MKM is mostly a miss but there are some interesting cards: evidence examiner has potential for several ending layers, seems nearly better than mind's eye? (with swapping back to infectious inquiry for the initial draws)
break out is a creature tutor and haste enabler, it almost allows us to go back to phabine as it hits everything we need it to except master transmuter.
still hoping for a good white activated ability to fix the awkwardness of the stages.
edit: sludge titan would have been useful i think for an old version? It's slightly too good now, but not that far off.
After much fruitless searching I haven't been able to improve the red/blue/green/white stages there were a couple of close ideas that either cut off too much other stuff or used too many cards, or something similar.
The real problem is white.
White's activated abilities/kickers/flashbacks/etc are pretty awful at forming a stage. Especially compared to green and blue, which have multiple good options, though again, I couldn't improve that part of our deck either.
We have enough creature types, we can use the spiral rise construction that needs 7 clocks (including halt) which uses way less than a hundred clocks in the absolute worst cases.
Though that does also end up needing a bunch more bishops and tokens.
Yeah I think it does, and we just have the three caresses targeting them to trigger mind's eye.
Well two because 9 cards is not enough to draw all of our creatures, so the first batch of mind's eye triggers is wimpy.
Losing basically a whole layer off of the end kinda sucks, but I don't see a way around it.
I don't think that quite works still, but is kind of close.
edit edit: Oh duh she can copy treasures so that's no good at all.
and giving the opponent haste via swapping abandon the post for reckless charge lets them sacrifice an animated ghitu encampment to metalworker paying for brutal suppression in the middle of computation.
maybe there is another way to do the ending stages to skip weathered wayfarer?
edit3:
So thinking on swapping colors around,
without kurkesh, we aren't as locked into red being the worldfire stage resource as we were, though we do still want to be able to cast epic experiment, so it kind of just opens up blue, which doesn't help solve the problem of how bad all of the white options are at all. (also we'd still need to generate an initial extra red somehow to actually cast SSA for treasures)
Yeah getting a good estimate of that deck is difficult.
The general conversion from waterfall to flooding waterfall is notably worse than say squaring, so we aren't anywhere close to converting even a small waterfall program into flooding for the first computation. For that we'd need to find a halting flooding program using those audacious swaps as efficiently as possible, however, even fairly small flooding programs tend to explode. I think there was a simple pattern of n clocks that computed 2^n? so we can at least escape into proper BB numbers once we get going. We can definitely do better than that though.
Just popping in to point out that since flooding clocks are turing complete now, we can go back to the old small BB decks and make them actually work by removing Dralnu's crusade.
Awkward problem: Brutal suppression has oracle text of 'nontoken' because the original was 'rebel cards'
and Phabine, Boss's Confidant only gives haste to tokens,
so Ashnod the Uncaring won't actually trigger for cards like weathered wayfarer and Master transmuter.
This prevents our ending stages from working.
This does actually save us from letting the opponent sacrifice ghitu encampment to activate metalworker during computation, which was my original concern, but this is still a problem.
Yeah the start is a lot more free now. I'm not 100% on that spellweaver helix ruling, but its fine either way.
You also get 4 more copies of fated at the start because vreyan is in play doubling the tys trigger, so your line actually does a lot better
9 fated 1 rat 1 teysa 2 tokens/death (rats*(teysa+1))
8 fated 3 rat 1 teysa 6 tokens/death
7 fated 3 rat 7 teysa 24
6 fated 27 rat 7 teysa 216
5 fated 27 rat 223 teysa 6048
4 fated 6075 rat 223 teysa 1360800
3 fated 6075 rat 1361023 teysa 8268220800
2 fated 8268226875 rat 1361023 teysa 10^16
1 fated 8268226875 rat 10^16 teysa 10^26 (Edit: ok its actually 9.3*10^25)
last fated makes Vreyans
I'd been thinking 60 = precursor golem and something like:
cast drake before caress
getting orrery, precursor, metalworker
lets us split the caress draws up if we want
Something like draw 6:
1 search for glory fetch and play phabine, ashnod, rata, vreyan
2 AE precursor->zombie TYS x2 triggers zombify all creatures
3 fated on a golem(zombie) token, 2x precursor triggers, 2x tysx4 triggers + original
resolve the tys triggers to make ratadrabriks (each copy doubles the rats, so 2^8)
then resolve golem trigger on the rat tokens first, then on rat himself, then on the legends for about 2^10 of each legend
second golem trigger I think 'only' brings us to like 2^12
drake triggers draw artifacts
metalworker tokens make mana
We can't really take too much advantage of the ability to refill the opponent's deck as we only have one combat. Because combat can trigger an illegal computation (via blocking), we can't use some of the classic ending cards like world at war or finest hour.
One issue with riftsweeper is that it is another 'normal' creature that we can't fetch easily, squeezing the start's ability to do the full combo.
One fewer legend now though so that relaxes a bit of the pressure on Search for glory getting enough storm.
It would be nice if precursor golem's slot could be something that helps with SSA at the end and with fetching normal creatures at the start.
Edit: Oh right, why don't we go back to Caress of Phyrexia for extra precombat mind's eye triggers?
Thank you, that is helpful and solves most of what I was worried about.
I'm still stuck on this: Mirror of fate doesn't cost mana to activate
It can be activated by the opponent unless march of the machines is in play.
But we also can't do computation with march of the machines in play.
I think we need to donate it to be able to preserve it through computation.
It doesn't go co-operatively infinite because we only have one combat step to trigger phabines.
But they can threaten to trap the real mirror in our graveyard and empty their library preventing us from getting phabine triggers.
Edit:
Actually can someone else take a look at the kaervek's spite / top of foundry stage / prep for computation part of the stack? Something wasn't quite working for me yesterday, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
edit: not sure if that is the optimal end sequence, but precursor golem is slightly more useful than Xorn elsewhere and can be drawn with chromescale drake. Though maybe like Teysa Karlov is better?
edit2: going through the deck again I forgot how awkward our transitions are, I'm pretty sure they still work, but are quite close to not working.
For the start, we have a bunch of possible lines based on whats left over in our hand after starting with:
mox, dig, crypt, epic experiment flipping omniscience and resurgent belief
We can have the II from hand give 1,3,4,5, or 7 poison counters, depending on what we want to use.
we need to draw all of the nonlegendary-nonartifact creatures (and ghitu encampment as WW can't fetch it unless the opponent has some) before we have access to the full combo.
We also need to draw worldfire or AtP so we can make red mana to cast SSA, which we need to draw after resolving worldfire.
I count 12 unfetchable creatures, plus encampment, and also worldfire and SSA for 15 of the 18 cards we get to draw precombat, leaving just three cards free for cards like fated infatuation... so drawing SSA a second time seems difficult.
Though if we just want computes precombat that only needs 5 normal creatures.
Yeah, adding more coat of arms has been the fix we had for ages. (which also solves the tokens being base 2/2 instead of 1/1)
As for the shared type, I Think the old solution of flattening them out and just have the same number of the other types made indestructible with watchdog, so everything gets a flat +10294 toughness or whatever, so its the same behavior except that the first clock to dip to 10293 will be the one to zero. As velocity gets higher this term disappears.
But that is a good point and ill check with ais523
edit: ais523 confirms that buffing everything the same amount wont affect the behavior of their construction, but wouldn't be true of arbitrary FWC programs
edit2: I still don't entirely understand what dark magic ais523 wrought to make FWM TC, but it seems to be solid. I tested it using my own (suboptimal) FWC simulator on multiple different waterclock programs and it works! We'll maybe eventually want to run the explicit TM -> n-tag -> 2-tag -> spiral rise -> TWM -> FWM -> MTG conversion for like BB(6) or a small UTM. But I think we are good for now and can look for other optimizations like if Vesuvan Duplimancy is ok or not.
edit3: its not because it copies artifacts, allowing us for easy moxen and treasures. We only have one card that can trigger it like that but the card is artificial evolution.
were there any other notable cards that could be useful?
if not I guess its just determining the last cards and verifying/optimizing the start then?
edit4: yarok's deathtouch goes infinite with indestructible from resolute watchdog. We can either swap to panharmonicon or martyr of spores. I'm not sure which is more efficient?
Hmm I think if it works, that replaces Ratadrabik of Urborg and fated infatuation?
but that might break some of the transitions where fated infatuation would be relied on fizzling.
keeper of the cadence is just barely big enough with 5 toughness and can't recur itself.
watchful radstag seems like it is going to be busted in one of these, but not yet.
evidence examiner has potential for several ending layers, seems nearly better than mind's eye? (with swapping back to infectious inquiry for the initial draws)
break out is a creature tutor and haste enabler, it almost allows us to go back to phabine as it hits everything we need it to except master transmuter.
still hoping for a good white activated ability to fix the awkwardness of the stages.
edit: sludge titan would have been useful i think for an old version? It's slightly too good now, but not that far off.
The real problem is white.
White's activated abilities/kickers/flashbacks/etc are pretty awful at forming a stage. Especially compared to green and blue, which have multiple good options, though again, I couldn't improve that part of our deck either.
So it seems like this is where we are:
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
Starting a Computation
6 Opalescence
7 Wrong Turn
8 Kaervek's Spite
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
Utility
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Metalworker
13 Twinning Glass
14 Thousand-Year Storm
15 Bloodbond March
16 Chancellor of the Annex
Foundry Stage
17 Martyr of Spores
18 Soul Foundry
19 Emblem of the Warmind
20 Cowardice
21 Riftsweeper
22 Chromescale Drake
23 Ashnod the Uncaring
24 Ratadrabik of Urborg
25 Spellweaver Volute
26 Veyran, Voice of Duality
27 Fated Infatuation
28 Lingering Souls
29 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
30 Archon of Falling Stars
31 Pious Interdiction
Helix Megastage
32 Spellweaver Helix
33 Worldfire
34 Starlight
35 Abandon the Post
36 Abandon the Post
37 Mox Ruby
38 Yarok, the Desecrated
Blue Mana Stage
39 Master Transmuter
40 Floodchaser
41 Great Furnace
42 Brutal Suppression
43 Search for Glory
44 Snow-Covered Island
45 Arboreal Grazer
46 Firebrand Ranger
47 Groundskeeper
48 Forest
White Mana Stage
49 Ruin Ghost
50 Weathered Wayfarer
51 Archaeological Dig
52 Ghitu Encampment
Start
53 Mana Crypt
54 Epic Experiment
55 Resurgent Belief
56 Omniscience
57 Caress of Phyrexia
End Layers
58 Mind's Eye
59 Smoke Spirits' Aid
60 Precursor Golem
Though that does also end up needing a bunch more bishops and tokens.
Well two because 9 cards is not enough to draw all of our creatures, so the first batch of mind's eye triggers is wimpy.
Losing basically a whole layer off of the end kinda sucks, but I don't see a way around it.
edit:
hmm Saheeli, the Sun's Brilliance nearly fixes our problems
The idea being something like:
-master transmuter -brutal suppression
+saheeli +Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
I don't think that quite works still, but is kind of close.
edit edit: Oh duh she can copy treasures so that's no good at all.
and giving the opponent haste via swapping abandon the post for reckless charge lets them sacrifice an animated ghitu encampment to metalworker paying for brutal suppression in the middle of computation.
maybe there is another way to do the ending stages to skip weathered wayfarer?
edit3:
So thinking on swapping colors around,
without kurkesh, we aren't as locked into red being the worldfire stage resource as we were, though we do still want to be able to cast epic experiment, so it kind of just opens up blue, which doesn't help solve the problem of how bad all of the white options are at all. (also we'd still need to generate an initial extra red somehow to actually cast SSA for treasures)
The general conversion from waterfall to flooding waterfall is notably worse than say squaring, so we aren't anywhere close to converting even a small waterfall program into flooding for the first computation. For that we'd need to find a halting flooding program using those audacious swaps as efficiently as possible, however, even fairly small flooding programs tend to explode. I think there was a simple pattern of n clocks that computed 2^n? so we can at least escape into proper BB numbers once we get going. We can definitely do better than that though.
So we have something like this for 13 cards:
2 Channel
3 Vessel of Endless Rest
4 Precursor Golem
5 Replication Technique
6 Audacious Swap
7 Scrambleverse
9 Bishop of Wings
10 Artificial Evolution
11 Arcbond
12 Comeuppance
13 Soulblast
Brutal suppression has oracle text of 'nontoken' because the original was 'rebel cards'
and Phabine, Boss's Confidant only gives haste to tokens,
so Ashnod the Uncaring won't actually trigger for cards like weathered wayfarer and Master transmuter.
This prevents our ending stages from working.
This does actually save us from letting the opponent sacrifice ghitu encampment to activate metalworker during computation, which was my original concern, but this is still a problem.
You also get 4 more copies of fated at the start because vreyan is in play doubling the tys trigger, so your line actually does a lot better
9 fated 1 rat 1 teysa 2 tokens/death (rats*(teysa+1))
8 fated 3 rat 1 teysa 6 tokens/death
7 fated 3 rat 7 teysa 24
6 fated 27 rat 7 teysa 216
5 fated 27 rat 223 teysa 6048
4 fated 6075 rat 223 teysa 1360800
3 fated 6075 rat 1361023 teysa 8268220800
2 fated 8268226875 rat 1361023 teysa 10^16
1 fated 8268226875 rat 10^16 teysa 10^26 (Edit: ok its actually 9.3*10^25)
last fated makes Vreyans
I'd been thinking 60 = precursor golem and something like:
cast drake before caress
getting orrery, precursor, metalworker
lets us split the caress draws up if we want
Something like draw 6:
1 search for glory fetch and play phabine, ashnod, rata, vreyan
2 AE precursor->zombie TYS x2 triggers zombify all creatures
3 fated on a golem(zombie) token, 2x precursor triggers, 2x tysx4 triggers + original
resolve the tys triggers to make ratadrabriks (each copy doubles the rats, so 2^8)
then resolve golem trigger on the rat tokens first, then on rat himself, then on the legends for about 2^10 of each legend
second golem trigger I think 'only' brings us to like 2^12
drake triggers draw artifacts
metalworker tokens make mana
Yeah, not catching up to the teysa line.
We can't really take too much advantage of the ability to refill the opponent's deck as we only have one combat. Because combat can trigger an illegal computation (via blocking), we can't use some of the classic ending cards like world at war or finest hour.
One issue with riftsweeper is that it is another 'normal' creature that we can't fetch easily, squeezing the start's ability to do the full combo.
One fewer legend now though so that relaxes a bit of the pressure on Search for glory getting enough storm.
It would be nice if precursor golem's slot could be something that helps with SSA at the end and with fetching normal creatures at the start.
Edit: Oh right, why don't we go back to Caress of Phyrexia for extra precombat mind's eye triggers?
I'm still stuck on this: Mirror of fate doesn't cost mana to activate
It can be activated by the opponent unless march of the machines is in play.
But we also can't do computation with march of the machines in play.
I think we need to donate it to be able to preserve it through computation.
It doesn't go co-operatively infinite because we only have one combat step to trigger phabines.
But they can threaten to trap the real mirror in our graveyard and empty their library preventing us from getting phabine triggers.
Edit:
Actually can someone else take a look at the kaervek's spite / top of foundry stage / prep for computation part of the stack? Something wasn't quite working for me yesterday, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
1 Coat of Arms
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Artificial Evolution
4 Arcbond
5 Comeuppance
Starting a Computation
6 Opalescence
7 Wrong Turn
8 Kaervek's Spite
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
Utility
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Metalworker
13 Twinning Glass
14 Thousand-Year Storm
15 Bloodbond March
16 Chancellor of the Annex
Foundry Stage
17 Martyr of Spores
18 Soul Foundry
19 Phabine, Boss's Confidant
20 Cowardice
21 Mirror of Fate
22 Chromescale Drake
23 Ashnod the Uncaring
24 Ratadrabik of Urborg
25 Spellweaver Volute
26 Veyran, Voice of Duality
27 Fated Infatuation
28 Lingering Souls
29 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
30 Archon of Falling Stars
31 Pious Interdiction
Helix Megastage
32 Spellweaver Helix
33 Worldfire
34 Starlight
35 Abandon the Post
36 Abandon the Post
37 Mox Ruby
38 Yarok, the Desecrated
Blue Mana Stage
39 Master Transmuter
40 Floodchaser
41 Great Furnace
42 Brutal Suppression
43 Search for Glory
44 Snow-Covered Island
45 Arboreal Grazer
46 Firebrand Ranger
47 Groundskeeper
48 Forest
White Mana Stage
49 Ruin Ghost
50 Weathered Wayfarer
51 Archaeological Dig
52 Ghitu Encampment
Start
53 Mana Crypt
54 Epic Experiment
55 Resurgent Belief
56 Omniscience
57 Infectious Inquiry
End Layers
58 Mind's Eye
59 Smoke Spirits' Aid
60 Precursor Golem
edit: not sure if that is the optimal end sequence, but precursor golem is slightly more useful than Xorn elsewhere and can be drawn with chromescale drake. Though maybe like Teysa Karlov is better?
edit2: going through the deck again I forgot how awkward our transitions are, I'm pretty sure they still work, but are quite close to not working.
For the start, we have a bunch of possible lines based on whats left over in our hand after starting with:
mox, dig, crypt, epic experiment flipping omniscience and resurgent belief
We can have the II from hand give 1,3,4,5, or 7 poison counters, depending on what we want to use.
we need to draw all of the nonlegendary-nonartifact creatures (and ghitu encampment as WW can't fetch it unless the opponent has some) before we have access to the full combo.
We also need to draw worldfire or AtP so we can make red mana to cast SSA, which we need to draw after resolving worldfire.
I count 12 unfetchable creatures, plus encampment, and also worldfire and SSA for 15 of the 18 cards we get to draw precombat, leaving just three cards free for cards like fated infatuation... so drawing SSA a second time seems difficult.
Though if we just want computes precombat that only needs 5 normal creatures.
As for the shared type, I Think the old solution of flattening them out and just have the same number of the other types made indestructible with watchdog, so everything gets a flat +10294 toughness or whatever, so its the same behavior except that the first clock to dip to 10293 will be the one to zero. As velocity gets higher this term disappears.
But that is a good point and ill check with ais523
edit: ais523 confirms that buffing everything the same amount wont affect the behavior of their construction, but wouldn't be true of arbitrary FWC programs
edit2: I still don't entirely understand what dark magic ais523 wrought to make FWM TC, but it seems to be solid. I tested it using my own (suboptimal) FWC simulator on multiple different waterclock programs and it works! We'll maybe eventually want to run the explicit TM -> n-tag -> 2-tag -> spiral rise -> TWM -> FWM -> MTG conversion for like BB(6) or a small UTM. But I think we are good for now and can look for other optimizations like if Vesuvan Duplimancy is ok or not.
edit3: its not because it copies artifacts, allowing us for easy moxen and treasures. We only have one card that can trigger it like that but the card is artificial evolution.
were there any other notable cards that could be useful?
if not I guess its just determining the last cards and verifying/optimizing the start then?
edit4: yarok's deathtouch goes infinite with indestructible from resolute watchdog. We can either swap to panharmonicon or martyr of spores. I'm not sure which is more efficient?
but that might break some of the transitions where fated infatuation would be relied on fizzling.