Turn 1: Play an island for Hapless Researcher.
Turn 2: Play another island, and another Hapless Researcher.
Sacrifice both Researchers in response to each other. Draw a card and discard Oracle of Bones, then draw another card and discard Sutured Ghoul. The order is most definitely relevant.
Turn 3: Play a third island and Volrath's Shapeshifter. It attempts to enter the battlefield with the text of Sutured Ghoul, prompting you to exile cards from your graveyard. Choose to exile the Sutured Ghoul and both Hapless Researchers, and put Volrath's Shapeshifter onto the battlefield. Of course, at this point it has the text of Oracle of Bones. This causes its ETB ability to trigger, and tribute was not paid (in fact, by doing it this way, the opponent does not even get an opportunity to pay tribute, but that's beside the point), so choose to play Primal Surge from your hand without paying its mana cost.
Reveal a deck of nothing but permanents, including the three artifacts you're trying to combo with, at least 8 lands (probably more), and some method of preventing yourself from drawing cards, such as Abundance. Tap Magistrate's Scepter for a counter, and proliferate for three more.
Turn 4: Replace your draw with a no-op using Abundance so you don't lose. Activate Magistrate's Scepter for your first extra turn, and the rest is easy.
The entire hand has to be empty to use Megaliths, so on the Transcendence turn you have to do this:
-float R with Orchard, give them a spirit (2 cards in hand)
-play Transcendence (1 card in hand)
-respond to the spell with Mercy Killing, targeting the spirit (0 cards in hand)
-respond to both by using the floating mana for Megaliths, targeting self to 19
-Mercy Killing turns spirit into elf
-Tamiyo emblem returns Mercy Killing to hand
-Transcendence resolves
-Tap down the elf (not a spirit)
Except for that one-off deal (and the final turn where you shoot them to 0 right after untapping), you absolutely cannot afford to activate Megaliths on your own turn, since that will necessarily leave all your lands tapped, with no way of drawing more mana on their turn to play Mercy Killing and survive the attack. The following turns look like this:
-on their end step, Mercy Kill their elf, giving back 1 elf, and respond to the Tamiyo trigger with Megaliths to 19, giving them 1 spirit
-your turn, just lock down the spirit
-on their attack, kill their elf and replace it with another elf, then respond with Megaliths to 18 and 2 spirits
-again, lock down a spirit
-their attack, kill elf (1) followed by spirit (2), respond to the last return trigger with Megaliths to 17: 3 elves, 2 spirits
I was trying to find a way to do without Tamiyo, such as Reiterate + Remand, but those color requirements are crazy and leave nothing that could fit as a win condition.
The fact that Megaliths alone lends itself to a 6-card deck seemed promising for Cyclone along with something like Glimmerpost, but that forces no obligation to drop Coat of Arms (so Cyclone's payments will in fact kill all the tokens that get created). Megaliths are just too versatile to be cleanly replaced by either another land, or another win condition.
Static Orb will get to 2^^29, though, jumping far out into the lead.
You could try actually reading the article, where they explain exactly that.
Basically, unrevealed morphs are a type of rule violation where the information is asymmetric, so the opponent may be unaware that there was a violation to begin with, so penalties for violations like that have an upgraded penalty. However, in almost all cases where there's a failure to reveal, the opponent has a window just beforehand in which they should be aware that the morph is about to leave the battlefield, or that the game is about to end, and they have an opportunity to inquire about it then.
Ultimately, players are supposed to be incentivized to make sure the rules are followed, not to hope there's a lapse by their opponent so that they can be hit by a harsh penalty. So from now on, instead of being able to get their opponent a game loss for such a lapse, it will only be a warning that usually doesn't change the outcome of the game. Players will be expected to ask or remind their opponent before they shuffle up unrevealed morphs, and if it turns out that they reveal a card that couldn't have been legally cast face down, or they flout that explicit request and rush to shuffle up their cards anyway, then they can be given the game loss for a rule violation (or more likely, disqualified for Cheating).
The other major difference in the two styles of template revolves around what happens in multiplayer games, where it's possible for one player to lose without the game immediately ending at that point. If a player with an Oblivion Ring leaves the game, the Ring goes with it...but its LTB can't trigger, because that trigger would be controlled by the departing player, and no object can ever be created under the control of a player who isn't in the game. If you killed a player who had Confiscate on your permanent, you could kill the player to get it back, but if they had Oblivion Ring instead, killing them wouldn't help, and that seemed like a poor distinction to R&D.
With Banishing Light, the return isn't implemented a triggered ability, and will still happen even if Banishing Light's method of departure is by way of its owner leaving the game. Killing the player in that case is an effective way to break your permanent out of prison.
There is still at least one way to make Banishing Light's effect permanent without the enchantment sticking around, but it's a lot more trouble than it's worth: animate the enchantment, Cytoshape it into a licid, get a token, use the "banishing licid"'s ability to move it onto the token, then make the token phase out. Banishing Light will then be phased out indirectly on something that disappeared, so while it hasn't left the battlefield, its status is set to "phased out" and nothing can undo that for the rest of the game.
The Innistrad sheet was 121 cards, and contained 1 M once, 6 R twice each (12 slots), 7 U six times each (42 slots), and 6 C eleven times each (66 slots).
For Dark Ascension they tweaked it slightly, making commons appear 12 times each, so the numbers are 2*1 + 3*2 + 4*6 + 4*12 = 80.
GCCG offers all of it including booster pack generation and Limited play. (It has a fake money system that you can optionally participate in, allowing you to "collect" the cards if you want to, but you don't need to collect cards before putting them in decks unless you're taking part in sealed or draft games.)
Doesn't use anything newer than Gatecrash, and I haven't actually looked to see if any DGM or M14 cards might improve anything, but the whole deck is still Standard legal so there you go. It also boasted the strange result that in order to achieve best results, you'd have to take a mulligan.
Actually, come to think of it, when that deck was first put together, its damage potential was as stated, but under current rules it hits an unlimited amount of damage (which that topic was specifically designed to disallow). Bring Aurelia back from the brink, keep one of them, then in each combat phase populate and keep a different one, so they keep going without any need for the dummy artifacts. Oh well, there you go.
1
Turn 1: Play an island for Hapless Researcher.
Turn 2: Play another island, and another Hapless Researcher.
Sacrifice both Researchers in response to each other. Draw a card and discard Oracle of Bones, then draw another card and discard Sutured Ghoul. The order is most definitely relevant.
Turn 3: Play a third island and Volrath's Shapeshifter. It attempts to enter the battlefield with the text of Sutured Ghoul, prompting you to exile cards from your graveyard. Choose to exile the Sutured Ghoul and both Hapless Researchers, and put Volrath's Shapeshifter onto the battlefield. Of course, at this point it has the text of Oracle of Bones. This causes its ETB ability to trigger, and tribute was not paid (in fact, by doing it this way, the opponent does not even get an opportunity to pay tribute, but that's beside the point), so choose to play Primal Surge from your hand without paying its mana cost.
Reveal a deck of nothing but permanents, including the three artifacts you're trying to combo with, at least 8 lands (probably more), and some method of preventing yourself from drawing cards, such as Abundance. Tap Magistrate's Scepter for a counter, and proliferate for three more.
Turn 4: Replace your draw with a no-op using Abundance so you don't lose. Activate Magistrate's Scepter for your first extra turn, and the rest is easy.
1
-float R with Orchard, give them a spirit (2 cards in hand)
-play Transcendence (1 card in hand)
-respond to the spell with Mercy Killing, targeting the spirit (0 cards in hand)
-respond to both by using the floating mana for Megaliths, targeting self to 19
-Mercy Killing turns spirit into elf
-Tamiyo emblem returns Mercy Killing to hand
-Transcendence resolves
-Tap down the elf (not a spirit)
Except for that one-off deal (and the final turn where you shoot them to 0 right after untapping), you absolutely cannot afford to activate Megaliths on your own turn, since that will necessarily leave all your lands tapped, with no way of drawing more mana on their turn to play Mercy Killing and survive the attack. The following turns look like this:
-on their end step, Mercy Kill their elf, giving back 1 elf, and respond to the Tamiyo trigger with Megaliths to 19, giving them 1 spirit
-your turn, just lock down the spirit
-on their attack, kill their elf and replace it with another elf, then respond with Megaliths to 18 and 2 spirits
-again, lock down a spirit
-their attack, kill elf (1) followed by spirit (2), respond to the last return trigger with Megaliths to 17: 3 elves, 2 spirits
-next turn kill elf (3), elf (5), elf (9), spirit (2), Megaliths to 16: 19 elves, 2 spirits
-kill elf (19; 37; 73; 145; 289; 577; 1153; 2305; 4609; 9217; 18433; 36865; 73729; 147457; 294913; 589825; 1179649; 2359297; 4718593), spirit (2), Megaliths to 15: 9,437,187 elves (> 2^^4), 2 spirits
I was trying to find a way to do without Tamiyo, such as Reiterate + Remand, but those color requirements are crazy and leave nothing that could fit as a win condition.
The fact that Megaliths alone lends itself to a 6-card deck seemed promising for Cyclone along with something like Glimmerpost, but that forces no obligation to drop Coat of Arms (so Cyclone's payments will in fact kill all the tokens that get created). Megaliths are just too versatile to be cleanly replaced by either another land, or another win condition.
Static Orb will get to 2^^29, though, jumping far out into the lead.
5
Basically, unrevealed morphs are a type of rule violation where the information is asymmetric, so the opponent may be unaware that there was a violation to begin with, so penalties for violations like that have an upgraded penalty. However, in almost all cases where there's a failure to reveal, the opponent has a window just beforehand in which they should be aware that the morph is about to leave the battlefield, or that the game is about to end, and they have an opportunity to inquire about it then.
Ultimately, players are supposed to be incentivized to make sure the rules are followed, not to hope there's a lapse by their opponent so that they can be hit by a harsh penalty. So from now on, instead of being able to get their opponent a game loss for such a lapse, it will only be a warning that usually doesn't change the outcome of the game. Players will be expected to ask or remind their opponent before they shuffle up unrevealed morphs, and if it turns out that they reveal a card that couldn't have been legally cast face down, or they flout that explicit request and rush to shuffle up their cards anyway, then they can be given the game loss for a rule violation (or more likely, disqualified for Cheating).
1
2
With Banishing Light, the return isn't implemented a triggered ability, and will still happen even if Banishing Light's method of departure is by way of its owner leaving the game. Killing the player in that case is an effective way to break your permanent out of prison.
There is still at least one way to make Banishing Light's effect permanent without the enchantment sticking around, but it's a lot more trouble than it's worth: animate the enchantment, Cytoshape it into a licid, get a token, use the "banishing licid"'s ability to move it onto the token, then make the token phase out. Banishing Light will then be phased out indirectly on something that disappeared, so while it hasn't left the battlefield, its status is set to "phased out" and nothing can undo that for the rest of the game.
1
For Dark Ascension they tweaked it slightly, making commons appear 12 times each, so the numbers are 2*1 + 3*2 + 4*6 + 4*12 = 80.
1
1
1
Doesn't use anything newer than Gatecrash, and I haven't actually looked to see if any DGM or M14 cards might improve anything, but the whole deck is still Standard legal so there you go. It also boasted the strange result that in order to achieve best results, you'd have to take a mulligan.
Actually, come to think of it, when that deck was first put together, its damage potential was as stated, but under current rules it hits an unlimited amount of damage (which that topic was specifically designed to disallow). Bring Aurelia back from the brink, keep one of them, then in each combat phase populate and keep a different one, so they keep going without any need for the dummy artifacts. Oh well, there you go.
1