That's 61 cards (I'm hopeful we can find 1 slot of fat to trim because the two sphinxes work so well here), 8 stages, 3 layers on top, and a final iteration count that probably lands somewhere between 20 and 40. The main questions we have to answer are: is this Chalice magic safe through the Megastage transition? And does Wheel of Sun and Moon break anything lower down on the stack?
Ah, I missed Yuki-Onna, that makes a lot of sense.
I also want to throw out a possible out that may be a lot cheaper than any of our current plans: Wheel of Sun and Moon over Myr Welder.
Now, because we can't exile Engineered Explosives after sacrificing it, we need Wheel out when we sacrifice Explosives. However, we can't play it before playing Chalice on 2, because if we do then our Anaba Ancestor will skip the graveyard and we won't be able to Bloodbond March it back. Since we both need it on the field with Bloodbond March triggers on the stick (only possible with Chalice on 2), and can't play it then get the triggers, the only way to make it work is by killing Chalice after getting all our triggers, then resolving Wheel. We also need to get it off the field before Explosives's ability resolves, but since it's an aura, we can't bounce it. It will skip the graveyard and go to our library, where we need to use an untapped Millikin to get it in the graveyard where we can rebuy it. That means that, while we can get Explosives back again in the hyperstage, we won't have a Wheel to put it back in the library when we sacrifice it, and the entire hyperstage will fizzle. So it protects us the same way Myr Welder did.
Assuming I haven't missed anything, that makes Thousand-Year Storm safe again, because now we also have to resolve Wheel later on in the transition, That lets us skip all the scaling mechanisms we've been working with so far.
Fallen a bit behind, but I'm worried about the possibility of resolving Goryo's Vengeance mid transition now that Chalice is getting set to 1. You also can't use Aven Riftwatcher or any enters/leaves the battlefield triggers, because you can champion them under Changeling Hero. That's why I stuck with Verdant Succession and Centaur Safeguard: you need a death trigger in the megastage.
Edit: since Metallurgeon and Goryo's Vengeance have the same CMC, you have to reset Chalice to start the Metallurgeon stage, which I think is too expensive.
Also, I believe Myr Welder is still necessary here to prevent an infinite. If it's cheap to exile Explosives (i.e. doesn't require a resource Retract completely blanks), you can repeatedly tuck Explosives back in after using it, Muzzio it back out with the next Vengeance, then bounce it again with Retract, letting you make another hyperstage token for each Dark-Dwellers trigger.
In the Chalice deck, we can save a single Muzzio, Visionary Architect through the hyperstage transition, which is enough to go infinite. To avoid that, we need to force the deck to use that Muzzio during the transition, without letting it just play another Goryo's Vengeance afterwards to get a replacement Muzzio. The only way I see to do that, at least feasibly, is by forcing Muzzio to get out Chalice of the Void itself. To do THAT, we need to make some critical part of the hyperstage transition rely on RESOLVING a 2-mana spell some time AFTER we cast Anaba Ancestor to get Bloodbond March triggers. If we can resolve it any time, we can just play it first, then play Chalice on 2 and follow it up with the Ancestor.
Of the steps in the hyperstage transition, the ones which need to be done after casting Anaba Ancestor are:
Killing enchantments. After we put Anaba Ancestor on Mimic Vat, the only way of getting it back in the graveyard is by killing a green enchantment, imprinting it on the same vat to put the Ancestor in the graveyard, then using Mirror of Fate to put the enchantment in the library and using the Verdant Succession trigger from killing it to put it back on the battlefield. If we can't kill enchantments, we can only put Ancestor in the library, not the graveyard, and we'll fizzle.
Bouncing Chalice of the Void so we can replay it. If we can't resolve the bounce spell or a copy of the bounce spell through a Chalice, then there's no way to set Chalice back to 4. That's why I cut Thousand-Year Storm from the version I posted here, but that introduces its own host of problems.
Milling generic cards. Hurkyl's Recall is in our exile/library when we enter the transition, and to recast it and bounce the Chalice, we have to get it into the graveyard. Theoretically, we could mill it any time in the transition, but because we're using Millikin, getting Recall in the graveyard can only be done AFTER using Engineered Explosives. That only gives us the timing restriction, though: it still doesn't force us to use Muzzio every time we mill. If we go this route, we also have to make sure we can't do the same thing with Goryo's Vengeance, which would let us get another untapped Muzzio.
Get Vedalken Orrery back after the second Recall. This seems like a dead end, but in the interest of completeness, it's there.
If we can find a way to make any one of those things rely on activating Muzzio, then we can throw Thousand-Year Storm back in and make everything much, much easier.
When Child of Alara's ability resolves, the Mimic Vats will still trigger on those creatures dying: you just can't make token copies of them after you exile, because the vats aren't around. Then, as long as you've championed Vedalken Orrery under Changeling Hero, you can stack the triggers like so:
Vedalken Orrery comes in, and you replay Mirror of Fate from your hand (well, Mirrorworks too so you can spend the token and keep access to the original, which is important). Mimic Vat exiles the green creatures, and you activate a Mirror to tuck them in the library. Then Verdant Succession pulls them back out.
Oh, I see what you're saying. I'm worried about the potential for creating a Clockwork Gnomes token in between Hurkyl's Recall casts, but I'm also not sure what if anything that would break, so I think that should be safe.
So assuming that does work, and being optimistic about how well we can start, our deck is looking like this:
I'm not sure, but I think that the Millikin shenanigans are actually superfluous. Assuming I haven't forgotten an infinite past me learned to avoid, we can swap it for Millstone and make this list a little less unreasonably complicated. Then we just have to figure out the megastage transition, somehow...
Actually, I think Artifact Mutation is TOO safe: we can make a Clockwork Gnomes token, but then we have no way of getting it back to the battlefield afterwards. To profit a token each time, we need the instant's effect to persist after resolving.
We can also use Retrofitter Foundry to make the 4/4s, if that makes the stack any easier to handle. Panharmonicon goes infinite with Changeling Hero: you can exile multiple cards under it, then fail to exile and sacrifice it. I forget the exact details of the combo, but it's pretty much impossible to work around.
Speaking of workarounds... I forgot about this, but the only reason Thousand-Year Storm isn't allowed is because it lets you save an untapped Muzzio during the transition. If we can find another way to force us to use a Muzzio, we can go back to Thousand-Year Storm and save several slots.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to do that. One option would be to tie putting instants and sorceries into the graveyard to Muzzio: that way, in order to replay Hurkyl's Recall, you have to activate your extra Muzzio so Goblin Dark-Dwellers can target it. But anything Muzzio fetches can also get bounced by Hurkyl's Recall. I guess we could have Muzzio grab an artifact land, triggering Hedron Crab, but then I don't know how we'd keep the Crab alive through the megastage.
For an alternative solution: Vital Splicer and Master Splicer. Now, we can bounce Precursor Golem for 1 and replay it to get additional tokens. And because it's been pumped to power 4, we can now target it with Smite the Monstrous. So now, instead of getting only Psychic Battle triggers, we get 2 layers underneath the Psychic Battles, both of which are keyed only off how much mana we've generated so far! I think that lets us get away without crippling either of the higher n-stages.
I think I /mostly/ get the three decks at the top of page 86 now, though I have a couple corrections/questions:
1. Right now, you have Obelisk of Bant instead of Azorius Keyrune as the top-level mana fixer. I'm assuming that's a holdover from an older list, because it goes infinite in the gigastage and there's no need for green that high up.
2. Is there a reason for using Chancellor instead of Elvish Spirit Guide, and for using the infinite mana combo instead of Mana Vault? I can see there would be problems in the Iname lists, but for the others, I don't see any problem with using Spirit Guide, and the Mana Vault start should let us go back to Tribal Unity and add a layer on the top.
3. What cards do we actually NEED to save in hand with Wormfang Behemoth in the gigastage? I don't see any cards that can't be brought back from other zones. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think we can cut Behemoth from the current lists and add another layer to the deck.
Edit: after Worldfire doesn't matter, I think: we can just resolve back down to the next Megastage transition and rebuild from there. That Sephara combo should solve the progress-saving problem. Assuming that's right, we have something like this:
That gives f_{w^4+w7+3}(4)-ish, trading a stage for a couple layers on the safer decks. That's an improvement, but without those two-extra slots it may not wind up being worth it once we really optimize your lists.
I'm still catching up a bit on some of what you guys have done in my absence (the K'rrik bit is pure genius, by the way, kudos), but the chalice piles are kinda in my wheelhouse, so I'm gonna try to help where I can.
You guys have pretty much hit the nail on the head with why Chalice of the Void works where Cephalid Shrine doesn't: because you have to bounce and replay it to reset it each time, and the only way to do that is with Rebuild, which also removes all Vedalken Orrery copies, you're very limited in how you layer the different Bloodbond March triggers. I'm confident that the hyper stage works. I'm much less confident, however, about the mega stage transition. At that point, the Chalice transitions got so complicated I couldn't work them out in my head, and while I'm pretty sure it can't go infinite, it may consume too many resources.
We do have some flexibility in the megastage transition, though: if it turns out that switching to 5 is too expensive we can use Changeling Berserker and have our champion creature only cost 4. That might just make us go infinite, but if not, that is an option. We also can cast Goblin Dark-Dwellers while Chalice is on 5 and get a pile of Bloodbond March triggers, which may help negate the cost.
On Copy Artifact/Mirrormade: unfortunately, I don't think those actually work. You can destroy one of them, then reanimate it with Mimic Vat and make it into a copy of Clockwork Gnomes. Then you can activate the token to get PB triggers, and use them to make copies of Skull of Orm and such to get the original enchantment back from under the Mimic Vat. So I don't think that saving progress has actually been solved here.
How dangerous is populate here? Song of the Worldsoul combined with Allay would let us turn mana into token copies of any other token we've made, including our enchantments. It definitely doesn't break with Mimic Vat, but as of now it breaks with Goblin Dark-Dwellers: we can hit it with Smite the Monstrous, put it on Mimic Vat, make a token, and now we can make copies of it instead. And since I don't think we can avoid ever being able to target Dark-Dwellers, I guess that won't work.
Is there a way to give enchantments, and only enchantments, indestructible? That way, all our Psychic Battles and such would survive the mega stage transition, and we wouldn't need to worry about rebuilding them at all.
Hey, all. I've been out of this challenge for a few months (going to be catching up soon), but it looks like MtgSalvation is going to shut down in July. We're going to have to move this discussion if we want to continue, which I think we should, since apparently in my absence Deedlit's found a stage in standard and we're already back to a six-stage sequence.
I have a lot of server power at my disposal, and I'd be willing to look into setting up a forum locally for this, but failing that, does anyone have other ideas? I think it's important that our discussions remain public, so anyone can theoretically join at any time.
I'm getting up to speed on your thoughts for the standard challenge, but if you aren't at this point already I think we should be working towards a stage combo for sure.
The new flash-granting land makes life much, much easier, and Thousand-Year Storm is a scaling mechanism that works for all instants and sorceries. Bolas's Citadel could even potentially let us leverage both life AND mana as resources.
The problem is that we can activate our creature for Psychic Battle triggers, let one bounce the Changeling, put all our preprocessing on the stack again, and then cast the Changeling. So we get 1 Hyperstage transition per Psychic Battle trigger, which is definitely a no-go.
If we can stick with the second Forked-Branch Garami, I think we can still gain life of Natural Order. We can get both the Garamis on the battlefield at once with it, kill both to gain 6 life... wait no, that only worked with Centaur Safeguard. So I guess we do need a separate way to gain life, which would also mean a fourth Spider Spawning if I'm not mistaken.
If we allow power 4+, there are a LOT of extra stages we can add in. Possessed creatures, paragons, Slivers, Thrulls, a pile of others. The problem then becomes that we don't have enough space to fit them all, but if we were to allow a sideboard that wouldn't be a problem.
I believe Panharmonicon is unsafe in all Champion builds: lijil found an infinite way back when were you bounce the creature, cast it, champion the relevant creature, then fail to champion anything with the second one down and sacrifice the creature. Bloodbond March brings it back, and you have the ability to generate all your spells, while still allowing for preprocessing. So that doesn't work.
You also don't need multiple Forked-Branch Garami. You can dump the same one that died into the library with Bone Harvest. So that's your extra card right there
Though, do we have a way of recovering our artifacts after the gigastage?
So, assuming that works, and there is at least some chance it doesn't, we have a deck that looks like this:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Chalice of the Void
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Millikin
13 Allay
14 Skull of Orm
15 Mirrorworks
16 Mana Vault
17 Simic Keyrune
18 Clockwork Gnomes
19 Goryo's Vengeance
20 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
21 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
22 Hurkyl's Recall
23 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
24 Changeling Hero
25 Anaba Ancestor
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Wheel of Sun and Moon
29 Acorn Harvest
30 Smite the Monstrous
31 Child of Alara
32 Centaur Safeguard
33 Verdant Succession
34 Spellweaver Helix
35 Worldfire
36 Spider Spawning
37 Spider Spawning
38 Spider Spawning
39 Molderhulk
40 Multani's Decree
41 Bayou
42 Eureka
43 Mox Emerald
44 Vastwood Animist
45 Grassland Crusader
46 Western Paladin
47 Frightshroud Courier
49 Ghosthelm Courier
50 Devout Chaplain
51 Royal Assassin
52 Simian Spirit Guide
53 Goblin Kites
54 Old Man of the Sea
55 Sea Snidd
56 Reign of Chaos
57 Xathrid Gorgon
58 Reality Spasm
59 Thousand-Year Storm
60 Consecrated Sphinx
61 Sphinx of Enlightenment
That's 61 cards (I'm hopeful we can find 1 slot of fat to trim because the two sphinxes work so well here), 8 stages, 3 layers on top, and a final iteration count that probably lands somewhere between 20 and 40. The main questions we have to answer are: is this Chalice magic safe through the Megastage transition? And does Wheel of Sun and Moon break anything lower down on the stack?
I also want to throw out a possible out that may be a lot cheaper than any of our current plans: Wheel of Sun and Moon over Myr Welder.
Now, because we can't exile Engineered Explosives after sacrificing it, we need Wheel out when we sacrifice Explosives. However, we can't play it before playing Chalice on 2, because if we do then our Anaba Ancestor will skip the graveyard and we won't be able to Bloodbond March it back. Since we both need it on the field with Bloodbond March triggers on the stick (only possible with Chalice on 2), and can't play it then get the triggers, the only way to make it work is by killing Chalice after getting all our triggers, then resolving Wheel. We also need to get it off the field before Explosives's ability resolves, but since it's an aura, we can't bounce it. It will skip the graveyard and go to our library, where we need to use an untapped Millikin to get it in the graveyard where we can rebuy it. That means that, while we can get Explosives back again in the hyperstage, we won't have a Wheel to put it back in the library when we sacrifice it, and the entire hyperstage will fizzle. So it protects us the same way Myr Welder did.
Assuming I haven't missed anything, that makes Thousand-Year Storm safe again, because now we also have to resolve Wheel later on in the transition, That lets us skip all the scaling mechanisms we've been working with so far.
Edit: since Metallurgeon and Goryo's Vengeance have the same CMC, you have to reset Chalice to start the Metallurgeon stage, which I think is too expensive.
Also, I believe Myr Welder is still necessary here to prevent an infinite. If it's cheap to exile Explosives (i.e. doesn't require a resource Retract completely blanks), you can repeatedly tuck Explosives back in after using it, Muzzio it back out with the next Vengeance, then bounce it again with Retract, letting you make another hyperstage token for each Dark-Dwellers trigger.
In the Chalice deck, we can save a single Muzzio, Visionary Architect through the hyperstage transition, which is enough to go infinite. To avoid that, we need to force the deck to use that Muzzio during the transition, without letting it just play another Goryo's Vengeance afterwards to get a replacement Muzzio. The only way I see to do that, at least feasibly, is by forcing Muzzio to get out Chalice of the Void itself. To do THAT, we need to make some critical part of the hyperstage transition rely on RESOLVING a 2-mana spell some time AFTER we cast Anaba Ancestor to get Bloodbond March triggers. If we can resolve it any time, we can just play it first, then play Chalice on 2 and follow it up with the Ancestor.
Of the steps in the hyperstage transition, the ones which need to be done after casting Anaba Ancestor are:
If we can find a way to make any one of those things rely on activating Muzzio, then we can throw Thousand-Year Storm back in and make everything much, much easier.
top
Changeling Hero champion trigger returning Vedalken Orrery
Mimic Vat exile triggers for the relevant green creatures
Verdant Succession triggers for the same.
Vedalken Orrery comes in, and you replay Mirror of Fate from your hand (well, Mirrorworks too so you can spend the token and keep access to the original, which is important). Mimic Vat exiles the green creatures, and you activate a Mirror to tuck them in the library. Then Verdant Succession pulls them back out.
Another problem: Changeling Hero is also a Golem, so Vital Splicer won't work.
Sadly, it doesn't work for Mirror of Fate, but if we replace the Royal Assassin stage at the bottom, we can use Glimmerdust Aura to turn mana into copies of Mimic Vat and Skull of Orm as needed.
So assuming that does work, and being optimistic about how well we can start, our deck is looking like this:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Chalice of the Void
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Millikin
13 Phantatog
14 Mirrorworks
15 Mana Vault
16 Simic Keyrune
17 Skull of Orm
18 Clockwork Gnomes
19 Goryo's Vengeance
20 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
21 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
22 Hurkyl's Recall
23 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
24 Changeling Hero
25 Anaba Ancestor
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Myr Welder
29 Acorn Harvest
30 Smite the Monstrous
31 Child of Alara
32 Centaur Safeguard
33 Verdant Succession
34 Artifact Mutation
35 Spellweaver Helix
36 Worldfire
37 Spider Spawning
38 Spider Spawning
39 Spider Spawning
40 Titania, Protector of Argoth
41 Multani's Decree
42 Bayou
43 Eureka
44 Elvish Spirit Guide
45 Vastwood Animist
46 Grassland Crusader
47 Western Paladin
48 Frightshroud Courier
50 Ghosthelm Courier
51 Devout Chaplain
52 Royal Assassin
53 Simian Spirit Guide
54 Goblin Kites
55 Old Man of the Sea
56 Xathrid Gorgon
57 Reality Spasm
58 Precursor Golem
59 Consecrated Sphinx
60 Reforge the Soul
I'm not sure, but I think that the Millikin shenanigans are actually superfluous. Assuming I haven't forgotten an infinite past me learned to avoid, we can swap it for Millstone and make this list a little less unreasonably complicated. Then we just have to figure out the megastage transition, somehow...
Actually, I think Artifact Mutation is TOO safe: we can make a Clockwork Gnomes token, but then we have no way of getting it back to the battlefield afterwards. To profit a token each time, we need the instant's effect to persist after resolving.
Actually, if we switched to a 1cmc creature instead of Anaba Ancestor, we could switch to Metallurgeon and Battle Cry again... Wait, the only creature that would fit is Cenn's Tactician, which is also white.
Speaking of workarounds... I forgot about this, but the only reason Thousand-Year Storm isn't allowed is because it lets you save an untapped Muzzio during the transition. If we can find another way to force us to use a Muzzio, we can go back to Thousand-Year Storm and save several slots.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to do that. One option would be to tie putting instants and sorceries into the graveyard to Muzzio: that way, in order to replay Hurkyl's Recall, you have to activate your extra Muzzio so Goblin Dark-Dwellers can target it. But anything Muzzio fetches can also get bounced by Hurkyl's Recall. I guess we could have Muzzio grab an artifact land, triggering Hedron Crab, but then I don't know how we'd keep the Crab alive through the megastage.
I think I /mostly/ get the three decks at the top of page 86 now, though I have a couple corrections/questions:
1. Right now, you have Obelisk of Bant instead of Azorius Keyrune as the top-level mana fixer. I'm assuming that's a holdover from an older list, because it goes infinite in the gigastage and there's no need for green that high up.
2. Is there a reason for using Chancellor instead of Elvish Spirit Guide, and for using the infinite mana combo instead of Mana Vault? I can see there would be problems in the Iname lists, but for the others, I don't see any problem with using Spirit Guide, and the Mana Vault start should let us go back to Tribal Unity and add a layer on the top.
3. What cards do we actually NEED to save in hand with Wormfang Behemoth in the gigastage? I don't see any cards that can't be brought back from other zones. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think we can cut Behemoth from the current lists and add another layer to the deck.
Edit: after Worldfire doesn't matter, I think: we can just resolve back down to the next Megastage transition and rebuild from there. That Sephara combo should solve the progress-saving problem. Assuming that's right, we have something like this:
2 Psychic Battle
3 Cowardice
4 Horobi, Death's Wail
5 Bloodbond March
6 Chalice of the Void
7 Mimic Vat
8 Omniscience
9 Vedalken Orrery
10 Mirror of Fate
11 Karn, Silver Golem
12 Millikin
13 Phantatog
14 Mirrorworks
15 Mana Vault
16 Simic Keyrune
17 Skull of Orm
18 Clockwork Gnomes
19 Goryo's Vengeance
20 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
21 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
22 Hurkyl's Recall
23 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
24 Changeling Hero
25 Anaba Ancestor
26 Engineered Explosives
27 Myr Welder
29 Acorn Harvest
30 Smite the Monstrous
31 Child of Alara
32 Centaur Safeguard
33 Verdant Succession
34 Sephara, Sky's Blade
35 Maze Glider
36 Spellweaver Helix
37 Worldfire
38 Spider Spawning
39 Spider Spawning
40 Spider Spawning
41 Titania, Protector of Argoth
42 Multani's Decree
43 Bayou
44 Eureka
45 Elvish Spirit Guide
46 Vastwood Animist
47 Grassland Crusader
49 Frightshroud Courier
50 Havengul Runebinder
51 Ghosthelm Courier
52 Devout Chaplain
53 Royal Assassin
54 Simian Spirit Guide
55 Goblin Kites
56 Old Man of the Sea
57 Xathrid Gorgon
58 Reality Spasm
59 Precursor Golem
60 Reforge the Soul
That gives f_{w^4+w7+3}(4)-ish, trading a stage for a couple layers on the safer decks. That's an improvement, but without those two-extra slots it may not wind up being worth it once we really optimize your lists.
I'm still catching up a bit on some of what you guys have done in my absence (the K'rrik bit is pure genius, by the way, kudos), but the chalice piles are kinda in my wheelhouse, so I'm gonna try to help where I can.
You guys have pretty much hit the nail on the head with why Chalice of the Void works where Cephalid Shrine doesn't: because you have to bounce and replay it to reset it each time, and the only way to do that is with Rebuild, which also removes all Vedalken Orrery copies, you're very limited in how you layer the different Bloodbond March triggers. I'm confident that the hyper stage works. I'm much less confident, however, about the mega stage transition. At that point, the Chalice transitions got so complicated I couldn't work them out in my head, and while I'm pretty sure it can't go infinite, it may consume too many resources.
We do have some flexibility in the megastage transition, though: if it turns out that switching to 5 is too expensive we can use Changeling Berserker and have our champion creature only cost 4. That might just make us go infinite, but if not, that is an option. We also can cast Goblin Dark-Dwellers while Chalice is on 5 and get a pile of Bloodbond March triggers, which may help negate the cost.
On Copy Artifact/Mirrormade: unfortunately, I don't think those actually work. You can destroy one of them, then reanimate it with Mimic Vat and make it into a copy of Clockwork Gnomes. Then you can activate the token to get PB triggers, and use them to make copies of Skull of Orm and such to get the original enchantment back from under the Mimic Vat. So I don't think that saving progress has actually been solved here.
How dangerous is populate here? Song of the Worldsoul combined with Allay would let us turn mana into token copies of any other token we've made, including our enchantments. It definitely doesn't break with Mimic Vat, but as of now it breaks with Goblin Dark-Dwellers: we can hit it with Smite the Monstrous, put it on Mimic Vat, make a token, and now we can make copies of it instead. And since I don't think we can avoid ever being able to target Dark-Dwellers, I guess that won't work.
Is there a way to give enchantments, and only enchantments, indestructible? That way, all our Psychic Battles and such would survive the mega stage transition, and we wouldn't need to worry about rebuilding them at all.
I have a lot of server power at my disposal, and I'd be willing to look into setting up a forum locally for this, but failing that, does anyone have other ideas? I think it's important that our discussions remain public, so anyone can theoretically join at any time.
The new flash-granting land makes life much, much easier, and Thousand-Year Storm is a scaling mechanism that works for all instants and sorceries. Bolas's Citadel could even potentially let us leverage both life AND mana as resources.
If we can stick with the second Forked-Branch Garami, I think we can still gain life of Natural Order. We can get both the Garamis on the battlefield at once with it, kill both to gain 6 life... wait no, that only worked with Centaur Safeguard. So I guess we do need a separate way to gain life, which would also mean a fourth Spider Spawning if I'm not mistaken.
I believe Panharmonicon is unsafe in all Champion builds: lijil found an infinite way back when were you bounce the creature, cast it, champion the relevant creature, then fail to champion anything with the second one down and sacrifice the creature. Bloodbond March brings it back, and you have the ability to generate all your spells, while still allowing for preprocessing. So that doesn't work.
You also don't need multiple Forked-Branch Garami. You can dump the same one that died into the library with Bone Harvest. So that's your extra card right there
Though, do we have a way of recovering our artifacts after the gigastage?