Yeah next couple weeks I’m pretty busy w/ work but I’ll try to start getting something written up. Just doing some final checks and sequencing optimization to eek out all the value I can. That and making sure things are actually were they need to be to work properly(mildly important). I’ve already got a good working layout/starting sequence to get to the line I asked you guys about so I’ve already got a decent chunk layer out on paper. Will just need to actually get it all onto a computer so I can post it. Prob will be a few posts but I’ll try to new things as short as I can. If anyone has questions I can fill in any blanks.
That’s kind of what I figured. Last time drake card entering was worth about 3 layers if I am remembering correctly. I knew putting mana reflection in was worth about 1 layer by itself so I was pretty sure the green->mountains->crown bounce/recast was around 3 as well(if not more). The fact that a red mana will only ever be worth 1 heroic trigger was the only sticking point. It’s whether or not arbor card entering scales as fast or faster than drake card entering. Yes the arbor line has more steps but all of them aren’t exponential(I don’t think, re:red mana only will ever be 1 bounce/recast). If enough of those steps keep up or even surpass the drake card entering scaling then yeah arbor should be the choice unless I need a specific repopulating of a resource.
Edit: whoops misread your reply a bit. Had it as card v card not token v token. Yes I can see why line 2 is stronger. Much closer if mana reflection wasn’t in the mix but with it there line 2 is much stronger.
Hey guys, I was hoping I could get some clarification on 2 lines my design has access to, in terms of which line is more powerful for output/growth.
So much like my last list we will be using Drake Familiar(DF or drake) to update our enchantments. In my last list we used Samula Woodshaper(sws)triggers to draw DF on a once per sws token batch basis. Back then it was pointed out that if we could have all of the sws triggers find DF the whole thing would be quite a bit more powerful. Well I was able to do that. Using The Cauldron of Eternity we can let drake die each time the actual card enters and be put back on the bottom of the library for sws to find it again(possibly not every time(still working the numbers out) but still far more often than the original deck could).
Anyway working inside this shell(drake recursion) I have another line that has 2 very powerful options and I’m just wondering which one is more potent. Both lines start from the same place so it really is a 1-1 comparison.
My new deck allows me to reuse Garruk, caller of beasts a lot to get many -7 emblems. These emblems r what allow these lines to exist. The main question is which is more powerful but it also answers whether or not I want a 2nd drake in the list. Going down a drake will slow down the start a bit I believe, but, if in the overall scheme of things drake 2 doesn’t add a ton of value, I’ll probably cut back to just the single drake.
-So the first line is casting drake and using the emblems to find the 2nd drake each time as we let the DF#2 card self sac each time to go back to bottom of library to be found for the next emblem trigger. *this line can be started with any creature being cast but I do need a 2nd drake if I specifically want drake->drake*
-Line 2 is more complicated: we cast drake #1 again but instead of drake #2 we find Dryad Arbor(DA). We will be able to update green mana output as we go so we do tap our DA tokens one at a time. We use a green mana to activate a Fertilid and go find a basic “Mountain”. It enters tapped but gives us mountain tokens(Nature’s Revolt has the land enter as a creature). Again we can update our red mana output as well so we tap them 1 at a time while the token generation triggers are on the stack. We then use our red mana one at a time to return Crown of Flames to our hand and recast it targeting Triton Cavalry. This proc’s it’s heroic trigger and allows us to update 1 enchantment per red mana. We update Doubling Season and Molten Echoes(we use “Xenograph” or similar to ensure echoes triggers for any creature and so that enchantments enters as typed creatures in the first place), and then as we reach the end of the use of 1 mountain output we use the last heroic trigger to pick up and update Mana Reflection. This way our next mountain tap gives us an updated amount of red mana. As we use up our mountains and need to go back to a fertilid activation our updating of mana reflection quantities means our green mana generation will also be updated. Oh we sac arbor and mountain cards to Pegasus Stampede to get them back into deck to be found again(“Omniscience” to cast, sac them to buy back, with cauldron putting either land back into deck when needed). Also we have a way to put more counters on Fertilid if and when we need to.
So: is the drake->drake line better than the drake->arbor(and green->red->update) line?
As said before this line happens with any creature cast so it’s just to see if a 2nd drake is more potent. I will still have access to finding drake(or arbor) off casting other creatures so in either case I will be able to do what is correct/optimum for specific needs. It is worth noting that neither green or red mana can get creatures to my hand to be cast to retrigger the whole loop and it cannot be used to get more Garruk activations which again could restart the loop with his +1 ability.
Fwiw my gut says the arbor line is better because of mana reflection. Originally I wasn’t running it but because the fertilid line will be in the deck for green->red anyway, I figured reflection was a good idea. I just don’t know the conversion into math equations well enough to know which is more potent.
Also once I have this sorted I’ll start doing a write up for the full deck. I seem to top out around 50-55 cards before I decide to start working on a new idea. I never quite know how to finish off the lists. I’ll prob be moving on to making something with spellweaver helix and minds desire to see what I can do with that. Hopefully that won’t take me 2+ years like this one did.
*I’ll probably edit this post once i remember how to link/highlight cards*
edit: figured the card thing out. Left a few unlinked but they r pretty obvious
Rector should be fine. To actually get omniscience you need to exile the rector when it dies. If you don’t exile it, rector will just go to yard(dying from flash resolving) and not do anything. If getting rector back from exile becomes a problem, then yeah you are gonna need a work around there, but after lotus/flash/rector -> omniscience the only things in the yard should be lotus and flash. You will also have one floating U to use/account for.
Long time no post but I want to see if u guys can help me vet a combination of cards. I have been following the progress and it’s been super cool to see how far all of this has been pushed. I’m pretty confident this doesn’t go infinite but it’s dealing with cards I haven’t designed with much yet and this group certainly has so I figured I’d run it out and see if it works.
So cards involved:
Spellweaver Helix
Approach of the second sun x2
Mind’s desire
Frazzle
Ok so a bit of set up. Desire is the only way in the deck to cast things from someplace other than my hand(not true, but those other options don’t matter to this scenario). The other thing is that the only way to get approach into my yard is by casting and then countering it(and frazzle is the only viable counter that can do it). Also recurring frazzle is not possible currently.
What I want to happen: Have 1 approach under helix with another spell I want to cast, then cast desire and have it always find and cast the 2nd approach which in turn lets me cast my other spell. To set this up I have to cast and then counter approach w/ frazzle. Then after getting my other spell into my graveyard play helix with approach and mystery spell under it, then I cast desire and go off. Once the original copy of desire resolves it goes harmlessly to the yard where I can’t do any more tricks with it.
My worry: getting desire and an approach under the helix. If somehow I can cast the other approach not from my hand I’m worried it will create an infinite loop.
So far I think I’m safe but it seems really really close.
If I cast desire first and get it into yard I can then cast approach from hand, counter it, then play helix and get them both under the helix. That seems bad but I think it’s safe. If I cast approach again from hand I will get a bunch of desire copies(scary) but both copies of approach are not in the deck to be cast. Eventually after the copies of desire finish the original copy of approach will resolve and it’ll proc the win clause and gg.
If I cast approach 1 and respond with approach 2 then desire I can desire into frazzle hitting 2nd approach. Then finish the desire and cast helix with 1st approach still on the stack putting desire and 2nd approach under helix. Then approach 1 resolves. It still sees itself being the first instance of being cast from hand so it won’t proc win and gets back into library. Also it’s already on the stack so it won’t proc helix to cast anything. We draw approach again and we r right back to where we were in the last example, scary but safe.
I actually think I’m even safe from something like snapcaster stuff too. Counter both approaches, get desire into yard, cast helix putting desire and approach under helix, cast snaps target approach, flash back approach, proc helix casting desire but again neither approach is available to be cast/reshuffled off desire casts. Approach resolves shuffling back in and again right back to the first scenario.
So I think I’m safe as the fail safes I have r just enough to keep this from being too good. If frazzle could counter desire it’s too good. If the rehuffling spell didn’t win the game it’d be too good. That being said I’m still a bit foggy on some of the mechanics that u guys r abusing so I just wanted to check.
Hmm. I think I might actually be fine even if I can counter desire, tho details matter here.
If I can counter desire, it lets me leave a stash of x desire copies on the stack. Lets say I can use negate(I can’t in my current deck but for explaining the concept here it’ll be fine).
So I cast approach 1 respond and cast desire, respond to storm trigger and negate both of them. Responding further I cast helix, putting both desire and approach 1 under it. Resolve an original desire copy(ODC), hit and cast approach 2, helix triggers casting desire making a new clump of desire copies(ND - new desire). A ND copy goes to resolve but the copy of approach that isn’t under helix is now on the stack. Theses ND spells cannot recast approach, and will eventually run out. Now our approach on the stack resolves and shuffles in. Now we go back to our original ODC batch, we resolve one of those copies and that can find and cast approach. It does and another ND batch is made via helix casting.
The loop closes once I use up all the ODC copies. Once this is done I’m back to the same setup I was in the other scenario where I cannot do too much as things just aren’t quite in the right places to go broken.
Huh, pretty cool. Don’t get to cast the spell I originally wanted too but this might be better anyway. Casting an ever increasing amount of minds desire seems pretty potent, along with gaining a ton of life along the way.
So I have a lot of questions. These are not to expose what I think r mistakes but more of an effort on my part to understand the math I managed to create. I’m super appreciative that u took the time to even give me an estimate in the first place, so for that, thank u!!
So I just want to do a better layout of the BU loops as they r stronger than they were in the last version. So I think the DF/FSC/DS interaction got credit for 4 layers in the last deck if I remember correctly but I’ll admit I don’t understand the math well enough to understand the actual growth rate. I can explain it but I can’t turn that into a mathematical expression. It’s very possible your 20 layer estimation is dead on, I’m kinda just doing this part for me, so I can understand the math in my own deck a bit better. FWIW my very rough estimation was 20-40 layers but I was so confused on how the math worked so I wasn’t even sure how to even estimate. I just knew it was stronger than my last deck and went farther down the chain as well.
So let’s just start with 1 DF card entering the battlefield event.
-DF card enters gets X FSC triggers
-Each FSC trigger makes X DF tokens
-Each DF token recasts DS or FSC
-Each recast gets X FSC triggers of DS or FSC
-Each FSC/FSC trigger makes X additional FSC
-Each DS/FSC trigger adds 2^X more DS per trigger and each next trigger scales off the new X not the same X as the previous.
So on a FSC update we take FSC from X to X(2^X). With DS being updated we take X to 2^X but repeated (updated?) X times.
*I tried to do a bit of manual calculation just to see what the math looks like and it looks to me like when we end this full use of all DS/FSC on a DS recast we appear to get a exponent stack being X exponents high being added to one x-1 then x-2 then x-3 exponents high until we r back adding our original X to the total. So the first resolves and gets us 2^X growth. Next is 2^(2^X). Next is 2^(2^(2^X)). This addition of an exponent happens each time and we r going to be doing it X times, so we should end with a calculation that is X parentheses in size with a ^ inside each of them. On top of this it’s actually even larger as we are always adding the new to the old so the end is a X exponents number added to a X-1 added to X-2 etc etc and this will just be the final trigger. I don’t know how to express it in a simplified manner but I’m sure it can be*
We can repeat the alternating between DS and FSC across the entire X DF tokens we get off 1 FSC trigger. So if we have X DF tokens we get X/2 “full cycle” update to FSC and DS
All of this is happening off of 1 DF/FSC trigger. We should have X(granted this X is static and “locked” at time of FD card entering the battlefield) triggers to work through and each time we pay for a trigger we get an updated X amount of DF tokens to use to update DS and FSC again.
Now with the old deck we were bottlenecked on BU strength as we could only get Y instances of DF entering where Y was the number of TYS on cast of BU. With the addition of flectomancer tho we can do much better. If we have done a Spellseeker/GSZ loop to update our TYS storm count our storm is actually at X(2^X) if we have X DS to start, *of note here is it doesn’t matter which we updated last FSC or DS as we either get X(2^X) FSC trigger for X seekers each or X FSC triggers for 2^X seekers each* which means our full BU chain length is Y times “storm” count. If we update Y and our storm count after settling on X DS we get a BU chain length of (2^X)(X(2^X)).
Now while that will be the total length it’s easier to break it down looking at individual TYS triggers resolving making X(2^X) BU copies. Each of the copies we can retarget to get back whatever we want thanks to flectomancer. This means the entirety of a TYS trigger of X(2^X) BU copies can be used to recur DF each time *we will have to give up a tiny amount of that number to ensure we have enough flectomancer’s to allow is to do this but as I stated in the original post I think it’s literally 1 BU copy per TYS trigger after X has been updated to get enough flectomancers to cover it, so a very small amount, it is a few more if we r doing creature resets but again it’s a tiny number in the bigger scheme of things* So let’s look again at the BU chains. We will let X be the number of DS we start with.
-We have X DS and all of important/relevant perms have been updated from this X
-we have X(2^X) mana reflections
-we tap our swamp for 2^(X(2^X)) black mana(B)
-we can spend BB to cast BU
-each BU cast gets X(2^X) TYS triggers and each TYS trigger makes X(2^X) BU copies giving us a BU chain length of (X(2^X))^2
-each BU copy can allow DF to enter the battlefield to get X(2^X) FSC triggers and start the DF token/FSC/DS updating again
*in the final TYS/BU batch we will be doing a creature reset which will allow us to update our perm and storm counts to the current X, which will cost us some very small amount BU copies to do. We do not need to update everything, just things relevant to what will be happening next or what ever else is gaining us value. Things like mana reflection don’t need updates until we will tap for mana etc. In the most basic BU loop we need to update storm/TYS/DS/FSC and I think that is it and realistically it’s mostly just DS and FSC until we are going to recast BU which then we can and should update both TYS perm count and also our TYS storm count as well*
Even at its most simplified we will get X-C DF card enters battlefield per BU chain of length X with C being enough to cover our creature resets/updates.
So another thing I was curious about is why it seems the mana battery is only getting credit for what a mox would in the same situation. Even just the first original battery will tap for at the very least X^2 compared to a mox’s production as it will have at least X counters to remove in addition to the 2^X mana reflection buff. The estimation also doesn’t seem to reflect the counters the untapped batteries gain while a batch of white mana from a battery is being used. We will have some amount of inexorable tides each producing X counters(updating) per cast of any spell for each untapped battery. We can then update IT during our DF triggers at as fast a rate of adding it to our normal DS/FSC alternating to be DS then FSC then IT using 3 DF token triggers instead of just the 2. I think it’s a mistake to update IT that often but regardless if updating it is beneficial(it makes us more W so it can’t be correct to ignore it completely) we can indeed do that quite easily.
So I think the difficulty in me knowing how to do the math is knowing how to keep track of everything once they start overlapping. You kinda hit on it by talking about parallel chains and that is where I really struggle as I’m just not sure how they all kinda intermingle. The deck doesn’t have just 1 linear chain it follows so it gets really hard to figure out what the hell is going on. It’s def possible my non linear growths just don’t grow hard enough to matter in the larger scheme of things but I am kinda curious why they don’t.
This was kinda my thoughts on what the layer count would look like, tho if around 20 is correct I’m def misunderstanding something somewhere in all of this. Number on the left is number of layers, then card, then interactions I think might be worth a layer. I tried to not double count though I might have.
1- MVD = power
5- Rings = bargain, RH, AA, sham, displacer
1- Boon = RH
1- Bargain = spiral
4- TYS = s-storm, spiral, BU, SI
2- MW = rings, WMB
1- GER = power
1- SWS = GER
1- SS = storm count
1- HTC = creature resets
1- PO/sower = colorless
1- DP = power
1- RSK = red mana
1- CC = power
5- MR = DRS, WMB+pearl, DA+emerald, wastes, swamp(s)
3- IT = WMB, red mana, power
5(6?)- DF = MR, DS, FSC, boon, TYS, (storm count?)
2- KWF = red mana/power(bodies to hold counters), power(CC triggers)
?- (Mana producers/separation?)
?- FSC/DS as our base
Also in your estimation I think u missed the colorless layer(s). Each white gets x bounces of DA. Each bounce casts SI targeting an animated waste(token or real). Each cast of SI gets x copies. Each copy makes x waste. Each waste taps for x colorless. Each colorless blinks DA x times with displacer and rings. Each blink makes x FSC/DA triggers. Then BU brings DA back gets another set of FSC triggers and is ready to be bounced again .....
Again thanks for the estimation and for being patient with me. I’ve ask a lot of questions on this thread(and the std one too) so thanks for bearing with me!
UU- once our first full spiral/TYS trigger has resolved we then let the next one happen and get another set of X(old X but still) spirals to work with. we use these up just as before and let another spiral/TYS trigger happen. again we use these up. we continue to work through all these spiral/TYS triggers. once we have used all of these up we pay for our next bargain/rings trigger and draw spiral from the deck again. we again cast and counter spiral just as before and get another giant spiral chain. once all of these bargain/rings triggers have been used up we do let the original bargain activation also resolve and again create another long spiral chain. then once the stack has cleared again we pay another 1 life and get X rings triggers again(new X this time) and again start working through these to draw and re cast/counter spiral to create many more spiral chains off draws from bargain and rings. we continue down this structure until we have used all but our last 1 life with bargain
*so a brief note about scatter and HTC. originally i thought we would be able to add +1 storm into our creature resets by using scatter w/ PO and HTC but i think things get messy. because of the way things will stack we will make many more scatter copies from TYS than we will ever have PO copies on the stack. this means when the scatter/TYS triggers happen we will be forced to target whatever is available to target. this means things like s-storm copies or even worse spiral copies which most certainly will still be on the stack. i think we may be able to cast scatter occasionally for storm gains but we have to be very very careful on when we actually do that. the fact that the original spiral is the only thing on the stack when we do the cast/counter helps ensure we aren't forced to counter desirable effects from the TYS triggers of scatter. it doesn't really matter much now that the SS/GSZ loop exist making updating TYS storm easy to do *
< empty stack > 1 life
VV- now we have used up the easy to use resources, time to get creative. in our last SWS loop we will pick up Deathrite Shaman(50)(DRS), ???????(51), ???????(52), ????????(53)and ???????(54). we cast DRS and conveniently during our many spirals resolving our opp library of 53 wastes(opp 1-60) are in their graveyard. while yes we can copy DRS trigger with rings it's actually pretty terrible to do so. what is very very good for us is that because MR is worded very specifically it effects the mana generation output of these DRS activation's. so we play DRS and get a FSC copy of him. we then exile one of our opp's wastes and get X blue(U) mana. now as good as using this mana to cast spiral off the top would be we can do far far better. we now cast Boon Reflection(51)(boon) and River Hoopoe(52)(RH)
< empty stack > X U, 1 life, and 1 opp wastes in exile
WW- so we play boon and get X copies of it, and then play RH. we then pay U(actually UGRRR, so we will have had to float G, easy enough) to gain 2(2^X) life and draw 1 card, onto the stack. while DRS's ability didn't make sense for us to copy w/ rings this ability from RH certainly does so we get X RH/rings triggers happening in front of the original RH ability
*so this is about to get a bit complicated but explaining this next loop uses a card that has even more value in a little bit*
XX- so now before we let any of our RH abilities resolve we have a loop we can now start that cards 53 and 54 allow. we cast Oblivion Sower(53)(sower) of the top. there is no library for us to exile away but DRS did put a land into exile we can now use. we indeed do put that land into play. we then tap it to get X colorless(C) mana. now we play Eldrazi Displacer(54)(ED). now we use ED to blink DA. DA re-enters and triggers X FSC and we then can make many green to use to get value. this doesn't really seem like a loop per say as we seem to only get 1 tap of a waste per DRS activation. the thing is tho we get way way more than that. the next time we have W we can cast PO for its awaken cost and target our waste. once that has been done when we bounce DA using a AA ability(rings or actual) we can recast SI and target our animated waste instead of targeting our swamp. these wastes come in as the land like our swamp did and don't care about having summoning sickness because they aren't creatures anymore. this means our W->G loop is now W->C->G now. this is even further compounded by the fact that EDs ability is copy-able by rings
*so i need to explain a few things to show that this doesn't go infinite. we could exile the animated waste w/ ED but that doesn't do us any good as the waste comes back from the blink in it's original non animated form(and tapped too) meaning we don't get any FSC triggers. also the blink happens in time span small enough(ie priority doesn't pass) that we cannot recast sower to get it back from exile over and over. we have no way to kill generic lands, only swamps via genju(spirit) and KWF because PO still doesn't kill lands or land creatures. we can chaos warp the land or the animated land but it doesn't actually net putting cards into back into our opp deck. however many cards r in the deck as warp resolves will be the same number after warp finishes resolving. there is no time the card is in the deck we can access it. it just gets revealed and forced into play. our opp cannot decide to leave it in the library to allow us to go infinite. this does mean we can put lands we can exile w/ DRS into play under their control but that doesn't do us much good. we can't animate them there and we cannot destroy them even if they are in play. there is a lot of scary stuff that just opened up and it is possible i missed something. i'm usually pretty thorough tho and i'm pretty confident that these cards and lines of play are safe and don't go infinite. ED is also safe with all of our artifact mana producers as ED can only blink creatures which none of our artifact mana makers are, and cannot become, creatures. we can bounce our animated wastes in an attempt to be able to retrace SI by discarding the waste but when we do the bounce the waste goes back to our opp hand, which doesn't do us any good as we can't access them there(yet)*
yy- so we now have an increase of layers down in our lower powered layers, but we need to start resolving our RH abilities to get things started. the life gain and the card draw do happen at the same time unfortunately so we cannot stack those 2 things. each time we resolve this ability we will gain 2^X life and draw spiral. we should then recast spiral from hand the start a spiral chain before using any of our newly acquired life. once that spiral chain has run its course we start working through the life via bargain. the best part about all of this is that while the number of RH abilities per single U mana will have a fixed X(rings at the time of activation of the original ability) the X in the life gain is not static. that will scale to what ever X is at the time as we can easily update the number of BR to as high as possible right before we resolve another RH ability
< RH original ability, X-1 RH/rings triggers > X-1 U, 1 + 2^X life, 52 lands in opp graveyard
ZZ- so we work through the RH abilities resolving until we have used them all including the original. then we use up our next U to restart this chain again. then we use the next U. we work through all of the U we have. then we activate another DRS and get a freshly updated X amount of U to work with, which eats another land out of our opp graveyard. once we have used up all 53 lands in our opp graveyard(bouncing and recasting sower each time to get a bit of C for each exile *i actually think it's proper to just wait until we have all additional 52 exiled before doing sower tricks*) it's time to move to card 55 which we will have to use up 1 last SWS trigger to pick up
AAA- once all 53 of our opp lands have been exiled with DRS from their graveyard and then brought back into play on our board, via sower, we will again cast PO w/ awaken and we will let our copies from TYS animate all of our actual wastes cards. we will then use at least W to use AA to bounce all waste land cards back to our opp hand(meaning they now have 60 waste cards in hand). we then play Nicol Bolas(55)(bolas) from hand, we need bolas to have haste so we pay for 1 FSC trigger and let the original die to keep a FSC token copy. we then equip sorcerer's wand(card #15 from way back when, it didn't need to live through all s-storms but it does need to have at least 1 copy of it in play now). we then activate bolas using his new ability from wand. this means bolas does 1 damage to our opp(they are now at 19 life). this triggers bolas's triggered ability and forces our opp to discard their entire hand. now we have the full 60 wastes in the yard and can start activating DRS again to make more U
*this means instead of 53 DRS activation's to make U, we now get 1193(60x19 + 53) activation's. this obviously greatly increases our amount of RH activation's as well and as such everything else that is happens deeper and deeper into the decks recursive engines*
BBB- one thing we will want to do is during the instance where we are using PO to animate the actual waste land cards into creatures we will want to animate at least 1 of our token waste lands. this way we can always have a animated waste to target with our SI retraces and its copies so the W->C->G loop is aways valid once we gain access to it. its a small thing but it's worth doing
CCC- so yeah we exile the lands, make the blue mana, make that into life, then use up the life, then need to use bolas again and use up one of their life points. we do this until we have used all 19 of their available life and then we are kinda done. we run through the loops as much as we can but we have essentially reached the end of the line. eventually we will run out of life and can no longer reshuffle s-storm and our warps to reset our artifact mana. we will have gone as far as we can
DDD- so once its all finally over we make sure our enchantments are creatures and we do our best to use up the last of our red mana on MVD buffs and then we swing with everything and our opp takes a lot of damage
notes-
with the addition of RH the 2nd welding jar can change back to chrome mox. then we can add painters servant back in as well. i had to take this out for awhile as chrome mox allowed an infinite using different cards that are no longer in the deck. the servant would allow the red mana engine to become even more powerful all be it only slightly. the big thing is that once we exhaust our opp life total we can still make a little bit more U mana from chrome mox. all of our cards can be blue(all colors if it matters) so we exile redundant pieces to gain some blue mana. cards like our chaos warps(i assume s-storm is the best of the artifact resets?) and then bolas, sower, DRS, tinder wall and possibly some others. we can get some of that value currently as we can use DRS to exile non useful creatures to gain life once they have run their course(bolas etc) but blue mana is significantly more scarce than life so it mght be worth giving up a card slot especially since we have 5 to work with currently
it would be possible to replace scatter with a 2nd spiral. this effectively allows us to run without counters. we could then run a card like approach of the 2nd sun for a 1 time life gain boost. we could also then run a instant damage dealer as our win which would allow us to cast approach a 2nd time and then get the life gain from the copies and then do our damage with the final approach cast from hand still on the stack as we did the damage.
i could easily add a damage multiplier for another layer but id have to be careful to bounce them when bolas was doing his damge or just wait to get it into play after bolas has fully done his job0
sangromancer is a card that fits into the deck. tbh i don't know how exactly it would work with the mass discard off bolas. i know it would be really good but i'm not sure how the math works on it. also the other line of text about opp creatures is a bit scary as if i figure out a way to give my opp creatures i can go infinite easily.
**** i'm going to see if i can get a full list soon but i just wanted the walk through done, which it is, finally ******
*i made a mistake on labeling the and listed FF and GG twice, i'll change to FF2 and GG2*
FF2- using RRR we play Sculpting Steel(42)(steel) off the top. we have it enter as a copy of MW, and the orginal MW triggers. we pay for that MW trigger and get X new MW tokens. now we play Coretapper(41)(CT) from hand *i actually think our SWS are worth less than even red mana so that is why i have used SWS triggers to pick up CT and AA instead of just playing them off the top, it's not clear tho as arbitrarily a SWS trigger is worth some fraction of a red mana that was used to pay for the FSC trigger that made them, but each SWS trigger can also find GER in our red mana amplification phase so its not so simple*, and we make get X MW triggers and X FSC triggers. we pay for all of them
GG2- now we play White Mana Battery(43)(WMB) off the top, it resolves and we get X MW triggers. now tap all X CT/FSC tokens and each puts X counters on our original WMB. then we sac all CT/FSC and CT/MW tokens to put 2X counters on WMB from each token sac'ed(this also puts X counters on RSK from DP triggers). now we tap our WMB and remove X counters and get X^X white mana thanks to X MR
HH- we use up this W the same way we did before off the pearl moxes. we will want to make sure we do bring back CT and makes all copies during our last BU chain after our creature reset. we then pay RR and resolve our first WMB/MW trigger and get X WMB token
II- unlike our first original WMB now we have many WMB in play. we now tap our CT that can tap and target each WMB token once. we should have many CTs left over after(probably ones that can just tap, vs sac only) and we then pick one of our WMB to be the next one we will draw W from. onto this WMB token we sac and tap all of our remaining CT tokens and get a lot of counters we then tap and remove all counters with the WMB and get a X W again
*this is where my understanding of the math gets a bit fuzzy. im just not sure how to best my tools optimumly. i know we need to use CT to get counter onto the WMBs originally but tbh i'm not sure its worth recurring them during our BU chains. i'm honestly no even sure its worth bringing them back during or after our creature resets. to do that we need to use up BU copies and i think those r too valuable to "waste" on CT. if we update IT properly IT should be doing far more work than CT ever can in terms of putting counters on our waiting WMBs. within our DF updates our DF triggers r bouncing and recasting our enchantments. while TYS only cares about ins/sor storm IT looks at true storm and those DF updates actually have our true storm at or above TYS storm until we do a SS/GSZ loop and that only bring our TYS storm up to where our true storm already is right before the loop begins (so true storm is about X pre SS/GSZ loop and then our TYS storm goes to X^2 and our true storm becomes X+X^2). the strength of IT in all of this is that it's giving X counters to each WMB and not just one that CT copies could do. also CT costs us a BU copy to get up and running where IT just does it automatically(we do need to give up a few DF etb's to update IT occasionally) so it costs us basically nothing and its easy to keep on top of the updates should we need or want to. which is another thing. i know IT is doing gross things but its possible to update it during our DF stuff. should i add it to the alternating of DS and FSC or should i more be looking at alternating less often? im pretty sure we want to update IT once per DF/FSC trigger but maybe its 1 per entire BU chain, i just don't know. maybe its an arbitrary number(i was thinking maybe 1 per X DF etb where X is # of DF/FSC triggers at start of the chain so 1st DF/FSC trigger we would just do 1 IT update but next DF/FSC we do every 1 per Xth DF tokens inside an new X that just got made) but if so how do we choose? fwiw i know IT triggers will be the 2nd most common thing happening in the deck behind CC triggers. maybe the updating on our DS/FSC bouncing is allowing the IT triggers to scale well enough that updating isn't as needed. i just dont know*
JJ- now we work our way through this W all the while growing the counters on the WMB tokens we haven't tapped yet via our IT triggers. once we run out of W we will use our last creature update from the very last of our BU chains to get a bunch more CT and load the next WMB up *i think it's correct to do this once, at least, per W batch we get from tapping a WMB. it's possible more is correct but i think at least 1 as we transition into the next WMB is def correct* we then tap that one and get another batch of white mana. we proceed to do this process of getting and using white mana from our WMB tokens we got from our WMB/MW trigger we resolved. once we have used them all up we pay for and resolve the next WMB/MW trigger getting a new X WMB tokens to work with. we proceed to use these up as well. we proceed this way until all but the very last WMB/MW trigger is left
KK- now before this last WMB/MW trigger resolves we will be playing Rings of Brighthearth(44)(rings). we will get X MW triggers and pay for all of them
* yeah so this is happening. while this doesn't gain us a ton of value in the BU chains we get ton of value from our sham activation's, our AA activation's, and even our CT activation's. i don't really know if this addition changes how we should process the events that those activation's put into action but i do know that we can stack things so that we can always get full rings value from these activation's. we can always get our targets back to where they need to be. we will give up the original activation but all rings copies can be used as long as we don't pay for the trigger until we have our target back where it needs to be to not fizzle which we can easily do*
*i wanted to wait to cast rings until we had X as high as we could. as i noted with IT the DF update engine means each X is progressively more powerful than the last so the most recent X will be more potent than all value gained from those earlier X's combined. this is why i waited until now and this last WMB/MW trigger. if i wait longer we won't have any top end triggers to work with to gain value from. if we did it sooner, well it might be correct to get rings down sooner. as u will see updating artifacts isn't an easy thing to do so if we play it earlier it won't have a very high X to be copied by. playing it hrre just felt right tho im not opposed to playing it elsewhere in the sequence if there is more value to be gained than i realize*
LL- so now with rings at our disposal our use of W gains value as each W now gets X activation's and not just the one. so X white gets X AA bounces and each bounce gets copied X times. our white mana generation also goes up as now CTs counter making can be copied. i don't know if this makes it a legitimate BU target during BU chains but if we are bringing it back at all rings makes it that much better. similarly to how W is used our G usage gets better as sham's targeting of KGF can and will be copied. so X green gets X activation's and each gets X rings copies
MM- so as we work through our last of our W from our very last WMB from the last WMB/MW trigger we will need to pick up Djinn Illuminatus(45)(djinn) from a random SWS trigger. once we have djinn at our disposal we will want to be sure as we run down out of our W/G/B resources we are being sure to do our advanced red mana making. we will want to sac our swamp this time even if we don't have any G left to recur the KFG. we just want to ensure that we have access to as much R as possible. it's important to now see why it's for our R generation to be as efficient as possible
NN- with BB floating and all of our R as well we play djinn and then we cast Shatterstorm(46)(s-storm) off the top. as we cast it we use all of our R to replicate it as much as possible. if like i believe our R engine is stronger than our other engines then we should be able to replicate s-storm for more copies than all of our TYS and thier triggers combined. this is why i wanted the R engine to be so powerful and so prevalent even when our R costs weren't all that high
< orginal s-storm, X s-storm copies>
OO- now before we let any of our s-storm's resolve at all we will need to do one last thing. with our last BU chain before this during our last creature update we will need to set aside one BU copy to bring back a welding jar(# 1 or 2) . luckily i think 1 jar/MW trigger will be enough to make X copies and that will be all we need to save the things we need to. we sac enough jar's to put regen shields on all token copies of WM, all token rings, and then 1 token VO. this will leave all of our artifact progress in play and still allow us to now update our rings and MW while also getting our artifacts into our yard where we can bring them back with BU. we let the first s-strom copy resolve putting our actual artifacts cards into the yard
< X-1 s-strom copies >
PP- so now we need to start bringing things back. we cast BU and get a BU chain. the original BU will target the first of our artifacts we want to bring back. the weakest i think is to just do mox emerald. let our BU chain play out as normal but with the original BU we go ahead and bring emerald back. we get X MW triggers for emerald and go abut using those up. luckily since we had our original BU target the mox we can recast BU inside this value engine we just recurred. i originally thought i needed multiple BU in the deck but with this set up i think just the 1 is all we need. so we use up all the value from the emerald coming back. next is the pearl and we go ahead and use up all that value before moving on
QQ- now we are down to our last few artifacts we want to recur in MW, rings, WMB, and steel. i'm pretty sure we want lead out with MW after using up our moxes to get X up bit higher, but it get's complicated after this. the ability for steel to come in as itself and have different numbers of things enter as different things kinda makes my head hurt. my gut tells me that we just want steel to make more copies of MW but i could be grossly underestimating the power of WMB and rings. maybe a combination of them all is correct, i just don't know
RR- once we have an optimal sequence settled on we proceed to work through this engine. getting and using large amounts of various colors of W/G/B mana as we work through getting our artifacts back. then once we have extracted maximum value we again make sure we get jar back (to save our progress via regen shields) and then let the next copy of s-storm resolve and start again. this should be fairly regimented in its structure for most of the s-storm chain. the one exception to this is when we have used up the last original s-storm. while we will still use much of the mana for just redoing what we have already been doing we will at the very end want to make sure we sequence the returning of our artifacts to ensure we can produce the maximum amount of rings
SS- during our last SWS dig we will want to pick up Yawgmoth's Bargain(47)(bargain) with one of the triggers. once our max rings have been created we will play bargain. we will make max copies as its just correct to do so but we really need 1 of these in play. we then pay 1 life and get X rings triggers. we pay for 2 of these triggers and pick up Psychic Spiral(48)(spiral) and Scatter to the Winds(49)(scatter). we leave the other bargain/rings triggers on the stack by responding to them. we cast spiral from hand. we then respond to spirals TYS triggers and cast scatter targeting spiral. TYS will trigger for scatter and we counter the original scatter and the original spiral. then the rest of the TYS/scatter triggers happen and bunch of scatters get created that don't do anything. once all of those have resolved we will then cast HTC from hand(we will need to alter our creature reset loop slightly to do this but it shouldn't lose too much value) and pick up PO and scatter. now we let the first spiral/TYS trigger happen and we get X copies of spiral. the first spiral resolves and shuffles spiral, s-storm, 3 copies of chaos warp, VO and tinder wall back into our library. we also mill our opponent for a few cards. luckily we still have flash so now we can recast these reshuffled cards from our library before the next spiral resolves
TT- with the help of flect and gobs of red mana we can now recast chaos warps 1-3 off the top and reset one permanent per copy and use djinn and that red mana to make many many copies. we will always just target WMB, MW, or rings (unless doing it with steel is just better) to maximize our value. once all of our red mana artifact resets have been cast and copied and their value has been used up we let the next copy of spiral resolve
< oirginal bargain activation, x-2 bargain/rings triggers, x-1 spiral/TYS triggers, x-2 copies of spiral > 19 life
U- we spend RRRWW to cast Planar Outburst(PO)(34) off the top of our deck. so a lot is about to happen. one thing we want to do is after the dust settles we will need to have X + 7 red mana floating where X is the number of FSC we have. so we remove X + 7 counters from one of our RSK making red mana and then the fireworks begin. also of note here is that this is why we had to pay a few enchantments for less value. we haven't had a chance since step L to return opalescence to hand. we had to do it there or we would have lost all of our progress in enchantments. so the important thing here is that we are going to getting our creatures into our yard but there is also some stuff going on with preserving out gained power as well
V- so i've already talked a bit about our red mana engine of KWF/RSK/IT/CC but the really powerful engine is all those plus SWS/GER/PO/MVD/DP and our animated swamp. so our swamp doesn't die in these PO's, even as a creature, because of PO specific wording about non land creatures. this means we can "store" all of our power progress on the swamp for retrieval later via our DP triggers(spoiler, the swamp will die). before any PO resolve though we can do some powerful stuff to actually amplify our total power in a pretty significant manner. *when i say all mana i am referring to all disposable mana, our saved red and floating black are not to be touched* so first thing we do is pull all counters of RSKs possible by converting them into red mana. then we filter it all through MVD. this means that we should get something like X->L+2->X red mana(where L is number of layers of X, i think the mana is at 2-4 layers higher so this was a guess) which means our team of f(X) bodies each get that much additional power. this in itself would be good but we can do far better. we have a ton of K tokens *in fact the amount of K tokens will be far great than any other type of permanent* still around(esp after the X^2 casts of GSZ). these can kill themselves so we sac 1. we get our MVD buff plus its original non buff power back in counters from DP that are amplified by 2^X. we put all these counters back onto one RSK, and then remove them all again to buff our team again. then we sac the next K token and repeat. we do this for all of our K tokens. what's important here is in none of this process are we losing ground power wise. sure we go down when we convert the counters into mana but that mana is a 1/1 ratio coming back from the MVD buff. and yes we lose power when we sac a K token but again we get it back(modified by X actually) from DP(X of them when i can update properly). while the MVD buff isn't amplified by X itself, the output is because the number of bodies in play is most certainly some f(X) so even this is scaling to X. once we work through all the sac'able creatures and used them to buff our team it's time to let our POs to start resolving. the first POS resolves and kill all of our huge creatures. this triggers DP to put P(our total power) counters(P^X actually from DS modification) onto our swamp (the only thing still alive). the rest of the PO rage but ultimately don't do anything. we still don't want our pearl/MW trigger to resolve yet so we will responding further using the cards in our hand
W- with the board clear and all POs resolved(original in the yard) we now cast Halimar Tidecaller(31)(HTC). this is why we needed our X red mana floating. we still get X FSC triggers, but we will let the original's etb trigger first getting PO back to hand, which we will recast before our FSC triggers are resolved. this puts our HTC into the yard. after all the POs have resolved and our DP counters have gone to our swamp we pay for our first HTC/FSC trigger. we get X tokens but only 1 of those etb's can grab PO, which it will, and again we cast PO before resolving the next FSC trigger. we move the DP counters to the swamp again. we repeat this for all but the last FSC trigger. with that one we will get PO back but we will leave it in hand. this means we get X casts of PO. not as good as the SS/GSZ loop but it does serve a better purpose of resetting my creatures by putting them into the yard. with all POs resolved it is now safe to replay opalescence from hand. we will have a chance to get it back to hand before we wipe again. now its time to move onto using our B we still have floating
X- we pay RRRBB and cast Beacon of Unrest(35)(BU) off the top. because we were able to update storm to X^2 earlier, and because we have X TYS as well we will get many many BU copies. the original target actually doesn't matter. we are about to fix one of my old decks shortcomings. the copies targets don't matter either. we are about to modify them anyway
<VO/MW, pearl/MW, org BU, X-1 TYS/BU triggers, X copies of BU> RRRR and X-2 B floating
Y- before any BU copies resolve we cast Goblin Flectomancer(32)(flect) from our hand. we get some FSc triggers, but we only pay for 1 getting X flect tokens. we sac the original flect to target RSK with the first BU and put flect into the yard. we let this BU resolve and get RSK back into play. we resolve the CC trigger first to allow us to pay for all FSC/RSK triggers. before the next BU resolves we sac a flect to re-target onto KWF. we get KWF back(paying for at least 1 FSC trigger so we can kill the orginal to legend rule) and now we have our basic red mana engine back online. we then sac a flect token to get DF back with a BU copy. with our mana engine online we have no issues paying for all DF/FSC triggers. we let the original die, and use the other DFs to update X again through DF/FSC alternating bounces. we use the last of our DF token bounces to update CC/IT/DP so our mana engine is operating in a more standard manner. now that our current X is updated past our X^2 storm/TYS count we can use a flect/BU to bring the original flect back to play, then pay for enough FSC triggers to get enough tokens to redirect the rest of the BU chain. we will of course sac the original flect to get it back into the yard. this means we can use every BU copy(and org) to get back DF(or anything else). while the majority of the BUs will indeed be getting DF we will need to get other stuff to fully be able to update everything
*so i'm gonna be honest i don't understand the math well enough to know exactly how to best use the full BU chain here. my gut says that the best option is to do 1 full creature reset per BU chain(so per BB spent). we are fully capable of doing this with the chain. the only thing we need to be sure of is to pull it off we need to cast PO when we still have at least 1 flect/FSC trigger still on the stack. that way we can redirect the BUs we have left to get back up and running. i think we need 1 BU on flect per BU chain and an additional 1 BU on flect per reset but its possible my math is wrong here. my instinct is that we want to as late as possible in the BU chain to do our reset. the DF update engine is very powerful and the difference between resetting on BU/DF 25 vs even BU/DF 26 is a huge difference in our X value, so 25 to say 1 million basically makes our 25 X have contributed basically nothing. if we wait and do our full reset near the end our BU chain X will be appropriately high and we will update the things that need to be updated to that current very high X which those updated values will be higher than if we did many updates as the next update will be drastically more powerful than the last. also along those same lines we get get additional value in only doing 1 creature update because it menas we didn't waste possible DF updates(our most powerful effect currently) on anything less powerful. we need to do creature reset to update storm so we should probably be resetting everything and doing as full a reset/update as possible when we need to be doing it anyway. this may change later but this is how i see me best using these BU chains currently*
<VO/MW, pearl/MW> X-2 B floating
Z- so once we have worked through our BU chain and used them all up our original BU shuffles back to the top of the deck. we just finished a BU chain so our storm and number of TYS should be updated so we can pay another RRRBB and cast BU again getting a much much much longer BU chain this time. we repeat our chain use and work through it in a similar fashion to the last one. once we finish this chain we use up another BB and start the chain again. we do this for each BB we have until we have used all of our B up. in our very last creature update while we are working through many SWS triggers finding GER we will instead use 1 of them to find Kaya's Ghostform(36)(KGF) and keep it in our hand until our BU chain has run its course. still before our 2 MW triggers resolve we do cast the KGF onto our animated swamp. once there we sac the swamp to KWF(genju makes the swamp a spirit) to make R. we get a massive amount of DP triggers returning all our "stored" power back onto our RSK's. we can then remove them to make a huge amount of red mana we will have floating to use for triggers or buffs. the other thing that happens tho is that KGF brings the swamp back into play untapped(also genju comes back to our hand as part of its own ability). since we just did a massive update at the end our our last BU chain we should have updated our MR so our swamp will tap for an updated X amount of B. once we have tapped for mana we play the genju again and animate the swamp. *it's def possible that casting genju later is optimum as we really only need the swamp animated for PO resolutions. there are def some creature deaths during our BU chains that are not from PO but its not many and i believe RSK will be in play for most if not all of them so we might be able to wait until X is much higher to cast genju and get more KWF tokens if played correctly* so with this batch of B we will use it up the same way we did before with 2 exceptions. we will use one of our SWS triggers to find Dowsing Shaman(37)(sham). we will also want to make sure that our very last BU to resolve(which will be the actual card) will get us back SS. this will allow a very late storm update but it will also allow something else. the very last of those GSZ to resolve will actually find us Dryad Arbor(38)(DA). while the original has summoning sickness, when we pay for its first FSC trigger, those tokens will not. we will then tap 1 DA token and get X green mana(G)
<VO/MW, pearl/MW, X-1 DA/FSC triggers> X G floating, X-1 DA tokens untapped
AA- we will then cast sham from hand, and again we will have to pay for 1 sham/FSC trigger to get a lot of hasty sham's. we then pay RRG and tap one of our sham to get KFG back from our yard. we then cast KGF onto the swamp just as before. also as before we sac the swamp, KFG goes to yard, swamp into play, and genju back to hand. we tap the swamp for X B and then replay the genju onto the swamp and animate it. once again the SS/GSZ loop has updated our storm count to X^2 so when we cast BU again its a huge chain. we again use flect and his tokens to make sure we can use the full length of the BU chain. this process is how we turn 1 G into many B
<VO/MW, pearl/MW, X-1 DA/FSC, original BU, X-1 BU/TYS triggers, X^X BU copies> X-1 G floating, X-2 B floating, X-1 DA tokens untapped
BB- we use our B up at BB each time and work through our increasingly longer BU chains. then once we have used all the B up we use up another of our floating G, get KGF back and make another batch of B scaled to our new X once again. we repeat this G->X B until our first batch of G has been used up. we then tap our next DA token and get an updated X amount of G. we then again work on converting G->X B and using that B up to update us fully in BU chains. once we have used up our first DA/FSCs triggers worth of DA tokens we pay for our next DA/FSC trigger and once again get and newly updated X DA tokens to use to make many ever increasing X sized batches of G which in turn makes B and in turn updates everything aggressively. once we have work through all of the DA/FSC triggers we will be back to our waiting pearl/MW trigger. because W is so powerful in this deck we still will be responding before we let the pearl/MW trigger resolve
CC- we now cast mox emerald off the top. we will respond to this emerald/MW trigger by tapping the original emerald for G. this process will play out identically to the DA/FSC triggers and G use. before we use the very last of this G up we will want to leave GGGG floating
DD- when our original BU shuffles into the deck after using up the last B with GGGG floating we will actually have it shuffle into the 2nd from the top slot instead of the top slot. this top slot will be Spitting Image(39)(SI) and we will cast it of the top for RRRRGG. we will get X TYS triggers, each making X copies. all of these plus the original will target our animated swamp. i could target DA but these SI tokens don't have haste like the FSC ones do. luckily when we target the swamp and try to copy it the copy will be a copy of the original card which is just a swamp land. these don't care about summoning sickness and can be tapped to make mana as soon as they exist. because we can use BB to update our MR we will be tapping these swamps one at a time and then using all the mana to update further before tapping the next. then we let the next SI copy resolve and repeat. then the next TYS trigger resolves and makes a bunch more, we use these up and move to the next TYS trigger. once we have let all the TYS triggers resolve the original SI resolves and makes ones last batch of swamps and the SI goes to the graveyard. we use up these last swamps to update but we do use a SWS trigger to pick one more card(40,??????) before we finish things up
EE- we pay RR and our pearl/MW trigger is paid for we get X mox pearl tokens. we then pay an additional RR and let our VO/MW trigger happen. we get X VO tokens. our stack is now empty for the first time in quite some time. we tap one of these pearl tokens to get X W and prepare to move into the use of W
FF- we play Aegis Automaton(40)(AA) from hand. we will be leaving the triggers on the stack as we only ever need 1 of these in play. unfortunately our creature resets will be destroying these AA so we will have to use up a AA/FSC trigger each time we come back to use up a W but that will last us awhile *i think it actually covers the entirety of each mox pearl we tap but i might be messing the math up. it's possible welding jar's could be used here but it doesn't seem worth it as we need to use up BU for those too and we will have many many PO this would need to regenerate through* regardless if we need to we can use up a random BU to get AA back into play and if we do it as our last BU(the original card) to resolve we can again leave AA/FSC triggers on the stack. we now pay RRRRW and bounce our DA to our hand. we then retrace SI from the yard with RRRRGG and discarding DA. SI and all its copies will again target our animated swamp. we will use the swamps up until we are on our last BB from our last swamp. we will wait until our very last BU(original card) from our last chain and we will bring DA back into play. *i think its correct to use up the swamps first instead of bringing back DA first, tho i might be wrong* and set off our FSC triggers on DA. we use up there DA/FSC triggers and their resulting tokens to get our B->G loops going. this time though when we run out of G(well we need to leave GG to restart after using a W) we can just go and use up a W to refresh our G supply. so now its W->G->B. now we work our way through the mox pearl tokens one at a time until we have used them all up. we will be making more white here shortly so we do need to leave GG floating
GG- we now cast mox pearl off the top of the deck. we again respond to the pearl/MW trigger and tap our original pearl. we get X W. we use this up and pay for our pearl/MW trigger again and get X pearl tokens. we use these up as well. we are back to an empty stack. we will want to leave GG floating here as we transition into our next phase of the deck. we will want in our last SWS loop to use up another trigger to pick up another card(41, ???????)
*this is where i got to in the last deck for what i posted to the thread. the next aspect i had finished designing but never got to posting it. i did have even further figured out as well but most of that end game has changed over time. some of it is the same but most of it is repetitively new or is a much improved version of the idea/concept. part of reason i never posted this next step is tbh i have no idea how to optimize it or even the correct order to play some of these cards. one of the cards is pretty confusing to me as to when i should introduce it. it doesn't effect the use of B but it definitely can effect the G->B and W->G. i don't know how powerfully but it's def something. also this card effects a decent amount of things after this so i know it's correct to use it but i do wonder if it should have come down sooner. much like the PO enable a form of advanced red mana creation, we are about to move into advanced white mana creation*
*note i'm probably going to have to edit these posts to get everything formatted and spellchecked but i do want to just get it posted and i'll clean it up shortly. i have it all written and just need to get it cleaned up and posted*
it's been awhile since i posted anything on this deck but i have been working on it in the background. figured i'd post my progress so far. it's still incomplete as i'm around 5 or so cards short of the full 60 but i feel like sharing the deck at this point. a lot of this will be familiar as it's based of the last version but it makes significant strides in potency in quite a few ways. i'll try to not talk too much about the old deck so i'll be presenting some stuff that feels like a rehash but often there are some pretty important improvements so i really did need to go through it all again.
A- play both moxes(1,2) and wall(3), sac wall for RR and tap pearl for RRW to cast chaos warp #1(4) targeting pearl. pearl shuffles back into the deck and we get Omniscience(8) into play
B- cast Kykar, Wind's Fury(5)(KWF), then cast Thousand-Year Storm(6)(TYS), triggering KWF to get 1 spirit token(i will refer to KWF tokens as K and will track the amount as K=x, currently K=1)
C- cast chaos warp #2(7) targeting mox emerald. we trigger both TWS and KWF. we will resolve the TYS trigger first and we target the K token with our copy of warp. this resolves(K=0) and we get Doubling Season(9)(DS) into play. then the KWF trigger resolves and we get 2 tokens(K=2). now we resolve our original warp #2 and shuffle emerald back into the deck and get Future Sight(10) into play
D- we play a basic swamp(11) off the top of the library
E- cast welding jar #1(12) and #2(13) off the top. we get 2 K each(K=6). we sack 5 K(K=1) to cast Mirrorworks(14)(MW), which get us 2 K(K=3). cast sorcerer's wand(K=2 then 4)(15, we won't be using this for a very long time), then cast Vedalken Orrery(VO)(16)(K=0 then 2). when VO enters we have a MW trigger go onto the stack
*now we have flash and we will start responding to triggers. i will try to periodically restate what is still on the stack, floating mana, etc as we move through the process of playing things. we want to leave this VO/MW trigger on the stack*
<last<VO/MW>first> K=2
F- cast mox pearl of the top(K=4), enters get MW trigger but respond to pearl/MW trigger by casting mox emerald(K=6). this time we will let emeralds MW trigger resolve and sac 2 K(K=4) to pay for it, and we get 2 mox emerald tokens. we then tap 2 mox emeralds and sac 4 K(K=0) to cast Mana Reflection(MR)(17) for RRRRGG, and get 2 K(K=2). we now tap our last mox emerald to get GG and cast Green Sun's Zenith(18)(GSZ)on X=0(K=4) off the top with GSZ finding nothing and then shuffling back into the deck. we now tap our mox pearl and get WW.
<VO/MW, pearl/MW> K=4, WWG floating
G- sac 2 K(K=2) and then pay GRR to cast chaos wrap #3(19) targeting original mox emerald. we get 2 K(K=4) as we will let the KWF trigger resolve first and then target welding jar #1, mox pearl, and DS with our 3 TYS copies.
H- jar shuffles back into the deck and we get Opalescence(20) into play. now our non auras enchantments are also creatures
I- pearl shuffles into our deck and we get Flameshadow Conjuring(21)(FSC) into play. it enters as a creature and self triggers. we pay with a K(K=3) and get 2 FSC tokens
J- DS shuffles back in and we re-find it with the copy of warp and it enters as a creature triggering all 3 FSC. we sac our last 3 K(K=0) to pay for the 3 triggers get 2, then 8, then 2048 DS. before we resolve the original warp #3 we cast welding jar #1 off the top and get X K(K=X)
K- the original warp #3 resolves on emerald. it shuffles in and we find Sumala Woodshaper(22)(SWS) which enters and we get it's own etb and also 3 SWS/FSC triggers. we will resolve SWS own etb first and pick up Drake Familiar(23)(DF). still responding to our SWS/FSC triggers we will play DF. same as with SWS we will resolve DFs own etb before the DF/FSC triggers resolve. with this etb we will just let DF die and go to the graveyard
L- now we use a K to pay for our first DF/SWS trigger and make 2^2059(current X) DF tokens. our first trigger we will pick up FSC and then replay it(during this process we will get many many K and can easily pay of all FSC triggers we will create). we get 3 FSC/FSC triggers which we will pay for getting 3X more FSCs. the next DF etb trigger will pick up DS and again we will replay it, this time with X FSC triggers(actually 3X+, tho X is scaling so fast it doesn't matter much). each of these DF triggers we resolve updates X at 2^X rate and we have X of them to work through. we then pick up FSC again and play it again getting X FSC triggers to make X FSC each. next its DS again. this was 4 DF tokens triggers. we have 2^2059 - 4 left to work through. we will repeat the bounce/replay dance with DS and FSC using up all the bounce triggers from all of our DF tokens. next we pay for our next DF/FSC trigger and get and updated X DF tokens. we again proceed in the same manner and use all these triggers to bounce and replay FSC and DS alternating between the 2 for maximum growth. after that DF/FSC has been used up we pay for our final DF/FSC trigger and again proceed to use all but 3 of these triggers up as well. we need to save 2 so once X has been fully updated we can update our number of MR and TYS, and the last 1 will be used to pick opalesence up into hand.
M- we now tap our swamp for X(actually 2^X but again X will be scaling so fast it doesn't matter much) black mana(B)
<VO/MW, pearl/MW, SWS/FSC x3> K = more than X but not sure by how much, WW and X B floating
N- before we start using our black mana we will need a few more tools. we pay for all 3 of our SWS/FSC triggers and let them start to resolve. we will be using up all of these right now. we will be "drawing" 9 cards and then the rest of them will be drawing the same card a lot of times
O- the first 5 cards will be Death's presence(24)(DP), Genju of the Fens(25), Cathars' Crusade(26)(CC), Runaway Steam-Kin(27)(RSK), and Inexorable Tide(28)(IT). Now we are going to lose some value here as we will be playing some enchantments onto a board with no Opalescence to get FSC triggers but the value loss should be minimal as we will be capable of updating soon enough and can catch these ones we are playing now up to the others very quickly and easily
P- we play DP onto the field and then genju onto our swamp, which we then animate. next comes CC into play. then we play RSK. this is naturally a creature so we do get FSC triggers which we do pay for using the CC trigger. next comes IT which again is just a single copy of. RSK/CC/IT is our new red mana engine. combined with KWFs token generation we will be capable of a staggering amount of red mana production. honestly IT is the weakest part of this production but it's real role in the deck is actually a bit later. it adds value here tho so im introducing it now. this core when properly updated makes 2-4 layers of mana above what ever layer we are currently at. it is also adding tons of power to the board w/ CC doling out just tons of counters. the power that is being accumulated is not just to attack with. we have a mechanism to convert much if not all of it directly back into red mana without giving up P/T in the process. while the red mana isn't super valuable right now it does ensure we can pay for all of our FSC triggers which isn't a small matter. with RSKs active now we no longer need to sac any K. K will just grow and accumulate CC counters for now
Q- our 6th "draw" will pick up a very powerful tool for us in Spellseeker(29)(SS). this card interacts really well with our deck in that it allows us to update our "storm" counts of TYS. so SS enters and we get X FSC triggers which we will pay for all of them before we start to resolve any etbs. we unfortunately can't get all the bodies into play at first but that's a small bump. the first SS trigger will find GSZ. we will cast it for free. it finds nothing but shuffles back into the deck. we get all triggers from this cast(KWF/IT/TYS). our TYS copies don't really do anything here unfortunately but KWF and IT help make a bunch of bodies and mana. the important thing is that GSZ is back in the deck for the next SS to go find so we can cast it again, which we do. then we continue to do this for each SS token. we will get about X^2 SS tokens, which means we get X^2 casts of GSZ which updates our storm count to X^2
R- our 7th will be Moonveil Dragon(30)(MVD) which we will cast and make full copies of *i should probably play this before SS but it's not a huge deal tbh. we just need access to this ability coming up shortly*
S- our 8th and 9th draws we will keep in hand as ??????(31) and ??????(32)
T- our 10th draw will be God-Eternal Rhonas(33)(GER) who we are about to see a lot of. so during what is about to happen we will want to for the most part keep as many counters on our RSKs as possible. we will remove them to pay for FSC triggers but we shouldn't be doing it very often. when GER enters we will stack the triggers so that it's doubling effect is the last thing to happen. once all this nonsense has resolved we will get 1 more double power buff. we will have our CC trigger before the FSC. so the order in first<CC/FSC/buff>last. so GER enters, CC triggers, X FSCs trigger, buff waiting. when we pay for our first FSC trigger we get X GERs. immediately we need to resolve the legend rule. we pick one token GER and sac the rest including the original(who shuffles in 3rd from top of our library). this sets off X DP triggers from X GER dying. we put these counters on 1 RSK. This RSK will be our alpha RSK and will absorb all DP counters from GER deaths. next we get X(actually X-1 but close enough) buffs resolving. next up is the next FSC trigger to resolve, which we do. again we get X GER entering. we choose one of the new ones to be our survivor and again put all DP counters on our alpha RSK. we repeat this process for all of our X FSC triggers. then we proceed to our 11th of our 3(2^X) draws, which is, surprise surprise, GER again. we repeat this process of playing GER over and over for each of these SWS "draw" triggers. so our stack has shrunk back to just our pearl and VO MW triggers. we don't yet want to resolve either of these so we are going to use up the WW we have floating
Looks like I need to read cards better I guess, or possibly read the full thread to see how things actually work. FWIW that is a very cool work around. Glad to see that you guys are still way better at this than me lol. It is still nice to see this have some traction tho. Kind of a nice distraction to get lost in for a bit.
So I hate to show up out of the blue and ruin things but the blue mana stage goes infinite. Quasi + mystic + dowser + pixie + haste + storm goes infinite. So on the stack we target something with the original quasi. Then tys triggers. We use the first of these to target mystic. We then use this new mystic to counter the original quasi and put it into our graveyard. Then our next quasi to resolve will be targeting dowser, which we use to get back quasi into our hand. The rest of the storm amount of quasi’s all target pixie. This gives us plenty of mana to recast quasi to restart this loop
Hopefully this doesn’t mess up the deck structure too badly if parts need to be replaced or removed entirely.
I’m glad these projects are still moving along tho. I haven’t read through everything yet but I did notice this loop.
Hope everyone is doing ok. At some point I will post the last parts of my vintage list I had been working on. I need to sit down and make sure I still remember how everything actually worked before I post any more write ups tho.
Pretty sure this is my layout so far. Pretty sure not all of these are layers but it’s at least a map for what is happening. Not sure how the question marks at the bottom fit in to it.
1- White mox entering battlefield
2- X mirrorworks triggers
3- each trigger makes x mox’s
4- each mox makes x white mana
5- each white mana bounces DA
6- each DA bounce casts SI
7a1- each mox emerald entering gives x MW triggers
7a2- each MW triggers makes x green mox’s
7b-each cast of SI puts x DA into play getting x FSC triggers and getting x copies of SI targeting DI
8- each DA(or mox emerald) can tap for X green mana
9- each green mana can recur KGF which allows us to retap our swamp for x black mana
10- 2 black mana can cast BU
11- each BU cast gets x batches
12- each batch makes 1 BM or BM+ loop
13a- each BM loop makes x DF tokens enter
13b- each BM+ loop is BM plus ups our storm count x
13c- each BM+ loop gives us SWS entering
14- each SWS gives us Rhonas card
15- each Rhonas entering gives us x FSC triggers
16- each FSC triggers gives x Rhonas
17- each Rhonas token gives us double power buff
? Whenever creatures die we get x^2 counter(x DP and then x DS).
?? Each BM+ loop all non lands creatures die
??? When we make the green->black transition we will get back all p/t back lost since last g->b transition as we can save it all on the swamp during PO resolving.
???? We can convert these counters into x red mana via RSK
????? We can convert 3 red into a buff for the team.
Only thing I see u missed is I make x dryad arbors when it enters as well off FSC. So I get x Spitting images copies and then x FSC copies, each of these x’s fully updating before the next resolves.
And yeah 8-11 layers sounds about right for where I normally end up. I do still have space as u mentioned. I should still have 3-4 more layers, maybe a bit more. I hope to get those written up in the next week or so.
Edit: whoops misread your reply a bit. Had it as card v card not token v token. Yes I can see why line 2 is stronger. Much closer if mana reflection wasn’t in the mix but with it there line 2 is much stronger.
So much like my last list we will be using Drake Familiar(DF or drake) to update our enchantments. In my last list we used Samula Woodshaper(sws)triggers to draw DF on a once per sws token batch basis. Back then it was pointed out that if we could have all of the sws triggers find DF the whole thing would be quite a bit more powerful. Well I was able to do that. Using The Cauldron of Eternity we can let drake die each time the actual card enters and be put back on the bottom of the library for sws to find it again(possibly not every time(still working the numbers out) but still far more often than the original deck could).
Anyway working inside this shell(drake recursion) I have another line that has 2 very powerful options and I’m just wondering which one is more potent. Both lines start from the same place so it really is a 1-1 comparison.
My new deck allows me to reuse Garruk, caller of beasts a lot to get many -7 emblems. These emblems r what allow these lines to exist. The main question is which is more powerful but it also answers whether or not I want a 2nd drake in the list. Going down a drake will slow down the start a bit I believe, but, if in the overall scheme of things drake 2 doesn’t add a ton of value, I’ll probably cut back to just the single drake.
-So the first line is casting drake and using the emblems to find the 2nd drake each time as we let the DF#2 card self sac each time to go back to bottom of library to be found for the next emblem trigger. *this line can be started with any creature being cast but I do need a 2nd drake if I specifically want drake->drake*
-Line 2 is more complicated: we cast drake #1 again but instead of drake #2 we find Dryad Arbor(DA). We will be able to update green mana output as we go so we do tap our DA tokens one at a time. We use a green mana to activate a Fertilid and go find a basic “Mountain”. It enters tapped but gives us mountain tokens(Nature’s Revolt has the land enter as a creature). Again we can update our red mana output as well so we tap them 1 at a time while the token generation triggers are on the stack. We then use our red mana one at a time to return Crown of Flames to our hand and recast it targeting Triton Cavalry. This proc’s it’s heroic trigger and allows us to update 1 enchantment per red mana. We update Doubling Season and Molten Echoes(we use “Xenograph” or similar to ensure echoes triggers for any creature and so that enchantments enters as typed creatures in the first place), and then as we reach the end of the use of 1 mountain output we use the last heroic trigger to pick up and update Mana Reflection. This way our next mountain tap gives us an updated amount of red mana. As we use up our mountains and need to go back to a fertilid activation our updating of mana reflection quantities means our green mana generation will also be updated. Oh we sac arbor and mountain cards to Pegasus Stampede to get them back into deck to be found again(“Omniscience” to cast, sac them to buy back, with cauldron putting either land back into deck when needed). Also we have a way to put more counters on Fertilid if and when we need to.
So: is the drake->drake line better than the drake->arbor(and green->red->update) line?
As said before this line happens with any creature cast so it’s just to see if a 2nd drake is more potent. I will still have access to finding drake(or arbor) off casting other creatures so in either case I will be able to do what is correct/optimum for specific needs. It is worth noting that neither green or red mana can get creatures to my hand to be cast to retrigger the whole loop and it cannot be used to get more Garruk activations which again could restart the loop with his +1 ability.
Fwiw my gut says the arbor line is better because of mana reflection. Originally I wasn’t running it but because the fertilid line will be in the deck for green->red anyway, I figured reflection was a good idea. I just don’t know the conversion into math equations well enough to know which is more potent.
Also once I have this sorted I’ll start doing a write up for the full deck. I seem to top out around 50-55 cards before I decide to start working on a new idea. I never quite know how to finish off the lists. I’ll prob be moving on to making something with spellweaver helix and minds desire to see what I can do with that. Hopefully that won’t take me 2+ years like this one did.
*I’ll probably edit this post once i remember how to link/highlight cards*
edit: figured the card thing out. Left a few unlinked but they r pretty obvious
Long time no post but I want to see if u guys can help me vet a combination of cards. I have been following the progress and it’s been super cool to see how far all of this has been pushed. I’m pretty confident this doesn’t go infinite but it’s dealing with cards I haven’t designed with much yet and this group certainly has so I figured I’d run it out and see if it works.
So cards involved:
Spellweaver Helix
Approach of the second sun x2
Mind’s desire
Frazzle
Ok so a bit of set up. Desire is the only way in the deck to cast things from someplace other than my hand(not true, but those other options don’t matter to this scenario). The other thing is that the only way to get approach into my yard is by casting and then countering it(and frazzle is the only viable counter that can do it). Also recurring frazzle is not possible currently.
What I want to happen: Have 1 approach under helix with another spell I want to cast, then cast desire and have it always find and cast the 2nd approach which in turn lets me cast my other spell. To set this up I have to cast and then counter approach w/ frazzle. Then after getting my other spell into my graveyard play helix with approach and mystery spell under it, then I cast desire and go off. Once the original copy of desire resolves it goes harmlessly to the yard where I can’t do any more tricks with it.
My worry: getting desire and an approach under the helix. If somehow I can cast the other approach not from my hand I’m worried it will create an infinite loop.
So far I think I’m safe but it seems really really close.
If I cast desire first and get it into yard I can then cast approach from hand, counter it, then play helix and get them both under the helix. That seems bad but I think it’s safe. If I cast approach again from hand I will get a bunch of desire copies(scary) but both copies of approach are not in the deck to be cast. Eventually after the copies of desire finish the original copy of approach will resolve and it’ll proc the win clause and gg.
If I cast approach 1 and respond with approach 2 then desire I can desire into frazzle hitting 2nd approach. Then finish the desire and cast helix with 1st approach still on the stack putting desire and 2nd approach under helix. Then approach 1 resolves. It still sees itself being the first instance of being cast from hand so it won’t proc win and gets back into library. Also it’s already on the stack so it won’t proc helix to cast anything. We draw approach again and we r right back to where we were in the last example, scary but safe.
I actually think I’m even safe from something like snapcaster stuff too. Counter both approaches, get desire into yard, cast helix putting desire and approach under helix, cast snaps target approach, flash back approach, proc helix casting desire but again neither approach is available to be cast/reshuffled off desire casts. Approach resolves shuffling back in and again right back to the first scenario.
So I think I’m safe as the fail safes I have r just enough to keep this from being too good. If frazzle could counter desire it’s too good. If the rehuffling spell didn’t win the game it’d be too good. That being said I’m still a bit foggy on some of the mechanics that u guys r abusing so I just wanted to check.
Hmm. I think I might actually be fine even if I can counter desire, tho details matter here.
If I can counter desire, it lets me leave a stash of x desire copies on the stack. Lets say I can use negate(I can’t in my current deck but for explaining the concept here it’ll be fine).
So I cast approach 1 respond and cast desire, respond to storm trigger and negate both of them. Responding further I cast helix, putting both desire and approach 1 under it. Resolve an original desire copy(ODC), hit and cast approach 2, helix triggers casting desire making a new clump of desire copies(ND - new desire). A ND copy goes to resolve but the copy of approach that isn’t under helix is now on the stack. Theses ND spells cannot recast approach, and will eventually run out. Now our approach on the stack resolves and shuffles in. Now we go back to our original ODC batch, we resolve one of those copies and that can find and cast approach. It does and another ND batch is made via helix casting.
The loop closes once I use up all the ODC copies. Once this is done I’m back to the same setup I was in the other scenario where I cannot do too much as things just aren’t quite in the right places to go broken.
Huh, pretty cool. Don’t get to cast the spell I originally wanted too but this might be better anyway. Casting an ever increasing amount of minds desire seems pretty potent, along with gaining a ton of life along the way.
So I just want to do a better layout of the BU loops as they r stronger than they were in the last version. So I think the DF/FSC/DS interaction got credit for 4 layers in the last deck if I remember correctly but I’ll admit I don’t understand the math well enough to understand the actual growth rate. I can explain it but I can’t turn that into a mathematical expression. It’s very possible your 20 layer estimation is dead on, I’m kinda just doing this part for me, so I can understand the math in my own deck a bit better. FWIW my very rough estimation was 20-40 layers but I was so confused on how the math worked so I wasn’t even sure how to even estimate. I just knew it was stronger than my last deck and went farther down the chain as well.
So let’s just start with 1 DF card entering the battlefield event.
-DF card enters gets X FSC triggers
-Each FSC trigger makes X DF tokens
-Each DF token recasts DS or FSC
-Each recast gets X FSC triggers of DS or FSC
-Each FSC/FSC trigger makes X additional FSC
-Each DS/FSC trigger adds 2^X more DS per trigger and each next trigger scales off the new X not the same X as the previous.
So on a FSC update we take FSC from X to X(2^X). With DS being updated we take X to 2^X but repeated (updated?) X times.
*I tried to do a bit of manual calculation just to see what the math looks like and it looks to me like when we end this full use of all DS/FSC on a DS recast we appear to get a exponent stack being X exponents high being added to one x-1 then x-2 then x-3 exponents high until we r back adding our original X to the total. So the first resolves and gets us 2^X growth. Next is 2^(2^X). Next is 2^(2^(2^X)). This addition of an exponent happens each time and we r going to be doing it X times, so we should end with a calculation that is X parentheses in size with a ^ inside each of them. On top of this it’s actually even larger as we are always adding the new to the old so the end is a X exponents number added to a X-1 added to X-2 etc etc and this will just be the final trigger. I don’t know how to express it in a simplified manner but I’m sure it can be*
We can repeat the alternating between DS and FSC across the entire X DF tokens we get off 1 FSC trigger. So if we have X DF tokens we get X/2 “full cycle” update to FSC and DS
All of this is happening off of 1 DF/FSC trigger. We should have X(granted this X is static and “locked” at time of FD card entering the battlefield) triggers to work through and each time we pay for a trigger we get an updated X amount of DF tokens to use to update DS and FSC again.
Now with the old deck we were bottlenecked on BU strength as we could only get Y instances of DF entering where Y was the number of TYS on cast of BU. With the addition of flectomancer tho we can do much better. If we have done a Spellseeker/GSZ loop to update our TYS storm count our storm is actually at X(2^X) if we have X DS to start, *of note here is it doesn’t matter which we updated last FSC or DS as we either get X(2^X) FSC trigger for X seekers each or X FSC triggers for 2^X seekers each* which means our full BU chain length is Y times “storm” count. If we update Y and our storm count after settling on X DS we get a BU chain length of (2^X)(X(2^X)).
Now while that will be the total length it’s easier to break it down looking at individual TYS triggers resolving making X(2^X) BU copies. Each of the copies we can retarget to get back whatever we want thanks to flectomancer. This means the entirety of a TYS trigger of X(2^X) BU copies can be used to recur DF each time *we will have to give up a tiny amount of that number to ensure we have enough flectomancer’s to allow is to do this but as I stated in the original post I think it’s literally 1 BU copy per TYS trigger after X has been updated to get enough flectomancers to cover it, so a very small amount, it is a few more if we r doing creature resets but again it’s a tiny number in the bigger scheme of things* So let’s look again at the BU chains. We will let X be the number of DS we start with.
-We have X DS and all of important/relevant perms have been updated from this X
-we have X(2^X) mana reflections
-we tap our swamp for 2^(X(2^X)) black mana(B)
-we can spend BB to cast BU
-each BU cast gets X(2^X) TYS triggers and each TYS trigger makes X(2^X) BU copies giving us a BU chain length of (X(2^X))^2
-each BU copy can allow DF to enter the battlefield to get X(2^X) FSC triggers and start the DF token/FSC/DS updating again
*in the final TYS/BU batch we will be doing a creature reset which will allow us to update our perm and storm counts to the current X, which will cost us some very small amount BU copies to do. We do not need to update everything, just things relevant to what will be happening next or what ever else is gaining us value. Things like mana reflection don’t need updates until we will tap for mana etc. In the most basic BU loop we need to update storm/TYS/DS/FSC and I think that is it and realistically it’s mostly just DS and FSC until we are going to recast BU which then we can and should update both TYS perm count and also our TYS storm count as well*
Even at its most simplified we will get X-C DF card enters battlefield per BU chain of length X with C being enough to cover our creature resets/updates.
So another thing I was curious about is why it seems the mana battery is only getting credit for what a mox would in the same situation. Even just the first original battery will tap for at the very least X^2 compared to a mox’s production as it will have at least X counters to remove in addition to the 2^X mana reflection buff. The estimation also doesn’t seem to reflect the counters the untapped batteries gain while a batch of white mana from a battery is being used. We will have some amount of inexorable tides each producing X counters(updating) per cast of any spell for each untapped battery. We can then update IT during our DF triggers at as fast a rate of adding it to our normal DS/FSC alternating to be DS then FSC then IT using 3 DF token triggers instead of just the 2. I think it’s a mistake to update IT that often but regardless if updating it is beneficial(it makes us more W so it can’t be correct to ignore it completely) we can indeed do that quite easily.
So I think the difficulty in me knowing how to do the math is knowing how to keep track of everything once they start overlapping. You kinda hit on it by talking about parallel chains and that is where I really struggle as I’m just not sure how they all kinda intermingle. The deck doesn’t have just 1 linear chain it follows so it gets really hard to figure out what the hell is going on. It’s def possible my non linear growths just don’t grow hard enough to matter in the larger scheme of things but I am kinda curious why they don’t.
This was kinda my thoughts on what the layer count would look like, tho if around 20 is correct I’m def misunderstanding something somewhere in all of this. Number on the left is number of layers, then card, then interactions I think might be worth a layer. I tried to not double count though I might have.
1- MVD = power
5- Rings = bargain, RH, AA, sham, displacer
1- Boon = RH
1- Bargain = spiral
4- TYS = s-storm, spiral, BU, SI
2- MW = rings, WMB
1- GER = power
1- SWS = GER
1- SS = storm count
1- HTC = creature resets
1- PO/sower = colorless
1- DP = power
1- RSK = red mana
1- CC = power
5- MR = DRS, WMB+pearl, DA+emerald, wastes, swamp(s)
3- IT = WMB, red mana, power
5(6?)- DF = MR, DS, FSC, boon, TYS, (storm count?)
2- KWF = red mana/power(bodies to hold counters), power(CC triggers)
?- (Mana producers/separation?)
?- FSC/DS as our base
Also in your estimation I think u missed the colorless layer(s). Each white gets x bounces of DA. Each bounce casts SI targeting an animated waste(token or real). Each cast of SI gets x copies. Each copy makes x waste. Each waste taps for x colorless. Each colorless blinks DA x times with displacer and rings. Each blink makes x FSC/DA triggers. Then BU brings DA back gets another set of FSC triggers and is ready to be bounced again .....
Again thanks for the estimation and for being patient with me. I’ve ask a lot of questions on this thread(and the std one too) so thanks for bearing with me!
1 mox pearl
2 mox emerald
3 tinder wall
4 chaos warp
5 kykar, wind’s fury
6 thousand-year storm
7 chaos warp
8 omniscience
9 doubling season
10 future sight
11 swamp
12 welding jar
13 welding jar
14 mirrorworks
15 Sorcerer’s wand
16 vedalken orrery
17 mana reflection
18 green sun’s zenith
19 chaos warp
20 opalescence
21 flameshadow conjuring
22 sumala woodshaper
23 drake familiar
24 death’s presence
25 genju of the fens
26 cathars’ crusade
27 runaway steam-kin
28 inexorable tide
29 spellseeker
30 moonveil dragon
31 halimar tidecaller
32 goblin flectomancer
33 god-eternal rhonas
34 planar outburst
35 beacon of unrest
36 kaya’s ghostform
37 dowsing shaman
38 dryad arbor
39 spitting image
40 aegis automaton
41 coretapper
42 sculpting steel
43 white mana battery
44 rings of brighthearth
45 djinn Illuminatus
46 shatterstorm
47 yawgmoth’s bargain
48 psychic spiral
49 scatter to the winds
50 deathrite shaman
51 boon reflection
52 river hoopoe
53 oblivion sower
54 eldrazi displacer
55 nicol Bolas
here’s the list, in order, and in deck format
UU- once our first full spiral/TYS trigger has resolved we then let the next one happen and get another set of X(old X but still) spirals to work with. we use these up just as before and let another spiral/TYS trigger happen. again we use these up. we continue to work through all these spiral/TYS triggers. once we have used all of these up we pay for our next bargain/rings trigger and draw spiral from the deck again. we again cast and counter spiral just as before and get another giant spiral chain. once all of these bargain/rings triggers have been used up we do let the original bargain activation also resolve and again create another long spiral chain. then once the stack has cleared again we pay another 1 life and get X rings triggers again(new X this time) and again start working through these to draw and re cast/counter spiral to create many more spiral chains off draws from bargain and rings. we continue down this structure until we have used all but our last 1 life with bargain
*so a brief note about scatter and HTC. originally i thought we would be able to add +1 storm into our creature resets by using scatter w/ PO and HTC but i think things get messy. because of the way things will stack we will make many more scatter copies from TYS than we will ever have PO copies on the stack. this means when the scatter/TYS triggers happen we will be forced to target whatever is available to target. this means things like s-storm copies or even worse spiral copies which most certainly will still be on the stack. i think we may be able to cast scatter occasionally for storm gains but we have to be very very careful on when we actually do that. the fact that the original spiral is the only thing on the stack when we do the cast/counter helps ensure we aren't forced to counter desirable effects from the TYS triggers of scatter. it doesn't really matter much now that the SS/GSZ loop exist making updating TYS storm easy to do *
< empty stack > 1 life
VV- now we have used up the easy to use resources, time to get creative. in our last SWS loop we will pick up Deathrite Shaman(50)(DRS), ???????(51), ???????(52), ????????(53)and ???????(54). we cast DRS and conveniently during our many spirals resolving our opp library of 53 wastes(opp 1-60) are in their graveyard. while yes we can copy DRS trigger with rings it's actually pretty terrible to do so. what is very very good for us is that because MR is worded very specifically it effects the mana generation output of these DRS activation's. so we play DRS and get a FSC copy of him. we then exile one of our opp's wastes and get X blue(U) mana. now as good as using this mana to cast spiral off the top would be we can do far far better. we now cast Boon Reflection(51)(boon) and River Hoopoe(52)(RH)
< empty stack > X U, 1 life, and 1 opp wastes in exile
WW- so we play boon and get X copies of it, and then play RH. we then pay U(actually UGRRR, so we will have had to float G, easy enough) to gain 2(2^X) life and draw 1 card, onto the stack. while DRS's ability didn't make sense for us to copy w/ rings this ability from RH certainly does so we get X RH/rings triggers happening in front of the original RH ability
*so this is about to get a bit complicated but explaining this next loop uses a card that has even more value in a little bit*
XX- so now before we let any of our RH abilities resolve we have a loop we can now start that cards 53 and 54 allow. we cast Oblivion Sower(53)(sower) of the top. there is no library for us to exile away but DRS did put a land into exile we can now use. we indeed do put that land into play. we then tap it to get X colorless(C) mana. now we play Eldrazi Displacer(54)(ED). now we use ED to blink DA. DA re-enters and triggers X FSC and we then can make many green to use to get value. this doesn't really seem like a loop per say as we seem to only get 1 tap of a waste per DRS activation. the thing is tho we get way way more than that. the next time we have W we can cast PO for its awaken cost and target our waste. once that has been done when we bounce DA using a AA ability(rings or actual) we can recast SI and target our animated waste instead of targeting our swamp. these wastes come in as the land like our swamp did and don't care about having summoning sickness because they aren't creatures anymore. this means our W->G loop is now W->C->G now. this is even further compounded by the fact that EDs ability is copy-able by rings
*so i need to explain a few things to show that this doesn't go infinite. we could exile the animated waste w/ ED but that doesn't do us any good as the waste comes back from the blink in it's original non animated form(and tapped too) meaning we don't get any FSC triggers. also the blink happens in time span small enough(ie priority doesn't pass) that we cannot recast sower to get it back from exile over and over. we have no way to kill generic lands, only swamps via genju(spirit) and KWF because PO still doesn't kill lands or land creatures. we can chaos warp the land or the animated land but it doesn't actually net putting cards into back into our opp deck. however many cards r in the deck as warp resolves will be the same number after warp finishes resolving. there is no time the card is in the deck we can access it. it just gets revealed and forced into play. our opp cannot decide to leave it in the library to allow us to go infinite. this does mean we can put lands we can exile w/ DRS into play under their control but that doesn't do us much good. we can't animate them there and we cannot destroy them even if they are in play. there is a lot of scary stuff that just opened up and it is possible i missed something. i'm usually pretty thorough tho and i'm pretty confident that these cards and lines of play are safe and don't go infinite. ED is also safe with all of our artifact mana producers as ED can only blink creatures which none of our artifact mana makers are, and cannot become, creatures. we can bounce our animated wastes in an attempt to be able to retrace SI by discarding the waste but when we do the bounce the waste goes back to our opp hand, which doesn't do us any good as we can't access them there(yet)*
yy- so we now have an increase of layers down in our lower powered layers, but we need to start resolving our RH abilities to get things started. the life gain and the card draw do happen at the same time unfortunately so we cannot stack those 2 things. each time we resolve this ability we will gain 2^X life and draw spiral. we should then recast spiral from hand the start a spiral chain before using any of our newly acquired life. once that spiral chain has run its course we start working through the life via bargain. the best part about all of this is that while the number of RH abilities per single U mana will have a fixed X(rings at the time of activation of the original ability) the X in the life gain is not static. that will scale to what ever X is at the time as we can easily update the number of BR to as high as possible right before we resolve another RH ability
< RH original ability, X-1 RH/rings triggers > X-1 U, 1 + 2^X life, 52 lands in opp graveyard
ZZ- so we work through the RH abilities resolving until we have used them all including the original. then we use up our next U to restart this chain again. then we use the next U. we work through all of the U we have. then we activate another DRS and get a freshly updated X amount of U to work with, which eats another land out of our opp graveyard. once we have used up all 53 lands in our opp graveyard(bouncing and recasting sower each time to get a bit of C for each exile *i actually think it's proper to just wait until we have all additional 52 exiled before doing sower tricks*) it's time to move to card 55 which we will have to use up 1 last SWS trigger to pick up
AAA- once all 53 of our opp lands have been exiled with DRS from their graveyard and then brought back into play on our board, via sower, we will again cast PO w/ awaken and we will let our copies from TYS animate all of our actual wastes cards. we will then use at least W to use AA to bounce all waste land cards back to our opp hand(meaning they now have 60 waste cards in hand). we then play Nicol Bolas(55)(bolas) from hand, we need bolas to have haste so we pay for 1 FSC trigger and let the original die to keep a FSC token copy. we then equip sorcerer's wand(card #15 from way back when, it didn't need to live through all s-storms but it does need to have at least 1 copy of it in play now). we then activate bolas using his new ability from wand. this means bolas does 1 damage to our opp(they are now at 19 life). this triggers bolas's triggered ability and forces our opp to discard their entire hand. now we have the full 60 wastes in the yard and can start activating DRS again to make more U
*this means instead of 53 DRS activation's to make U, we now get 1193(60x19 + 53) activation's. this obviously greatly increases our amount of RH activation's as well and as such everything else that is happens deeper and deeper into the decks recursive engines*
BBB- one thing we will want to do is during the instance where we are using PO to animate the actual waste land cards into creatures we will want to animate at least 1 of our token waste lands. this way we can always have a animated waste to target with our SI retraces and its copies so the W->C->G loop is aways valid once we gain access to it. its a small thing but it's worth doing
CCC- so yeah we exile the lands, make the blue mana, make that into life, then use up the life, then need to use bolas again and use up one of their life points. we do this until we have used all 19 of their available life and then we are kinda done. we run through the loops as much as we can but we have essentially reached the end of the line. eventually we will run out of life and can no longer reshuffle s-storm and our warps to reset our artifact mana. we will have gone as far as we can
DDD- so once its all finally over we make sure our enchantments are creatures and we do our best to use up the last of our red mana on MVD buffs and then we swing with everything and our opp takes a lot of damage
notes-
with the addition of RH the 2nd welding jar can change back to chrome mox. then we can add painters servant back in as well. i had to take this out for awhile as chrome mox allowed an infinite using different cards that are no longer in the deck. the servant would allow the red mana engine to become even more powerful all be it only slightly. the big thing is that once we exhaust our opp life total we can still make a little bit more U mana from chrome mox. all of our cards can be blue(all colors if it matters) so we exile redundant pieces to gain some blue mana. cards like our chaos warps(i assume s-storm is the best of the artifact resets?) and then bolas, sower, DRS, tinder wall and possibly some others. we can get some of that value currently as we can use DRS to exile non useful creatures to gain life once they have run their course(bolas etc) but blue mana is significantly more scarce than life so it mght be worth giving up a card slot especially since we have 5 to work with currently
it would be possible to replace scatter with a 2nd spiral. this effectively allows us to run without counters. we could then run a card like approach of the 2nd sun for a 1 time life gain boost. we could also then run a instant damage dealer as our win which would allow us to cast approach a 2nd time and then get the life gain from the copies and then do our damage with the final approach cast from hand still on the stack as we did the damage.
i could easily add a damage multiplier for another layer but id have to be careful to bounce them when bolas was doing his damge or just wait to get it into play after bolas has fully done his job0
sangromancer is a card that fits into the deck. tbh i don't know how exactly it would work with the mass discard off bolas. i know it would be really good but i'm not sure how the math works on it. also the other line of text about opp creatures is a bit scary as if i figure out a way to give my opp creatures i can go infinite easily.
**** i'm going to see if i can get a full list soon but i just wanted the walk through done, which it is, finally ******
FF2- using RRR we play Sculpting Steel(42)(steel) off the top. we have it enter as a copy of MW, and the orginal MW triggers. we pay for that MW trigger and get X new MW tokens. now we play Coretapper(41)(CT) from hand *i actually think our SWS are worth less than even red mana so that is why i have used SWS triggers to pick up CT and AA instead of just playing them off the top, it's not clear tho as arbitrarily a SWS trigger is worth some fraction of a red mana that was used to pay for the FSC trigger that made them, but each SWS trigger can also find GER in our red mana amplification phase so its not so simple*, and we make get X MW triggers and X FSC triggers. we pay for all of them
GG2- now we play White Mana Battery(43)(WMB) off the top, it resolves and we get X MW triggers. now tap all X CT/FSC tokens and each puts X counters on our original WMB. then we sac all CT/FSC and CT/MW tokens to put 2X counters on WMB from each token sac'ed(this also puts X counters on RSK from DP triggers). now we tap our WMB and remove X counters and get X^X white mana thanks to X MR
HH- we use up this W the same way we did before off the pearl moxes. we will want to make sure we do bring back CT and makes all copies during our last BU chain after our creature reset. we then pay RR and resolve our first WMB/MW trigger and get X WMB token
II- unlike our first original WMB now we have many WMB in play. we now tap our CT that can tap and target each WMB token once. we should have many CTs left over after(probably ones that can just tap, vs sac only) and we then pick one of our WMB to be the next one we will draw W from. onto this WMB token we sac and tap all of our remaining CT tokens and get a lot of counters we then tap and remove all counters with the WMB and get a X W again
*this is where my understanding of the math gets a bit fuzzy. im just not sure how to best my tools optimumly. i know we need to use CT to get counter onto the WMBs originally but tbh i'm not sure its worth recurring them during our BU chains. i'm honestly no even sure its worth bringing them back during or after our creature resets. to do that we need to use up BU copies and i think those r too valuable to "waste" on CT. if we update IT properly IT should be doing far more work than CT ever can in terms of putting counters on our waiting WMBs. within our DF updates our DF triggers r bouncing and recasting our enchantments. while TYS only cares about ins/sor storm IT looks at true storm and those DF updates actually have our true storm at or above TYS storm until we do a SS/GSZ loop and that only bring our TYS storm up to where our true storm already is right before the loop begins (so true storm is about X pre SS/GSZ loop and then our TYS storm goes to X^2 and our true storm becomes X+X^2). the strength of IT in all of this is that it's giving X counters to each WMB and not just one that CT copies could do. also CT costs us a BU copy to get up and running where IT just does it automatically(we do need to give up a few DF etb's to update IT occasionally) so it costs us basically nothing and its easy to keep on top of the updates should we need or want to. which is another thing. i know IT is doing gross things but its possible to update it during our DF stuff. should i add it to the alternating of DS and FSC or should i more be looking at alternating less often? im pretty sure we want to update IT once per DF/FSC trigger but maybe its 1 per entire BU chain, i just don't know. maybe its an arbitrary number(i was thinking maybe 1 per X DF etb where X is # of DF/FSC triggers at start of the chain so 1st DF/FSC trigger we would just do 1 IT update but next DF/FSC we do every 1 per Xth DF tokens inside an new X that just got made) but if so how do we choose? fwiw i know IT triggers will be the 2nd most common thing happening in the deck behind CC triggers. maybe the updating on our DS/FSC bouncing is allowing the IT triggers to scale well enough that updating isn't as needed. i just dont know*
JJ- now we work our way through this W all the while growing the counters on the WMB tokens we haven't tapped yet via our IT triggers. once we run out of W we will use our last creature update from the very last of our BU chains to get a bunch more CT and load the next WMB up *i think it's correct to do this once, at least, per W batch we get from tapping a WMB. it's possible more is correct but i think at least 1 as we transition into the next WMB is def correct* we then tap that one and get another batch of white mana. we proceed to do this process of getting and using white mana from our WMB tokens we got from our WMB/MW trigger we resolved. once we have used them all up we pay for and resolve the next WMB/MW trigger getting a new X WMB tokens to work with. we proceed to use these up as well. we proceed this way until all but the very last WMB/MW trigger is left
KK- now before this last WMB/MW trigger resolves we will be playing Rings of Brighthearth(44)(rings). we will get X MW triggers and pay for all of them
* yeah so this is happening. while this doesn't gain us a ton of value in the BU chains we get ton of value from our sham activation's, our AA activation's, and even our CT activation's. i don't really know if this addition changes how we should process the events that those activation's put into action but i do know that we can stack things so that we can always get full rings value from these activation's. we can always get our targets back to where they need to be. we will give up the original activation but all rings copies can be used as long as we don't pay for the trigger until we have our target back where it needs to be to not fizzle which we can easily do*
*i wanted to wait to cast rings until we had X as high as we could. as i noted with IT the DF update engine means each X is progressively more powerful than the last so the most recent X will be more potent than all value gained from those earlier X's combined. this is why i waited until now and this last WMB/MW trigger. if i wait longer we won't have any top end triggers to work with to gain value from. if we did it sooner, well it might be correct to get rings down sooner. as u will see updating artifacts isn't an easy thing to do so if we play it earlier it won't have a very high X to be copied by. playing it hrre just felt right tho im not opposed to playing it elsewhere in the sequence if there is more value to be gained than i realize*
LL- so now with rings at our disposal our use of W gains value as each W now gets X activation's and not just the one. so X white gets X AA bounces and each bounce gets copied X times. our white mana generation also goes up as now CTs counter making can be copied. i don't know if this makes it a legitimate BU target during BU chains but if we are bringing it back at all rings makes it that much better. similarly to how W is used our G usage gets better as sham's targeting of KGF can and will be copied. so X green gets X activation's and each gets X rings copies
MM- so as we work through our last of our W from our very last WMB from the last WMB/MW trigger we will need to pick up Djinn Illuminatus(45)(djinn) from a random SWS trigger. once we have djinn at our disposal we will want to be sure as we run down out of our W/G/B resources we are being sure to do our advanced red mana making. we will want to sac our swamp this time even if we don't have any G left to recur the KFG. we just want to ensure that we have access to as much R as possible. it's important to now see why it's for our R generation to be as efficient as possible
NN- with BB floating and all of our R as well we play djinn and then we cast Shatterstorm(46)(s-storm) off the top. as we cast it we use all of our R to replicate it as much as possible. if like i believe our R engine is stronger than our other engines then we should be able to replicate s-storm for more copies than all of our TYS and thier triggers combined. this is why i wanted the R engine to be so powerful and so prevalent even when our R costs weren't all that high
< orginal s-storm, X s-storm copies>
OO- now before we let any of our s-storm's resolve at all we will need to do one last thing. with our last BU chain before this during our last creature update we will need to set aside one BU copy to bring back a welding jar(# 1 or 2) . luckily i think 1 jar/MW trigger will be enough to make X copies and that will be all we need to save the things we need to. we sac enough jar's to put regen shields on all token copies of WM, all token rings, and then 1 token VO. this will leave all of our artifact progress in play and still allow us to now update our rings and MW while also getting our artifacts into our yard where we can bring them back with BU. we let the first s-strom copy resolve putting our actual artifacts cards into the yard
< X-1 s-strom copies >
PP- so now we need to start bringing things back. we cast BU and get a BU chain. the original BU will target the first of our artifacts we want to bring back. the weakest i think is to just do mox emerald. let our BU chain play out as normal but with the original BU we go ahead and bring emerald back. we get X MW triggers for emerald and go abut using those up. luckily since we had our original BU target the mox we can recast BU inside this value engine we just recurred. i originally thought i needed multiple BU in the deck but with this set up i think just the 1 is all we need. so we use up all the value from the emerald coming back. next is the pearl and we go ahead and use up all that value before moving on
QQ- now we are down to our last few artifacts we want to recur in MW, rings, WMB, and steel. i'm pretty sure we want lead out with MW after using up our moxes to get X up bit higher, but it get's complicated after this. the ability for steel to come in as itself and have different numbers of things enter as different things kinda makes my head hurt. my gut tells me that we just want steel to make more copies of MW but i could be grossly underestimating the power of WMB and rings. maybe a combination of them all is correct, i just don't know
RR- once we have an optimal sequence settled on we proceed to work through this engine. getting and using large amounts of various colors of W/G/B mana as we work through getting our artifacts back. then once we have extracted maximum value we again make sure we get jar back (to save our progress via regen shields) and then let the next copy of s-storm resolve and start again. this should be fairly regimented in its structure for most of the s-storm chain. the one exception to this is when we have used up the last original s-storm. while we will still use much of the mana for just redoing what we have already been doing we will at the very end want to make sure we sequence the returning of our artifacts to ensure we can produce the maximum amount of rings
SS- during our last SWS dig we will want to pick up Yawgmoth's Bargain(47)(bargain) with one of the triggers. once our max rings have been created we will play bargain. we will make max copies as its just correct to do so but we really need 1 of these in play. we then pay 1 life and get X rings triggers. we pay for 2 of these triggers and pick up Psychic Spiral(48)(spiral) and Scatter to the Winds(49)(scatter). we leave the other bargain/rings triggers on the stack by responding to them. we cast spiral from hand. we then respond to spirals TYS triggers and cast scatter targeting spiral. TYS will trigger for scatter and we counter the original scatter and the original spiral. then the rest of the TYS/scatter triggers happen and bunch of scatters get created that don't do anything. once all of those have resolved we will then cast HTC from hand(we will need to alter our creature reset loop slightly to do this but it shouldn't lose too much value) and pick up PO and scatter. now we let the first spiral/TYS trigger happen and we get X copies of spiral. the first spiral resolves and shuffles spiral, s-storm, 3 copies of chaos warp, VO and tinder wall back into our library. we also mill our opponent for a few cards. luckily we still have flash so now we can recast these reshuffled cards from our library before the next spiral resolves
TT- with the help of flect and gobs of red mana we can now recast chaos warps 1-3 off the top and reset one permanent per copy and use djinn and that red mana to make many many copies. we will always just target WMB, MW, or rings (unless doing it with steel is just better) to maximize our value. once all of our red mana artifact resets have been cast and copied and their value has been used up we let the next copy of spiral resolve
< oirginal bargain activation, x-2 bargain/rings triggers, x-1 spiral/TYS triggers, x-2 copies of spiral > 19 life
***** post size break *****
U- we spend RRRWW to cast Planar Outburst(PO)(34) off the top of our deck. so a lot is about to happen. one thing we want to do is after the dust settles we will need to have X + 7 red mana floating where X is the number of FSC we have. so we remove X + 7 counters from one of our RSK making red mana and then the fireworks begin. also of note here is that this is why we had to pay a few enchantments for less value. we haven't had a chance since step L to return opalescence to hand. we had to do it there or we would have lost all of our progress in enchantments. so the important thing here is that we are going to getting our creatures into our yard but there is also some stuff going on with preserving out gained power as well
V- so i've already talked a bit about our red mana engine of KWF/RSK/IT/CC but the really powerful engine is all those plus SWS/GER/PO/MVD/DP and our animated swamp. so our swamp doesn't die in these PO's, even as a creature, because of PO specific wording about non land creatures. this means we can "store" all of our power progress on the swamp for retrieval later via our DP triggers(spoiler, the swamp will die). before any PO resolve though we can do some powerful stuff to actually amplify our total power in a pretty significant manner. *when i say all mana i am referring to all disposable mana, our saved red and floating black are not to be touched* so first thing we do is pull all counters of RSKs possible by converting them into red mana. then we filter it all through MVD. this means that we should get something like X->L+2->X red mana(where L is number of layers of X, i think the mana is at 2-4 layers higher so this was a guess) which means our team of f(X) bodies each get that much additional power. this in itself would be good but we can do far better. we have a ton of K tokens *in fact the amount of K tokens will be far great than any other type of permanent* still around(esp after the X^2 casts of GSZ). these can kill themselves so we sac 1. we get our MVD buff plus its original non buff power back in counters from DP that are amplified by 2^X. we put all these counters back onto one RSK, and then remove them all again to buff our team again. then we sac the next K token and repeat. we do this for all of our K tokens. what's important here is in none of this process are we losing ground power wise. sure we go down when we convert the counters into mana but that mana is a 1/1 ratio coming back from the MVD buff. and yes we lose power when we sac a K token but again we get it back(modified by X actually) from DP(X of them when i can update properly). while the MVD buff isn't amplified by X itself, the output is because the number of bodies in play is most certainly some f(X) so even this is scaling to X. once we work through all the sac'able creatures and used them to buff our team it's time to let our POs to start resolving. the first POS resolves and kill all of our huge creatures. this triggers DP to put P(our total power) counters(P^X actually from DS modification) onto our swamp (the only thing still alive). the rest of the PO rage but ultimately don't do anything. we still don't want our pearl/MW trigger to resolve yet so we will responding further using the cards in our hand
W- with the board clear and all POs resolved(original in the yard) we now cast Halimar Tidecaller(31)(HTC). this is why we needed our X red mana floating. we still get X FSC triggers, but we will let the original's etb trigger first getting PO back to hand, which we will recast before our FSC triggers are resolved. this puts our HTC into the yard. after all the POs have resolved and our DP counters have gone to our swamp we pay for our first HTC/FSC trigger. we get X tokens but only 1 of those etb's can grab PO, which it will, and again we cast PO before resolving the next FSC trigger. we move the DP counters to the swamp again. we repeat this for all but the last FSC trigger. with that one we will get PO back but we will leave it in hand. this means we get X casts of PO. not as good as the SS/GSZ loop but it does serve a better purpose of resetting my creatures by putting them into the yard. with all POs resolved it is now safe to replay opalescence from hand. we will have a chance to get it back to hand before we wipe again. now its time to move onto using our B we still have floating
X- we pay RRRBB and cast Beacon of Unrest(35)(BU) off the top. because we were able to update storm to X^2 earlier, and because we have X TYS as well we will get many many BU copies. the original target actually doesn't matter. we are about to fix one of my old decks shortcomings. the copies targets don't matter either. we are about to modify them anyway
<VO/MW, pearl/MW, org BU, X-1 TYS/BU triggers, X copies of BU> RRRR and X-2 B floating
Y- before any BU copies resolve we cast Goblin Flectomancer(32)(flect) from our hand. we get some FSc triggers, but we only pay for 1 getting X flect tokens. we sac the original flect to target RSK with the first BU and put flect into the yard. we let this BU resolve and get RSK back into play. we resolve the CC trigger first to allow us to pay for all FSC/RSK triggers. before the next BU resolves we sac a flect to re-target onto KWF. we get KWF back(paying for at least 1 FSC trigger so we can kill the orginal to legend rule) and now we have our basic red mana engine back online. we then sac a flect token to get DF back with a BU copy. with our mana engine online we have no issues paying for all DF/FSC triggers. we let the original die, and use the other DFs to update X again through DF/FSC alternating bounces. we use the last of our DF token bounces to update CC/IT/DP so our mana engine is operating in a more standard manner. now that our current X is updated past our X^2 storm/TYS count we can use a flect/BU to bring the original flect back to play, then pay for enough FSC triggers to get enough tokens to redirect the rest of the BU chain. we will of course sac the original flect to get it back into the yard. this means we can use every BU copy(and org) to get back DF(or anything else). while the majority of the BUs will indeed be getting DF we will need to get other stuff to fully be able to update everything
*so i'm gonna be honest i don't understand the math well enough to know exactly how to best use the full BU chain here. my gut says that the best option is to do 1 full creature reset per BU chain(so per BB spent). we are fully capable of doing this with the chain. the only thing we need to be sure of is to pull it off we need to cast PO when we still have at least 1 flect/FSC trigger still on the stack. that way we can redirect the BUs we have left to get back up and running. i think we need 1 BU on flect per BU chain and an additional 1 BU on flect per reset but its possible my math is wrong here. my instinct is that we want to as late as possible in the BU chain to do our reset. the DF update engine is very powerful and the difference between resetting on BU/DF 25 vs even BU/DF 26 is a huge difference in our X value, so 25 to say 1 million basically makes our 25 X have contributed basically nothing. if we wait and do our full reset near the end our BU chain X will be appropriately high and we will update the things that need to be updated to that current very high X which those updated values will be higher than if we did many updates as the next update will be drastically more powerful than the last. also along those same lines we get get additional value in only doing 1 creature update because it menas we didn't waste possible DF updates(our most powerful effect currently) on anything less powerful. we need to do creature reset to update storm so we should probably be resetting everything and doing as full a reset/update as possible when we need to be doing it anyway. this may change later but this is how i see me best using these BU chains currently*
<VO/MW, pearl/MW> X-2 B floating
Z- so once we have worked through our BU chain and used them all up our original BU shuffles back to the top of the deck. we just finished a BU chain so our storm and number of TYS should be updated so we can pay another RRRBB and cast BU again getting a much much much longer BU chain this time. we repeat our chain use and work through it in a similar fashion to the last one. once we finish this chain we use up another BB and start the chain again. we do this for each BB we have until we have used all of our B up. in our very last creature update while we are working through many SWS triggers finding GER we will instead use 1 of them to find Kaya's Ghostform(36)(KGF) and keep it in our hand until our BU chain has run its course. still before our 2 MW triggers resolve we do cast the KGF onto our animated swamp. once there we sac the swamp to KWF(genju makes the swamp a spirit) to make R. we get a massive amount of DP triggers returning all our "stored" power back onto our RSK's. we can then remove them to make a huge amount of red mana we will have floating to use for triggers or buffs. the other thing that happens tho is that KGF brings the swamp back into play untapped(also genju comes back to our hand as part of its own ability). since we just did a massive update at the end our our last BU chain we should have updated our MR so our swamp will tap for an updated X amount of B. once we have tapped for mana we play the genju again and animate the swamp. *it's def possible that casting genju later is optimum as we really only need the swamp animated for PO resolutions. there are def some creature deaths during our BU chains that are not from PO but its not many and i believe RSK will be in play for most if not all of them so we might be able to wait until X is much higher to cast genju and get more KWF tokens if played correctly* so with this batch of B we will use it up the same way we did before with 2 exceptions. we will use one of our SWS triggers to find Dowsing Shaman(37)(sham). we will also want to make sure that our very last BU to resolve(which will be the actual card) will get us back SS. this will allow a very late storm update but it will also allow something else. the very last of those GSZ to resolve will actually find us Dryad Arbor(38)(DA). while the original has summoning sickness, when we pay for its first FSC trigger, those tokens will not. we will then tap 1 DA token and get X green mana(G)
<VO/MW, pearl/MW, X-1 DA/FSC triggers> X G floating, X-1 DA tokens untapped
AA- we will then cast sham from hand, and again we will have to pay for 1 sham/FSC trigger to get a lot of hasty sham's. we then pay RRG and tap one of our sham to get KFG back from our yard. we then cast KGF onto the swamp just as before. also as before we sac the swamp, KFG goes to yard, swamp into play, and genju back to hand. we tap the swamp for X B and then replay the genju onto the swamp and animate it. once again the SS/GSZ loop has updated our storm count to X^2 so when we cast BU again its a huge chain. we again use flect and his tokens to make sure we can use the full length of the BU chain. this process is how we turn 1 G into many B
<VO/MW, pearl/MW, X-1 DA/FSC, original BU, X-1 BU/TYS triggers, X^X BU copies> X-1 G floating, X-2 B floating, X-1 DA tokens untapped
BB- we use our B up at BB each time and work through our increasingly longer BU chains. then once we have used all the B up we use up another of our floating G, get KGF back and make another batch of B scaled to our new X once again. we repeat this G->X B until our first batch of G has been used up. we then tap our next DA token and get an updated X amount of G. we then again work on converting G->X B and using that B up to update us fully in BU chains. once we have used up our first DA/FSCs triggers worth of DA tokens we pay for our next DA/FSC trigger and once again get and newly updated X DA tokens to use to make many ever increasing X sized batches of G which in turn makes B and in turn updates everything aggressively. once we have work through all of the DA/FSC triggers we will be back to our waiting pearl/MW trigger. because W is so powerful in this deck we still will be responding before we let the pearl/MW trigger resolve
CC- we now cast mox emerald off the top. we will respond to this emerald/MW trigger by tapping the original emerald for G. this process will play out identically to the DA/FSC triggers and G use. before we use the very last of this G up we will want to leave GGGG floating
DD- when our original BU shuffles into the deck after using up the last B with GGGG floating we will actually have it shuffle into the 2nd from the top slot instead of the top slot. this top slot will be Spitting Image(39)(SI) and we will cast it of the top for RRRRGG. we will get X TYS triggers, each making X copies. all of these plus the original will target our animated swamp. i could target DA but these SI tokens don't have haste like the FSC ones do. luckily when we target the swamp and try to copy it the copy will be a copy of the original card which is just a swamp land. these don't care about summoning sickness and can be tapped to make mana as soon as they exist. because we can use BB to update our MR we will be tapping these swamps one at a time and then using all the mana to update further before tapping the next. then we let the next SI copy resolve and repeat. then the next TYS trigger resolves and makes a bunch more, we use these up and move to the next TYS trigger. once we have let all the TYS triggers resolve the original SI resolves and makes ones last batch of swamps and the SI goes to the graveyard. we use up these last swamps to update but we do use a SWS trigger to pick one more card(40,??????) before we finish things up
EE- we pay RR and our pearl/MW trigger is paid for we get X mox pearl tokens. we then pay an additional RR and let our VO/MW trigger happen. we get X VO tokens. our stack is now empty for the first time in quite some time. we tap one of these pearl tokens to get X W and prepare to move into the use of W
FF- we play Aegis Automaton(40)(AA) from hand. we will be leaving the triggers on the stack as we only ever need 1 of these in play. unfortunately our creature resets will be destroying these AA so we will have to use up a AA/FSC trigger each time we come back to use up a W but that will last us awhile *i think it actually covers the entirety of each mox pearl we tap but i might be messing the math up. it's possible welding jar's could be used here but it doesn't seem worth it as we need to use up BU for those too and we will have many many PO this would need to regenerate through* regardless if we need to we can use up a random BU to get AA back into play and if we do it as our last BU(the original card) to resolve we can again leave AA/FSC triggers on the stack. we now pay RRRRW and bounce our DA to our hand. we then retrace SI from the yard with RRRRGG and discarding DA. SI and all its copies will again target our animated swamp. we will use the swamps up until we are on our last BB from our last swamp. we will wait until our very last BU(original card) from our last chain and we will bring DA back into play. *i think its correct to use up the swamps first instead of bringing back DA first, tho i might be wrong* and set off our FSC triggers on DA. we use up there DA/FSC triggers and their resulting tokens to get our B->G loops going. this time though when we run out of G(well we need to leave GG to restart after using a W) we can just go and use up a W to refresh our G supply. so now its W->G->B. now we work our way through the mox pearl tokens one at a time until we have used them all up. we will be making more white here shortly so we do need to leave GG floating
GG- we now cast mox pearl off the top of the deck. we again respond to the pearl/MW trigger and tap our original pearl. we get X W. we use this up and pay for our pearl/MW trigger again and get X pearl tokens. we use these up as well. we are back to an empty stack. we will want to leave GG floating here as we transition into our next phase of the deck. we will want in our last SWS loop to use up another trigger to pick up another card(41, ???????)
*this is where i got to in the last deck for what i posted to the thread. the next aspect i had finished designing but never got to posting it. i did have even further figured out as well but most of that end game has changed over time. some of it is the same but most of it is repetitively new or is a much improved version of the idea/concept. part of reason i never posted this next step is tbh i have no idea how to optimize it or even the correct order to play some of these cards. one of the cards is pretty confusing to me as to when i should introduce it. it doesn't effect the use of B but it definitely can effect the G->B and W->G. i don't know how powerfully but it's def something. also this card effects a decent amount of things after this so i know it's correct to use it but i do wonder if it should have come down sooner. much like the PO enable a form of advanced red mana creation, we are about to move into advanced white mana creation*
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it's been awhile since i posted anything on this deck but i have been working on it in the background. figured i'd post my progress so far. it's still incomplete as i'm around 5 or so cards short of the full 60 but i feel like sharing the deck at this point. a lot of this will be familiar as it's based of the last version but it makes significant strides in potency in quite a few ways. i'll try to not talk too much about the old deck so i'll be presenting some stuff that feels like a rehash but often there are some pretty important improvements so i really did need to go through it all again.
max damage 2020
opening 7:(this is the same)
1 mox pearl
2 mox emerald
3 tinder wall
4 chaos warp(#1)
5 kykar, wind's fury(KWF)
6 thousand-year storm(TYS)
7 chaos warp(#2)
A- play both moxes(1,2) and wall(3), sac wall for RR and tap pearl for RRW to cast chaos warp #1(4) targeting pearl. pearl shuffles back into the deck and we get Omniscience(8) into play
B- cast Kykar, Wind's Fury(5)(KWF), then cast Thousand-Year Storm(6)(TYS), triggering KWF to get 1 spirit token(i will refer to KWF tokens as K and will track the amount as K=x, currently K=1)
C- cast chaos warp #2(7) targeting mox emerald. we trigger both TWS and KWF. we will resolve the TYS trigger first and we target the K token with our copy of warp. this resolves(K=0) and we get Doubling Season(9)(DS) into play. then the KWF trigger resolves and we get 2 tokens(K=2). now we resolve our original warp #2 and shuffle emerald back into the deck and get Future Sight(10) into play
D- we play a basic swamp(11) off the top of the library
E- cast welding jar #1(12) and #2(13) off the top. we get 2 K each(K=6). we sack 5 K(K=1) to cast Mirrorworks(14)(MW), which get us 2 K(K=3). cast sorcerer's wand(K=2 then 4)(15, we won't be using this for a very long time), then cast Vedalken Orrery(VO)(16)(K=0 then 2). when VO enters we have a MW trigger go onto the stack
*now we have flash and we will start responding to triggers. i will try to periodically restate what is still on the stack, floating mana, etc as we move through the process of playing things. we want to leave this VO/MW trigger on the stack*
<last<VO/MW>first> K=2
F- cast mox pearl of the top(K=4), enters get MW trigger but respond to pearl/MW trigger by casting mox emerald(K=6). this time we will let emeralds MW trigger resolve and sac 2 K(K=4) to pay for it, and we get 2 mox emerald tokens. we then tap 2 mox emeralds and sac 4 K(K=0) to cast Mana Reflection(MR)(17) for RRRRGG, and get 2 K(K=2). we now tap our last mox emerald to get GG and cast Green Sun's Zenith(18)(GSZ)on X=0(K=4) off the top with GSZ finding nothing and then shuffling back into the deck. we now tap our mox pearl and get WW.
<VO/MW, pearl/MW> K=4, WWG floating
G- sac 2 K(K=2) and then pay GRR to cast chaos wrap #3(19) targeting original mox emerald. we get 2 K(K=4) as we will let the KWF trigger resolve first and then target welding jar #1, mox pearl, and DS with our 3 TYS copies.
H- jar shuffles back into the deck and we get Opalescence(20) into play. now our non auras enchantments are also creatures
I- pearl shuffles into our deck and we get Flameshadow Conjuring(21)(FSC) into play. it enters as a creature and self triggers. we pay with a K(K=3) and get 2 FSC tokens
J- DS shuffles back in and we re-find it with the copy of warp and it enters as a creature triggering all 3 FSC. we sac our last 3 K(K=0) to pay for the 3 triggers get 2, then 8, then 2048 DS. before we resolve the original warp #3 we cast welding jar #1 off the top and get X K(K=X)
K- the original warp #3 resolves on emerald. it shuffles in and we find Sumala Woodshaper(22)(SWS) which enters and we get it's own etb and also 3 SWS/FSC triggers. we will resolve SWS own etb first and pick up Drake Familiar(23)(DF). still responding to our SWS/FSC triggers we will play DF. same as with SWS we will resolve DFs own etb before the DF/FSC triggers resolve. with this etb we will just let DF die and go to the graveyard
<VO/MW, pearl/MW, SWS/FSC x3, DF/FSC x3> K=X, WW floating
L- now we use a K to pay for our first DF/SWS trigger and make 2^2059(current X) DF tokens. our first trigger we will pick up FSC and then replay it(during this process we will get many many K and can easily pay of all FSC triggers we will create). we get 3 FSC/FSC triggers which we will pay for getting 3X more FSCs. the next DF etb trigger will pick up DS and again we will replay it, this time with X FSC triggers(actually 3X+, tho X is scaling so fast it doesn't matter much). each of these DF triggers we resolve updates X at 2^X rate and we have X of them to work through. we then pick up FSC again and play it again getting X FSC triggers to make X FSC each. next its DS again. this was 4 DF tokens triggers. we have 2^2059 - 4 left to work through. we will repeat the bounce/replay dance with DS and FSC using up all the bounce triggers from all of our DF tokens. next we pay for our next DF/FSC trigger and get and updated X DF tokens. we again proceed in the same manner and use all these triggers to bounce and replay FSC and DS alternating between the 2 for maximum growth. after that DF/FSC has been used up we pay for our final DF/FSC trigger and again proceed to use all but 3 of these triggers up as well. we need to save 2 so once X has been fully updated we can update our number of MR and TYS, and the last 1 will be used to pick opalesence up into hand.
M- we now tap our swamp for X(actually 2^X but again X will be scaling so fast it doesn't matter much) black mana(B)
<VO/MW, pearl/MW, SWS/FSC x3> K = more than X but not sure by how much, WW and X B floating
N- before we start using our black mana we will need a few more tools. we pay for all 3 of our SWS/FSC triggers and let them start to resolve. we will be using up all of these right now. we will be "drawing" 9 cards and then the rest of them will be drawing the same card a lot of times
O- the first 5 cards will be Death's presence(24)(DP), Genju of the Fens(25), Cathars' Crusade(26)(CC), Runaway Steam-Kin(27)(RSK), and Inexorable Tide(28)(IT). Now we are going to lose some value here as we will be playing some enchantments onto a board with no Opalescence to get FSC triggers but the value loss should be minimal as we will be capable of updating soon enough and can catch these ones we are playing now up to the others very quickly and easily
P- we play DP onto the field and then genju onto our swamp, which we then animate. next comes CC into play. then we play RSK. this is naturally a creature so we do get FSC triggers which we do pay for using the CC trigger. next comes IT which again is just a single copy of. RSK/CC/IT is our new red mana engine. combined with KWFs token generation we will be capable of a staggering amount of red mana production. honestly IT is the weakest part of this production but it's real role in the deck is actually a bit later. it adds value here tho so im introducing it now. this core when properly updated makes 2-4 layers of mana above what ever layer we are currently at. it is also adding tons of power to the board w/ CC doling out just tons of counters. the power that is being accumulated is not just to attack with. we have a mechanism to convert much if not all of it directly back into red mana without giving up P/T in the process. while the red mana isn't super valuable right now it does ensure we can pay for all of our FSC triggers which isn't a small matter. with RSKs active now we no longer need to sac any K. K will just grow and accumulate CC counters for now
Q- our 6th "draw" will pick up a very powerful tool for us in Spellseeker(29)(SS). this card interacts really well with our deck in that it allows us to update our "storm" counts of TYS. so SS enters and we get X FSC triggers which we will pay for all of them before we start to resolve any etbs. we unfortunately can't get all the bodies into play at first but that's a small bump. the first SS trigger will find GSZ. we will cast it for free. it finds nothing but shuffles back into the deck. we get all triggers from this cast(KWF/IT/TYS). our TYS copies don't really do anything here unfortunately but KWF and IT help make a bunch of bodies and mana. the important thing is that GSZ is back in the deck for the next SS to go find so we can cast it again, which we do. then we continue to do this for each SS token. we will get about X^2 SS tokens, which means we get X^2 casts of GSZ which updates our storm count to X^2
R- our 7th will be Moonveil Dragon(30)(MVD) which we will cast and make full copies of *i should probably play this before SS but it's not a huge deal tbh. we just need access to this ability coming up shortly*
S- our 8th and 9th draws we will keep in hand as ??????(31) and ??????(32)
T- our 10th draw will be God-Eternal Rhonas(33)(GER) who we are about to see a lot of. so during what is about to happen we will want to for the most part keep as many counters on our RSKs as possible. we will remove them to pay for FSC triggers but we shouldn't be doing it very often. when GER enters we will stack the triggers so that it's doubling effect is the last thing to happen. once all this nonsense has resolved we will get 1 more double power buff. we will have our CC trigger before the FSC. so the order in first<CC/FSC/buff>last. so GER enters, CC triggers, X FSCs trigger, buff waiting. when we pay for our first FSC trigger we get X GERs. immediately we need to resolve the legend rule. we pick one token GER and sac the rest including the original(who shuffles in 3rd from top of our library). this sets off X DP triggers from X GER dying. we put these counters on 1 RSK. This RSK will be our alpha RSK and will absorb all DP counters from GER deaths. next we get X(actually X-1 but close enough) buffs resolving. next up is the next FSC trigger to resolve, which we do. again we get X GER entering. we choose one of the new ones to be our survivor and again put all DP counters on our alpha RSK. we repeat this process for all of our X FSC triggers. then we proceed to our 11th of our 3(2^X) draws, which is, surprise surprise, GER again. we repeat this process of playing GER over and over for each of these SWS "draw" triggers. so our stack has shrunk back to just our pearl and VO MW triggers. we don't yet want to resolve either of these so we are going to use up the WW we have floating
< VO/MW, pearl/MW > WW floating
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Looks like I need to read cards better I guess, or possibly read the full thread to see how things actually work. FWIW that is a very cool work around. Glad to see that you guys are still way better at this than me lol. It is still nice to see this have some traction tho. Kind of a nice distraction to get lost in for a bit.
Jkibbs
So I hate to show up out of the blue and ruin things but the blue mana stage goes infinite. Quasi + mystic + dowser + pixie + haste + storm goes infinite. So on the stack we target something with the original quasi. Then tys triggers. We use the first of these to target mystic. We then use this new mystic to counter the original quasi and put it into our graveyard. Then our next quasi to resolve will be targeting dowser, which we use to get back quasi into our hand. The rest of the storm amount of quasi’s all target pixie. This gives us plenty of mana to recast quasi to restart this loop
Hopefully this doesn’t mess up the deck structure too badly if parts need to be replaced or removed entirely.
I’m glad these projects are still moving along tho. I haven’t read through everything yet but I did notice this loop.
Hope everyone is doing ok. At some point I will post the last parts of my vintage list I had been working on. I need to sit down and make sure I still remember how everything actually worked before I post any more write ups tho.
Jkibbs
1- White mox entering battlefield
2- X mirrorworks triggers
3- each trigger makes x mox’s
4- each mox makes x white mana
5- each white mana bounces DA
6- each DA bounce casts SI
7a1- each mox emerald entering gives x MW triggers
7a2- each MW triggers makes x green mox’s
7b-each cast of SI puts x DA into play getting x FSC triggers and getting x copies of SI targeting DI
8- each DA(or mox emerald) can tap for X green mana
9- each green mana can recur KGF which allows us to retap our swamp for x black mana
10- 2 black mana can cast BU
11- each BU cast gets x batches
12- each batch makes 1 BM or BM+ loop
13a- each BM loop makes x DF tokens enter
13b- each BM+ loop is BM plus ups our storm count x
13c- each BM+ loop gives us SWS entering
14- each SWS gives us Rhonas card
15- each Rhonas entering gives us x FSC triggers
16- each FSC triggers gives x Rhonas
17- each Rhonas token gives us double power buff
? Whenever creatures die we get x^2 counter(x DP and then x DS).
?? Each BM+ loop all non lands creatures die
??? When we make the green->black transition we will get back all p/t back lost since last g->b transition as we can save it all on the swamp during PO resolving.
???? We can convert these counters into x red mana via RSK
????? We can convert 3 red into a buff for the team.
And yeah 8-11 layers sounds about right for where I normally end up. I do still have space as u mentioned. I should still have 3-4 more layers, maybe a bit more. I hope to get those written up in the next week or so.
Jkibbs