We are back to Citywatch Sphinx from Diligent Excavator for reshuffle to avoid the infinite. (Might need to be millstone even)
Exchanged Teysa Karlov with Gideon, Blackblade to fix the targeting issue.
Also swapped back Samut for Garna as our haste enabler, the gravedigger triggers are slightly more useful than not having to recast it, and Teferi can be the damage victim now.
Good point. Though, are they enough on their own? Anything to let us reuse millstone enough would also apply to the lockets.
Edit: Two ways to reshuffle goes infinite
Play the lockets, tap them for WWW
Cast Nova=Purify and disdainful stroke it
let one resolve (W floating)
Use Excavation Elephant to return the artifacts (0 floating)
tap them for WWW
Reshuffle Nova (Reshuffler 1)
Let the next nova=purify resolve
Cast Nova=Wrath and counter it
Let one copy resolve (W floating)
Return the Elephant with Garna (Garna not needed, just easier to show the combo)
Recast Elephant and get lockets (0 floating)
Let next wrath resolve
Reshuffle (Reshuffler 2)
Back to step 1.
This means that my original stage combo didn't work.
Millstone can be tapped whenever the lockets are so it looks infinite, (though I think it needs Garna because we only get 1 mill per Elephant.)
The Mending is even easier to get back, and has the raise dead built in, so its definitely infinite.
Citywatch Sphinx is safe at least because it can only reshuffle on death. We might have to go back to 2 copies of Nova.
Thinking about it while writing this post, Millstone seems safe without Garna, and is good enough to reform the stage as we are resolving it down.
I might be missing something though, it is subtle and we missed it for ~100 posts.
Edit: checking if Millstone alone is enough to rebuild:
First we build the alternating nova stack with Gaea's Blessing, Warlord's Fury, and Ionize.
Note: the topmost nova alone isn't very profitable, lots of wraths or lots of purifies do not give us lots of reshuffles.
However one of each does let us reshuffle.
If we resolve purify then wrath then we can recover the artifacts right before the wrath. Then use Millstone to reshuffle, after the wrath.
If we are resolving wrath then purify we can reshuffle right after the wrath, then Elephant the artifacts after the Purify.
Either way we net exactly enough W mana to recast Nova.
So PW and WP work.
We need either WPPW or PWWP to work. (or do we need both?)
The WPPW case: Millstone isn't actually enough for this I think, as the last wrath ends with everything in the yard, which is a dead end.
The PWWP case: Troubling as the artifacts are in play before the second wrath and therefore cant be returned by the elephant. However, we can let that wrath do nothing and use the Purify to put them in the yard, fetch them with the elephant then we cast wrath and use the top one to kill the elephant and then reshuffle and Purify. (So PWP is what we are actually using.)
Because WPPW doesn't work, when Purify batches run low we can't be as efficient. I'm not sure how much this messes up the math, but it doesn't seem good.
Citywatch Sphinx works fine for both the PWWP and WPPW cases, but does require a second Nova.
Edit 2: Azor's gateway does eat at deckslots, but we can feed it Teferi, Emergence Zone, Voltaic Servant, Gideon Blackblade and Llanowar elves. for a 0,1,2,3,5 and get it flipped without using more card slots.
Losing a card spot for a second Nova is annoying but it's worth it to make the combo actually work.
So the post#126 decklist with:
-1 Mountain
+ Cleansing Nova
Having two novas lets us either save the purify nova's thousand-year storm trigger or make the stack twice as tall by destroying the lockets.
I think making it taller is just better, but its a shame that either way the improvement is lost in the approximation.
I was thinking that because its better to use teferi to untap Sanctum of the Sun than a mountain.
But losing out on earlier teferi triggers just isnt worth it.
Maybe Hijack so we can flip it earlier?
No, the card slots are too valuable. Big numbers are weird. The extra mountain more than makes up for any gains tapping for more would have.
(Also Hijack goes infinite as we can make a bunch of white, nova to reshuffle, then sac a locket to get back hijack and return the locket with elephant.)
Hmm, if the problem with the Millstone combo is that everything winds up in the graveyard, could it perhaps work with Finale of Devastation?
Let's analyze the WPPW process: First we resolve a Wrath Nova, and the battlefield is cleared of creatures. We cast Finale of Devastation to bring Garna, the Bloodflame onto the battlefield, and that allows us to bring Tragic Poet and Excavation Elephant back to our hand. We play Tragic Poet, and cast Quasiduplicate to get many copies of it (and perhaps copies of our mana creatures as well). We then resolve a Purity Nova. This kills our artifacts and enchantments, so we need to use some Tragic Poets to bring our enchantments back. We play Excavation Elephant with several Nabans on the battlefield, so that we get back our lockets and Millstone. Tap the lockets to get three white mana, and tap the Millstone to reshuffle our library. Then resolve the second Purity Nova. This puts our artifacts and enchantments back in the graveyard again. Use some Tragic Poets to get our enchantments back. Resolve the final Wrath Nova. Cast a Purity Nova with the mana we gained; this puts Cleansing Nova in the graveyard. Cast Finale of Devastation again, bringing Garna onto the battlefield, and the other creatures back to our hand. cast Naban, and get some copies with Spark Double and Quasiduplicate. Cast Excavation Elephant, and bring our artifacts back to the battlefield. Tap the lockets for mana, and use Millstone to shuffle the graveyard into the library. We can now cast a Wrath Nova. So this looks like it works.
But, does your above infinite combo work? We play the lockets and Millstone, gaining 3 white mana. We cast a Purity Nova. We cast Finale of Devastation, bringing back Garna, which brings the other creatures to our hand. We play Tragic Poet, and make copies of it. We use the Millstone to reshuffle our graveyard into our library. We resolve a Purity Nova. We use our Tragic Poets to bring back the enchantments. We play Excavation Elephant, bringing back our artifacts. We tap the lockets for mana, and use Millstone to reshuffle again. We resolve another Purity Nova. We use more Tragic Poets to bring back our enchantments. We cast a Wrath Nova. We resolve a Wrath Nova, destroying our creatures. We cast Finale of Devastation, bringing back Garna, and bringing back Tragic Poet and Excavation Elephant back to our hand. We cast Naban and Tragic Poet, and use Quasiduplicate to make copies. We cast Excavation Elephant, and bring our artifacts back to the battlefield. We tap the lockets for mana, and tap the Millstone to reshuffle. We can now cast a Purity Nova and restart the combo. Okay, so we do go infinite here.
If we have Adventurous Impulse rather than Finale of Devastation (and no Garna), then I don't think the infinite combo works, because when we have a Purity Nova followed by a Wrath Nova, the millstone goes away, and then the Wrath puts our creatures in our graveyard, so that we need a reshuffle to access them again. But the same problem messes up our intended combo as well. The only way around it would be to have the Excavation Elephant in our hand or in the library when this happened. But, after the first of two Purity Novas, we need to play the Excavation Elephant to get our artifacts back, so it should be on the battlefield when the second Purity Nova is resolved. So I don't see a way around this.
Sorry, nothing new here; just thought I would check one more time.
And rechecking is important, we don't want to miss something this big again. I'm still not 100% sure, but everything looks to be working now.
I think we are pretty close to optimal for this strategy. The big easy improvement would be a way to copy Thousand Year Storm, but that does not look possible in standard, we can hope core 2020 enables that in some way.
been preoccupied with non magic things lately but still stop by this and the vintage challenge regularly. hopefully i'll get back to making vintage lists again.
a few observations though on this challenge.
1) pretty sure highland lake(both instances) needs to be sulfur falls if you guys want to go off turn 3, if you are ok with turn 4, that brings up another issue
2) if we don't go off on t3 we go infinite with the current list t4 or later(after the land swaps enabling t3). so if we go t4 we see 10 cards naturally instead of 9, and this difference alone is enough to do it. we could still go infinite t3 if we take the draw instead of the play getting to see our 10th card on t3. we do it by playing the same first 8 cards as normal, getting omniscience in play. then we cast TYS as card 9 and either gaea's blessing or warlord's fury as card 10. this gets us 1 original and 2 copies from TYS drawing us 3 cards. with these draws we can draw emergency powers, a counter(edit: this has to be disdainful stroke or its bound by life), and then literally anything else. we can then cast EP, getting its copies, and then with a copy of EP on the stack still we counter the original letting our counter and EP shuffle back in to be drawn again.
3)(possibly an issue) so i think you might have another issue anyway. as we up our TYS count we will get to the point where casting warlord's fury will draw all of our deck. i think as this draw engine grows it will come to a point where it allows us the draw the sphinx and cleansing nova post reshuffle. if we can do this it allows us to go infinite a different way. if we just cast sphinx and the nova(wrath) we don't get rid of omniscience and can reshuffle both when we mill blessing. then we cast fury and redraw (via WLF) all the pieces and repeat. we can even get rid of omniscience at some point and then get it back and recast if off mana we generate off multiple castings of gyre engineer as we draw and blow up the board time and time again. both issues 2 and 3 lead to infinite TYS counts which make our damage unbound. also on a similar note, as we up the TYS count we might be able to use blessing to recur itself. we do this with ionize by casting blessing, hold priority to respond to TYS trigger and the counter the original, before the copies are created and need targets, and then use the copies to pick it, and everything else, back up. i guess we are bound by life with this loop, so it might be ok. haven't dug too far into it yet.
The deck is intended to go off on turn 3 on the play. So yeah, it does go infinite if we wait until turn 4 or turn 3 on the draw, but we are ruling that to be legal; the deck just has to not go infinite on the intended turn (and player position) or earlier.
The idea behind Warlord's Fury is that it will be on the stack during resolution, so that we can't use it to draw itself. We can use Ionize, but that costs life, and nothing in the stage combo allows us to gain life. Similarly, Gaea's Blessing needs Ionize to draw itself, so it doesn't go infinite (as far as we can tell).
Hey, J_kibbs good to see more interest. Hopefully a fresh look to see if we missed anything.
Oops, on Highland Lake vs Sulfur Falls, we changed when we were considering turn 4 without Gift of Growth, and just forgot to change back.
You are also entirely right about turn 4 being infinite, which is why we are going off turn 3.
I'm confident that the card draw spells are safe because they can't draw themselves without ionize, and warlord's fury needs a reshuffle which needs gaea's blessing in the library to draw itself.
So they can draw themselves a good amount but we will eventually run out of life and need to spend a red on Banefire to heal up.
Hmm... for the current deck, after two Purity Novas, what forces us to resolve the next Wrath Nova, rather than cast a Purity Nova and then a Wrath Nova, then resolve a Wrath Nova to kill off our creatures?
Ugh, the second copy of nova allows that. We don't need the first reshuffle in my #128 post with two novas.
Is there a way to avoid having two novas?
It looks like all of the ways to get a sorcery back go infinite.
All of the creatures are super infinite. All the Regrow effects are infinite or self exiling.
The planeswalkers are too slow.
I'm not sure on The Mirari Conjecture? Seems very likely infinite but maybe depends on how we proliferate?
Edit: Looking back on the original combo, which used some different cards I think still worked.
Original combo: Path of Discovery lets all creatures reshuffle on ETB via Gaea's Blessing Finale of Devastation fetches creatures from deck and GY, does not let us cast them. Gilded Lotus taps for WWW The Mending of Dominaria reshuffles and allows us to cast Excavation Elephant.
So, each Wrath lets us reshuffle for each creature we have, (each reshuffle give us tons of G and lots of U Mana.)
But only Gilded lotus makes white for Wrath.
To untap it we need to replay it, which means it needs to get killed via Cleansing Nova=Purify.
However Purify also kills our enchantments: Thousand Year Storm, Omniscience, Path of Discovery, and Precognition Field.
We use 2 tragic poets to return Precognition field and Path of discovery (original deck was suboptimal here). This lets us cast Finale and reshuffle it to repeatedly return the poets for Omniscience and TYS. Finally they get The Mending, and that gets us a kickable elephant to return the Lotus. (note: we can mill it with an explore trigger)
Gilded Lotus gives us just enough W mana to pay for the kicker and the next Nova.
This all was working fine. Wrath then purify turn into many wraths.
But when we run low on Purifies, the new question is do we need to use a lower Wrath? or can we use a new one?
Stack : WPPW
We go through the combo as before, but instead of casting wrath we let the last purify resolve, and rebuild using Poets again. (Saving the Mending in hand).
However if we have a bit of W floating we can cast Purify, then reshuffle with an etb and then cast wrath to kill the elephant, return it with the mending then kick it to get the WWW back.
Then we are back where we started but +mana and +storm which is infinite...
So, some ways we can get proliferate include a creature entering the battlefield and and a creature dying. But those with The Mirari Conjecture seem similar to the old way of just using Citywatch Sphinx or say Homarid Explorer. It's a little different though with The Mirari Conjecture only fetching one sorcery when we proliferate, rather than reshuffling everything. Might be worth further examination.
So let's examine the infinite combo in post #128. We play the lockets, gaining 3 white mana. We cast Vivien's Invocation to put Tragic Poet into play, and cast Quasiduplicate to get sufficient copies. We cast a Purity Nova, then Disdainful Stroke to counter it. We resolve a Purity Nova copy. We tap some Tragic Poets to get our enchantments back. Among these is The Mending of Dominaria, which brings Excavation Elephant back to our hand, and reshuffles the library. We cast Vivien's Invocation to put Naban and Spark Double into play, then cast Excavation Elephant kicked to bring our lockets back to the battlefield. We tap the lockets for white mana, then resolve another Purity Nova copy. Tap some Tragic Poets to bring back our enchantments. This includes The Mending of Dominaria, which reshuffles our library. Then, we cast a Wrath Nova, and counter it with Disdainful Stroke. We resolve a Wrath Nova, destroying our creatures.
Hmm, there is a problem: The Mending of Dominaria is on the battlefield, but we need to put it into play to bring back Excavation Elephant. So this looks like a dead end here.
What if we don't bring back The Mending of Dominaria after the second Purity Nova? We could have used the previous Vivien's Invocation to put Homarid Explorer into play, reshuffling our library. We can reshuffle Vivien's Invocation in as well, so long as we fetch Homarid Explorer using the original Vivien's Invocation. Next, we cast a Wrath Nova, and counter it with Disdainful Stroke. We resolve a Wrath Nova.
Okay, there is another problem: That Wrath puts both Tragic Poet and Excavation Elephant into the graveyard. We need to fetch Tragic Poet so that it can fetch The Mending of Dominaria. But we can't fetch it from the graveyard without a reshuffle.
Actually, no - we can sacrifice the original Tragic Poet early, and it gets shuffled back into the library by The Mending of Dominaria.
Okay, so with Tragic Poet in the library and Excavation Elephant in our graveyard, we can cast Vivien's Invocation again to bring back Tragic Poet to the battlefield, along with Naban and Spark Double. We tap it to fetch The Mending of Dominaria, and it brings back Excavation Elephant to our hand, getting us a reshuffle. We cast Excavation Elephant kicked, and we bring back the lockets. We tap the lockets for mana. We resolve another Wrath Nova copy.
At this point, we are near where we were at the beginning of the combo, and I think we are in a position to repeat. We have Excavation Elephant in the graveyard, and the rest of our creatures and sorceries in our library. We can cast Vivien's Invocation to put Tragic Poet, Naban, and Spark Double on the battlefield. We can then cast a Purity Nova, and Disdainful Stroke it. Cast Quasiduplicate to get copies of Tragic Poet. Resolve a Purity Nova, tap our Tragic Poets to bring back our enchantments, including The Mending of Dominaria, which brings back Excavation Elephant. And so on and so forth.
So it looks like that still goes infinite. But, it also looks like we crucially relied on Homarid Explorer to make it work. After the second Purity Nova, bringing back The Mending of Dominaria is a problem, because it gets stuck on the battlefield when we need to bring back Excavation Elephant. So we need some other way to reshuffle at that point.
Can the combo work without Homarid Explorer?
Let's look at the WPPW process again. So a Wrath resolves, putting our creatures in our graveyard. Let's say at this point Excavation Elephant is in our graveyard and the rest of our creatures and sorceries are in our library. We cast Vivien's Invocation to put Naban, Spark Double, and Tragic Poet on the battlefield. We cast Quasiduplicate to get sufficient copies of Tragic Poet. Tap the lockets if we haven't yet. We resolve a Purity Nova. Use some Tragic Poets to get our enchantments back (including the original Tragic Poet). This brings back The Mending of Dominaria, which puts Excavation Elephant into our hand and reshuffles the library. We cast Excavation Elephant kicked to get our lockets back, and tap the lockets for mana. Resolve another Purity Nova. Tap some Tragic Poets to bring back our enchantments, but not The Mending of Dominaria yet. Resolve the remaining Wrath Nova, putting Excavation Elephant in the graveyard, along with Naban and Spark Double (and probably our mana creatures). Cast a Purity Nova and counter it with Disdainful Stroke. Cast Vivien's Invocation to put Tragic Poet, Naban and Spark Double on the battlefield again. Sacrifice the Tragic Poet to bring The Mending of Dominaria to our hand. Cast The Mending of Dominaria, bringing back Excavation Elephant and getting us a reshuffle. Cast Excavation Elephant kicked, getting our lockets back again. Tap the lockets. Cast a Wrath Nova and Disdainful Stroke it. Resolve a Wrath Nova, putting Excavation Elephant, Naban, and Spark Double in the graveyard.
This is almost a loop, except now we have Naban and Spark Double in the graveyard instead of in the library. This means our first Vivien's Invocation won't be able to bring them back. Actually, it appears to be the same for the second Vivien's Invocation. Can we maneuver the process around so that we can reshuffle prior to Vivien's Invocation?
So, what about the possibility of just casting a Purity Nova after the resolution of the two Purity Novas? In that case, Excavation Elephant, Naban, and Spark Double are still on the battlefield. We cast a Purity Nova and counter it with Disdainful Stroke. We can still have Tragic Poets on the battlefield, so we sacrifice one to bring back The Mending of Dominaria to our hand. We cast it, which can't bring back Excavation Elephant since it is on the battlefield, but we still get a reshuffle. We then cast a Wrath Nova and Disdainful Stroke it. We resolve a Wrath Nova, destroying Excavation Elephant, Naban, and Spark Double. Hmm, now we can't get back our lockets, since The Mending of Dominaria is on the battlefield.
But, what if after we cast The Mending of Dominaria and reshuffle, we resolve one copy of Purity Nova? This will destroy our enchantments again, including The Mending of Dominaria. We can still have Tragic Poets at this point, so we can tap some to get back our enchantments, but not The Mending of Dominaria. Now we can cast a Wrath Nova and counter it. We resolve one to destroy our creatures. We cast Vivien's Invocation to bring back Tragic Poet, and sacrifice it to bring back The Mending of Dominaria. We cast it to bring back Excavation Elephant and reshuffle. Another Vivien's Invocation will bring back Naban and Spark Double. Then we can cast Excavation Elephant kicked, and get our lockets back. Resolve the remaining Wraths, then cast the second Vivien's Invocation to bring back Tragic Poet again. So I think this is an infinite.
@FortyTwo, did I make any mistake in the above analysis? There appear to be some subtleties that perhaps we were missing before, like the need to have Excavation Elephant in the graveyard while the other creatures need to be in the library. But, from what I can see, we can't get the combo working without also enabling an infinite combo, at least with The Mending of Dominaria.
I haven't analyzed your whole post yet, but Homarid explorer and all the etb explore creatures go infinite with Quasiduplicate, which you used to make enough tragic poets.
I'll edit this post with other issues if I see them.
Edit 1: Tragic Poet puts enchantments in our hand so we can save casting TMoD until we can get back the Elephant.
Edit 2: Good point about needing creatures in proper zones, we did kind of gloss over that before.
I agree that TMoD isn't safe with what we have.
Edit 3: Homarid explorer might be ok without Quasiduplicate, and using Finale of devastation to get poets back from the yard. (I think we'd need at least 3 tragic poets to rebuild Omniscience, Precognition field, and TYS) [Though I suppose spark double can help out]
Edit 4: Even if we could use The Mirari conjecture at the right times, it puts Cleaning nova in our hand where we can cast it for 0. So that's a non-starter.
Hmm, if Quasiduplicate is out the window anyway, maybe we could go back to Golgari Findbroker to get back our enchantments and/or artifacts. Of course, we would still need at least one Tragic Poet to get back Precognition Field. But maybe we don't really need Excavation Elephant now that Quasiduplicate is off the table.
i definitively like getting the lockets out of the list if possible. i'm pretty sure they allow another infinite from the 128 post. my concerns with warloard's fury is that it allows us to make draws the top layer of a stack and we can then allow looping our permanents underneath that. once the WLF draws are exhausted it does go to the yard but we can reshuffle it easily enough with a 3 card loop(sphinx, nova(wrath), stroke, we cast sphinx, then wrath getting copies, then counter the original wrath with stroke, then stroke and wrath go to yard, then wrath copy resolves and we mill blessing and we get everything back into library including our just used 3 card loop in its entirety) which we can have in hand before our draws from WLF have been fully used up. then we set the 3 card loop off to get WLF back into our library and then since we are able to generate enough loops to make enough white/black mana from the lockets and get them back we sac a locket to draw 1 card + WLF. now we have WLF back and can rebuild our draw tower even more potently than before which makes looping into infinity even easier. i was able to set this loop up without using poet or elephant at all. you just always have a wrath nova resolve after your purify nova and you will get back at least 1 nova(if you have access to stroke you can get them both). you can set this up easily enough by responding to your own casting of a wrath nova and then cast the purify nova which gives you a stack that always ends with a wrath nova to allow a full reshuffle of everything.
Hmm, that is concerning. The lockets are one of our few options to restrict mana colors. We really don't want to try to switch to mox amber.
Though, I'm not quite sure I follow your line, could you be a little more specific?
How you are making excess white mana without spending life? (and without using elephant or poet??)
The goal with the alternating nova is that a whole tower produces 2 less white mana than it took in because only the transitions make mana and there are only N-1 transitions from N castings of nova. (We build it up the first time with life, but then use W the rest of the way down.) At least that's the theory...
yeah i'll try to get the sequence written out tonight. its the same up through omniscience->emergency powers but my sequencing is different from that point. i'm at work now but i should be able to post it tonight hopefully.
Hmm yes, there does seem to be a problem with the lockets and Warlord's Fury. As we resolve further down the stage (say, when we get down to WPPWWPPWWPPWWPPW), we will start gathering up more and more white mana. Eventually, we will store up 4 or more white mana, and then we can sacrifice a locket and use the white mana to draw a card, which can be Warlord's Fury. We can then cast the Warlord's Fury, getting a bunch of card draws, which can draw Cleansing Nova a bunch more times to increase the stage.
The obvious fix is just to remove Warlord's Fury, losing a layer. Gaea's Blessing is still fine, since we have to use Ionize on it or else we have no way of getting it back to the library to cause more reshuffles.
I don't know what J_kibbs's sequence is without using Poets or Elephants, that might be important. (and possibly damaging)
Hmm, but it can only draw one nova at a time so we'd have to fully resolve it to get to the next WLF card draw to cast nova again. This is similar to how we are building the tower in the first place, except without Ionize.
Alternating which nova we are casting does lead to problems, assuming that both types can reshuffle.
Another issue I'm struggling with to make this not go infinite is if when we are building we can resolve 2 at a time
(WW) (PP) (WW) (PP) (WW)
to be resolved as:
(WPPW) (WPPW)
and break even on W mana as we build.
Hmm, but it can only draw one nova at a time so we'd have to fully resolve it to get to the next WLF card draw to cast nova again. This is similar to how we are building the tower in the first place, except without Ionize.
I don't quite follow what you are saying here. The idea is that we have a stack tower that starts out composed of card draws, and as we resolve it it gradually gets converted to Cleansing Nova casts. It's true that this is similar to how we are building the tower with Ionize, except that Ionize costs two life, which keeps us from repeating the process infinitely. By drawing cards with the lockets we are rebuilding the tower using just white mana, which I don't think is enough.
Another issue I'm struggling with to make this not go infinite is if when we are building we can resolve 2 at a time
(WW) (PP) (WW) (PP) (WW)
to be resolved as:
(WPPW) (WPPW)
and break even on W mana as we build.
If we resolve (WPPW) (WPPW), we should break even on white mana (we should store up 8 white mana as we resolve, and then use the 8 white mana to cast four alternating Cleansing Novas), but then the stack will look like W...W P...P W...W P...P. So there will be more W's and P's in the top four groups, but one less W in the fifth group. So this is the normal stage process, assuming that things are working as I think they are. (I admit that I haven't taken a deep look at what happens when we resolve multiple groups down.)
so if you pull warlord's fury it should stop my loop. i'll have to look though at just how potent i can make blessing/ionize. if i can get that potent enough early enough i might be able to just do the loop using lockets themselves. i'm pretty sure i can't but i'll post everything just i case and let you guys look it over.
basically the loop works like this: there are only 6 things we need to actually draw to start looping the entire thing 1) omniscience 2) thosand-year storm 3) preconition field and 4-6) lockets. we do need to have both novas in our hand before omniscience goes away but we don't need them to start. all the creatures(Marwyn, the Nurturer, Gyre Engineer, Citywatch Sphinx, Garna, the Bloodflame) we can get from adventurous impulse, and we can then play all of our non wrath ins/sorceries off the top of the deck via precog field. we use gift of growth on engineer and marwyn to generate at least enough blue and green to cast omnisciene and the rest of out instants/sorceries off the top. so once we have this all set up we cast WLF and generate a tower of draws from TYS(i think my current play through makes 9, but we could inflate the TYS count via blessing/ionize a few times if needed). the first 2 will draw us our novas and will also have stroke on top of the deck. before the next draw (7 left) resolves we tap our lockets for white mana and make all excess mana from engineer/marwyn. we now cast nova(wrath) and respond with nova(purify), then counter both the the originals with stoke off the top(TYS count is up to 12 now). now we let nova(purify) resolve and put our big 6 into the yard. then the wrath nova resolves and we kill all of our creatures including sphinx which triggers and we mill blessing, which reshuffles everything except WLF which is still on the stack. we then draw our big 6 plus 1 nova and WLF goes to the yard. we now cast omniscience via floating mana and the the rest of our big 6 and then sphinx. now we cast nova(wrath) from hand killing sphinx milling blessing and reshuffling WLF/blessing/sphinx into the deck. wrath original resolves and goes to yard. now we cast out the rest of our creatures. we then cast a bunch of ins/sorcery off the top to inflate our TYS count. once that is done we can finally complete the loop. we tap 1 locket for w and then sac another to draw 2. we get WLF and X. we then cast WLF to make a large draw tower. we use this tower to recur the wrath first and then go about looping nova(purify) and lockets to get to a point where the next looping of them will allow a draw from the lockets . i believe our tower will now be large enough to recur things enough go infinite. one small mistake i realized as i wrote this is starting from our 7 card emergency powers hand we can only have 5 of our big six. we need emergence zone to allow flash speed and it needs to come in off EP or we can't get it into play. so we just have EZ and the big 6(-1 locket) and WLF as our 7 or we use EZ plus big 6 and then need to use 1 tap of a mountain to get it going originally. don't need red mana after that. if the tower looks too small on the 2nd casting of WLF we can use 1RU and 1G early to loop/redraw blessing and ionize via life and some use of mountains and probably gift of growth too to make plenty of blue mana for later use.
the deck can generate a decent amount of mana via gift of growth to cast a lot of itself of of the top of the deck, espically as our TYS count goes higher and higher. we can recur all of our creatures and all u/g ins sorceries for 2 draws, 1 green mana, and 1U as well for strokeoff the top. we draw sphinx and nova, cast sphinx for free off omni cast impluse off the top for G getting all of our creatures, then cast all the u/g stuff of the top after tapping engineer to cast gift for many copies making a lot of mana. we just need to use actual draws to get our big 6 and WLF.
still at work, can explain exact set up if needed once i get home. i think we need to cut WLF though ....
Thanks J_kibbs. I think in your combo we don't generate the four white mana we need to draw a card via the locket (correct me if I am wrong), but if we go through enough draws we will be able to do so, so I still think that we need to get rid of Warlord's Fury.
Of course, we still haven't corrected the stage to work in the first place. I have hopes that it can work with Homarid Explorer, but I haven't had the time yet to really analyze it.
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2 Llanowar Elves
3 Highland Lake
4 Marwyn, the Nurturer
5 Highland Lake
6 Giant Growth
7 Gift of Growth
8 Omniscience
9 Emergency Powers
10 Thousand-Year Storm
11 Precognition Field
12 Gaea's Blessing
13 Gyre Engineer
14 Emergence Zone
16 Orzhov Locket
17 Orzhov Locket
18 Cleansing Nova
19 Disdainful Stroke
20 Excavation Elephant
21 Citywatch Sphinx
22 Naban, Dean of Iteration
23 Arcane Adaptation
24 Spark Double
25 Adventurous Impulse
26 Tragic Poet
27 Garna, the Bloodflame
29 Ionize
30 Grow from the Ashes
31 Banefire
32 Sun-Crowned Hunters
33 Gideon Blackblade
34 Nikya of the Old Ways
35 Quasiduplicate
36 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
24 Mountain
We are back to Citywatch Sphinx from Diligent Excavator for reshuffle to avoid the infinite. (Might need to be millstone even)
Exchanged Teysa Karlov with Gideon, Blackblade to fix the targeting issue.
Also swapped back Samut for Garna as our haste enabler, the gravedigger triggers are slightly more useful than not having to recast it, and Teferi can be the damage victim now.
Otherwise, looks good!
Edit: Two ways to reshuffle goes infinite
Play the lockets, tap them for WWW
Cast Nova=Purify and disdainful stroke it
let one resolve (W floating)
Use Excavation Elephant to return the artifacts (0 floating)
tap them for WWW
Reshuffle Nova (Reshuffler 1)
Let the next nova=purify resolve
Cast Nova=Wrath and counter it
Let one copy resolve (W floating)
Return the Elephant with Garna (Garna not needed, just easier to show the combo)
Recast Elephant and get lockets (0 floating)
Let next wrath resolve
Reshuffle (Reshuffler 2)
Back to step 1.
This means that my original stage combo didn't work.
The Mending is even easier to get back, and has the raise dead built in, so its definitely infinite.
Citywatch Sphinx is safe at least because it can only reshuffle on death. We might have to go back to 2 copies of Nova.
Thinking about it while writing this post, Millstone seems safe without Garna, and is good enough to reform the stage as we are resolving it down.
I might be missing something though, it is subtle and we missed it for ~100 posts.
-Garna, the bloodflame -Citywatch Sphinx
+Samut, tyrant smasher +Millstone
Edit: checking if Millstone alone is enough to rebuild:
First we build the alternating nova stack with Gaea's Blessing, Warlord's Fury, and Ionize.
Note: the topmost nova alone isn't very profitable, lots of wraths or lots of purifies do not give us lots of reshuffles.
However one of each does let us reshuffle.
If we resolve purify then wrath then we can recover the artifacts right before the wrath. Then use Millstone to reshuffle, after the wrath.
If we are resolving wrath then purify we can reshuffle right after the wrath, then Elephant the artifacts after the Purify.
Either way we net exactly enough W mana to recast Nova.
So PW and WP work.
We need either WPPW or PWWP to work. (or do we need both?)
The WPPW case: Millstone isn't actually enough for this I think, as the last wrath ends with everything in the yard, which is a dead end.
The PWWP case: Troubling as the artifacts are in play before the second wrath and therefore cant be returned by the elephant. However, we can let that wrath do nothing and use the Purify to put them in the yard, fetch them with the elephant then we cast wrath and use the top one to kill the elephant and then reshuffle and Purify. (So PWP is what we are actually using.)
Because WPPW doesn't work, when Purify batches run low we can't be as efficient. I'm not sure how much this messes up the math, but it doesn't seem good.
Citywatch Sphinx works fine for both the PWWP and WPPW cases, but does require a second Nova.
Edit: as another useful endstep trigger many Voltaic Servant can untap a Firemind Vessel, or perhaps more appealing is Azor's Gateway.
Edit 2: Azor's gateway does eat at deckslots, but we can feed it Teferi, Emergence Zone, Voltaic Servant, Gideon Blackblade and Llanowar elves. for a 0,1,2,3,5 and get it flipped without using more card slots.
The problem with Voltaic Servant into Firemind Vessel or Azor's Gateway is that we don't get the benefit until the end step, so it doesn't feed into Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, so the benefit winds up being much less. That is the same reason we aren't using Wilderness Reclamation over more Mountains.
So the post#126 decklist with:
-1 Mountain
+ Cleansing Nova
Having two novas lets us either save the purify nova's thousand-year storm trigger or make the stack twice as tall by destroying the lockets.
I think making it taller is just better, but its a shame that either way the improvement is lost in the approximation.
I was thinking that because its better to use teferi to untap Sanctum of the Sun than a mountain.
But losing out on earlier teferi triggers just isnt worth it.
Maybe Hijack so we can flip it earlier?
No, the card slots are too valuable. Big numbers are weird. The extra mountain more than makes up for any gains tapping for more would have.
(Also Hijack goes infinite as we can make a bunch of white, nova to reshuffle, then sac a locket to get back hijack and return the locket with elephant.)
Let's analyze the WPPW process: First we resolve a Wrath Nova, and the battlefield is cleared of creatures. We cast Finale of Devastation to bring Garna, the Bloodflame onto the battlefield, and that allows us to bring Tragic Poet and Excavation Elephant back to our hand. We play Tragic Poet, and cast Quasiduplicate to get many copies of it (and perhaps copies of our mana creatures as well). We then resolve a Purity Nova. This kills our artifacts and enchantments, so we need to use some Tragic Poets to bring our enchantments back. We play Excavation Elephant with several Nabans on the battlefield, so that we get back our lockets and Millstone. Tap the lockets to get three white mana, and tap the Millstone to reshuffle our library. Then resolve the second Purity Nova. This puts our artifacts and enchantments back in the graveyard again. Use some Tragic Poets to get our enchantments back. Resolve the final Wrath Nova. Cast a Purity Nova with the mana we gained; this puts Cleansing Nova in the graveyard. Cast Finale of Devastation again, bringing Garna onto the battlefield, and the other creatures back to our hand. cast Naban, and get some copies with Spark Double and Quasiduplicate. Cast Excavation Elephant, and bring our artifacts back to the battlefield. Tap the lockets for mana, and use Millstone to shuffle the graveyard into the library. We can now cast a Wrath Nova. So this looks like it works.
But, does your above infinite combo work? We play the lockets and Millstone, gaining 3 white mana. We cast a Purity Nova. We cast Finale of Devastation, bringing back Garna, which brings the other creatures to our hand. We play Tragic Poet, and make copies of it. We use the Millstone to reshuffle our graveyard into our library. We resolve a Purity Nova. We use our Tragic Poets to bring back the enchantments. We play Excavation Elephant, bringing back our artifacts. We tap the lockets for mana, and use Millstone to reshuffle again. We resolve another Purity Nova. We use more Tragic Poets to bring back our enchantments. We cast a Wrath Nova. We resolve a Wrath Nova, destroying our creatures. We cast Finale of Devastation, bringing back Garna, and bringing back Tragic Poet and Excavation Elephant back to our hand. We cast Naban and Tragic Poet, and use Quasiduplicate to make copies. We cast Excavation Elephant, and bring our artifacts back to the battlefield. We tap the lockets for mana, and tap the Millstone to reshuffle. We can now cast a Purity Nova and restart the combo. Okay, so we do go infinite here.
If we have Adventurous Impulse rather than Finale of Devastation (and no Garna), then I don't think the infinite combo works, because when we have a Purity Nova followed by a Wrath Nova, the millstone goes away, and then the Wrath puts our creatures in our graveyard, so that we need a reshuffle to access them again. But the same problem messes up our intended combo as well. The only way around it would be to have the Excavation Elephant in our hand or in the library when this happened. But, after the first of two Purity Novas, we need to play the Excavation Elephant to get our artifacts back, so it should be on the battlefield when the second Purity Nova is resolved. So I don't see a way around this.
Sorry, nothing new here; just thought I would check one more time.
And rechecking is important, we don't want to miss something this big again. I'm still not 100% sure, but everything looks to be working now.
I think we are pretty close to optimal for this strategy. The big easy improvement would be a way to copy Thousand Year Storm, but that does not look possible in standard, we can hope core 2020 enables that in some way.
been preoccupied with non magic things lately but still stop by this and the vintage challenge regularly. hopefully i'll get back to making vintage lists again.
a few observations though on this challenge.
1) pretty sure highland lake(both instances) needs to be sulfur falls if you guys want to go off turn 3, if you are ok with turn 4, that brings up another issue
2) if we don't go off on t3 we go infinite with the current list t4 or later(after the land swaps enabling t3). so if we go t4 we see 10 cards naturally instead of 9, and this difference alone is enough to do it. we could still go infinite t3 if we take the draw instead of the play getting to see our 10th card on t3. we do it by playing the same first 8 cards as normal, getting omniscience in play. then we cast TYS as card 9 and either gaea's blessing or warlord's fury as card 10. this gets us 1 original and 2 copies from TYS drawing us 3 cards. with these draws we can draw emergency powers, a counter(edit: this has to be disdainful stroke or its bound by life), and then literally anything else. we can then cast EP, getting its copies, and then with a copy of EP on the stack still we counter the original letting our counter and EP shuffle back in to be drawn again.
3)(possibly an issue) so i think you might have another issue anyway. as we up our TYS count we will get to the point where casting warlord's fury will draw all of our deck. i think as this draw engine grows it will come to a point where it allows us the draw the sphinx and cleansing nova post reshuffle. if we can do this it allows us to go infinite a different way. if we just cast sphinx and the nova(wrath) we don't get rid of omniscience and can reshuffle both when we mill blessing. then we cast fury and redraw (via WLF) all the pieces and repeat. we can even get rid of omniscience at some point and then get it back and recast if off mana we generate off multiple castings of gyre engineer as we draw and blow up the board time and time again. both issues 2 and 3 lead to infinite TYS counts which make our damage unbound. also on a similar note, as we up the TYS count we might be able to use blessing to recur itself. we do this with ionize by casting blessing, hold priority to respond to TYS trigger and the counter the original, before the copies are created and need targets, and then use the copies to pick it, and everything else, back up. i guess we are bound by life with this loop, so it might be ok. haven't dug too far into it yet.
You're right, Highland Lake does need to be Sulfur Falls.
The deck is intended to go off on turn 3 on the play. So yeah, it does go infinite if we wait until turn 4 or turn 3 on the draw, but we are ruling that to be legal; the deck just has to not go infinite on the intended turn (and player position) or earlier.
The idea behind Warlord's Fury is that it will be on the stack during resolution, so that we can't use it to draw itself. We can use Ionize, but that costs life, and nothing in the stage combo allows us to gain life. Similarly, Gaea's Blessing needs Ionize to draw itself, so it doesn't go infinite (as far as we can tell).
Oops, on Highland Lake vs Sulfur Falls, we changed when we were considering turn 4 without Gift of Growth, and just forgot to change back.
You are also entirely right about turn 4 being infinite, which is why we are going off turn 3.
I'm confident that the card draw spells are safe because they can't draw themselves without ionize, and warlord's fury needs a reshuffle which needs gaea's blessing in the library to draw itself.
So they can draw themselves a good amount but we will eventually run out of life and need to spend a red on Banefire to heal up.
Is there a way to avoid having two novas?
It looks like all of the ways to get a sorcery back go infinite.
All of the creatures are super infinite. All the Regrow effects are infinite or self exiling.
The planeswalkers are too slow.
I'm not sure on The Mirari Conjecture? Seems very likely infinite but maybe depends on how we proliferate?
Edit: Looking back on the original combo, which used some different cards I think still worked.
Original combo:
Path of Discovery lets all creatures reshuffle on ETB via Gaea's Blessing
Finale of Devastation fetches creatures from deck and GY, does not let us cast them.
Gilded Lotus taps for WWW
The Mending of Dominaria reshuffles and allows us to cast Excavation Elephant.
So, each Wrath lets us reshuffle for each creature we have, (each reshuffle give us tons of G and lots of U Mana.)
But only Gilded lotus makes white for Wrath.
To untap it we need to replay it, which means it needs to get killed via Cleansing Nova=Purify.
However Purify also kills our enchantments: Thousand Year Storm, Omniscience, Path of Discovery, and Precognition Field.
We use 2 tragic poets to return Precognition field and Path of discovery (original deck was suboptimal here). This lets us cast Finale and reshuffle it to repeatedly return the poets for Omniscience and TYS. Finally they get The Mending, and that gets us a kickable elephant to return the Lotus. (note: we can mill it with an explore trigger)
Gilded Lotus gives us just enough W mana to pay for the kicker and the next Nova.
This all was working fine. Wrath then purify turn into many wraths.
But when we run low on Purifies, the new question is do we need to use a lower Wrath? or can we use a new one?
Stack : WPPW
We go through the combo as before, but instead of casting wrath we let the last purify resolve, and rebuild using Poets again. (Saving the Mending in hand).
However if we have a bit of W floating we can cast Purify, then reshuffle with an etb and then cast wrath to kill the elephant, return it with the mending then kick it to get the WWW back.
Then we are back where we started but +mana and +storm which is infinite...
Is this salvageable?
What if we used Homarid Explorer, but coupled that with Finale of Devastation or Vivien's Invocation, so that we could only reshuffle after that spell resolved? Then we could use The Mending of Dominaria to fetch Excavation Elephant to our hand.
So let's examine the infinite combo in post #128. We play the lockets, gaining 3 white mana. We cast Vivien's Invocation to put Tragic Poet into play, and cast Quasiduplicate to get sufficient copies. We cast a Purity Nova, then Disdainful Stroke to counter it. We resolve a Purity Nova copy. We tap some Tragic Poets to get our enchantments back. Among these is The Mending of Dominaria, which brings Excavation Elephant back to our hand, and reshuffles the library. We cast Vivien's Invocation to put Naban and Spark Double into play, then cast Excavation Elephant kicked to bring our lockets back to the battlefield. We tap the lockets for white mana, then resolve another Purity Nova copy. Tap some Tragic Poets to bring back our enchantments. This includes The Mending of Dominaria, which reshuffles our library. Then, we cast a Wrath Nova, and counter it with Disdainful Stroke. We resolve a Wrath Nova, destroying our creatures.
Hmm, there is a problem: The Mending of Dominaria is on the battlefield, but we need to put it into play to bring back Excavation Elephant. So this looks like a dead end here.
What if we don't bring back The Mending of Dominaria after the second Purity Nova? We could have used the previous Vivien's Invocation to put Homarid Explorer into play, reshuffling our library. We can reshuffle Vivien's Invocation in as well, so long as we fetch Homarid Explorer using the original Vivien's Invocation. Next, we cast a Wrath Nova, and counter it with Disdainful Stroke. We resolve a Wrath Nova.
Okay, there is another problem: That Wrath puts both Tragic Poet and Excavation Elephant into the graveyard. We need to fetch Tragic Poet so that it can fetch The Mending of Dominaria. But we can't fetch it from the graveyard without a reshuffle.
Actually, no - we can sacrifice the original Tragic Poet early, and it gets shuffled back into the library by The Mending of Dominaria.
Okay, so with Tragic Poet in the library and Excavation Elephant in our graveyard, we can cast Vivien's Invocation again to bring back Tragic Poet to the battlefield, along with Naban and Spark Double. We tap it to fetch The Mending of Dominaria, and it brings back Excavation Elephant to our hand, getting us a reshuffle. We cast Excavation Elephant kicked, and we bring back the lockets. We tap the lockets for mana. We resolve another Wrath Nova copy.
At this point, we are near where we were at the beginning of the combo, and I think we are in a position to repeat. We have Excavation Elephant in the graveyard, and the rest of our creatures and sorceries in our library. We can cast Vivien's Invocation to put Tragic Poet, Naban, and Spark Double on the battlefield. We can then cast a Purity Nova, and Disdainful Stroke it. Cast Quasiduplicate to get copies of Tragic Poet. Resolve a Purity Nova, tap our Tragic Poets to bring back our enchantments, including The Mending of Dominaria, which brings back Excavation Elephant. And so on and so forth.
So it looks like that still goes infinite. But, it also looks like we crucially relied on Homarid Explorer to make it work. After the second Purity Nova, bringing back The Mending of Dominaria is a problem, because it gets stuck on the battlefield when we need to bring back Excavation Elephant. So we need some other way to reshuffle at that point.
Can the combo work without Homarid Explorer?
Let's look at the WPPW process again. So a Wrath resolves, putting our creatures in our graveyard. Let's say at this point Excavation Elephant is in our graveyard and the rest of our creatures and sorceries are in our library. We cast Vivien's Invocation to put Naban, Spark Double, and Tragic Poet on the battlefield. We cast Quasiduplicate to get sufficient copies of Tragic Poet. Tap the lockets if we haven't yet. We resolve a Purity Nova. Use some Tragic Poets to get our enchantments back (including the original Tragic Poet). This brings back The Mending of Dominaria, which puts Excavation Elephant into our hand and reshuffles the library. We cast Excavation Elephant kicked to get our lockets back, and tap the lockets for mana. Resolve another Purity Nova. Tap some Tragic Poets to bring back our enchantments, but not The Mending of Dominaria yet. Resolve the remaining Wrath Nova, putting Excavation Elephant in the graveyard, along with Naban and Spark Double (and probably our mana creatures). Cast a Purity Nova and counter it with Disdainful Stroke. Cast Vivien's Invocation to put Tragic Poet, Naban and Spark Double on the battlefield again. Sacrifice the Tragic Poet to bring The Mending of Dominaria to our hand. Cast The Mending of Dominaria, bringing back Excavation Elephant and getting us a reshuffle. Cast Excavation Elephant kicked, getting our lockets back again. Tap the lockets. Cast a Wrath Nova and Disdainful Stroke it. Resolve a Wrath Nova, putting Excavation Elephant, Naban, and Spark Double in the graveyard.
This is almost a loop, except now we have Naban and Spark Double in the graveyard instead of in the library. This means our first Vivien's Invocation won't be able to bring them back. Actually, it appears to be the same for the second Vivien's Invocation. Can we maneuver the process around so that we can reshuffle prior to Vivien's Invocation?
If not, I think we can fix it by having two Vivien's Invocations (or two Adventurous Impulses, if that is preferable).
So, what about the possibility of just casting a Purity Nova after the resolution of the two Purity Novas? In that case, Excavation Elephant, Naban, and Spark Double are still on the battlefield. We cast a Purity Nova and counter it with Disdainful Stroke. We can still have Tragic Poets on the battlefield, so we sacrifice one to bring back The Mending of Dominaria to our hand. We cast it, which can't bring back Excavation Elephant since it is on the battlefield, but we still get a reshuffle. We then cast a Wrath Nova and Disdainful Stroke it. We resolve a Wrath Nova, destroying Excavation Elephant, Naban, and Spark Double. Hmm, now we can't get back our lockets, since The Mending of Dominaria is on the battlefield.
But, what if after we cast The Mending of Dominaria and reshuffle, we resolve one copy of Purity Nova? This will destroy our enchantments again, including The Mending of Dominaria. We can still have Tragic Poets at this point, so we can tap some to get back our enchantments, but not The Mending of Dominaria. Now we can cast a Wrath Nova and counter it. We resolve one to destroy our creatures. We cast Vivien's Invocation to bring back Tragic Poet, and sacrifice it to bring back The Mending of Dominaria. We cast it to bring back Excavation Elephant and reshuffle. Another Vivien's Invocation will bring back Naban and Spark Double. Then we can cast Excavation Elephant kicked, and get our lockets back. Resolve the remaining Wraths, then cast the second Vivien's Invocation to bring back Tragic Poet again. So I think this is an infinite.
@FortyTwo, did I make any mistake in the above analysis? There appear to be some subtleties that perhaps we were missing before, like the need to have Excavation Elephant in the graveyard while the other creatures need to be in the library. But, from what I can see, we can't get the combo working without also enabling an infinite combo, at least with The Mending of Dominaria.
Perhaps Homarid Explorer without The Mending of Dominaria might be worth checking.
I'll edit this post with other issues if I see them.
Edit 1: Tragic Poet puts enchantments in our hand so we can save casting TMoD until we can get back the Elephant.
Edit 2: Good point about needing creatures in proper zones, we did kind of gloss over that before.
I agree that TMoD isn't safe with what we have.
Edit 3: Homarid explorer might be ok without Quasiduplicate, and using Finale of devastation to get poets back from the yard. (I think we'd need at least 3 tragic poets to rebuild Omniscience, Precognition field, and TYS) [Though I suppose spark double can help out]
Edit 4: Even if we could use The Mirari conjecture at the right times, it puts Cleaning nova in our hand where we can cast it for 0. So that's a non-starter.
Though, I'm not quite sure I follow your line, could you be a little more specific?
How you are making excess white mana without spending life? (and without using elephant or poet??)
The goal with the alternating nova is that a whole tower produces 2 less white mana than it took in because only the transitions make mana and there are only N-1 transitions from N castings of nova. (We build it up the first time with life, but then use W the rest of the way down.) At least that's the theory...
The obvious fix is just to remove Warlord's Fury, losing a layer. Gaea's Blessing is still fine, since we have to use Ionize on it or else we have no way of getting it back to the library to cause more reshuffles.
I don't know what J_kibbs's sequence is without using Poets or Elephants, that might be important. (and possibly damaging)
Alternating which nova we are casting does lead to problems, assuming that both types can reshuffle.
Another issue I'm struggling with to make this not go infinite is if when we are building we can resolve 2 at a time
(WW) (PP) (WW) (PP) (WW)
to be resolved as:
(WPPW) (WPPW)
and break even on W mana as we build.
I don't quite follow what you are saying here. The idea is that we have a stack tower that starts out composed of card draws, and as we resolve it it gradually gets converted to Cleansing Nova casts. It's true that this is similar to how we are building the tower with Ionize, except that Ionize costs two life, which keeps us from repeating the process infinitely. By drawing cards with the lockets we are rebuilding the tower using just white mana, which I don't think is enough.
If we resolve (WPPW) (WPPW), we should break even on white mana (we should store up 8 white mana as we resolve, and then use the 8 white mana to cast four alternating Cleansing Novas), but then the stack will look like W...W P...P W...W P...P. So there will be more W's and P's in the top four groups, but one less W in the fifth group. So this is the normal stage process, assuming that things are working as I think they are. (I admit that I haven't taken a deep look at what happens when we resolve multiple groups down.)
basically the loop works like this: there are only 6 things we need to actually draw to start looping the entire thing 1) omniscience 2) thosand-year storm 3) preconition field and 4-6) lockets. we do need to have both novas in our hand before omniscience goes away but we don't need them to start. all the creatures(Marwyn, the Nurturer, Gyre Engineer, Citywatch Sphinx, Garna, the Bloodflame) we can get from adventurous impulse, and we can then play all of our non wrath ins/sorceries off the top of the deck via precog field. we use gift of growth on engineer and marwyn to generate at least enough blue and green to cast omnisciene and the rest of out instants/sorceries off the top. so once we have this all set up we cast WLF and generate a tower of draws from TYS(i think my current play through makes 9, but we could inflate the TYS count via blessing/ionize a few times if needed). the first 2 will draw us our novas and will also have stroke on top of the deck. before the next draw (7 left) resolves we tap our lockets for white mana and make all excess mana from engineer/marwyn. we now cast nova(wrath) and respond with nova(purify), then counter both the the originals with stoke off the top(TYS count is up to 12 now). now we let nova(purify) resolve and put our big 6 into the yard. then the wrath nova resolves and we kill all of our creatures including sphinx which triggers and we mill blessing, which reshuffles everything except WLF which is still on the stack. we then draw our big 6 plus 1 nova and WLF goes to the yard. we now cast omniscience via floating mana and the the rest of our big 6 and then sphinx. now we cast nova(wrath) from hand killing sphinx milling blessing and reshuffling WLF/blessing/sphinx into the deck. wrath original resolves and goes to yard. now we cast out the rest of our creatures. we then cast a bunch of ins/sorcery off the top to inflate our TYS count. once that is done we can finally complete the loop. we tap 1 locket for w and then sac another to draw 2. we get WLF and X. we then cast WLF to make a large draw tower. we use this tower to recur the wrath first and then go about looping nova(purify) and lockets to get to a point where the next looping of them will allow a draw from the lockets . i believe our tower will now be large enough to recur things enough go infinite. one small mistake i realized as i wrote this is starting from our 7 card emergency powers hand we can only have 5 of our big six. we need emergence zone to allow flash speed and it needs to come in off EP or we can't get it into play. so we just have EZ and the big 6(-1 locket) and WLF as our 7 or we use EZ plus big 6 and then need to use 1 tap of a mountain to get it going originally. don't need red mana after that. if the tower looks too small on the 2nd casting of WLF we can use 1RU and 1G early to loop/redraw blessing and ionize via life and some use of mountains and probably gift of growth too to make plenty of blue mana for later use.
the deck can generate a decent amount of mana via gift of growth to cast a lot of itself of of the top of the deck, espically as our TYS count goes higher and higher. we can recur all of our creatures and all u/g ins sorceries for 2 draws, 1 green mana, and 1U as well for strokeoff the top. we draw sphinx and nova, cast sphinx for free off omni cast impluse off the top for G getting all of our creatures, then cast all the u/g stuff of the top after tapping engineer to cast gift for many copies making a lot of mana. we just need to use actual draws to get our big 6 and WLF.
still at work, can explain exact set up if needed once i get home. i think we need to cut WLF though ....
Of course, we still haven't corrected the stage to work in the first place. I have hopes that it can work with Homarid Explorer, but I haven't had the time yet to really analyze it.