Ooh, very nice! Having Enchanted Carriage be the only possible enchanted creature is pretty slick.
I guess we should also spend some time thinking about a possible third stage. Red mana, white mana, and life are the obvious stage resources to choose from. However Revival // Revenge doesn't seem to help with transitioning to a third stage, since we can't afford to spend our precious third stage mana as a second stage resource. We need to get the second stage mana as a byproduct. We still have creatures of casting cost more than 3 to use, although they will probably need to be Human to avoid being fetched by Kinnan. I didn't find much that was promising by a quick search though. The only thing that struck me was that Syr Carah, the Bold can deal one damage, so with lifelink it can gain us 1 life by tapping. So we could perhaps go back to Bolas's Citadel, and spend life on a couple of equal costing instants/sorceries.
That layer 4 is amazing! Really clever! You are correct that we don't need artifact (or enchantment) removal.
It needs to be Sporeweb Weaver and not lifelink so that we can update the number of angels in between triggers, or each Akroan war is only one big life gain isntead of lots. (Enchanted Carriage also lets us tap all of our Sporeweb Weavers so the Akroan war works.)
I was thinking that Saheeli didn't work because of the legend rule, but we get to re-choose both targets, and can chain them. (cant use her servos as they get wiped by Ritual of Soot, but can use excess Enchanted Carriages)
Edit: as for a third stage, I'm not seeing much of anything either. Syr Carah, the Bold looks the be the only useful cmc>3 human that doesn't immediately go infinite.
I suppose we don't actually neeeeed it to be a human, if the two spells were both needed to kill it. Like Swift Response+Dizzying Swoop (Ardenvale Tactician)? (though then what are we possibly using as our stage creature if it can't tap itself?)
Blacklance paragon gives Syr Carah lifelink
tap Syr Carah to ping one of clackbridge troll's goats, gaining 4.
Spend 4 life for Widespread brutality killing our dorks, letting us retap them for U and B. (the army can't gain lifelink as it is not a knight.)
Go through the U stage to reshuffle Syr Carah. Transmogrify an excess token into Syr Carah.
That looks actually good?
Edit:
oops blacklance paragon gives deathtouch too, is there a better way to give lifelink?
Hmm, the issue with Porcuparrot is that it's difficult to control its characteristics - it can be mutated under a low CMC creature that dies to ritual of soot, or under a low toughness creature that kills itself to its own ability
With citadel, you can't use mutate off the top since mutate and citadel are both alternative costs. I asked about that on the judge chat the other day. So you'd need to use mana, and you also need to draw it.
I guess one way to get more control over it would be to use a creature with lifelink, which would need to be the mutate target, rather than a spell that grants lifelink.
Hmm, so we'd need to actually draw it and pay red, hmm, and can have say Blood Glutton as the only source of lifelink, so it needs to be the mutate target.
Well if we cut the problems with adventure creatures, we can use corpse churn to draw it.
Say we have 2 mutators in the deck; porcuparrot and one that costs blue or black mana, say Archipelagore. Since creating a token copy of a mutated permanent resets the "number of times mutated" counter to 0, the only way it can be 2 (i.e. porcuparrot's ability deals 2 damage) is to have both mutators in the pile, i.e. red mana was spent.
So, the only way for a creature to have lifelink, porcuparrot's ability, and have been mutated once, without spending red mana on it, is for it to have been a token copy of poruparrot-mutated-onto-a-lifelinker; and then to mutate Archipelagore onto it. So, Archipelagore must have been drawn, and the creature can't have haste.
But this is where I hit a dead end. I thought about Samut's Sprint + Crash Through as a potential life stage, with killing the creatures being easy (say be using Sea Dashed Octopus as the other mutator to lower CMC into ritual range); but it doesn't work because you can haste a bunch of lifelink-porcuparrot tokens and then each crash through generates life.
I also thought about Shock + Crash Through, with haste being easy somehow; but it has the same issue that you can pre-damage the tokens so they can kill themselves so each crash through generates life. Claim the firstborn would be nice as a way of giving haste only to low CMC creatures and thus requiring that sea dasher octopus already be mutated; but since it untaps then it still gains too much life.
Edit: Perhaps Fry could work as a way of requiring a blue creature be mutated. Plus Thrill of possibility for the card draw? Then all we need is a way to give our mutate piles haste without being able to give Skull Prophet tokens (or pixie tokens) haste early.
Edit: Perhaps the mutate base could need to be something that inherently has haste, and make lifelink easy? say with unexpected fangs
In fact, doing it that way means an actual haste creature won't be needed, just fetch the nontoken porcuparrot with Kinnan. And in fact that is a lot safer as it ensures you couldn't use one porcuparrot to ping another avoiding the use of a Fry somewhere.
Kinnan up porcuparrot for haste
spend 2 life to Thrill of possibility to draw archipelagore
mutate onto the parrot
spend a black to give it lifelink with unexpected fangs
Ping Skull prophet and gain 2 life (can use obosh, the preypiercer to go from 1 to 2)
spend 2 to Fry the archiporcuparragore
Hmm, this looks a bit awkward to actually profit black off of though.
That's the idea. Maybe Duskfang Mentor could be used to give lifelink, so that we can profit black by casting skull prophets
Edit: An additional wrinkle I've just noticed is that Fry is uncounterable, so it would get stuck on the stack. So perhaps we want Ashiok's Erasure + enchantment removal for that. Does that cause any issues in the lower stages? I don't think so, since countering spells and returning them to hand is something that Quasiduplicate can already do.
Edit: Aether gust or Unsubstantiate are potentially more convenient options
Edit: Unsubstantiate generates black with skull prophet, and gust allows us to put the porcuparrot pile into our library without Fry; so Ashiok's Erasure it is. I believe it can actually replace frilled mystic though.
Edit: Another thing to note is that, if Role Reversal is used for something, opponent's life can't be used as a resource, since it would be possible to tap a porcuparrot and respond by donating it, which would give the opponent life.
In particular, this makes Revival // Revenge bad. Corpse Churn and similar effects are also bad because it can return an Archipelagore to hand without resolving a Thrill of Possibility; so for the black mana stage we want Gruesome Menagerie
Edit: Obosh can be mutated onto and cloned, so I think instead we want a second Archipelagore to make our pings gain 2
Edit: Do we actually need to use Fry now? With a stage of Shock + Crash Through, the previous concern was that one shock could damage multiple tokens allowing each draw to generate life. But now that we're using the nontoken porcuparrot then that's no longer an issue; we can only generate life when they resolve in the right order. So that would save the second archipelagore as well as any complications with ashiok's erasure.
Donating a way for them to gain life is always tricky. Blood burglar loses lifelink when donated, but isn't compatible with the rest of the combo.
Obosh being mutated and cloned is not a problem since for the parrot to be part of the mutate stack, we need to have spent red mana, which is very expensive.
I think there was still some problem with Shock+Crash Through? Though I don't seem to be seeing it at the moment...
Cloning obosh is still an issue because the nontoken one can be killed to reuse its components, which doesn't need any red mana (if using archipelagore) or only needs one red mana (if using porcuparrot)
not optimal ending but something still feels off abut the life stage to me. I haven't been able to break it, and it seems to work...
The only way to tap porcuparrot for damage is if it is in a mutate stack,
that requires drawing at least one of the mutators archipelagore is cheaper.
the only way we can draw a creature is via crash through
crash through costs 1 life to cast as we can't make red
the only way to gain life is with a hasty mutated porcuparrot.
this taps our parrot and the only way we can recycle it is to shock it (twice).
shock costs 1 life to cast.
now we can kinnan back the porcuparrot to get it hasty and untapped,
but we still need to draw an archipelagore.
...
And we make excess black by drawing Skull prophets with the top level of Crash throughs or by killing them with the top level of shocks.
I need to convince myself a bit more by messing with it some.
Edit: also the start needs some helper cards like Cling to dust
The point is that once you have 2 obosh/archipelagore piles, each porcuparrot tap gains 4 life rather than 2 which would go infinite.
As far as layers go, we're pretty limited. We can't use planeswalkers since our shocks and porcuparrots damage them, allowing them to be recycled. We also can't use adventure creatures since we can already draw them to recycle them. We also can't use spells that can be paid for with life. It's also difficult (though maybe not impossible if Role Reversal isn't used) to use opponent's life as a resource.
Stuff we do have to work with:
- Heliod's Intervention
- Leafkin Avenger could gain a lot of life by hitting a walker that has no useful abilities to recur
- Tapping a land or a lotus can produce a lot of red or white mana
- A few red or white activated abilities could untap something (Gauntlets of light, High alert, Smelt-Ward Ingus)
- Sagas; though the only source of proliferate is combat damage
- Smothering tithe is ok if Role Reversal is not used
Oh right, it is a problem with making nonlegendary obosh-eligores, missed that. (also that we could ping our walker down to reuse it)
As for the start, i think Claim the firstborn is actually still safe as long as we can't make red to mutate the porcuparrot onto something cheaper.
so:
turn 1:
Leylinex3 ?
jungle hollow
turn 2:
Swamp
Skull prophet
turn 3:
Bolas's citadel 21 life 2 cards in hand
plains from the top
Rhythm of the wild 18
Kinnan 16
pixie pixie 6G4UW 12
Venture deeper 6GUUUW
Dance of the manse U 12 reanimating the leylines+ TYS + saga
Quasiduplicate x3 U 9
Claim the firstborn x13 44G23(U/B) 8 and mill Ritual of Soot + Gruesome Menagerie + Devious cover-up + Duskfang Mentor (via Skull prophet's other ability)
Kinnan up Shipwreck dowser for quasiduplicate
Quasiduplicate x17 37G20(U/B)
Return Ritual of Soot + Gruesome Menagerie + Quasiduplicate +Devious cover up
Should be good to combo from here with 8 life left, only Claim the firstborn and Merfolk secret-keeper are startup-only for deck-space.
Hmm, using Kiora Bests the Sea God to fetch an opponent's land is problematic, since in order to make Role Reversal work, we need to give the opponent a land. Mobilized District is the only way I see to do that, but if we animate that, we can make unlimited copies of it and trigger Evolution Sage too easily.
Edit: Oh, I thought that if red was expensive, then it wouldn't be a problem. But, if we can mutate Porcuparrot onto something cheap, we can keep casting Claim the firstborn on it for more life I guess. So that doesn't work.
Which means Nyx Lotus is no good either. The solution seems to be to switch to a start where red mana is allowed.
Nyx Lotus means Claim the Firstborn can't be used, since if we can generate any red mana at all then we can mutate a porcuparrot onto something cheap and generate infinite life.
What are the rules on what lands the opponent can have in their deck? Because if they can choose then they could have a mountain to allow us to generate red mana and go infinite with it in the same way.
I guess we decided that we get to pick which basic lands the opponent has. In the original rules many years ago (for the Vintage challenge), the opponent had 60 Islands.
When stakfish updated the rules for standard it was "60 random basic lands" and since another rule is "Conditions caused by randomness can resolve any way you like"
Which when taken together I interpreted as us getting to choose their lands for the last standard deck. (not that it ended up mattering)
Ideally they would just have wastes but that's not legal in standard.
Edit: As for an alternative start without claim the firstborn, I'll see what I can do.
Sorry, being stupid - I forgot that Quasiduplicate copies won't have haste.
Edit: I suppose Happily Ever After would be all we need, as it would supply a potential 53 cards drawn and 265 life gained. It also provides a source of white devotion, so we can go up to 24 Plains.
I guess we should also spend some time thinking about a possible third stage. Red mana, white mana, and life are the obvious stage resources to choose from. However Revival // Revenge doesn't seem to help with transitioning to a third stage, since we can't afford to spend our precious third stage mana as a second stage resource. We need to get the second stage mana as a byproduct. We still have creatures of casting cost more than 3 to use, although they will probably need to be Human to avoid being fetched by Kinnan. I didn't find much that was promising by a quick search though. The only thing that struck me was that Syr Carah, the Bold can deal one damage, so with lifelink it can gain us 1 life by tapping. So we could perhaps go back to Bolas's Citadel, and spend life on a couple of equal costing instants/sorceries.
It needs to be Sporeweb Weaver and not lifelink so that we can update the number of angels in between triggers, or each Akroan war is only one big life gain isntead of lots. (Enchanted Carriage also lets us tap all of our Sporeweb Weavers so the Akroan war works.)
I was thinking that Saheeli didn't work because of the legend rule, but we get to re-choose both targets, and can chain them. (cant use her servos as they get wiped by Ritual of Soot, but can use excess Enchanted Carriages)
Edit: as for a third stage, I'm not seeing much of anything either. Syr Carah, the Bold looks the be the only useful cmc>3 human that doesn't immediately go infinite.
I suppose we don't actually neeeeed it to be a human, if the two spells were both needed to kill it. Like Swift Response+Dizzying Swoop (Ardenvale Tactician)? (though then what are we possibly using as our stage creature if it can't tap itself?)
Edit: Transmogrify + Rumbling Rockslide is a way to recycle a creature for two 3R cards.
EDIT: and we can make a lifelinking Syr Carah gain exactly 4 with the help of Jaya, venerated firemage and Torbran, thane of red fell
edit: but then Syr carah can just ping herself, gaining the 4 for all the copies of transmogrify, and going infinite.
Edit: Quasiduplicate kills Syr Carah without using Rumbling Rockslide :/
Blacklance paragon gives Syr Carah lifelink
tap Syr Carah to ping one of clackbridge troll's goats, gaining 4.
Spend 4 life for Widespread brutality killing our dorks, letting us retap them for U and B. (the army can't gain lifelink as it is not a knight.)
Go through the U stage to reshuffle Syr Carah.
Transmogrify an excess token into Syr Carah.
That looks actually good?
Edit:
oops blacklance paragon gives deathtouch too, is there a better way to give lifelink?
Edit2
Unexpected fangs works though we need to go back to Rumbling Rockslide
Edit3:
oh right being a legend lest quasiduplicate kill it >.< phooey
OK what about a nonhuman that we need to actually cast?
Porcuparrot+another mutate
If we put it on a pixie to gain life, then once we kill that pixie the porcuparrot is in the gy/library.
Unfortunately, we can just mutate it from the top again for 3 life, which doesn't seem to be restrictive enough.
I guess one way to get more control over it would be to use a creature with lifelink, which would need to be the mutate target, rather than a spell that grants lifelink.
Well if we cut the problems with adventure creatures, we can use corpse churn to draw it.
Or even polly*** symbiote to have it draw itself as needed?
Red mana seems to be a real problem though...
edit: nice filter
Edit: went down a few more dead ends, Feasting Troll king gains 9 when cast but the cmc 9+ options are awful.
Omnispell adept looks like it goes infinite with everything.
So, the only way for a creature to have lifelink, porcuparrot's ability, and have been mutated once, without spending red mana on it, is for it to have been a token copy of poruparrot-mutated-onto-a-lifelinker; and then to mutate Archipelagore onto it. So, Archipelagore must have been drawn, and the creature can't have haste.
But this is where I hit a dead end. I thought about Samut's Sprint + Crash Through as a potential life stage, with killing the creatures being easy (say be using Sea Dashed Octopus as the other mutator to lower CMC into ritual range); but it doesn't work because you can haste a bunch of lifelink-porcuparrot tokens and then each crash through generates life.
I also thought about Shock + Crash Through, with haste being easy somehow; but it has the same issue that you can pre-damage the tokens so they can kill themselves so each crash through generates life.
Claim the firstborn would be nice as a way of giving haste only to low CMC creatures and thus requiring that sea dasher octopus already be mutated; but since it untaps then it still gains too much life.
Edit: Perhaps Fry could work as a way of requiring a blue creature be mutated. Plus Thrill of possibility for the card draw? Then all we need is a way to give our mutate piles haste without being able to give Skull Prophet tokens (or pixie tokens) haste early.
Edit: Perhaps the mutate base could need to be something that inherently has haste, and make lifelink easy? say with unexpected fangs
In fact, doing it that way means an actual haste creature won't be needed, just fetch the nontoken porcuparrot with Kinnan. And in fact that is a lot safer as it ensures you couldn't use one porcuparrot to ping another avoiding the use of a Fry somewhere.
Kinnan up porcuparrot for haste
spend 2 life to Thrill of possibility to draw archipelagore
mutate onto the parrot
spend a black to give it lifelink with unexpected fangs
Ping Skull prophet and gain 2 life (can use obosh, the preypiercer to go from 1 to 2)
spend 2 to Fry the archiporcuparragore
Hmm, this looks a bit awkward to actually profit black off of though.
Edit: An additional wrinkle I've just noticed is that Fry is uncounterable, so it would get stuck on the stack. So perhaps we want Ashiok's Erasure + enchantment removal for that. Does that cause any issues in the lower stages? I don't think so, since countering spells and returning them to hand is something that Quasiduplicate can already do.
Edit:
Aether gust or Unsubstantiate are potentially more convenient optionsEdit: Unsubstantiate generates black with skull prophet, and gust allows us to put the porcuparrot pile into our library without Fry; so Ashiok's Erasure it is. I believe it can actually replace frilled mystic though.
Edit: Another thing to note is that, if Role Reversal is used for something, opponent's life can't be used as a resource, since it would be possible to tap a porcuparrot and respond by donating it, which would give the opponent life.
In particular, this makes Revival // Revenge bad. Corpse Churn and similar effects are also bad because it can return an Archipelagore to hand without resolving a Thrill of Possibility; so for the black mana stage we want Gruesome Menagerie
Edit: Obosh can be mutated onto and cloned, so I think instead we want a second Archipelagore to make our pings gain 2
Edit: Do we actually need to use Fry now? With a stage of Shock + Crash Through, the previous concern was that one shock could damage multiple tokens allowing each draw to generate life. But now that we're using the nontoken porcuparrot then that's no longer an issue; we can only generate life when they resolve in the right order. So that would save the second archipelagore as well as any complications with ashiok's erasure.
Donating a way for them to gain life is always tricky. Blood burglar loses lifelink when donated, but isn't compatible with the rest of the combo.
Obosh being mutated and cloned is not a problem since for the parrot to be part of the mutate stack, we need to have spent red mana, which is very expensive.
I think there was still some problem with Shock+Crash Through? Though I don't seem to be seeing it at the moment...
What does the deck look like now?
looks moot anyway if the shock/crash through line works.
Which brings the deck to something like:
1 Leyline of abundance
2 Leyline of abundance
3 Leyline of abundance
4 jungle hollow
5 watery grave
6 maraleaf pixie
7 swamp
8 Bolas's Citadel
9 Merfolk SecretKeeper
10 ???
11 Thousand-Year Storm
12 Dance of the manse
13 Leyline of anticipation
14 Rhythm of the Wild
U stage:
15 Maraleaf pixie 2
16 Frilled Mystic
17 Scholar of the ages
18 Kinnan, Bonder prodigy
19 Quasiduplicate
20 Devious Cover-Up
21 Collision // colossus
22 Skull prophet
23 Ritual of Soot
24 Gruesome Menagerie
Life stage?
25 Duskfang mentor
26 porcuparrot
27 archipelagore
28 shock
29 crash through
Layers
30 huatli, the sun's heart
31 repeated reverberation
32 ...
not optimal ending but something still feels off abut the life stage to me. I haven't been able to break it, and it seems to work...
The only way to tap porcuparrot for damage is if it is in a mutate stack,
that requires drawing at least one of the mutators archipelagore is cheaper.
the only way we can draw a creature is via crash through
crash through costs 1 life to cast as we can't make red
the only way to gain life is with a hasty mutated porcuparrot.
this taps our parrot and the only way we can recycle it is to shock it (twice).
shock costs 1 life to cast.
now we can kinnan back the porcuparrot to get it hasty and untapped,
but we still need to draw an archipelagore.
...
And we make excess black by drawing Skull prophets with the top level of Crash throughs or by killing them with the top level of shocks.
I need to convince myself a bit more by messing with it some.
Edit: also the start needs some helper cards like Cling to dust
As far as layers go, we're pretty limited. We can't use planeswalkers since our shocks and porcuparrots damage them, allowing them to be recycled. We also can't use adventure creatures since we can already draw them to recycle them. We also can't use spells that can be paid for with life. It's also difficult (though maybe not impossible if Role Reversal isn't used) to use opponent's life as a resource.
Stuff we do have to work with:
- Heliod's Intervention
- Leafkin Avenger could gain a lot of life by hitting a walker that has no useful abilities to recur
- Tapping a land or a lotus can produce a lot of red or white mana
- A few red or white activated abilities could untap something (Gauntlets of light, High alert, Smelt-Ward Ingus)
- Sagas; though the only source of proliferate is combat damage
- Smothering tithe is ok if Role Reversal is not used
Layer 1: Heliod's Intervention can gain us a lot of life at the cost of two white mana.
Layer 2: Tapping a white mana land can generate a lot of wnite mana, thanks to Nikya of the Old Ways.
Layer 3: Resolving a couple of proliferates will trigger a bunch of Kiora Bests the Sea God.
Layer 4: Putting a land into play will trigger a bunch of Evolution Sages.
Layer 5: We can put a bunch of lands into play.
As for the start, i think Claim the firstborn is actually still safe as long as we can't make red to mutate the porcuparrot onto something cheaper.
so:
turn 1:
Leylinex3 ?
jungle hollow
turn 2:
Swamp
Skull prophet
turn 3:
Bolas's citadel 21 life 2 cards in hand
plains from the top
Rhythm of the wild 18
Kinnan 16
pixie pixie 6G4UW 12
Venture deeper 6GUUUW
Dance of the manse U 12 reanimating the leylines+ TYS + saga
Quasiduplicate x3 U 9
Claim the firstborn x13 44G23(U/B) 8 and mill Ritual of Soot + Gruesome Menagerie + Devious cover-up + Duskfang Mentor (via Skull prophet's other ability)
Kinnan up Shipwreck dowser for quasiduplicate
Quasiduplicate x17 37G20(U/B)
Return Ritual of Soot + Gruesome Menagerie + Quasiduplicate +Devious cover up
Should be good to combo from here with 8 life left, only Claim the firstborn and Merfolk secret-keeper are startup-only for deck-space.
Hmm, using Kiora Bests the Sea God to fetch an opponent's land is problematic, since in order to make Role Reversal work, we need to give the opponent a land. Mobilized District is the only way I see to do that, but if we animate that, we can make unlimited copies of it and trigger Evolution Sage too easily.
So Nyx Lotus seems like the way to go.
1 Leyline of abundance
2 Leyline of abundance
3 Leyline of abundance
4 jungle hollow
5 swamp
6 maraleaf pixie
7 plains
8 Bolas's Citadel
9 Merfolk SecretKeeper
10 Claim the Firstborn
engines:
11 Thousand-Year Storm
12 Dance of the manse
13 Leyline of anticipation
14 Rhythm of the Wild
15 Maraleaf pixie
16 Frilled Mystic
17 Shipwreck Dowser
18 Kinnan, Bonder prodigy
19 Quasiduplicate
20 Devious Cover-Up
21 Collision // colossus
B stage
22 Skull prophet
23 Ritual of Soot
24 Gruesome Menagerie
Life stage
25 Duskfang mentor
26 porcuparrot
27 archipelagore
28 shock
29 crash through
30 Heliod's Intervention
31 Nyx Lotus
32 random white creature
Saga
33 Kiora Bests the Sea God
34 Clackbridge Troll
35 Role Reversal
Landfall
36 Evolution Sage
37 Arboreal Grazer
23 Plains
Edit: Oh, I thought that if red was expensive, then it wouldn't be a problem. But, if we can mutate Porcuparrot onto something cheap, we can keep casting Claim the firstborn on it for more life I guess. So that doesn't work.
Which means Nyx Lotus is no good either. The solution seems to be to switch to a start where red mana is allowed.
What are the rules on what lands the opponent can have in their deck? Because if they can choose then they could have a mountain to allow us to generate red mana and go infinite with it in the same way.
Which when taken together I interpreted as us getting to choose their lands for the last standard deck. (not that it ended up mattering)
Ideally they would just have wastes but that's not legal in standard.
Edit: As for an alternative start without claim the firstborn, I'll see what I can do.
Edit: I suppose Happily Ever After would be all we need, as it would supply a potential 53 cards drawn and 265 life gained. It also provides a source of white devotion, so we can go up to 24 Plains.