Ah, so deck 2 loses 2 slots, bringing it down to 6 layers, behind the The First Iroan Games deck.
Edit: It's too bad we can't get a Thrumming Stone combo to work; in the Urborg, Siphon-Mage decks, we can't have Mirror Gallery, whereas with the Nihilistic Glee decks, it doesn't look like Thrumming Stone does anything that drawing can't do, and we can draw pretty cheaply with Nihilistic Glee. I was thinking we could maybe get cards with no mana costs to be cast with Thrumming Stone, but Omniscience allows us to cast those as well.
Edit: Rowan Kenrith looks interesting as a possible way to increase the life gain from Urborg Syphon-Mage. Then we don't need Alhammarret's Archive, so we can have Mirror Gallery again. This would give us another layer in the current deck, thanks to being able to have many copies of Tamiyo's Journal. Unfortunately, Rowan Kenrith can deal damage to tapped creatures to start a computation, such as Urborg Syphon-Mage itself.
What if we went back to the Nihilistic Glee deck? Then Rowan Kenrith could combine with Alhammarret's Archive to gain 4 life from Nihilistic Glee, enouugh to use K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth for black mana. I'll have to investigate this.
Hmm, I'm not sure if we can avoid ever having a tapped creature, all of the xathrid necromancer tokens are tapped, however, it seems possible as Soul separator sacrifices itself, and we can avoid golgari locket with K'rrik.
Swapping Xathrid necromancer with Rotlung Reanimator seems fine, though we do need to be careful about keeping them alive as they are the types they care about. I don't remember what the solution for that was.
Hmm, that's a good question. Anyway, the most I was able to get was 7 layers. (assuming Rotlung Reanimator is okay) One problem was that we couldn't transition from Animist's Awakening into Contentious Plan or Pirate's Prize, since we could put lands into the library.
As for making rotlung reanimator work, I'm leaning towards it not being possible, as we need something to remake the lost "main" token to reset a waterclock, and any rotlung like that would die at the same time as it couldn't have a "safe" type.
If we tried to have a cycle of rotlungs to remake that token, then each type in the cycle would need to die and so therefore so would the rotlung reanimators.
I don't think there's anything clever we can do with Dralnu's Crusade as they'd change the tokens too.
If we set up the crusades in a dependency loop then we can get them to only apply in timestamp order, but I cant figure out how that'd actually be useful.
Here's an alternative ending layer sequence, although it only gets 7 layers. Adding the land part in the beginning would get 10 layers, but we just don't have room. There are a few spaces left without the land part though, if we find another way to add layers.
Patron of the moon can be flashed in during a computation (if when we resolve the desolation giant we have a necromancer set up to make a moonfolk)
Looks like rotlungs don't work on their own; I believe the previous proof involving them was in a setting where they could be given indestructible or have damage prevented to them, and only proved that the base toughness of each creature type can be made consistent
hmm, taking a look at this saga spoiled from Kaldheim. It hasn't been previewed in english yet, but assuming Scryfall's translation is correct, its:
UG "the first snowman" (Google translate says the real name is closer to "Three Seasons")
I-Mill three.
II-Return up to two target snow permanents from your graveyard to you hand.
III- Choose up to 3 cards from graveyards, Shuffle them into their owner's libraries.
The second chapter is really narrow, but could be useful, and the third chapter looks pretty dangerous but probably where we can get some advantage.
The key difference compared to The Mending of Dominaria is that it doesn't obviously go infinite with the rest that we have so far.
Edit: I had hoped that we could have the option to cut Black lotus for mana crypt and still only have the one land, and it would have worked out really nicely with the R/U double faced land Lavaglide Pathway, but the sides are the wrong way around for the way we'd want.
It would be nice if we could add another layer to the Sphinx of the Second Sun version instead, but I don't see any card that will transition from making the opponent shuffle to upkeep/draw step.
But the damage ability is just too dangerous, we can go down some life with a computation or seven then damage a tapped token and go infinite. Doesn't seem like we need them to have an Amulet of Vigor. We can even generate tapped creatures via Drake Familiar saccing itself. (Edit: Maybe Requiem angel can work where Rotlung failed? but that's white and Urborg Syphon-mage needs to tap too,)
Illusionist's bracers is the only other card that looks promising for copying abilities, but we can get too many copies and just sorcery speed equip some.
Another spot that seems like it could be improved is Sphinx of Enlightenment, which is currently needed for the start even though we have three other cards that draw cards. Unfortunately, Dack Fayden needs to be used to ult so he can't draw, windreader Sphinx would use up our first combat, and we don't have any mana for Blue Sun's Zenith right at the start.
Edit2: After thinking on it a bit more Requiem Angel does not work.
It looks like Second Sunrise and Faith's Reward don't necessarily go infinite with our main combo, since they can only return cards to the battlefield that left from there. Unfortunately, they don't seem to help return cards after a Worldfire, since Worldfire exiles cards rather than destroy them. So, I'm not sure how they could help either.
Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom seems like a useful way to draw cards, since it is based on coin flips. Unfortunately, it has another ability that allows us to win arbitrarily many coin flips at the start of combat.
Those seem to be a lot more efficient to set up our next computation than retract/soul seperator.
That lets a Spellweaver Vollute batch of instants fully combo I think, and we wouldn't need to get flash back in the middle, though we could.
...
Computation ends, we just have desolation giant in play.
SV trigger on Second sunrise, return everything
SV trigger on Artificial Evolution, get TYS copies, setup next computation, kill giant.
SV trigger on arcbond
SV trigger on second sunrise returns giant, triggers computation
Computation ends, we just have desolation giant in play.
...
One thing to note is that Runed Halo doesn't actually keep us alive, as we don't have enchantments during computation. (otherwise we could stay alive with Invulnerability/Mana echoes) Endure/Safe Passage looks like a replacement.
Edit:
as for rebuilding after a Worldfire, yeah that does seem tricky.
Enchantments can be bounced with Drake familiar/Triton cavalry, creatures get returned with bloodbond march, and artifacts... I guess would need retract? This still seems better than Soul Separator.
Can't second sunrise just bring back a bunch of stuff in the middle of a computation? Desolation giant causes them to have been put into the graveyard from the battlefield.
If we could force us to cast (or mill?) it during setup, we couldn't use it to break up a computation.
We'd need double white too, as we don't have omniscience during computation.
Edit:
Hmm, what's the smallest computation that would get ruined by a second sunrise from hand?
I think its 4 necromancers, one that remakes a goblin, one that makes minions (to keep K'rrik alive) and two that make zombies, this makes an arbitrary number of zombies. Then when we second sunrise we'd get Dralnu's Crusade back and the goblins become zombies and k'rrik dies and arcbond stops.
Infinite zombies lets gravitic punch do an arbitrary amount of damage. (though hilariously, the opponent would be at more life than that due to k'rrik, but we can get enough storm that that doesn't matter)
That definitely seems small enough to setup without too much work and easily without needing to second sunrise first.
Ok so what about milling?
If our card draw source is like Primal surge + some mill source? Though we could still have it in the opening 7 right?
mana crypt, chrome mox, retract, show+tell, omniscience, primal surge, second sunrise is exactly 7.
hmm,... we couldn't get arbitrary storm with Invulnerability that way... Though it is still a problem.
(too bad they never made mill + buyback instant)
Illuna, Apex of wishes is nearly exactly the right effect but not very triggerable.
Same with Ajani Unyielding, though the -3 could be trouble if we can repeat the +2
Oh, in the last deck we can sacrifice Soul Separator, and Thousand-Year Elixir allows us to activate it while it is a creature. So we would need to replace it for that deck to work.
Hmm starting with Mountain, Sol ring, Chrome mox, Show and tell, Omniscience, Primal surge does force Second sunrise out of our hand, but anything that gets invulnerability could get second sunrise back too...
I guess spellseeker? Though this line is starting to fall behind on deckslots...
Hmm, I guess this opens the possibility for other instants that we rejected for being able to cast them from our hand, like Into Thin Air.
But, in addition to dealing with deck slots, we have to find some other ending layer sequence, without Black Lotus, and also without being able to draw I guess. A Thrumming Stone combo would help a lot here, but we still don't have Mirror Gallery...
Yeah, barring access to general card draw/precognition field is pretty limiting, I like the top level combo efficiency of second sunrise which lets us make larger computations easier, but that is way less important than squeezing out more layers at the end.
unless we can fit a whole stage in there, but that seems super unlikely.
Edit:
almost had a really cool extension for second sunrise that allowed for a computation for each TYS copy of second sunrise. But unfortunately required layer dependency/timestamp shenanigans with dralnu's crusade making/breaking a cycle. It basically worked, but due to the same rule (613.8a) also applying to artificial evolution, its impossible for the vanilla dralnu's crusade to be part of a dependency loop of crusades.
We probably have the room for another stage, if we had one to put in there. If we still use mana as the resource, we have the possibility of using snow mana, since there's more of it in Kaldheim. But, there still doesn't seem to be a lot of ways to use snow mana, nor ways to generate it. I don't know a way to spend snow mana to return a creature to our hand. In standard we had stages built from moving creatures from the graveyard to the battlefield and back, but Worldfire can get cards from the battlefield to the graveyard cheaper.
There is also the possibility of using green mana, but I didn't see a good way to bounce creatures with green mana either. Temur Sabertooth doesn't target, so it could bounce higher stage creatures. Kogla, the Titan Ape could be just what we are hoping for, except it fights when it enters the battlefield.
There's always the possibility of creating a different kind of stage, but my imagination has failed me here. Maybe something with Mutate could be helpful?
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Edit: It's too bad we can't get a Thrumming Stone combo to work; in the Urborg, Siphon-Mage decks, we can't have Mirror Gallery, whereas with the Nihilistic Glee decks, it doesn't look like Thrumming Stone does anything that drawing can't do, and we can draw pretty cheaply with Nihilistic Glee. I was thinking we could maybe get cards with no mana costs to be cast with Thrumming Stone, but Omniscience allows us to cast those as well.
Edit: Rowan Kenrith looks interesting as a possible way to increase the life gain from Urborg Syphon-Mage. Then we don't need Alhammarret's Archive, so we can have Mirror Gallery again. This would give us another layer in the current deck, thanks to being able to have many copies of Tamiyo's Journal. Unfortunately, Rowan Kenrith can deal damage to tapped creatures to start a computation, such as Urborg Syphon-Mage itself.
What if we went back to the Nihilistic Glee deck? Then Rowan Kenrith could combine with Alhammarret's Archive to gain 4 life from Nihilistic Glee, enouugh to use K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth for black mana. I'll have to investigate this.
Swapping Xathrid necromancer with Rotlung Reanimator seems fine, though we do need to be careful about keeping them alive as they are the types they care about. I don't remember what the solution for that was.
2 Rotlung Reanimator
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Mirrormade
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Mana Echoes
23 Soul Separator
24 Nihilistic Glee
25 Rowan Kenrith
26 Alhammarret's Archive
27 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
28 Lingering Souls
29 Drake Familiar
30 Runed Halo
31 Spellweaver Helix
32 Worldfire
33 Gravitic Punch
34 Gravitic Punch
35 Recoup
36 Mountain
37 Restore
38 Panharmonicon
39 Wormfang Behemoth
40 Stolen by the Fae
41 Chrome Mox
43 Guardian of the Guildpact
44 Bolt Bend
45 Black Lotus
46 Show and Tell
47 Omniscience
49 Fountain of Cho
50 Amulet of Vigor
51 Soratomi Cloudskater
52 The First Iroan Games
53 Contentious Plan
54 Widespread Panic
55 Elfhame Sanctuary
56 Sphinx of the Second Sun
57 World at War
58 Primal Vigor
59 Patron of the Moon
If we tried to have a cycle of rotlungs to remake that token, then each type in the cycle would need to die and so therefore so would the rotlung reanimators.
I don't think there's anything clever we can do with Dralnu's Crusade as they'd change the tokens too.
If we set up the crusades in a dependency loop then we can get them to only apply in timestamp order, but I cant figure out how that'd actually be useful.
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Mirrormade
16 Minion Reflector
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Mana Echoes
23 Soul Separator
24 Urborg, Syphon-Mage
25 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
26 Moan of the Unhallowed
27 Drake Familiar
28 Runed Halo
29 Spellweaver Helix
30 Worldfire
31 Gravitic Punch
32 Gravitic Punch
33 Recoup
34 Mountain
35 Molderhulk
36 Wormfang Behemoth
37 Stolen by the Fae
38 Chrome Mox
39 Aegis Automaton
40 Guardian of the Guildpact
41 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
42 Bolt Bend
43 Alhammarret's Archive
45 Show and Tell
46 Omniscience
47 Contraband Kingpin
48 Merchesa's Smuggler
49 Blue Sun's Zenith
50 Consecrated Sphinx
51 Widespread Panic
52 Sphinx Ambassador
53 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
54 World at War
55 Drafna's Restoration
56 Sphinx of Enlightenment
57 Doubling Season
Looks like rotlungs don't work on their own; I believe the previous proof involving them was in a setting where they could be given indestructible or have damage prevented to them, and only proved that the base toughness of each creature type can be made consistent
UG "the first snowman" (Google translate says the real name is closer to "Three Seasons")
I-Mill three.
II-Return up to two target snow permanents from your graveyard to you hand.
III- Choose up to 3 cards from graveyards, Shuffle them into their owner's libraries.
The second chapter is really narrow, but could be useful, and the third chapter looks pretty dangerous but probably where we can get some advantage.
The key difference compared to The Mending of Dominaria is that it doesn't obviously go infinite with the rest that we have so far.
It looks like Steady progress or Contentious plan will probably go infinite, but maybe thrummingbird works?
Edit: I had hoped that we could have the option to cut Black lotus for mana crypt and still only have the one land, and it would have worked out really nicely with the R/U double faced land Lavaglide Pathway, but the sides are the wrong way around for the way we'd want.
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Mirrormade
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Mana Echoes
23 Soul Separator
24 Urborg, Syphon-Mage
25 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
26 Lingering Souls
27 Drake Familiar
28 Runed Halo
29 Spellweaver Helix
30 Worldfire
31 Gravitic Punch
32 Gravitic Punch
33 Recoup
34 Mountain
35 Molderhulk
36 Wormfang Behemoth
37 Stolen by the Fae
38 Chrome Mox
39 Aegis Automaton
40 Guardian of the Guildpact
41 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
42 Bolt Bend
43 Alhammarret's Archive
45 Show and Tell
46 Omniscience
47 Contraband Kingpin
48 Blue Sun's Zenith
49 Angelheart Vial
50 Boggart Shenanigans
51 Mindstab Thrull
52 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
53 World at War
54 Drafna's Restoration
55 Sphinx of Enlightenment
56 Doubling Season
57 Marchesa's Smuggler
This ties it with the Jester's Mask version with 8 layers, but this one has Moraug, Fury of Akoum, giving it the slight lead.
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Mirrormade
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Mana Echoes
23 Soul Separator
24 Urborg, Syphon-Mage
25 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
26 Lingering Souls
27 Drake Familiar
28 Runed Halo
29 Spellweaver Helix
30 Worldfire
31 Starlight
32 Recoup
33 Recoup
34 Mountain
35 Restore
36 Panharmonicon
37 Wormfang Behemoth
38 Stolen by the Fae
39 Chrome Mox
40 Aegis Automaton
41 Guardian of the Guildpact
42 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
43 Bolt Bend
44 Alhammarret's Archive
46 Show and Tell
47 Omniscience
48 Contraband Kingpin
49 Blue Sun's Zenith
50 Angelheart Vial
51 Boggart Shenanigans
52 Mindstab Thrull
53 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
54 World at War
55 Drafna's Restoration
56 Sphinx of Enlightenment
57 Doubling Season
58 Marchesa's Smuggler
In other news, I just realized that K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth has lifelink, so we don't need Contraband Kingpin. That leaves room for Marchesa's Smuggler, so we can go back to the Moraug, Fury of Akoum version again:
2 Xathrid Necromancer
3 Arcbond
4 Artificial Evolution
5 Wrong Turn
6 Dralnu's Crusade
7 Opalescence
8 Desolation Giant
9 Goblin Boom Keg
10 March of the Machines
11 Vedalken Orrery
12 Dack Fayden
13 Spellweaver Volute
14 Pull from Eternity
15 Mirrormade
16 Dual Nature
17 Bloodbond March
18 Cephalid Shrine
19 Thousand-Year Storm
20 Invulnerability
21 Mana Echoes
23 Soul Separator
24 Urborg, Syphon-Mage
25 Thousand-Year Elixir
26 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
27 Lingering Souls
28 Drake Familiar
29 Runed Halo
30 Spellweaver Helix
31 Worldfire
32 Gravitic Punch
33 Gravitic Punch
34 Recoup
35 Mountain
36 Restore
37 Panharmonicon
38 Wormfang Behemoth
39 Stolen by the Fae
40 Chrome Mox
41 Aegis Automaton
42 Guardian of the Guildpact
43 Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient
44 Bolt Bend
45 Alhammarret's Archive
47 Show and Tell
48 Omniscience
49 Sphinx of Enlightenment
50 Marchesa's Smuggler
51 Fountain of Cho
52 Amulet of Vigor
53 Animist's Awakening
54 Blue Sun's Zenith
55 Windreader Sphinx
56 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
57 World at War
58 Doubling Season
59 Uproot
60 Drafna's Restoration
It would be nice if we could add another layer to the Sphinx of the Second Sun version instead, but I don't see any card that will transition from making the opponent shuffle to upkeep/draw step.
It would be nice to use Rowan kenrith instead of Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient+Alhammarret's Archive.
But the damage ability is just too dangerous, we can go down some life with a computation or seven then damage a tapped token and go infinite. Doesn't seem like we need them to have an Amulet of Vigor. We can even generate tapped creatures via Drake Familiar saccing itself. (Edit: Maybe Requiem angel can work where Rotlung failed? but that's white and Urborg Syphon-mage needs to tap too,)
Illusionist's bracers is the only other card that looks promising for copying abilities, but we can get too many copies and just sorcery speed equip some.
Another spot that seems like it could be improved is Sphinx of Enlightenment, which is currently needed for the start even though we have three other cards that draw cards. Unfortunately, Dack Fayden needs to be used to ult so he can't draw, windreader Sphinx would use up our first combat, and we don't have any mana for Blue Sun's Zenith right at the start.
Edit2: After thinking on it a bit more Requiem Angel does not work.
Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom seems like a useful way to draw cards, since it is based on coin flips. Unfortunately, it has another ability that allows us to win arbitrarily many coin flips at the start of combat.
Edit: We can extend the Sphinx of the Second Sun version to 9 layers, if we can replace Tamiyo's Journal and Contraband Kingpin with Deep Spawn and [c}Dragon Appeasement[/c]. But, we will need to replace Drake Familiar, which we can sacrifice. How about Triton Cavalry?
That lets a Spellweaver Vollute batch of instants fully combo I think, and we wouldn't need to get flash back in the middle, though we could.
...
Computation ends, we just have desolation giant in play.
SV trigger on Second sunrise, return everything
SV trigger on Artificial Evolution, get TYS copies, setup next computation, kill giant.
SV trigger on arcbond
SV trigger on second sunrise returns giant, triggers computation
Computation ends, we just have desolation giant in play.
...
One thing to note is that Runed Halo doesn't actually keep us alive, as we don't have enchantments during computation. (otherwise we could stay alive with Invulnerability/Mana echoes) Endure/Safe Passage looks like a replacement.
Edit:
as for rebuilding after a Worldfire, yeah that does seem tricky.
Enchantments can be bounced with Drake familiar/Triton cavalry, creatures get returned with bloodbond march, and artifacts... I guess would need retract? This still seems better than Soul Separator.
If we could force us to cast (or mill?) it during setup, we couldn't use it to break up a computation.
We'd need double white too, as we don't have omniscience during computation.
Edit:
Hmm, what's the smallest computation that would get ruined by a second sunrise from hand?
I think its 4 necromancers, one that remakes a goblin, one that makes minions (to keep K'rrik alive) and two that make zombies, this makes an arbitrary number of zombies. Then when we second sunrise we'd get Dralnu's Crusade back and the goblins become zombies and k'rrik dies and arcbond stops.
Infinite zombies lets gravitic punch do an arbitrary amount of damage. (though hilariously, the opponent would be at more life than that due to k'rrik, but we can get enough storm that that doesn't matter)
That definitely seems small enough to setup without too much work and easily without needing to second sunrise first.
Ok so what about milling?
If our card draw source is like Primal surge + some mill source? Though we could still have it in the opening 7 right?
mana crypt, chrome mox, retract, show+tell, omniscience, primal surge, second sunrise is exactly 7.
hmm,... we couldn't get arbitrary storm with Invulnerability that way... Though it is still a problem.
(too bad they never made mill + buyback instant)
Illuna, Apex of wishes is nearly exactly the right effect but not very triggerable.
Same with Ajani Unyielding, though the -3 could be trouble if we can repeat the +2
The next best version is the 8-layer Moraug one.
I guess spellseeker? Though this line is starting to fall behind on deckslots...
But, in addition to dealing with deck slots, we have to find some other ending layer sequence, without Black Lotus, and also without being able to draw I guess. A Thrumming Stone combo would help a lot here, but we still don't have Mirror Gallery...
unless we can fit a whole stage in there, but that seems super unlikely.
Edit:
almost had a really cool extension for second sunrise that allowed for a computation for each TYS copy of second sunrise. But unfortunately required layer dependency/timestamp shenanigans with dralnu's crusade making/breaking a cycle. It basically worked, but due to the same rule (613.8a) also applying to artificial evolution, its impossible for the vanilla dralnu's crusade to be part of a dependency loop of crusades.
There is also the possibility of using green mana, but I didn't see a good way to bounce creatures with green mana either. Temur Sabertooth doesn't target, so it could bounce higher stage creatures. Kogla, the Titan Ape could be just what we are hoping for, except it fights when it enters the battlefield.
There's always the possibility of creating a different kind of stage, but my imagination has failed me here. Maybe something with Mutate could be helpful?