Doh! My mistake... I confused the Blurred with the Nimble. Hmm, so I guess that's another deck I can't go 2-2 against. Still, I think this is one of the strongest contenders for a mise deck.

Hey, why didn't I go 2-2 versus corncob? My Sheltered Valley nullifies his Mongoose damage...

Unfortunately, Energy Field doesn't prevent mana burn

I agree. Numbering would help.

I also think Alfred's mise deck 2-2's your Buddha deck, wonkey. You both build up mana, and then you either play Balancing Act (he discards FoW), or you play Dragon (he hardcasts FoW just to get it out of his hand, then plays Field), or you cycle Dragon and play Act (he has enough mana to hardcast FoW against your Act).

In any case, I need to go think of something that will get me better than last place...

wonkey, I think you forgot about my follow-up PM, where I changed my deck to Black Lotus, Conjurer's Bauble, Spiketail Drake (or if you didn't allow that, I changed it to Black Lotus, Treasure Hunter, Crush of Wurms, similar to Goblinboy's deck).

Here's what I've been working on:

upwelling
cabal pit
dark ritual
elvish spirit guide
tower of eons
death wish
death wish

SB:
divergent growth
decompose
decompose
mirari
donate
relic bind
metal fatigue

You start off by playing Cabal Pit, removing ESG, then playing Ritual and Upwelling. Bring out Tower of Eons, which will let you gain 2 life every 8 turns (and you have to start with at least 9 life). MirariWish for the combo pieces (you can gain life between the Wishes). Once you've stored enough mana and life, you can go for the win.

Donate your Tower (you need to keep your Mirari). Play Relic Bind on it, then Metal Fatigue to do 1 damage to your opponent. Decompose the Fatigue, Wish for it, then play it the next turn. Decompose the first Decompose and the Fatigue, Wish for both, then play Fatigue the next turn. Repeat until you do 20 damage. This requires you to play 37 Wishes (and 37 Wish copies), so you need 2^74 life. Because you only gain 2 life per 8 turns, this means you need at least 2^77 (or roughly 10^23) turns for this deck. I don't have an exact figure yet, but I think that's pretty good.

Yeah, I had expected a 4-of limit as well, but when I saw other people using 196 Final Fortunes or 7 Leviathans, I figured we had thrown the book out the window.

So now we're back to what?

One additional obstacle to adding a Guiding Spirit-esque is engine is that it will very likely 'dilute' the deck. Currently, the only way to build a storm count is through repeated Wishes, but if you add in some other looping mechanism, you can build your storm count through other spells (and only occasional Wishes). It'll be tough to try to come up with something that will keep the Wish requirements intact.

EDIT: I guess one thing you can do, although it's very inelegant, is to add Volrath's Stronghold and 199 Turnabouts to the sideboard.

Just for benchmark purposes, here's the results for the LeviaShot deck I proposed earlier:

tolarian academy
black lotus
library of leng
gemstone array
death wish
mirari
stream of life

death wish
battle of wits
scattershot
leviathan (x200)
piper's melody

// 14 turns for setup
1 academy, lotus, array
2 library
3 charge.1
4 charge.2
5 charge.3
6 mirari
7 charge.1
8 charge.2
9 charge.3
10 wish+mirari (5 life) for wish+battle
11 charge.1
12 charge.2
13 charge.3
14 wish+mirari (1 life) for wish+melody

// 2^1997-2 turns to gain 2^1997-1 life
2^1997-3  charge.2^1997-3
2^1997-2  stream for 2^1997-1

// 7802 turns to build mana and win
7800 charge.7800
7801 wish+mirari 200 times for wish+leviathan <storm 200> [400 divisions]
  play 200 leviathans <storm 400>
  play battle <storm 401>
  wish for wish 1596 times <storm 1997> [1996 divisions]
  wish for scattershot <storm 1998> [1997 divisions]
  scattershot+mirari, killing all leviathans
  piper's melody
7802 win
(total of 1200+1800+5+4791+6+1=7803 mana, 1997 life divisions)
 
total turns: 14 + 2^1997 - 2 + 7802 = 2^1997 + 7814 turns


Nibble's idea with the Guiding Spirit is interesting. If I use that to replace my Piper's Melody, this number can easily be extended to an even much larger amount.

EDIT: Oops, I fudged my results - I forgot it's better to wish for the Leviathans during the final turn. I'm updating now.

That could be good. But then, how do you untap Steamclaw? An alternative is 2 Decomposes+Ether Well. That way you have to Wish for Decompose as well in each loop.

Well, to play the deck optimally, you would Wish for most of the Leviathans and discard them into your graveyard during your discard step. Then your hand will be:

Death Wish
Mortal Combat
Scattershot
4x Leviathan

This means you only need to kill off 4 Leviathans with your Scattershot, instead of 20.

theorigamist: You're right, Morality Shift is a little slower, but I wanted to make sure the only 200 cards you can put back are the Leviathans. I really think the Scattershot with 200 Leviathans is the best lead we've got right now (I mean, something on the order of 10^602 is pretty ridiculous). I wish I could slow down the mana generation or the lifegain though. The big problem is forcing a Library of Leng or Spellbook into play (wonkey's version needs to address that), and the only solutions we've come across so far are the rather quick Blinkmoth Urn and Tolarian Academy (by the way, I've already counted the Academy mana for casting the Leviathans). I also needed my lifegain to be a one-shot source because my Wishes can be spread out, and the best solution I found was Stream of Life. (Maybe Juju Bubble could work, but I would have to calculate if it's faster to keep the Bubble around and gain life in between Death Wish loops.

EDIT: A bit too late, you already covered most of what I wanted to say.

Wouldn't the Biskelion block the Factory instead? After damage goes on the stack, the Biskelion can kill your Pet, leaving you with nothing on your side of the board, and your opponent would be left at 1 life. Then Ferropede swings for the win.

EDIT: Oh, and some corrections to mine.

Against the Biskelion/Ferropede decks (4 & 18), you gave me 3 free points.  Those should be 6-0 in their favor, not 6-3

Against CaptainPlanet, I think I should go 6-0 instead of 2-2. If I make the first move, I can play Eater. If he Edicts me, I can Confiscate his Factory and win. If he makes the first move, I can Confiscate his Factory before he can kill me.

I understand that the last part needs to be done all in the same turn, but the Wishes when getting the Fortunes into your hand can be done independently. If I'm looking at the right post, on the last turn I see 2 Wishes and one Contract per loop (which gets 2 Fortunes into the library), so I get 2^294 life needed for that. The other life divisions come before the final turn, and you can do those independently.

I'm probably mistaken though. The idea has changed several times and I might have lost track of what's going on.


EDIT: Okay, I've given up on my other deck, since it's clearly not as good, so I decided to work on the Battle of Wits idea. I figure, why Final Fortune? I think I can do better with 200 Leviathans.

tolarian academy
black lotus
library of leng
gemstone array
death wish
mirari
stream of life

death wish
battle of wits
crippling fatigue
leviathan (x200)
piper's melody

Since there's only one Stream for lifegain, you only get one chance to get all the life you'll need for the rest of the process. Every Death Wish after that is cumulative.

It takes 117 turns to Wish for 4 Leviathans, play them, and use Crippling Fatigue (you can Mirari it), flashback it, Wish it back, etc. to kill the 4 Leviathans. In that loop, you need to play Wish 9 times (and copy it 9 times), giving you 18 life divisions (plus some extra because of the 3 life payment to flashback Fatigue). Since you need to do this loop 50 times, that gives a minimum factor of 2^900 life required.

After all the Leviathans are in your graveyard, you can Piper's Melody and win the next turn.

Actually, just now I thought, why not combine the 200-Leviathan deck with Scattershot? Same idea, except you put in Scattershot instead of Fatigue, and you still use Piper's Melody for the win. You need a Storm count of 1998, and 200 of those are Leviathans, so you would need to cast Death Wish 1798 times (200 of that is copied to get the Leviathans, so that's back to 1998). A few more Wishes to get the other pieces, and that's around 2^2000 life required right there.

I'm not so sure these decks will work the way you want. If the Death Wish loops are independent, then you can go through one loop, then build life and tokens, then repeat the loop, etc. Ideally, you want to force the deck to gain all its life at once, so that you can't just gain life in between loops. Otherwise, it's something like: start at 2^N life, Wish N-1 times, rebuild life to 2^N. This is MUCH smaller than if you have to gain all the life before doing the Wishes.

Well, here's a sillier variation of the Storm Wish deck:

peat bog
svyelunite temple
blue mana battery
trade routes
death wish
mirari
black market

death wish
leviathan (x8)
scattershot
drain life
juju bubble
north star
mind over matter
?? right-hand-parts of B.F.M. (or other useless nonblue card)

The idea here is that you use Trade Routes and Peat Bog to charge your Battery for mana, then start Wishing. Use your fourth MirariWish (when you're at 1 life) for Juju Bubble and gain all your life in one shot (I think it should be optimal to do it all at once because it has cumulative upkeep, and your only real mana source is Battery, but I'm not 100% sure). Start wishing out Leviathans one at a time. When you've got them all out, play North Star and Mind Over Matter, then use North Star to repeatedly cast Wish to build storm count (there should be exactly enough BFMs to untap North Star the right number of times in the final turn, so you can't waste any before then - but you can MirariWish for each BFM while you do this). Finally, use North Star again to play Scattershot (with a Storm count of 78) and Mirari it, killing all 8 Leviathans and putting 8 charge counters on Black Market. Next turn, Drain Life for 10 + Mirari for the win. (*Note: North Star can't be used for the X part of Drain Life, but can be used to pay for the B in the base cost)

The mana generation is faster than the other decks, but the life requirement should be much higher since you need to gain it all at the same time (I'm guessing somewhere around 2^85?). The BFM part is mainly for fun - it can be any useless non-blue card, as long as it's exactly the number needed to build up the right Storm count with the Wishes. I don't know if this will turn out to be slower, but I'll try to calculate it... *groan*

Please let me know if I've made a mistake before I actually spend my time crunching the numbers.

Hmm, that's a pretty good solution for the Library of Leng problem. It seems to work fine to me.

The one problem with your loop is Aladdin's Lamp/Planar Portal. You have to find some way to untap them so that you can keep activating them (if you're looking at the Arabian Nights version of Aladdin's Lamp, remember that it's a Mono Artifact which means it taps for its activated ability). Otherwise, I think the loop works.

If you can resolve the Lamp issue, this could take a HUGE number of turns.

I tried bumping Fountain to the sideboard and replacing it with Library of Leng or Spellbook, but it doesn't want to work... I'm 1 life short of getting it to go. Here's what I got so far:

Black Lotus
Channel
Library of Leng
Diamond Kaleidoscope
Blinkmoth Urn
Death Wish
Fork

1. Lotus, Channel, Library, Kaleidoscope, Urn (11 life)
2. 3 Urn mana, prism.1
3. 4 Urn mana, prism.2 (10 life)
4. 5 Urn mana, prism.3 (8 life)
5. 6 Urn mana, prism.4, sac 4 prisms, Death Wish (4 life) + Fork (getting Death Wish and Krosan Reclamation) (2 life)
6. 3 Urn mana, prism.1
7. 4 Urn mana, prism.2, sac 1 prism, Reclamation for Lotus and Fork
8. draw Fork, 4 Urn mana, prism.2 (1 life)
9. draw Lotus, 5 Urn mana, Lotus, sac 2 prisms, Death Wish (DEAD!), Fork (getting Death Wish and Fountain of Youth), prism.1, Fountain, gain 1 life

-> Right here, if you can make it to that Death Wish with just 1 more life, you can stay alive with the following:

10. 5 Urn mana, prism.2, gain 1 life (3 life), sac 2 prisms, flashback Reclamation for Fork and Lotus
11. 4 Urn mana, prism.1, sac prism, gain 1 life
...repeat turn 11, gaining life until you have enough


Any thoughts? Or miscalculations?

Hmm, that's a pretty interesting one, Godder. One thing I would do to improve it is to get rid of North Star - that's way too fast in terms of filtering mana. How about we try the Capsize/Prism engine?

Sand Silos
Capsize
Celestial Prism

Reito Lantern
Obliterate
Iron Star

Test of Endurance

I guess Iron Star and Dragon Claw are equivalent in this deck, but I still like the Star  So now, in order to play Obliterate, you need to pay 3 to get R from the Prism, Capsize the Prism with buyback, play the Prism, and pay another 3 to get a second R. Not to mention you need to Capsize the Lantern in response to the Obliterate so that you can play it and bring back the Silos.

I haven't done the calculations, but it should be a fair improvement on the idea.

Wow, Limbo... that deck would be insane.

By the way, if you're using the Mana Cache engine, Fountain of Youth is much better than Braidwood Cup. Or actually, since you're using Kaleidoscope, Life Chisel is even better.

Other lifegain engines (they wouldn't replace the Lotus/Channel/Digger/Cup -> prism token engine, though):

(With Upwelling)
- Cabal Pit + Tower of Eons

(With Digger and prism tokens)
- Absorb
- Ancestral Tribute

Why exactly are sideboards allowed? It seems that any deck can generically be made slower by moving it into the sideboard and using Death Wish to pull the deck out. Having sideboards seems to just be against the spirit of restricting oneself to a 7-card deck.

As for exponential effects, the "lose half your life" cards can be used, as long as you make it so that you can't gain any more life after you start playing them (somehow). Maybe a string of Poxes could work? You're losing a third of your life, and you're losing a third of your creatures (presumably Prism tokens). It probably won't be that great since losing 1/3 of your life doesn't grow very fast - the reverse sequence is something like 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 18, 27...

You should only need 19,689 tokens, I think (or maybe it's 59,055). You can attack the same turn that you play Energy Flux and Ancestral Mask.


EDIT: Here are my calculations for the Blinkmoth Urn deck.
black lotus
channel
fountain of youth
diamond kaleidoscope
blinkmoth urn
energy flux
ancestral mask

//2-turn setup
Lotus, Fountain, Channel, Urn, Kaleidoscope (12 life)
3 Urn mana, prisms.1

//193,680,706-turn lifegain
repeat {
  4 Urn mana, prisms.2, sac 1 prism, gain 1 life
}
(end at 193,680,718 life)

//19,683-turn Prism production
1 prism in play, 4 Urn mana, prisms.2, burn 1 life
2 prisms in play, 5 Urn mana, prisms.3, gain 1 life
repeat from N=3 to N=19683 {
  N prisms in play, N+3 Urn mana, prisms.N+1, gain 1 life, burn N-2 life
}
(total of 193,680,721 mana burn and gain of 19,681 life = 19,678 life remaining)

//10-turn win
19684 prisms in play, 19687 Urn mana, Energy Flux, Ancestral Mask, prisms.19683, gain 1 life, burn 19678 life (1 life remaining), attack.prism for 2 (2)
19683 prisms in play, sac 13122 prism for upkeep (and sacrifice Fountain, Urn, and Kaleidoscope), attack.prism for 2 (4)
6561 prisms in play, sac 4374 prism for upkeep, attack.prism for 2 (6)
2187 prisms in play, sac 1458 prism for upkeep, attack.prism for 2 (8)
729 prisms in play, sac 486 prism for upkeep, attack.prism for 2 (10)
243 prisms in play, sac 162 prism for upkeep, attack.prism for 2 (12)
81 prisms in play, sac 54 prism for upkeep, attack.prism for 2 (14)
27 prisms in play, sac 18 prism for upkeep, attack.prism for 2 (16)
9 prisms in play, sac 6 prism for upkeep, attack.prism for 2 (18)
3 prisms in play, sac 2 prism for upkeep, attack.prism for 2 (20)

Total of 2 + 193,680,706 + 19,683 + 10 = 193,700,401

virtual: Blinkmoth Urn will add N+3 mana to my mana pool each turn, where N is the number of Prisms I have in play. So if I have 1000 Prisms in play, Urn adds 1003 mana to my pool. I can only sink 3 into Kaleidoscope and 2 into Fountain, so I take 998 mana burn that turn. That's what I was trying to get at.

But never mind, I found a different flaw in the deck. I don't need to get to 260,000 Prisms. Since my Urn is still producing mana, I can start a turn with 2 Prisms, sac one for upkeep, get 4 mana, create a Prism and burn 1 life, then swing with the one that was already in play. So I only need to get up to 2 Prisms

Back to the drawing board.

EDIT: Okay, I've figured that I can switch to Energy Flux/Ancestral Mask instead of Tabernacle/Field. This now prevents me from just creating tokens during the attack turns, as it's faster to just let the Urn and Kaleidoscope die to Flux than to keep them around. So instead of needing 262,000 tokens, I'm down to needing about 19,683 tokens (since I can play Flux and Mask then attack once before I need to start paying upkeep). Because I can sink 5 mana a turn, it looks like my total mana burn will be something like (19681*19682)/2 = about 193.7 million instead of being in the billions. So it still should beat the Tabernacle/Strength deck, but not the Tortoise 1 deck.

EDIT2: My calculations come out to 193,700,401 turns. Can someone verify that this deck actually works? I seem to have a bad habit of building decks that should work but somehow have a crucial flaw.

I might be missing something, but I'm not quite sure what you're saying. Maybe you're thinking that the Urn mana can be used to pay upkeep? Urn mana comes at the beginning of your precombat main phase, so when the Tabernacle comes down, the only way you can pay upkeep is with Prism tokens. I got the 260,000 number from jro's Tabernacle/Field deck as the number required to swing 20 times with a Prism.

How about this? No extra turns for mana generation, but you'll need tons of turn for life-gain to take on all the mana burn:

black lotus
fountain of youth
channel
diamond kaleidoscope
blinkmoth urn
tabernacle at pendrell vale
verdant field

It would go something like:

1. lotus, channel, fountain, urn, kaleidoscope, create a token (9 life)
2. add 4 to mana pool, create a token, sac token, gain 1 life (10 life)
and so on, gaining 1 life a turn.
Then you build up to the roughly 260,000 prism tokens needed to win through Verdant Field (all the time taking mana burn from the Urn).
3. Play tabernacle and verdant field, spend the next 20 turns winning.

I think this could actually be a contender, but I'd have to go do the math to see what it actually comes out to.

EDIT: Preliminary estimates indicate somewhere upwards of 33 billion life needed. If that's right, this would actually beat out the Tortoise 1 deck if jro's calculations for the Tortoise 1 deck are correct.

I had wondered earlier about the Crypt too, but never got around to actually building something with Crypt/Test.

As for making the opponent gain life, the two cards I've been tinkering with are Truce and Armistice (combined with Digger or Lantern), but I can't find a good enough deck that forces the repeated use of those cards. The best I can think of with Armistice is using it to do mana filtering (using Digger or Lantern), but I never have enough room for a slow engine or win condition.

And unfortunately, you can't use Fountain instead of Cup because you need the free life at the start to be able to actually get any mana.

Lofobal: That's why the Tabernacle decks are built to force you to play it in order to win. For example, it being the only land in a deck using Mana Cache as its initial source of mana, or it being the only way to get rid of Leviathan so that you can recur it, or using it for Caribou Range because you have no other lands, or using it for Strength of Cedars, etc.

Wow. I think Tabernacle has officially been broken.

Or maybe it's the Kaleidoscope? But my money's on Tabernacle.

Hmmm, yeah. I didn't think of that. I'll take your word on that number since I was doing my calculations mostly by hand and I don't want to have to figure out how to account for making Prism tokens during the Peacekeeper building...

jro, if your engine only takes 2 turns for token generation, doesn't that cut your turn count in half almost? I don't remember exactly, but I thought most of your turns came from token generation.

Although jro's deck was ridiculous (even if it's only one mana each 2 turns), it just got trumped by virtual's deck. This is what I got:

9 turns to play vale, cache, kaleidoscope, and foundry
21896 turns to charge cache
193 turns making prism tokens (using up 19113 mana)
19 more turns putting Peacekeepers into play and casting the win condition.

This would give 22117 turns.

EDIT: Oops, I didn't realize Soulblast is combined power. So the deck works as is.