Once you have multiple precursors, it gets out of hand very fast. It isn't just that the triggers stack, but they stack and resolve independently. So when you start with 2 precursors and 6 tokens and cast Heat Shimmer at a token, the stack starts as
Precursor trigger
Precursor trigger
Heat Shimmer on token
and then it expands to
7x copy of heat shimmer
precursor trigger
heat shimmer on token
Those 7 copies of heat shimmer resolve now, making 5 new vanilla tokens (which I hereby name jigglypuffs) and 2 precursor tokens making 4 more jigglypuffs, making it 4 precursors and 15 jigglypuffs before the second precursor trigger resolves! So now that the stack has made it back to that, it goes "ok, now to copy that spell for every golem, boy there sure are a lot of them all of a sudden" because that resolving trigger sees the golems made by the heat shimmers that already resolved.
So the second trigger will make a Heat Shimmer for all 4 Precursors and 14 of the jigglypuffs, and the total is up to 8 precursors and 37 jigglypuffs.
Here's where it diverges whether you recast them separately (Past in Flames) or together (Mizzix's Mastery). Due to the triggers, you get much better results separately since there will be more Precursors around to trigger on the fourth casting.
78 Precursor Golems (1 of which is "real")
458 Golem tokens (156 of is "real")
But this is also where there numbers get ridiculous!
Going with the bigger version (because casting them separately does make a lot more tokens), you recast Twinflame with flashback and get 8 Precursor golem triggers each trigger is going to double every golem in play (except the original target) and add the few etb extras.
Start with: 8 and 37
After 1 trigger: 16 and 89
After 2 triggers: 32 and 209
After 3 triggers: 64 and 481
After 4 triggers: 128 and 1089
After 5 triggers: 256 and 2433
After 6 triggers: 512 and 5377
After 7 triggers: 1024 and 11777
After 8 triggers: 2048 and 25601 (+1 from the original spell = 25602)
And then you recast heat shimmer, and numbers cease to be useful. If I have this right, there'd be about 10^620 precursor golems at this point (which is roughly 7-8 times the estimated number of atoms in the observed universe, for reference), but I had to do some hand work cause excel gave up. Even the far worse Mizzix Mastery path ends up with 524,288 Precursor Golems and 10747906 jigglypuffs.
The difference, in math terms, between what you were doing and the truth, is that by expanding all the triggers at once, you were copying each precursor for each precursor each time, which is, ignoring the jigglypuffs, effectively [new#] = [old#] + [old#]^2 each time a copy spell is cast, the actual equation is [new#] = [old#] * 2^[old#], which grows quite a lot faster. And then, god forbid, you decided to aim Overblaze at one of them, you'd have each golem capable of 3*2^(10^620) damage, and I think that's how we get another Time Spiral block.
So I don't know what you'd want to do about giving damage calculations for the primer, but I think "if you can cast a copy spell 4 independent times, every atom in the universe is a token" would probably get the message across pretty well.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
Also, Zada has to be attacking or you can't target her in the first place with Balduvian Rage. If that is the circumstance her trigger will copy the spell to each creature you control, but I'm pretty sure any copy targeting a non-attacking creature will fizzle because the target is illegal. It's a nice mana sink otherwise, but it was the first cantrip I cut.
Nah, it doesn't even copy for nonattacking creatures. Zada copies the spell "for each other creature you control that the spell could target" and it can't target non-attacking creatures.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
Thanks so much! A follow-up question, then: If they pass the priority of combat, I can choose to cast Panic after they've assigned to attackers? Meaning that once I cast it the current player can't choose attackers? How would I go about it? Do I say: "You can't skip combat, I will cast something during combat. Please choose attackers." and then once they choose (an) attacker(s) (or choose 0 attackers) I can then cast Panic?
I was confused for a second before I remembered the whole Zada thing and realized you were making it so that none of your creatures could block. Lol.
Yeah, something like "Please announce what you're doing during your combat phase" and then cast it after they declare no attackers. It's one of those rare situations where magic online makes something other than shuffling easier as you can set the stop where you need it without alerting your opponent that something's up. To clarify cause I just read your post above this, combat would go "Beginning of combat, they pass priority, you pass priority. Move to declare attackers, they have to dedclare their attackers right away. After they declare attacks, even if they declare no attacks, priority passes again within the declare attackers step which is a fine opportunity to cast Panic. They cannot change their attacks based on you casting that.
And, just to double check, if no attackers are declared, the declare blockers phase is actually skipped, correct? In other words, Aleatory and Chaotic Strike could not be cast if no attackers were declare.
That is correct. I personally think it's a stupid rule since skipping the steps is meant as a shortcut but then turns into a functional change for certain cards, but my opinion of the rule doesn't really matter (and I'm far more irritated by the ruling on Ixidron + double-faced cards). They figure that you can't cast a spell after something if it never happened, so for spells formatted as "cast only after declare blockers" you can miss the opportunity to use them if no attackers are declared.
Hmm... that is a good question. I always assumed the same thing but I decided on assuming the worst in the sense that combat is optional. Since it's the active player that declares the combat step, I'm under the impression that there is none if the player just goes from main phase to end step. Can anyone with the facts enlighten us? Can Panic be used during another player's turn when that player announces the end of their turn? Can you say: "wait, before the end step, during combat..." and then cast Panic? I don't know if that sounds right.
Combat is not optional. No part of a turn can be voluntarily skipped. If a player plays a bunch of things in the first main phase and then tries to go to the end of the turn, it's implied shorthand for "I would like to pass priority through the remaining parts of the turn if that is ok with all the other players" and if you say "no, I have something to cast during combat," they have to give you that opportunity. It is sort of awkward when that happens, so if you'd prefer to avoid that awkwardness, you can ask them to declare combat ahead of time, but you don't have to do that. Player's can't refuse to do combat any more than they can refuse to do the cleanup step.
More bizarre than that, if for some reason the player whose turn it is dies on their own turn (let's pretend there's a Nekusar at the table and they died on their draw step), you still go through all the steps of the turn without them, giving everyone else priority in all the steps they would normally. So even if the player before you concedes before combat, they still have a combat phase and you can still cast Panic. So far as I know, the only ways around a combat phase are the small pool of cards that say to skip combat, the smaller pool of cards that end the turn, and Karn's ultimate. But if someone plays Sundial of the Infinite and denies you the chance to cast Panic, they deserve it.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
Creative Spark (I'm not gonna card link that cause it's almost certainly not the official name)
R
Sorcery
Choose target creature. Exile the top card of your library. You may have ~ deal damage to that creature equal to the converted mana cost of the exiled card. If you don't, you may play that card until end of turn.
So basically if you're in a pinch, it's an unreliable removal option, but most of the time it's gonna be one mana for Commune With Lava where X is the number of creatures you control.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
Even Ink-treader doesn't quite do what I want. I want Precursor Golem without the golem limitation. I want something that triggers when something targets any one creature, and then you can go truly berserk with Heat Shimmers and whatnot.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
If we are already drawing that many cards to consistently hit our 8 creatures that enter the battlefield for effects, then we probably don't need to copy our creatures is all that means.
You don't need to copy them. You don't need to cast them at all. But if you can copy the creatures, you can turn a profit off of them. If you cast Beetleback Chief and follow it up with a Battle Hymn, you paid 4 for the creature and got 3 of it back. If you cast Beetleback Chief and copy it with Flameshadow Conjuring and then cast Battle Hymn, you paid 5 for the creatures and got 6 back. The deck already has the instants and sorceries actually gaining cards and mana when they're cast, and with the ability to double things, creatures can start to do the same sort of thing. Using one card of the deck to let another 8 contribute to the snowball might be worthwhile. It certainly has been in my experience with a similar deck concept, but in fairness, that deck has access to black and major creature discounts.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
The problem is, most Zada decks run l9w creature counts, sometimes in the single digits. The Conjuring does little in most Zada decks.
Ok, but this particular deck has 12, half of them have etb tokens, and one turns into a Seething Song. To put it in perspective, if I'm counting correctly, the deck has 8 arcane spells, and they come together in pairs reliably enough to name the thread after. When the game plan is drawing 100 cards in a turn, it's not really a question of if there will be opportunity to double creatures with it, but rather whether it's worth the mana and card slot when the opportunity presents itself.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
I've been clicking on this thread whenever I see it, so I'm just going to comment and get this one in my list of threads I've commented in.
The closest experience I have to a deck like this is my Rakdos, Lord of Riots deck. It doesn't do splice arcane shenanigans, but it does chain creatures into mana into card draw into creatures into mana etc, etc, etc. The best new addition I've made to my Rakdos deck in a long time is Flameshadow Conjuring. The one red to duplicate a creature absolutely goes places when you can easily getitrightback. The 4 mana to cast it before you start going off is the biggest sticking point I can see for something that might be overkill, but with all those creature etb token generations, you can make a conjuring clone of like half the creatures in the deck and immediately hit critical mass while having that utility stick around later. I use it with Thermopod to make my board absolutely explode.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Player: So, I aim the first Heat Shimmer at a golem token and that makes...
Everyone else: We're gonna go get pizza. You can let us know how you won when we get back.
You got it right that it triggers for every Precursor and copies for every golem, but the stack of things gets a lot more fun.
Once you have multiple precursors, it gets out of hand very fast. It isn't just that the triggers stack, but they stack and resolve independently. So when you start with 2 precursors and 6 tokens and cast Heat Shimmer at a token, the stack starts as
Precursor trigger
Precursor trigger
Heat Shimmer on token
and then it expands to
7x copy of heat shimmer
precursor trigger
heat shimmer on token
Those 7 copies of heat shimmer resolve now, making 5 new vanilla tokens (which I hereby name jigglypuffs) and 2 precursor tokens making 4 more jigglypuffs, making it 4 precursors and 15 jigglypuffs before the second precursor trigger resolves! So now that the stack has made it back to that, it goes "ok, now to copy that spell for every golem, boy there sure are a lot of them all of a sudden" because that resolving trigger sees the golems made by the heat shimmers that already resolved.
So the second trigger will make a Heat Shimmer for all 4 Precursors and 14 of the jigglypuffs, and the total is up to 8 precursors and 37 jigglypuffs.
But this is also where there numbers get ridiculous!
Going with the bigger version (because casting them separately does make a lot more tokens), you recast Twinflame with flashback and get 8 Precursor golem triggers each trigger is going to double every golem in play (except the original target) and add the few etb extras.
Start with: 8 and 37
After 1 trigger: 16 and 89
After 2 triggers: 32 and 209
After 3 triggers: 64 and 481
After 4 triggers: 128 and 1089
After 5 triggers: 256 and 2433
After 6 triggers: 512 and 5377
After 7 triggers: 1024 and 11777
After 8 triggers: 2048 and 25601 (+1 from the original spell = 25602)
And then you recast heat shimmer, and numbers cease to be useful. If I have this right, there'd be about 10^620 precursor golems at this point (which is roughly 7-8 times the estimated number of atoms in the observed universe, for reference), but I had to do some hand work cause excel gave up. Even the far worse Mizzix Mastery path ends up with 524,288 Precursor Golems and 10747906 jigglypuffs.
The difference, in math terms, between what you were doing and the truth, is that by expanding all the triggers at once, you were copying each precursor for each precursor each time, which is, ignoring the jigglypuffs, effectively [new#] = [old#] + [old#]^2 each time a copy spell is cast, the actual equation is [new#] = [old#] * 2^[old#], which grows quite a lot faster. And then, god forbid, you decided to aim Overblaze at one of them, you'd have each golem capable of 3*2^(10^620) damage, and I think that's how we get another Time Spiral block.
So I don't know what you'd want to do about giving damage calculations for the primer, but I think "if you can cast a copy spell 4 independent times, every atom in the universe is a token" would probably get the message across pretty well.
Nah, it doesn't even copy for nonattacking creatures. Zada copies the spell "for each other creature you control that the spell could target" and it can't target non-attacking creatures.
I was confused for a second before I remembered the whole Zada thing and realized you were making it so that none of your creatures could block. Lol.
Yeah, something like "Please announce what you're doing during your combat phase" and then cast it after they declare no attackers. It's one of those rare situations where magic online makes something other than shuffling easier as you can set the stop where you need it without alerting your opponent that something's up. To clarify cause I just read your post above this, combat would go "Beginning of combat, they pass priority, you pass priority. Move to declare attackers, they have to dedclare their attackers right away. After they declare attacks, even if they declare no attacks, priority passes again within the declare attackers step which is a fine opportunity to cast Panic. They cannot change their attacks based on you casting that.
That is correct. I personally think it's a stupid rule since skipping the steps is meant as a shortcut but then turns into a functional change for certain cards, but my opinion of the rule doesn't really matter (and I'm far more irritated by the ruling on Ixidron + double-faced cards). They figure that you can't cast a spell after something if it never happened, so for spells formatted as "cast only after declare blockers" you can miss the opportunity to use them if no attackers are declared.
Combat is not optional. No part of a turn can be voluntarily skipped. If a player plays a bunch of things in the first main phase and then tries to go to the end of the turn, it's implied shorthand for "I would like to pass priority through the remaining parts of the turn if that is ok with all the other players" and if you say "no, I have something to cast during combat," they have to give you that opportunity. It is sort of awkward when that happens, so if you'd prefer to avoid that awkwardness, you can ask them to declare combat ahead of time, but you don't have to do that. Player's can't refuse to do combat any more than they can refuse to do the cleanup step.
More bizarre than that, if for some reason the player whose turn it is dies on their own turn (let's pretend there's a Nekusar at the table and they died on their draw step), you still go through all the steps of the turn without them, giving everyone else priority in all the steps they would normally. So even if the player before you concedes before combat, they still have a combat phase and you can still cast Panic. So far as I know, the only ways around a combat phase are the small pool of cards that say to skip combat, the smaller pool of cards that end the turn, and Karn's ultimate. But if someone plays Sundial of the Infinite and denies you the chance to cast Panic, they deserve it.
Creative Spark (I'm not gonna card link that cause it's almost certainly not the official name)
R
Sorcery
Choose target creature. Exile the top card of your library. You may have ~ deal damage to that creature equal to the converted mana cost of the exiled card. If you don't, you may play that card until end of turn.
So basically if you're in a pinch, it's an unreliable removal option, but most of the time it's gonna be one mana for Commune With Lava where X is the number of creatures you control.
You don't need to copy them. You don't need to cast them at all. But if you can copy the creatures, you can turn a profit off of them. If you cast Beetleback Chief and follow it up with a Battle Hymn, you paid 4 for the creature and got 3 of it back. If you cast Beetleback Chief and copy it with Flameshadow Conjuring and then cast Battle Hymn, you paid 5 for the creatures and got 6 back. The deck already has the instants and sorceries actually gaining cards and mana when they're cast, and with the ability to double things, creatures can start to do the same sort of thing. Using one card of the deck to let another 8 contribute to the snowball might be worthwhile. It certainly has been in my experience with a similar deck concept, but in fairness, that deck has access to black and major creature discounts.
Ok, but this particular deck has 12, half of them have etb tokens, and one turns into a Seething Song. To put it in perspective, if I'm counting correctly, the deck has 8 arcane spells, and they come together in pairs reliably enough to name the thread after. When the game plan is drawing 100 cards in a turn, it's not really a question of if there will be opportunity to double creatures with it, but rather whether it's worth the mana and card slot when the opportunity presents itself.
The closest experience I have to a deck like this is my Rakdos, Lord of Riots deck. It doesn't do splice arcane shenanigans, but it does chain creatures into mana into card draw into creatures into mana etc, etc, etc. The best new addition I've made to my Rakdos deck in a long time is Flameshadow Conjuring. The one red to duplicate a creature absolutely goes places when you can easily get it right back. The 4 mana to cast it before you start going off is the biggest sticking point I can see for something that might be overkill, but with all those creature etb token generations, you can make a conjuring clone of like half the creatures in the deck and immediately hit critical mass while having that utility stick around later. I use it with Thermopod to make my board absolutely explode.