Hey everyone,
So I've been working on my decklist for the last few days and think it really improved with all the tips from here. Also it's now a 60 card Vintage instead of Commander deck. A Commander deck goes infinite way too easy because you can always recast your commander from the command zone...
Basically I've tried to more or less use a consistent main line now instead of multiple ways to do stuff.
Start is as usual: Black Lotus -> Show and Tell -> Omniscience -> Enter the Infinite
Isochron Scepter will now imprint 7 cards (4 Outnumber, Kabira Tabedown (essentially the same card), Rush of Vitality and Fling), this is possible with multiple EtB triggers from Yarok, the Desecrated. I'm not sure if this is the best move, but there were 5 slots open and I figured that additional Outnumbers would be best.
The combo is now: Unbender Tine untaps Isochron Scepter, which is copied by every Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient. Every Kurkesh then copies the Isochron activation. All the copies are cast, which triggers every Precursor Golem for every creature we have. First we use Fling on a Saber Ants, to set the number of creatures we have to a multiple of the power of the creature we sacrificed with the help of Fiery Emancipation and Doubling Season. Unfortunately Fling doesn't do much after that because the damage stays constant, but with Outnumber, the damage increases with the increasing number of creatures we get. Psychic Battle redirects all of the Golem copies to Saber Ants, which creates more golems (Xenograft)
Every creature then comes into play with a number of +1/+1 counters equal to the power of Master Biomancer, multiplied by Doubling Season and triggers Hamletback Goliath, also multiplied by Doubling Season. This increases the power of Heroes' Bane enchanted with Gleam of Authority.
Every creature entering the battlefield also triggers Intruder Alarm, multiplied by Yarok and untaps every Alena, Kessig Trapper, which can be used to increase the power of Heroes' Bane further.
Once every copy of every copy from the Isochrone Spells is resolved, we use one Alena to cast Haze of Rage with buyback X/2 times where X is Heroes' Bane's power, to increase the storm count of Thousand-Year Storm.
All of the creature tokens created by Saber Ants can be used as any combo piece (Precursor Golem, Doubling Season, Fiery Emancipation, Alena, Intruder Alarm, Yarok, Kurkesh, etc) at every point of the combo with Shapesharer. So every Isochrone activation gives multiplies all combo pieces multiple times.
Unbender Tine can then be untapped with Lapis Lazuli Talisman every time a blue spell is cast.
They way to do that is: One play of Gingerbread Cabin creates a lot of Food tokens with Doubling Season and Yarok (Dryad Arbor copies in play count for the forests so the Cabin enters untapped). Cracking a Food token nets 3 life, copied by Kurkesh and multiplied by Rhox Faithmender. For 1 life, Wydwen, the Biting Gale can be bounced and discard to Chainer, Nightmare Adept, which gets copied by Kurkesh to get a lot of creature replays from the grave. The creature we recast is Bygone Bishop, which creates a lot of Clue tokens, again copied by Doubling Season. Cracking a Clue draws a card for every Kurkesh we have, one at a time so this can recast Blue Sun's Zenith that many times to trigger the Talisman and untap Unbender Tine.
Chandra also casts Chandra's Ignition (how fitting). Before casting it, every creature (except one of each combo piece) should be turned into a Precursor Golem from Shapesharer, to generate the most triggers. Every trigger then counts the number of Golems when it resolves, so this really scales. With Psychic Battle, the Ignition copy from the Golems is redirected to the Heroes' Bane with Gleam of Authority. Then every creature is turned into Saber Ants or Fiery Emancipation, to get the most token triggers. Before the first token trigger resolves, we change everything into Doubling Season, Yarok, the Desecreated and Intruder Alarm to get the most tokens, while the powerful Heroes' Bane with Gleam of Authority gets turned into Master Biomancer and one other creature gets turned into Hamletback Goliath. This makes Heroe's Bane a lot more powerful and gives a bunch of untap triggers. After an untap trigger resolves, we turn one creature into Alena, Kessig Trapper and every other creature into Nyxbloom Ancient, tap it, increase the power of Heroes' Bane, then repeat that until every creature (including the new ones) is tapped for mana and Heroes' Bane is vastly more powerful.
Since Heroes' Bane has lifelink, this also creates a lot of Unbender Tine untaps for every copy and even more with the next copy.
With spells that don't target a single creature, like Second Sunrise, Surreal Memoir, Eerie Ultimatium, Echo of Eons and Time Spiral, it's best to turn every token into a Thousand-Year Storm before casting it, otherwise it's best to turn every token into a Precursor Golem because the Golem triggers scale as they count the number of Golems when the ability resolves.
Hopefully I did a decent job explaining it and I hope there's not some infinite combo still hidden in there.
How would the new list compare? It's certainly a lot more to the point than the one before, thanks to the help from everyone here.
/Edit:
Just found that Mycosinth Lattice doesn't work with Chandra Ablaze. That would have to be replaced by Memnarch or something like that.
But Khalni Gem and Llanowar Scout would be another layer with Second Sunrise.
@Deelit11: Oh wow, looks like the rule about the CMC of split cards was changed. I didn't play MtG for about 4 or 5 years and only started again recently so I missed that rule change. That's unfortunate :-(
Of course, I didn't realise that the number of Doubling Seasons, Kurkesh, etc was still constant with every Scepter activation, even if it was a very large number... They don't scale, so that's not an additional layer. My bad! Thanks for pointing that out.
But what if every Scepter activation would increase the number of Doubling Seasons, Molten Echoes, etc? If Repudiate//Replicate was imprinted and we had Djinn Illuminatus, we could copy replicate Replicate up to (x-1)/3 times where X is Heroe's Bane's power to alternately copy Doubling Season and Molten Echoes and Yarok, the Desecrated.
(Ignore for the moment that this would create all sorts of infinite combos in the current deck, the decklist would have to change significantly)
And the original spell cast from the Scepter could target a Precursor Golem and use Xenograft to turn everything into Golems so that everything else (Kurkesh, Nyxbloom Ancient, etc) also gets copied.
In that case, every untap of Unbender Tine should add a bunch of layers, right?
@Deelit: Consuming Bonfire can only target non-elemental creatures or treefolk creatures. It can't kill Nyxbloom Ancient. Auratog could though, so we would have to replace Nyxbloom Ancient with Mana Reflection which essentially does the same. I'll do that, thanks. Hadn't thought about that!
@jfb:
Wow, that infinite is a big issue. I'll probably have to change the commander, which makes Thousand-Year Storm significantly weaker and probably a place to cut. As it is, Consuming Bonfire allows us to get the storm count into a similar order of magnitude as Heroe's Bane's power with the last Selvala untap before we play another spell or activate our Scepter the next time. Which is absolitely ridiculously powerful. But Djinn Illuminatus could accomplish basically the same, so that's an alternative.
Then we just need to add a creature sac outlet, which should be safe to add if Horde of Notions is removed. Removing Horde of Notions means we can keep Nyxbloom of course.
We already get copies of Wirewood Lodge from Molten Echoes and Doubling Season and we can also reuse Rowan with Eerie Ultimatum (which gets copied by TYS), Make a Wish (which returns Ultimatum and gets copied by TYS) and by the self exiling spells like Time Spiral (which return Make a Wish and also get copied by TYS).
But I don't think you understand the Selvala chain.
Every time we tap Unbender Tine, we get a LOT of untaps of Isochron Scepter (because of lots of Kurkesh, remember we're using Molten Echoes, Bloodbond March and Doubling Season). Every untap casts a LOT of Spiritual Visits (again, Kurkesh). Every Spiritual Visit is copied X times by all of our Thousand Year Storms, the token gets doubled by Doubling Seasons, which triggers all Intruder Alarm copies, which trigger multiple times because of Yarok. That untaps all our Magus of the Candelabras, which untap all Wirewood Lodges (Nature's Revolt makes them copyable creatures), this ability gets copied by Rowan and all our Wirewood Lodges untap Selvala, which also gets copied by Rowan. One Selvala untap generates X mana, multiplied by all our Nyxbloom Ancients, which we use to grow Heroe's Bane countless times (this ability also gets copied by Rowan and all the counters get copied by Doubling Season). So the next time Selvala gets untapped from Lodge, it will generate a LOT more mana since Heroe's Bane itself grows exponentially.
This is MUCH more than 3 layers.
If I'm not mistaken, every single untap of Unbender Tine should actually add X layers, so we will get a LOT of layers. So many layers that we would need arrow notations to count them.
Because every copy of an Isochron activation will essentially translate Heroe's Bane's power into a much larger number of creatures entering the battlefield, every one of which triggers multiple layers of Selvala untaps and every Selvala untap exponentially grows Heroe's Bane. And since we can recast a spell for just 5 mana, we can essentially push our TYS spell count into a similar order of magnitude as Heroe's Bane's power, so the next copy of the Scepter avility will be incredibly more powerful.
Of course that last interaction would be gone without Horde of Notion, but Djinn Illuminatus works just as well.
Oh and I think it's safe to replace Make a Wish with Echo of Eons, which is strictly better AND has flashback once we're out of other self exiling recursion spells.
Hey everyone, I'm new here and been working on this challenge for the Commander format for the last days. I'm not sure if there's not still an infinite combo hidden there, but I think it should work. If it does, I don't even know how many arrows of damage it would do...
Anyway, here's the list, commander is Horde of Notions:
Then we play Copy Enchantment, the copies we get from Doubling Season and Molten Echoes will copy Doubling Season and Molten Echoes, while the original card stays a Copy Enchanment. We need that later to copy auras.
Next we start to play our creatures:
Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and Cloudshredder Sliver. Selvala has haste, but we need green mana. Play Dryad Arbor. Activate Selvala with every Intruder Alarm trigger from here on and gain enough mana to get us through the next steps. Soulsworn Jury can be used on our most important creatures to gain many more copies of them through Bloodbond March. Don't worry, we'll be able to retrieve him later and gain enough copies to later use him on any creature spell we play.
Play Yarok, the Desecrated, Horde of Notions, Teysa Karlov, Chainer, Nightmare Adept, Tireless Tracker and World Shaper. Discard Wirewood Lodge to Chainer, kill World Shaper with Consuming Bonfire, returning the animated Lodge, get multiple copies. Since there are multiple World Shaper death triggers, we should kill the original Dryad Arbors and Wirewood Lodges with Consuming Bonfire in response, to be able to return them (Horde of Notions allows us to do that from the grave for 1 mana of every colour. We also get a bunch of Clue tokens (Doubling Season doubles those, too), which we will need later.
Cast Magus of the Candelabra and Heroe's Bane. From now on, every time a creature enters the battlefield, we will get multiple untaps from every copy of Intruder Alarm. We use every Magus to untap all our Wirewood Lodges, which untap Selvala. Selvala will grow our Heroe's Bane, to give us more mana next time.
Ok, so we double or triple pretty much everything and neither player can win or lose the game. Now it's time to play Isochron Scepter, imprinting Spiritual Visit. We activate it and copy it as often as we can with Kurkesh. The copy is cast, so we can use Splice onto Arcane with Overblaze. It now has a target and the target of the original spell is Zada, so it gets copied once for every creature we have. The copies from Thousand Year Storm all target our Heroe's Bane. Every Isochron activation will also increase our storm count since the original copy is cast.
We get lots and lots of untaps on Selvala, Heroe's Bane will grow larger and larger. Then we play Oath of Teferi and Rowan Kenrith. We cast Repeted Reverberation, which means our next loyalty ability will get copied twice as much as our Thousand-Year storm count. We ultimate Rowan Kenrith. Twice. This now copies every activated ability, including Scepter activations!
Speaking of which, we will now play Unbender Tine and untap Scepter with it, which gets copied by Rowan's ultimate ability, then we activate Scepter which gets copied again by Rowan. Also Magus of the Candelabra, Wirewood Lodge and Heroe's Bane will get copied by Rowan's ultimate.
With Lapis Lazuli Talisman out, we can now untap Unbender Tine once every time we cast a blue spell. We will cast lots of blue spells - that's what Blue Sun's Zenith is for. Every time we sac a clue, we will draw a LOT of cards, so we can recast Zenith just as often.
The other way to untap Unbender Tine is with Janjeet Sentry, for which we need energy. This will of course get copied by Rowan. We can get energy from Architect of the Untamed, Aetherwind Basker, Era of Innovation and Peema Aether-Seer.
Setup almost done. Pollenbright Wings and Celestial Mantle enchant our Heroe's Bane.
Now we play Kindred Charge, naming Sliver, cast and ultimate Teferi so that we can activate Planeswalkers at instant speed and our board is set up! The copies of the plain Copy Enchantment can copy Auras and we use that to get a few Celestial Mantles, later also Pollenbright Wings.
Stage 2: Combo
Kill the original one of every creature (not animated enchantment!) we have except for Heroe's Bane and play Magister of Worth. This will trigger a lot of times and every trigger will return all our creatures to play. In response to every trigger, we kill the original creature again.
We get a lot of World Shapers, which will return our lands, the lands will get copied by Molten Echoes and Doubling Season, this will give us a lot of Clue tokens (and also energy), which we can use to draw and cast Blue Sun's Zenith, which triggers Talisman, which untaps Unbender Tine, etc.
Unfortunately this is over quickly, so on to the next stage!
Stage 3: Attacking
We play Mage Slayer and equip Heroe's Bane, also cast Commando Raid on it and play Quest for Pure Flame. Attack with everything we have.
First things first - Mageslayer trigger. Heroe's Bane will deal a lot more damage than it has power thanks to Overblaze and lifelink from True Conviction combined with Rhox Faithmenderwill gain us a lot of life. Dealing damage will also enable us to crack Quest for Pure Flame.
We use that life to return Wydwen to our hand, discard Wydwen to Chainer to get a lot of creature replays from our grave (Chainer's ability gets copied by Rowan) and replay Magister of Worth, Magister also returns Wyden, so for the cost of 1 life we get to to repeat stage 2 over and over again.
Use the mana from the last Selvala untap to grow Pathbreaker Ibex with Wine of Blood and Iron. The value of X on Pathbreaker Ibex is determined when the trigger resolves, so all our creatures are now stronger than Heroe's Bane was before. Next we let a Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin trigger resolve, so we will get just as many tokens, doubled by doubling seasons, then remember to kill them with Bonfire and transform every Goblin into a lot of Spirits. And for every untap we get from Intruder Alarm, Heroe's Bane grows. Then we let an Aetherwind Basker trigger resolve, which gives us energy to untap Unbender Tine again.
Use the mana from the last Selvala untap to grow the next Pathbreaker Ibex and repeat: Pathbreaker Ibex -> Krenkro -> Aetherwind Basker until all triggers are resolved. Now we dump all mana into Heroe's Bane.
Stage 4: Combat Damage
Lifelink gives us a lot of life again to start our Wydwen-Chainer-combo.
ThenVarchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor gives our opponent a bunch of tokens, which also untap our creatures.
Next we get a lot of life from Noble Purpose triggers, but don't spend that yet - wait for Celestial Mantle and its copies to double it (which gets multiplied by Rhox Faithmender!). After all those triggers, start the Wydwen combo again.
Then, Pollenbright Wings gives us a bunch of tokens, you know what to do already.
Then we get a lot of Derevi, Empyrial Tactician untaps on our Unbender Tine.
That was the first strike damage. Now our opponent has tokens, so in addition to what we've done before, we get a lot of Commando Raid triggers. Let them resolve after the Wydwen combo, so Heroe's Bane is more powerful and deals more damage, so we gain more life from lifelink, to get more creature replays from Wydwen and Chainer. Make a token indestructible to keep it around.
We might later have to kill our own Planeswalkers and I haven't found a really good way to do this, so I've included Sword of Sinew and Steel.
Stage 5: Again!
5.1 Waves of Aggression for many, many more combat steps.
5.2 Once the last combat step is over, we play No Rest for the Wicked. It's not targeted, so it will get copied by Rowan if we sac it. Let the first copy of the ability resolve, return all creatures including Dryad Arbor to hand, which we can use to cast Waves of Aggression from the grave via retrace. Repeat the Stages 2 - 5.1 for every copy of the ability, then crack every one of the copies of No Rest for the Wicked to do the same again.
5.3 Cast Crystal Chimes and crack it. Unfortunately we don't get any copies since Chimes is and artifact and copying artifacts is off-limits for us, but the ability will get copied by Rowan's ultimate and by Kurkesh.
5.4 Cast Second Sunrise, which gets copied a bunch of times. Remember to kill the original one of every creature and animated enchantment we have so they all get returned and copied again. Every copy of Second Sunrise also returns Crystal Chimes so we can repeat everything including 5.3
5.5 Discard Surreal Memoir to Chainer. Casting this to return Second Sunrise is the next step, but we can't cast it from our hand or it would be exiled. It's not targeted, so every copy can return a Second Sunrise.
5.6 Cast Chandra Ablaze and ultimate her. This casts Surreal Memoir and repeats everything up to stage 5.5. It gets copied by Rowan's ability, too! Chandra also recasts Commando Raid and Kindred Charge. A lot of times.
5.7 Cast Nissa and return Chandra and Rowan. Her ability is targeted, so we can only return Chandra and Rowan twice (because of Oath of Teferi), but I think it's still worth it to include her. This also finally returns Rowan, so we can ultimate him a lot more often, which will really jump-start our combo.
5.8 Cast Eerie Ultimatum or Primevals' Glorious Rebirth and do it all again for all the storm count we have.
5.9 Cast Make a Wish. This isn't targeted either, so every copy of it can return Nissa and Rowan or Nissa and Chandra.
6. And again
Now we still have cards like Time Spiral or Feldon's Cane left, which will repeat every step prior to this. I've included every card I could find which does this and also gets copied by Thousand-Year Storm or Rowan (and doesn't go infinite like Metallurgic Summonings. Enchantments are off limits for this unfortunately)
7. Once more
Now we can use Holistic Wisdom to turn every sorcery we have left over and don't need into Make a Wish and later Make a Wish itself into one last copy of Eerie Ultimatum.
8. The kill
After the last combat step is over and we have nothing else left to do and our mana pool is just 3WUBRG, we equip one Abyssal Persecutor with Assault Suit, sac Opalescence to Auratog so we can keep our Thousand-Year Storm, cast Consuming Bonfire on our Abyssal Persecutor with the Assault suit, then cast Soulblast in response. After every copy of Soulblast is resolved, Abyssal Persecutor is killed and our opponent dies.
I hope there's not still an infinity combo hidden somwhere, because I've already removed a lot of potential infinites.
The deck also still has one open card slot and I think there's a lot of room for improvement, but the damage should be very high (if it works without going infinite?). So high anyway that I can't calculate it even with the arrow notation. It should be higher than any other megacombo I've seen so far unless I'm mistaken?
/Edit:
Just removed Patron Wizard because that's an infinite combo with Time Spiral or any other self exiling recursion spell. Replaced with Soulsworn Jury which is just as good once we get Magister of Worth going.
So I've been working on my decklist for the last few days and think it really improved with all the tips from here. Also it's now a 60 card Vintage instead of Commander deck. A Commander deck goes infinite way too easy because you can always recast your commander from the command zone...
Anyway, here it is:
1 Kabira Takedown // Kabira Plateau
1 Seize the Day
1 Fling
1 Arcbound Ravager
1 Hamletback Goliath
1 Echo of Eons
1 Chandra's Ignition
1 Gleam of Authority
1 Haze of Rage
1 Fiery Emancipation
1 Enter the Infinite
1 Silverfur Partisan
1 Domri Rade
1 Grip of Chaos
1 Psychic Battle
1 Rush of Vitality
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Master Biomancer
1 Alena, Kessig Trapper
1 Shapesharer
1 Bygone Bishop
1 Saber Ants
1 Gingerbread Cabin
4 Outnumber
1 Precursor Golem
1 Xenograft
1 Black Lotus
1 Prismite
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Tidal Barracuda
1 Surreal Memoir
1 Nyxbloom Ancient
1 Opalescence
1 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
1 Rhox Faithmender
1 Thousand-Year Storm
1 Abyssal Persecutor
1 Oath of Teferi
1 Wydwen, the Biting Gale
1 Chainer, Nightmare Adept
1 Second Sunrise
1 Chandra Ablaze
1 Mirror Gallery
1 Intruder Alarm
1 Yarok, the Desecrated
1 Molten Echoes
1 Doubling Season
1 Lapis Lazuli Talisman
1 Omniscience
1 Show and Tell
1 Unbender Tine
1 Teferi, Temporal Archmage
1 Time Spiral
1 Eerie Ultimatum
1 Isochron Scepter
Basically I've tried to more or less use a consistent main line now instead of multiple ways to do stuff.
Start is as usual: Black Lotus -> Show and Tell -> Omniscience -> Enter the Infinite
Isochron Scepter will now imprint 7 cards (4 Outnumber, Kabira Tabedown (essentially the same card), Rush of Vitality and Fling), this is possible with multiple EtB triggers from Yarok, the Desecrated. I'm not sure if this is the best move, but there were 5 slots open and I figured that additional Outnumbers would be best.
The combo is now:
Unbender Tine untaps Isochron Scepter, which is copied by every Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient. Every Kurkesh then copies the Isochron activation. All the copies are cast, which triggers every Precursor Golem for every creature we have. First we use Fling on a Saber Ants, to set the number of creatures we have to a multiple of the power of the creature we sacrificed with the help of Fiery Emancipation and Doubling Season. Unfortunately Fling doesn't do much after that because the damage stays constant, but with Outnumber, the damage increases with the increasing number of creatures we get. Psychic Battle redirects all of the Golem copies to Saber Ants, which creates more golems (Xenograft)
Every creature then comes into play with a number of +1/+1 counters equal to the power of Master Biomancer, multiplied by Doubling Season and triggers Hamletback Goliath, also multiplied by Doubling Season. This increases the power of Heroes' Bane enchanted with Gleam of Authority.
Every creature entering the battlefield also triggers Intruder Alarm, multiplied by Yarok and untaps every Alena, Kessig Trapper, which can be used to increase the power of Heroes' Bane further.
Once every copy of every copy from the Isochrone Spells is resolved, we use one Alena to cast Haze of Rage with buyback X/2 times where X is Heroes' Bane's power, to increase the storm count of Thousand-Year Storm.
All of the creature tokens created by Saber Ants can be used as any combo piece (Precursor Golem, Doubling Season, Fiery Emancipation, Alena, Intruder Alarm, Yarok, Kurkesh, etc) at every point of the combo with Shapesharer. So every Isochrone activation gives multiplies all combo pieces multiple times.
Unbender Tine can then be untapped with Lapis Lazuli Talisman every time a blue spell is cast.
They way to do that is: One play of Gingerbread Cabin creates a lot of Food tokens with Doubling Season and Yarok (Dryad Arbor copies in play count for the forests so the Cabin enters untapped). Cracking a Food token nets 3 life, copied by Kurkesh and multiplied by Rhox Faithmender. For 1 life, Wydwen, the Biting Gale can be bounced and discard to Chainer, Nightmare Adept, which gets copied by Kurkesh to get a lot of creature replays from the grave. The creature we recast is Bygone Bishop, which creates a lot of Clue tokens, again copied by Doubling Season. Cracking a Clue draws a card for every Kurkesh we have, one at a time so this can recast Blue Sun's Zenith that many times to trigger the Talisman and untap Unbender Tine.
The rest is similar as it was before:
Second Sunrise can return Gingerbread Cabin for more combos.
Surreal Memoir can return Second Sunrise
Chandra Ablaze can return Surreal Memoir
Eerie Ultimatum can return Chandra Ablaze
Echo of Eons can return Ultimatum
Time Spiral can return Echo of Eons
flashback Echo of Eons
Chandra also casts Chandra's Ignition (how fitting). Before casting it, every creature (except one of each combo piece) should be turned into a Precursor Golem from Shapesharer, to generate the most triggers. Every trigger then counts the number of Golems when it resolves, so this really scales. With Psychic Battle, the Ignition copy from the Golems is redirected to the Heroes' Bane with Gleam of Authority. Then every creature is turned into Saber Ants or Fiery Emancipation, to get the most token triggers. Before the first token trigger resolves, we change everything into Doubling Season, Yarok, the Desecreated and Intruder Alarm to get the most tokens, while the powerful Heroes' Bane with Gleam of Authority gets turned into Master Biomancer and one other creature gets turned into Hamletback Goliath. This makes Heroe's Bane a lot more powerful and gives a bunch of untap triggers. After an untap trigger resolves, we turn one creature into Alena, Kessig Trapper and every other creature into Nyxbloom Ancient, tap it, increase the power of Heroes' Bane, then repeat that until every creature (including the new ones) is tapped for mana and Heroes' Bane is vastly more powerful.
Since Heroes' Bane has lifelink, this also creates a lot of Unbender Tine untaps for every copy and even more with the next copy.
With spells that don't target a single creature, like Second Sunrise, Surreal Memoir, Eerie Ultimatium, Echo of Eons and Time Spiral, it's best to turn every token into a Thousand-Year Storm before casting it, otherwise it's best to turn every token into a Precursor Golem because the Golem triggers scale as they count the number of Golems when the ability resolves.
Hopefully I did a decent job explaining it and I hope there's not some infinite combo still hidden in there.
How would the new list compare? It's certainly a lot more to the point than the one before, thanks to the help from everyone here.
/Edit:
Just found that Mycosinth Lattice doesn't work with Chandra Ablaze. That would have to be replaced by Memnarch or something like that.
But Khalni Gem and Llanowar Scout would be another layer with Second Sunrise.
But what if every Scepter activation would increase the number of Doubling Seasons, Molten Echoes, etc? If Repudiate//Replicate was imprinted and we had Djinn Illuminatus, we could copy replicate Replicate up to (x-1)/3 times where X is Heroe's Bane's power to alternately copy Doubling Season and Molten Echoes and Yarok, the Desecrated.
(Ignore for the moment that this would create all sorts of infinite combos in the current deck, the decklist would have to change significantly)
And the original spell cast from the Scepter could target a Precursor Golem and use Xenograft to turn everything into Golems so that everything else (Kurkesh, Nyxbloom Ancient, etc) also gets copied.
In that case, every untap of Unbender Tine should add a bunch of layers, right?
@Deelit: Consuming Bonfire can only target non-elemental creatures or treefolk creatures. It can't kill Nyxbloom Ancient. Auratog could though, so we would have to replace Nyxbloom Ancient with Mana Reflection which essentially does the same. I'll do that, thanks. Hadn't thought about that!
@jfb:
Wow, that infinite is a big issue. I'll probably have to change the commander, which makes Thousand-Year Storm significantly weaker and probably a place to cut. As it is, Consuming Bonfire allows us to get the storm count into a similar order of magnitude as Heroe's Bane's power with the last Selvala untap before we play another spell or activate our Scepter the next time. Which is absolitely ridiculously powerful. But Djinn Illuminatus could accomplish basically the same, so that's an alternative.
Then we just need to add a creature sac outlet, which should be safe to add if Horde of Notions is removed. Removing Horde of Notions means we can keep Nyxbloom of course.
We already get copies of Wirewood Lodge from Molten Echoes and Doubling Season and we can also reuse Rowan with Eerie Ultimatum (which gets copied by TYS), Make a Wish (which returns Ultimatum and gets copied by TYS) and by the self exiling spells like Time Spiral (which return Make a Wish and also get copied by TYS).
But I don't think you understand the Selvala chain.
Every time we tap Unbender Tine, we get a LOT of untaps of Isochron Scepter (because of lots of Kurkesh, remember we're using Molten Echoes, Bloodbond March and Doubling Season). Every untap casts a LOT of Spiritual Visits (again, Kurkesh). Every Spiritual Visit is copied X times by all of our Thousand Year Storms, the token gets doubled by Doubling Seasons, which triggers all Intruder Alarm copies, which trigger multiple times because of Yarok. That untaps all our Magus of the Candelabras, which untap all Wirewood Lodges (Nature's Revolt makes them copyable creatures), this ability gets copied by Rowan and all our Wirewood Lodges untap Selvala, which also gets copied by Rowan. One Selvala untap generates X mana, multiplied by all our Nyxbloom Ancients, which we use to grow Heroe's Bane countless times (this ability also gets copied by Rowan and all the counters get copied by Doubling Season). So the next time Selvala gets untapped from Lodge, it will generate a LOT more mana since Heroe's Bane itself grows exponentially.
This is MUCH more than 3 layers.
If I'm not mistaken, every single untap of Unbender Tine should actually add X layers, so we will get a LOT of layers. So many layers that we would need arrow notations to count them.
Because every copy of an Isochron activation will essentially translate Heroe's Bane's power into a much larger number of creatures entering the battlefield, every one of which triggers multiple layers of Selvala untaps and every Selvala untap exponentially grows Heroe's Bane. And since we can recast a spell for just 5 mana, we can essentially push our TYS spell count into a similar order of magnitude as Heroe's Bane's power, so the next copy of the Scepter avility will be incredibly more powerful.
Of course that last interaction would be gone without Horde of Notion, but Djinn Illuminatus works just as well.
Oh and I think it's safe to replace Make a Wish with Echo of Eons, which is strictly better AND has flashback once we're out of other self exiling recursion spells.
Anyway, here's the list, commander is Horde of Notions:
1 Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Mana Crypt
1 Wine of Blood and Iron
1 Heroes' Bane
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Nature's Revolt
1 Magus of the Candelabra
1 Wirewood Lodge
1 Commando Raid
1 Mage Slayer
1 True Conviction
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Quest for Pure Flame
1 Necropolis Regent
1 Experimental Overload
1 Tidal Barracuda
1 Surreal Memoir
1 Nyxbloom Ancient
1 Kindred Charge
1 Janjeet Sentry
1 Opalescence
1 Era of Innovation
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
1 Rhox Faithmender
1 Peema Aether-Seer
1 Thousand-Year Storm
1 Soulblast
1 Assault Suit
1 Abyssal Persecutor
1 Nissa, Vital Force
1 Oath of Teferi
1 Derevi, Empyrial Tactician
1 Noble Purpose
1 Waves of Aggression
1 Wydwen, the Biting Gale
1 Chainer, Nightmare Adept
1 Cloudshredder Sliver
1 Aetherwind Basker
1 World Shaper
1 No Rest for the Wicked
1 Second Sunrise
1 Chandra Ablaze
1 Pollenbright Wings
1 Celestial Mantle
1 Pathbreaker Ibex
1 Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin
1 Requiem Angel
1 Mirror Gallery
1 Intruder Alarm
1 Teysa Karlov
1 Yarok, the Desecrated
1 Magister of Worth
1 Ballot Broker
1 Soulsworn Jury
1 Bloodbond March
1 Hivestone
1 Molten Echoes
1 Doubling Season
1 Overblaze
1 Spiritual Visit
1 Lapis Lazuli Talisman
1 Omniscience
1 Show and Tell
1 Lotus Petal
1 Repeated Reverberation
1 Unbender Tine
1 Teferi, Temporal Archmage
1 Thran Foundry
1 Cranial Archive
1 Feldon's Cane
1 Emergency Powers
1 Recall
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Time Reversal
1 Game Plan
1 Finale of Revelation
1 Praetor's Counsel
1 Time Spiral
1 Make a Wish
1 Creeping Renaissance
1 Mythos of Brokkos
1 Primevals' Glorious Rebirth
1 Eerie Ultimatum
1 Angel's Grace
1 Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
1 Rowan Kenrith
1 Isochron Scepter
1 Consuming Bonfire
1 Sword of Sinew and Steel
1 Copy Enchantment
1 Holistic Wisdom
1 Deathless Angel
1 Auratog
And here's what it does:
Stage 0: Draw
Play Mana Crypt, Lotus Petal, Show and Tell, Omniscience, Angel's Grace, Ad Nauseam. Draw your deck.
Stage 1: Setup:
Play Hivestone, Opalescence, Soulsworn Jury, Mirror Gallery, Molten Echoes (naming Sliver), Doubling Season, Bloodbond March, Noble Purpose, Intruder Alarm, Nature's Revolt, True Conviction
Then we play Copy Enchantment, the copies we get from Doubling Season and Molten Echoes will copy Doubling Season and Molten Echoes, while the original card stays a Copy Enchanment. We need that later to copy auras.
Next we start to play our creatures:
Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and Cloudshredder Sliver. Selvala has haste, but we need green mana. Play Dryad Arbor. Activate Selvala with every Intruder Alarm trigger from here on and gain enough mana to get us through the next steps.
Soulsworn Jury can be used on our most important creatures to gain many more copies of them through Bloodbond March. Don't worry, we'll be able to retrieve him later and gain enough copies to later use him on any creature spell we play.
Play Yarok, the Desecrated, Horde of Notions, Teysa Karlov, Chainer, Nightmare Adept, Tireless Tracker and World Shaper. Discard Wirewood Lodge to Chainer, kill World Shaper with Consuming Bonfire, returning the animated Lodge, get multiple copies. Since there are multiple World Shaper death triggers, we should kill the original Dryad Arbors and Wirewood Lodges with Consuming Bonfire in response, to be able to return them (Horde of Notions allows us to do that from the grave for 1 mana of every colour. We also get a bunch of Clue tokens (Doubling Season doubles those, too), which we will need later.
Cast Magus of the Candelabra and Heroe's Bane. From now on, every time a creature enters the battlefield, we will get multiple untaps from every copy of Intruder Alarm. We use every Magus to untap all our Wirewood Lodges, which untap Selvala. Selvala will grow our Heroe's Bane, to give us more mana next time.
Ok, now that we've got this, we can play Thousand-Year Storm. The trick with Thousand-Year Storm and Horde of Notions is that we can use the mana from our last Selvala untap to cast Consuming Bonfire on Heroe's Bane, so our storm count will be in about the same order of magnitude as the power of Heroe's Bane! Yes, that's a lot of spell copies. Deathless Angel makes Heroe's Bane indestructible, so it doesn't get killed when we cast and recast Consuming Bonfire.
We play the rest of our setup creatures: Ballot Broker, Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient, Rhox Faithmender, Zada, Hedron Grinder, Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor, Abyssal Persecutor, Wydwen, the Biting Gale, Pathbreaker Ibex, Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin, Requiem Angel, Nyxbloom Ancient
We can now kill any of our non-spirit creatures which we don't need (like the copies of Wydwen for example) to get multiple Spirit tokens, untapping Magus of the Candelabra again and again.
Ok, so we double or triple pretty much everything and neither player can win or lose the game. Now it's time to play Isochron Scepter, imprinting Spiritual Visit. We activate it and copy it as often as we can with Kurkesh. The copy is cast, so we can use Splice onto Arcane with Overblaze. It now has a target and the target of the original spell is Zada, so it gets copied once for every creature we have. The copies from Thousand Year Storm all target our Heroe's Bane. Every Isochron activation will also increase our storm count since the original copy is cast.
We get lots and lots of untaps on Selvala, Heroe's Bane will grow larger and larger. Then we play Oath of Teferi and Rowan Kenrith. We cast Repeted Reverberation, which means our next loyalty ability will get copied twice as much as our Thousand-Year storm count. We ultimate Rowan Kenrith. Twice. This now copies every activated ability, including Scepter activations!
Speaking of which, we will now play Unbender Tine and untap Scepter with it, which gets copied by Rowan's ultimate ability, then we activate Scepter which gets copied again by Rowan. Also Magus of the Candelabra, Wirewood Lodge and Heroe's Bane will get copied by Rowan's ultimate.
With Lapis Lazuli Talisman out, we can now untap Unbender Tine once every time we cast a blue spell. We will cast lots of blue spells - that's what Blue Sun's Zenith is for. Every time we sac a clue, we will draw a LOT of cards, so we can recast Zenith just as often.
The other way to untap Unbender Tine is with Janjeet Sentry, for which we need energy. This will of course get copied by Rowan. We can get energy from Architect of the Untamed, Aetherwind Basker, Era of Innovation and Peema Aether-Seer.
Setup almost done. Pollenbright Wings and Celestial Mantle enchant our Heroe's Bane.
Now we play Kindred Charge, naming Sliver, cast and ultimate Teferi so that we can activate Planeswalkers at instant speed and our board is set up! The copies of the plain Copy Enchantment can copy Auras and we use that to get a few Celestial Mantles, later also Pollenbright Wings.
Stage 2: Combo
Kill the original one of every creature (not animated enchantment!) we have except for Heroe's Bane and play Magister of Worth. This will trigger a lot of times and every trigger will return all our creatures to play. In response to every trigger, we kill the original creature again.
We get a lot of World Shapers, which will return our lands, the lands will get copied by Molten Echoes and Doubling Season, this will give us a lot of Clue tokens (and also energy), which we can use to draw and cast Blue Sun's Zenith, which triggers Talisman, which untaps Unbender Tine, etc.
Unfortunately this is over quickly, so on to the next stage!
Stage 3: Attacking
We play Mage Slayer and equip Heroe's Bane, also cast Commando Raid on it and play Quest for Pure Flame. Attack with everything we have.
First things first - Mageslayer trigger. Heroe's Bane will deal a lot more damage than it has power thanks to Overblaze and lifelink from True Conviction combined with Rhox Faithmenderwill gain us a lot of life. Dealing damage will also enable us to crack Quest for Pure Flame.
We use that life to return Wydwen to our hand, discard Wydwen to Chainer to get a lot of creature replays from our grave (Chainer's ability gets copied by Rowan) and replay Magister of Worth, Magister also returns Wyden, so for the cost of 1 life we get to to repeat stage 2 over and over again.
Use the mana from the last Selvala untap to grow Pathbreaker Ibex with Wine of Blood and Iron. The value of X on Pathbreaker Ibex is determined when the trigger resolves, so all our creatures are now stronger than Heroe's Bane was before. Next we let a Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin trigger resolve, so we will get just as many tokens, doubled by doubling seasons, then remember to kill them with Bonfire and transform every Goblin into a lot of Spirits. And for every untap we get from Intruder Alarm, Heroe's Bane grows. Then we let an Aetherwind Basker trigger resolve, which gives us energy to untap Unbender Tine again.
Use the mana from the last Selvala untap to grow the next Pathbreaker Ibex and repeat: Pathbreaker Ibex -> Krenkro -> Aetherwind Basker until all triggers are resolved. Now we dump all mana into Heroe's Bane.
Stage 4: Combat Damage
Lifelink gives us a lot of life again to start our Wydwen-Chainer-combo.
ThenVarchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor gives our opponent a bunch of tokens, which also untap our creatures.
Next we get a lot of life from Noble Purpose triggers, but don't spend that yet - wait for Celestial Mantle and its copies to double it (which gets multiplied by Rhox Faithmender!). After all those triggers, start the Wydwen combo again.
Then, Pollenbright Wings gives us a bunch of tokens, you know what to do already.
Then we get a lot of Derevi, Empyrial Tactician untaps on our Unbender Tine.
That was the first strike damage. Now our opponent has tokens, so in addition to what we've done before, we get a lot of Commando Raid triggers. Let them resolve after the Wydwen combo, so Heroe's Bane is more powerful and deals more damage, so we gain more life from lifelink, to get more creature replays from Wydwen and Chainer. Make a token indestructible to keep it around.
We might later have to kill our own Planeswalkers and I haven't found a really good way to do this, so I've included Sword of Sinew and Steel.
Stage 5: Again!
5.1 Waves of Aggression for many, many more combat steps.
5.2 Once the last combat step is over, we play No Rest for the Wicked. It's not targeted, so it will get copied by Rowan if we sac it. Let the first copy of the ability resolve, return all creatures including Dryad Arbor to hand, which we can use to cast Waves of Aggression from the grave via retrace. Repeat the Stages 2 - 5.1 for every copy of the ability, then crack every one of the copies of No Rest for the Wicked to do the same again.
5.3 Cast Crystal Chimes and crack it. Unfortunately we don't get any copies since Chimes is and artifact and copying artifacts is off-limits for us, but the ability will get copied by Rowan's ultimate and by Kurkesh.
5.4 Cast Second Sunrise, which gets copied a bunch of times. Remember to kill the original one of every creature and animated enchantment we have so they all get returned and copied again. Every copy of Second Sunrise also returns Crystal Chimes so we can repeat everything including 5.3
5.5 Discard Surreal Memoir to Chainer. Casting this to return Second Sunrise is the next step, but we can't cast it from our hand or it would be exiled. It's not targeted, so every copy can return a Second Sunrise.
5.6 Cast Chandra Ablaze and ultimate her. This casts Surreal Memoir and repeats everything up to stage 5.5. It gets copied by Rowan's ability, too! Chandra also recasts Commando Raid and Kindred Charge. A lot of times.
5.7 Cast Nissa and return Chandra and Rowan. Her ability is targeted, so we can only return Chandra and Rowan twice (because of Oath of Teferi), but I think it's still worth it to include her. This also finally returns Rowan, so we can ultimate him a lot more often, which will really jump-start our combo.
5.8 Cast Eerie Ultimatum or Primevals' Glorious Rebirth and do it all again for all the storm count we have.
5.9 Cast Make a Wish. This isn't targeted either, so every copy of it can return Nissa and Rowan or Nissa and Chandra.
6. And again
Now we still have cards like Time Spiral or Feldon's Cane left, which will repeat every step prior to this. I've included every card I could find which does this and also gets copied by Thousand-Year Storm or Rowan (and doesn't go infinite like Metallurgic Summonings. Enchantments are off limits for this unfortunately)
7. Once more
Now we can use Holistic Wisdom to turn every sorcery we have left over and don't need into Make a Wish and later Make a Wish itself into one last copy of Eerie Ultimatum.
8. The kill
After the last combat step is over and we have nothing else left to do and our mana pool is just 3WUBRG, we equip one Abyssal Persecutor with Assault Suit, sac Opalescence to Auratog so we can keep our Thousand-Year Storm, cast Consuming Bonfire on our Abyssal Persecutor with the Assault suit, then cast Soulblast in response. After every copy of Soulblast is resolved, Abyssal Persecutor is killed and our opponent dies.
I hope there's not still an infinity combo hidden somwhere, because I've already removed a lot of potential infinites.
The deck also still has one open card slot and I think there's a lot of room for improvement, but the damage should be very high (if it works without going infinite?). So high anyway that I can't calculate it even with the arrow notation. It should be higher than any other megacombo I've seen so far unless I'm mistaken?
/Edit:
Just removed Patron Wizard because that's an infinite combo with Time Spiral or any other self exiling recursion spell. Replaced with Soulsworn Jury which is just as good once we get Magister of Worth going.
Also it would probably be good to replace Heroe's Bane with Hungering Hydra, Evolution Vat and Guilty Conscience
Rith, the Awakener is likely a better replacement for Pollenbright Wings, because it turns out they are kind of useless actually.