MTG Salvation

Creative technique would still slowly eat through their library right? (edit: oh nonland) The exile is not optional and we cant get their wastes back into their hand/deck.

Trickery is difficult due to needing a target to counter. We don't really have a counterable spell for R so we'd need an extra card for artificial evolution or something.

Hmm we could imprint Artificial evolution on chrome mox for an extra mana, but then we have almost nothing in hand.

Yeah, we make so much more mana than we need with Mana echoes so I think this substitution is fine.
But, can lore broker even get started with mana vault?

Yes because vault is +2 mana so we don't need the mountain
Lotus, vault, Creative technique
Then continue as before.


Edit: oh Show and tell was what broke countering extra worldfires in the transition, so Tibalt's trickery might be safe after all if we want to use that instead.

Black lotus + mountain is one short of creative technique -> omniscience

I dont think we can get there without another card though... Can Mana vault replace Mana echoes?

Oh, right I thought that was solved by Coat of arms based computation not really working if everything is the same creature type, but we can just point two kegs at a big keg as a whole computation, then dack the damaged keg once we have flash again.

Can we wrap drafna's restoration and uproot/plow under into the same card? Though a more general card like Noxious revival hitting creatures and enchantments is probably a problem... not to mention the use of using it on the oppon-

Oh, we kinda have a problem, show and tell+uproot allows the opponent to draw their wastes forever and avoid decking.

Edit: is there another way to get started? tibalt's trickery is almost safe, but counters worldfires...

Well since my lore broker start didn't use panharmonicon its not strictly needed, so Arcane adaptation is an option.

Thrumming stone ends up being pretty slot efficient right? I don't quite remember how it works though.

Edit: I don't think thrumming stone works as it gives the ripple trigger to the spells, so it'd need to be a tribal spell to work with the Harmonic prodigy. And there aren't very many options for those.

Edit2:Harmonic prodigy even only works on permanents, so thrumming stone doesn't look like it works at all :/
Relevant comp rule: 109.2. If a spell or ability uses a description of an object that includes a card type or subtype, but doesn't include the word "card," "spell," "source," or "scheme," it means a permanent of that card type or subtype on the battlefield.

Well the goal was to swap out the sphinx for FDZ, so that we'd have enough ETB friendly blue creatures and sneak in World at War for 11 layers. But it doesn't seem like the start is possible... A slight improvement is nice, but we want that layer.

Sky swallower was another blue creature option, but it can donate lands and let the opponent activate Aegis automation during computation so we dont need to figure out if it can even work.

Another option is Lore Broker, but that needs Thousand-Year Elixir, so we get kinda cramped at the start:
Lotus S+T omni
Dual nature
Thousand year elixir
Lore Broker
Consecrated Sphinx

Gives us 2 lore brokers we can activate, the first one gives us a mill and 4 cards, and with a mana we can even get an extra activation untapping it with the Elixir

Something like
Mill Pull from Eternity
Draw 4:
Orrery
TYS
Harmonic prodigy
Artificial evolution (wizard->sphinx)

Then the next lore broker mills say arcbond
and gives us 6 sphinx triggers while we have flash
Alhammarret's Archive
+21 other cards should be enough to get going

So lore broker seems like it works.

I think we get to 11 layers with this:

Edit: fixed decklist a little.

Hmm FDZ does seem interesting, let's see if i can get something going

Black Lotus
Show and Tell
Omniscience
Dual Nature
Panharmonicon
Floating-Dream Zubera
Desolation Giant

Left with 1 token giant in play draw 3x3= 9

March of the machines
Opalescence
Doubling season (I think we'd rather have more doubling seasons first than panharmonicons? This might be the wrong order)
Mana echoes
Bloodbond march
Cephalid shrine
Vedalken orrery
Soul separator
Drake familiar

This seems to be able to get us some soul separators, flash, a chunk of mana, and some BM triggers for the Drake

We don't have artificial evolution yet so we'd need to be careful not to make too many zuberas at once, we get them in powers of two so we probably want 3 doubling seasons for 8*11 cards.

Not sure how we'd be getting FDZ back from the yard at that point though...

Oh right we need to copy the ETB. hmm...

Clones are no good as you mentioned.

Going through the deck looking for blue creatures as replacements:
Coat of Arms: unique
Xathrid Necromancer: nothing blue
Arcbond: unique
Artificial Evolution: unique
Wrong Turn: Sky swallower? seems REALLY awkward to make work, possibly impossible.
Dralnu's Crusade: unique
Opalescence: nothing blue

Desolation Giant: unique
Goblin Boom Keg: unique
March of the Machines: unique
Vedalken Orrery: Tidal Barracuda almost works but is symmetrical.
Dack Fayden: Master thief comes close, and others are close as well, but I don't think anything works.

Spellweaver Volute: unique
Pull from Eternity: unique
Copy enchantment: unique

Dual Nature: nothing blue

Bloodbond March: unique
Cephalid Shrine: A few close ones, but countering copies breaks the worldfire transition.
Thousand-Year Storm: unique
Mana Echoes: Deranged Assistant? but its just so inefficient at making mana early and we can't afford to mill too much...

Retract: needs to be an instant
Soul Separator: unique
Urborg Syphon-Mage: no blue options
Thousand-Year Elixir: unique
K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth: unique
Lingering Souls: must be a sorcery
Drake Familiar: already blue
Safe Passage: no blue options

Spellweaver Helix: unique
Worldfire: sorcery
Gravitic Punch: sorcery
Gravitic Punch: dupe
Recoup: Snapcaster mage and Kess, dissident mage flashback instants
Journey for the Elixir: no blue options
Mountain: need to be a land
Harmonic Prodigy: unique
Arcane Adaptation/panharmonicon: nothing that works
Wormfang Behemoth: already blue

Distorting Wake: must be an X sorcery
Chrome Mox: unique

Aegis Automaton: must be artifact
Guardian of the Guildpact: unique
Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient: unique
Alhammarret's Archive: unique

Black Lotus: unique
Show and Tell: unique
Omniscience: Yusri, fortune's flame doesn't work
Sphinx of Enlightenment: already blue but limited casts. maybe Lore broker? Not sure if start is possible...
Break Through the Line/Marchesa's Smuggler: already a blue creature

Serra's Sanctum: land
Animist's Awakening: green
Blue Sun's Zenith: x instant
Consecrated Sphinx: already a blue creature
Widespread Panic: unique
Jester's Mask: nothing blue
Moraug, Fury of Akoum: nothing blue

Drake Familiar: already a blue creature

Doubling Season: unique
Drafna's Restoration: unique
Uproot: no blue creatures

Yeah the main concern with the wizards is that we can counter copies of things if we want, which we can't do with the Shrine. This might allow us to break the worldfire transition?

As before we relied on being unable to rebuild after resolving two worldfires in a row, so we couldn't cast worldfire while we had TYS in play. But now we could counter all but one of the worldfires.

So we just hide everything in the wormfang, resolve a worldfire, and then resolve some show and tells to put omniscience and vedalken orrery in play and rebuild without using any of the lower Dual Nature triggers.

Edit: Not really seeing other good options for subbing in a blue creature... Maybe Mistform Mutant for Arcane adaptation/panharmonicon? I don't think our opponent can make blue to mess with computation.

Ah I missed that panharmonicon was gone, but seems way better in the start than Arcane adaptation.
So we still have a slot we'd like to use for world at war taken up by the extra blue creature.

The obvious thing I see is adding Marchesa's Smuggler for Break Through the Line, but i think that breaks something?

Another thought is to replace Cephalid Shrine shrine with something like Disruptive student or Patron Wizard.

Nice, I didnt notice it worked with Kurkesh, that makes it a nice improvement over Bolt Bend.
But since Kurkesh already has creature types, do we even need arcane adaptation?

Also, we need to swap back from Mirrormade to Copy enchantment, cheap copies of black lotus is easy infinite.

Yeah out of time lets us get flash in the middle of the worldfire transition, so we can rebuild without using any lower resources.

Well, we have to be very careful about how we can reuse our cards.
Currently we jump through kind of a lot of hoops to be able to chain together computations triggered by Desolation Giant killing Goblin boom keg. We need a new Arcbond, a fresh keg, and a new march of the machines before getting another Giant trigger. We recast Arcbond with copy enchantment tokens of Spellweaver volute, (keeping them around thanks to pull from eternity, and bouncing them all in response with drake familiar to abuse last known information) using Lingering Souls as the Sorcery. Dack Fayden's emblem allows us to efficiently steal back a few key permanents such as vedalken orrery, Omniscience, goblin boom keg, and soul seperator. We can now recast our enchantments, make a bunch of copies and bounce the real ones with soul separator on Drake familiar. (we can 'save' some progress by wrong turning some of the tokens back to the opponent) Then we are ready to make another Giant and trigger everything again.

This cycle costs us: a few Spellweaver volute triggers. (and a batch of X of them costs 2 life)

This cycle used to obviously just be limited by the volute triggers, but without mirrormade anymore, we need to track the artifacts too. However, since we are using retract anyway, we can include that in the volute rotation, steal the artifacts, retract, and use another spellweaver volute trigger to steal a token copy of orrery, and then we can replay them and get Dual Nature copies.

So then we just use some small constant number (~10?) of spellweaver volute triggers each computation.

Seems like a lot of hoops to jump through, but because of the later stuff in the deck, while something like "Bounce all of our stuff" would suffice, it limits what else we can do to repeat computations in a limited manner. Specifically, we don't want to be able to bounce creatures easily, but do want to be able to make copies of them easily. Also, because of fizzling it would be very convenient if our bounce effects didn't target. Currently we are using Retract, Drake familiar and Soul Seperator to manage all of that.

And Retract is pulling triple duty by enabling the Urborg Syphon-Mage stage.

Edit: I don't have a whole lot of hope for something from MH2, but interesting to note that Urza's Saga will be our first Enchantment Land ever, I cant remember when the last time we got a new card type combo was? Gotta be something more recent than Dryad arbor/Lucent Liminid? (Edit2: I guess legendary instants and sorceries in dominaria.)

Edit: As suspected MH2 has some very unique cards, but none that seem particularly useful?
Dermotaxi allows for easy copying/reanimating creatures without triggering ETB effects. It can change what it is mid computation.
The underworld cookbook is a new discard->life possibility, though it's second ability ruins it.
Suspend can maybe do something with jhoira's timebug or Dust of moments, but its hard to ensure a cast in the setup.

Probably the most potential is Out of time, which looks like the best way to introduce phasing ever printed. if we can make it work.

So we rewind Toski, bearer of secrets for the untap and to clear the stack of the real rewind and the other spell.

Then we need the other spell to put the Gates of Istfell back into play (gates can draw itself) Eureka moment can do that, but costs UG instead of UU...

I guess U=G isn't obviously a big problem, and we still need to turn the 2 life into the proper mana. Something like Murderous Rider can kill Maraleaf pixie for 2 life, allowing the pixie to be brought back with Back for more, though that does add another green to the cost...

We also have to be careful about consequences of reusing the Tibalt's trickery from the setup.

Edit: AFR previews are starting and these are our last new cards before rotation.

I haven't seen anything pop out to me yet, but fingers crossed.

At the very least circle of dreams druid is probably worth a layer or two.

Hmm, that's kinda close, but runs into some problems like the Rewinds running out of targets, (all of the copy triggers only make one spell at a time) and gates of istfell being only one activation instead of several.

If we have Show of confidence as a counterable storm spell, maybe.

Also we cant have the mana come from lands, as we could just resolve 2+ rewinds in a row tapping the lands inbetween and be up mana.