Tortoise Format: Challenge #3

[ReAnimator]

@Virtual     oops it was late for me and I made a few errors with that deck, so yeah I’m an idiot 30 life it is, Thanks

@Captain planet   your deck is simply way faster than mine, you need 1BB to sac a leviathan I need 20 B and 20 colourless. I wouldn’t mind some help calculating mine though if your up for it =)

I still think my deck has a little bit of potential I realize since it was late when I was typing I made a few big mistakes so here is the new list without glaring omissions.

1)off colour storage land
2) Diamond Kaleidoscope (duh I forgot this some how and it is quite obviously "better" than array)
3)Disturbed Burial (again just strictly better than reito lantern (in this deck anyway))
4)Test of endurance
5)fevered convulsions
6) Crystal rod
7)leviathan

I think the Kaleidoscope / storage land is the 2nd slowest mana engine, it takes 4 turns to get a coloured mana but the up side is it only takes up 2 slots as opposed to the Tabernacle engines.
So with the deck how it is it takes 30 colourless and 25 coloured mana to gain one life! and you need to do that 30 times, at 4 turns to each coloured mana and 2 turns for colourless that works out to 4829 turns including setup (though I’m probably wrong somewhere in my calculations I sort of suck at math.

[Nazdakka]

The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Endless Whispers
High Market
Leviathan
Test of Endurance
Diamond Kaleidoscope
Mercadian Bazaar

Win:
Bazaar + High Market -> Kaleidoscope
Generate mana.
Drop Whispers and Test
Generate Blue mana to cast Leviathan
Drop Tabernacle.
(Start Loop)
Sacrifice Leviathan to Market for +1 life
Whispers give opponent the Leviathan
Leviathan dies in opponent's upkeep to Tabernacle
Get back Leviathan.
(End loop)
Repeat until Test wins.

My sums:
Colourless Mana to cast combo pieces = 4 + 2 + 2 + 5 - 1 (Market) = 14 => 16 turns.

Coloured mana needed = 9: 27 mana + 9 needed for this from Prism. So 18 from storage, 9 from Market. This takes 27 to generate and 9 more to make tokens.

36 turns.

Kill takes 31 turns.

93 turns.

*Finishes working it out, sees  it's crap, but has spent half an hour of his life on this, so posts anyway *

[thorme]

The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Endless Whispers
High Market
Leviathan
Test of Endurance
Diamond Kaleidoscope
Mercadian Bazaar


*Finishes working it out, sees  it's crap, but has spent half an hour of his life on this, so posts anyway *

And we appreciate your post!  I love checking out the different decklists and ideas, even if they can't all take tens of thousands of turns.  There is so much room for creativity in this format.

I work on a lot of goofy lists that probably aren't very promising.  Here's my latest work-in-progress:

Black Lotus
Teferi's Isle
Goblin Shrine
Mogg Flunkies
Death Pits of Rath
Soul Net
Soldevi Digger
Test of Endurance

Doesn't even work now as it takes 8 cards - also, takes far too few turns to be competitive with the heavy-hitters.  Still fun though.  

[Jacob Orlove]

The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Endless Whispers
High Market
Leviathan
Test of Endurance
Diamond Kaleidoscope
Mercadian Bazaar

Win:
Bazaar + High Market -> Kaleidoscope
Generate mana.
Drop Whispers and Test
Generate Blue mana to cast Leviathan
Drop Tabernacle.
(Start Loop)
Sacrifice Leviathan to Market for +1 life
Whispers give opponent the Leviathan
Leviathan dies in opponent's upkeep to Tabernacle
Get back Leviathan.
(End loop)
Repeat until Test wins.

My sums:
Colourless Mana to cast combo pieces = 4 + 2 + 2 + 5 - 1 (Market) = 14 => 16 turns.

Coloured mana needed = 9: 27 mana + 9 needed for this from Prism. So 18 from storage, 9 from Market. This takes 27 to generate and 9 more to make tokens.

36 turns.

Kill takes 31 turns.

93 turns.

*Finishes working it out, sees  it's crap, but has spent half an hour of his life on this, so posts anyway :D*

Can't you just sac kaleidoscope guys to the Market?

[jro]

Here's the latest Tabernacle deck I'm working on:

Black Lotus
Braidwood Cup
Channel
Reito Lantern
Diamond Kaleidoscope
Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Verdant Field[/list:u]
The idea is that you kill by attacking with Verdant Field'ed Prism tokens.  But since it takes 20 turns to kill that way, and your only permanent mana is the prisms, you need a LOT of prisms to have one left on the 20th turn.  I'm still not sure it works.  I've gone through about a dozen variations of the mana engine to get it to (hopefully) work.  I'm working on calculating how many turns this needs, and will update this post accordingly, but please let me know of you see some reason that it doesn't work.

EDIT:
Okay, I think this deck requires 2,097,161 turns.  It takes 8 turns to make a prism token, and you need 262,144 (2^18) tokens in order to keep at least one in play for 20 turns.  It's 2^18 rather than 2^20 because you can attack the turn you play the Verdant Field, and you can pay the upkeep for the last turn with the Black Lotus.

Here's the full turn-by-turn description.  You may want to copy and paste it into a wider window so that the formatting looks right.

Code:

lotus->channel.17->Cup+Lantern+Kaleidoscope+prisms.1+dig.lotus+dig.channel, 4 life
draw lotus, lotus, 5 life
draw channel, 6 life
7 life
8 life
9 life, lotus->channel.8->prisms.2+dig.lotus+dig.channel
repeat 262141 {
 draw lotus, lotus, 2 life
 draw channel, 3 life
 4 life
 5 life
 6 life
 7 life
 8 life
 9 life, lotus->channel.8->prisms.increment+dig.lotus+dig.channel  }
2 life, draw lotus, lotus
3 life, draw channel
4 life
5 life
6 life
7 life
8 life
9 life, tabernacle, lotus->channel.8->prisms.262144+dig.lotus+Verdant Field, attack.prism for 1 (1)
262144 prisms in play, sac 131072 prisms for upkeep, 2 life, draw lotus, pay N, attack.prism for 1 (2)
131072 prisms in play, sac 65536 prisms for upkeep, 3 life, attack.prism for 1 (3)
65536 prisms in play, sac 32768 prisms for upkeep, 4 life, attack.prism for 1 (4)
32768 prisms in play, sac 16384 prisms for upkeep, 5 life, attack.prism for 1 (5)
16384 prisms in play, sac 8192 prisms for upkeep, 6 life, attack.prism for 1 (6)
8192 prisms in play, sac 4096 prisms for upkeep, 7 life, attack.prism for 1 (7)
4096 prisms in play, sac 2048 prisms for upkeep, 8 life, attack.prism for 1 (8)
2048 prisms in play, sac 1024 prisms for upkeep, 9 life, attack.prism for 1 (9)
1024 prisms in play, sac 512 prisms for upkeep, 10 life, attack.prism for 1 (10)
512 prisms in play, sac 256 prisms for upkeep, 11 life, attack.prism for 1 (11)
256 prisms in play, sac 128 prisms for upkeep, 12 life, attack.prism for 1 (12)
128 prisms in play, sac 64 prisms for upkeep, 13 life, attack.prism for 1 (13)
64 prisms in play, sac 32 prisms for upkeep, 14 life, attack.prism for 1 (14)
32 prisms in play, sac 16 prisms for upkeep, 15 life, attack.prism for 1 (15)
16 prisms in play, sac 8 prisms for upkeep, 16 life, attack.prism for 1 (16)
8 prisms in play, sac 4 prisms for upkeep, 17 life, attack.prism for 1 (17)
4 prisms in play, sac 2 prisms for upkeep, 18 life, attack.prism for 1 (18)
2 prisms in play, sac 1 prism for upkeep, 19 life, attack.prism for 1 (19), play lotus
1 prism in play, sac lotus for upkeep, burn for 2, 18 life, attack.prism for 1 (20)

Now to really break the Diamond Kaleidoscope, I need to force an Energy Flux into play.

[Nazdakka]

The Tabernacle at Pendrell
Can't you just sac kaleidoscope guys to the Market?

Yeah, you can. I guess I use Gemstone array then. Endless Whispers is actually saving me turns anyway... I need to shuffle Leviathan back instead of sacrificing it, so it has to get cast again and again.

[Alfred]

Virtual, I like this mana engine!

Black lotus
Tabernacle at pendrell Vale
Mana Cache
Epic Struggle
Soul Foundry
Peacekeeper
Gemstone array

1.Use Black Lotus to cast cache, and start charging it up with vale, use cache to cast array, and start charing array with white and green mana, use green mana to cast epic struggle and cache to cast soul foundry.
2. Charge to array until there is enough counters to pay for the 20 turns of peacekeeper making, then charge up the cache until there is enough colorless to pay for the vale upkeep and the peacekeeper creation.
3. Laugh at how retardedly slow this deck is.

[theorigamist]

EDIT: Well, damn.

[fadeblue]

Wow. I think Tabernacle has officially been broken.

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

[jro]

I wanted to try something else with the idea of using your life total as a way of storing mana.  At 841 turns, this deck is pretty fast compared to the last few I submitted, but I think it's a neat concept:

Hall of the Bandit Lord
Jeweled Amulet
Implements of Sacrifice
Astrolabe
Soldevi Digger
Braidwood Cup
Magma Mine[/list:u]

Code:

Hall->amulet, 17 life
hall+amulet->digger, 14 life
hall->amulet, 11 life
hall+amulet->implements, 8 life
hall->amulet, 5 life
hall+amulet+implements->cup, 3 life
hall->magma mine, 1 life
2 life
3 life
hall->amulet, 1 life
2 life
3 life
hall+amulet->dig implements, 1 life
repeat 552 { //life buffer for using Hall of Bandit Lord
 gain 1 life }
repeat 20 { //negative numbers indicate total life lost so far each cycle
hall->amulet, -2
hall+amulet->implements, -4
hall->amulet, -6
hall+amulet+implements->astrolabe, -8
hall->amulet, -10
hall+amulet->dig implements, -12
hall->amulet, -14
hall+amulet->implements, -16
hall->amulet, -18
hall+amulet+implements+astrolabe->mine.++, -20 *
hall->amulet, -22
hall+amulet->dig astrolabe, -24
hall->amulet, -26
hall+amulet->dig implements, -28
}
* when mine counters = 20, shoot opponent
charge mine 20 times + recycle parts 19 times
20 * 20 + 8 * 19 = 552
turns = 13 setup + 552 lifegain + 276 mine buildup= 841

The neat thing about this deck is that there's no way to store mana long term: no Gemstone Array, Storage Land, Mana Battery, etc.

If your goldfish opponent was playing to kill you, this would be a fun coin-flip based deck:

Mishra's Workshop
Braidwood Cup
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Jeweled Amulet
Forbidden Orchard
Soldevi Digger
Mana Clash[/list:u]This deck really tests your luck: you could win with a first turn Forbidden Orchard / Mana Clash.  But if you don't win then, you'll probably be killed in short order with the spirit token.  So let's say instead you do Workshop->Cup first turn, and then gain a bunch of life, and then play Mana Clash.  Well, your opponent isn't likely to die from just one Mana Clash, so they're going to be attacking you with a spirit while you dig the Mana Clash back in.  How many times will you have to Mana Clash?  Is it better to use the Hall or the Orchard to charge the amulet to pay for digging mana clash back in?  How much life should you have saved up before you use the Clash?

I suppose this deck could be made into a non coin-flip deck pretty easily.  Maybe I'll look into that.

[Limbo]

/me bows to jro for breaking tortoise 3

[virtual]

I have 2 variations on jros decks that might be slower... One I'm sure it (slight variation), and the other probably isn't, because the kill condition is only 10 turns instead of 20...

This one below should take over the currently worst deck... (although it's the same idea as jros, just "better" cards)

[card]Black Lotus[/card]
[card]Reito Lantern[/card]
[card]Channel[/card]
[card]Diamond Kaleidoscope[/card]
[card]Fasting[/card] or [card]Braidwood Cup[/card]
[card]The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale[/card]
[card]Strength of Cedars[/card]

Secondly, the one with more significant changes (as far as new ideas)....
[card]Black Lotus[/card]
[card]Reito Lantern[/card]
[card]Channel[/card]
[card]Diamond Kaleidoscope[/card]
[card]Braidwood Cup[/card]
[card]Ancestral Mask[/card]
[card]Energy Flux[/card]

Unfortunately, even though I've doubled upkeep costs, I've halved the time required  to kill... given that it's exponential, I think that means it's slower... too lazy to check though... Can we slow it down more?

-Virtual

[leviat]

When the thread first started I spent almost two hours messing around with a deck, I eventually gave up since it only took like 200 turns and seemed way to quick (lol). My deck used Diamond Kaleidoscope, but I didn't think of Tabernacle, anyways, here's the list...

[card]Diamond Kaleidoscope[/card]
[card]Skull of Orm[/card]
[card]Test of Endurance[/card]
[card]Fasting[/card]
[card]City of Brass[/card]
[card]City of Traitors[/card]
[card]Black Lotus[/card]

This deck would take even longer if you were to use Mana Crypt (but I'm not sure how random effects work in this format). If I ever get bored again, I'll try to actually calculate how long this takes.

Edit!
I misposted, the Ancient Tomb was meant to be a City of Traitors. I thought one thing and types another. Thanks for the catch jro.

[Lofobal]

Rules and History

- 7 card decks, play starts with all 7 cards in the hand of a robot designed to play perfect Magic.  The robot will try to goldfish with the 7-card deck as quickly as he can.

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but wouldn't the perfect play (in terms of acheiving the fastest goldfish) with any deck containing The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale be to NOT play it, considering that it is not required to win and slows down the speed of the kill?

Edit: Thanks, fadeblue, I missed that, though how I managed to overlook something so obvious is beyond me. I'm so illiterate. . .

[fadeblue]

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.

[jro]

Ok, here's the calculations for Virtual's improvement to the Tabernacle / Verdant field deck, making it a Tabernacle / Strength of Cedars deck.

Code:

lotus->channel.17->Cup+Lantern+Kaleidoscope+prisms.1+dig.lotus+dig.channel, 4 life
draw lotus, lotus, 5 life
draw channel, 6 life
7 life
8 life
9 life, lotus->channel.8->prisms.2+dig.lotus+dig.channel, 1 life
repeat 4,718,582 {
 draw lotus, lotus, 2 life
 draw channel, 3 life
 4 life
 5 life
 6 life
 7 life
 8 life
 9 life, lotus->channel.8->prisms.increment+dig.lotus+dig.channel, 1 life  }
2 life, draw lotus, lotus
4718584 prisms in play ,3 life, draw channel, tabernacle, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (1)
4718576 prisms in play, prisms.2359288->tabernacle, 4 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (2)
2359280 prisms in play, prisms.1179640->tabernacle, 5 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (3)
1179632 prisms in play, prisms.589816->tabernacle, 6 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (4)
589808 prisms in play, prisms.294904->tabernacle, 7 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (5)
294896 prisms in play, prisms.147448->tabernacle, 8 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (6)
147440 prisms in play, prisms.73720->tabernacle, 9 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (7)
73712 prisms in play, prisms.36856->tabernacle, 10 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (8)
36848 prisms in play, prisms.18424->tabernacle, 11 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (9)
18416 prisms in play, prisms.9208->tabernacle, 12 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (10)
9200 prisms in play, prisms.4600->tabernacle, 13 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (11)
4592 prisms in play, prisms.2296->tabernacle, 14 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (12)
2288 prisms in play, prisms.1144->tabernacle, 15 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (13)
1136 prisms in play, prisms.568->tabernacle, 16 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (14)
560 prisms in play, prisms.280->tabernacle, 17 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (15)
272 prisms in play, prisms.136->tabernacle, 18 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (16)
128 prisms in play, prisms.64->tabernacle, 19 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (17)
56 prisms in play, prisms.28->tabernacle, 20 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (18)
20 prisms in play, prisms.10->tabernacle, 21 life, draw cedars, prisms.8->cedars+dig.cedars, attack.prism for 1 (19)
2 prisms in play, prisms.1->tabernacle, 22 life, draw cedars, lotus->channel.4->cedars, 18 life, attack.prism for 1 (20)


Total Turns = 7 Setup + 20 Kill + 37,748,656 Mana Generation = 37,748,683 turns

Which is an impressive 18-fold improvement on my version.  There are two factors that up the number of prisms needed so drastically.  The first and most obvious one is that you need to use 8 prisms each turn while under Tabernacle to cast and dig the Strength of Cedars. This multiplies the total number of prisms needed by 8.  The remainder comes from the fact that you can no longer use the Black Lotus to pay the upkeep for the last turn, effectively adding another turn under which the exponential effect takes place.  Why the increase is slightly larger than 8*2=16 still, I'm not sure.

I briefly tried to calculate how many turns the cumulative upkeep deck from Tortoise 1 takes.  I got roughly 12.4 billion.  If that's right, the Tabernacle / Strength of Cedars deck is slower by "only" a factor of about 330.  If, for example, there were 9 turns added into the kill somehow, this deck would take longer than that one!  Incidentally, to have an idea of how long this Tortoise 1 deck would take to play, if you were to take one turn every second and play this 24/7, it would take about 392 years to win.

Here's the rough estimate I did for the Tortoise 1 deck:

Code:

need G for Cocoon
need G for Upwelling

need 24 turns of sustaining spirit upkeep
need 300 colorless and 300W for upkeep of sustaining spirit
need 1colorless and 1W to cast sustaining spirit


need 301 turns of reality twist
45 451 colorless for upkeep, 90 902U for upkeep
need 3U to cast reality twist

need 90905 turns of Naked Singularity
12 395 714 895 colorless for upkeep
need 5 colorless to cast

total turns = sum of all mana necessary
            = 12 395 851 887

EDIT: Oh, and the Energy Flux / Ancestral Mask combo is great, but because it kills in 10 turns, and you only spend the Mask mana once, and you can use the Black Lotus for the last turn's upkeep, the number of prism tokens needed is something like 3^9 = 19,683 , which is good, but only about 2^14 or 2^15 rather than 2^17 (like the Verdant Field deck) or 2^18 (like the Strength of Cedars deck).

[theorigamist]

I wanted to point out a possible route that looks very promising: Aven Shrine.  It's a very slow win to have to play two very expensive cards to gain one life each.  The problem is that you need the Shrine, Test, two really expensive cards (Leviathan seems good), and Reito Lantern.  That leaves two cards, which isn't enough for a slow mana engine.

Some other ideas I've been thinking about:

-Mana Crypt in Test of Endurance decks.  Let's go with the suggested you lose, you win, you lose, you win scenario for the Crypt.  Then you have 12 turns to live while it's in play, and you'll lose 18 life to the Crypt in that time.  If you could somehow gain 19 or 20 life spread out over those turns, then it'll take about 12 turns per life, and you'll be starting from 2 instead of 20, and you'll need to get to 50.  Logically, Test of Endurance should be the slowest kill, because you need to gain 30 instead of take 20 away.

-Have some way for the opponent to gain life.  I can't think of something that would work, but if you could make the Energy Flux kill slower by giving the opponent life, you should get a pretty massive turn count.

EDIT: For that monster of a deck that takes like 38 million turns to win, could you slow that down by using Fountain of Youth instead of Braidwood Cup?  You'd have to pay for every use, even though the original cost is less.

[fadeblue]

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.

[thorme]

I've been trying to work on the opponent gaining life also.  My current thinking is that with:

Fiery Justice + Spiny Starfish

You have to give the opponent 1 life to create a single 0/1 starfish token.  I'm also wondering if Phyrexian Altar can't be used to make the starfish tokens function as Kaleidoscope dudes.

I can't figure out how to work the mana, or the kill for

Fiery Justice
Spiny Starfish
Phyrexian Altar
???

You would probably need to force Tabernacle down.  Problem is that I want some initial mana boost to get Starfish, Altar, etc. down - but that goes away forcing me to rely on Starfish tokens for the remaining mana.

[virtual]

Hmmm... ok jro... I think you're right... fasting doesn't work with Reito lantern... but it might work with digger?  I'm gunna start with proof of concept to show that it makes progress... I Believe this turns it into 8 turns to gain 1 life, then after you gain lots of life you can start making tokens...

[card]Black Lotus [/card]
[card]Soldevi digger [/card]
[card]Channel [/card]
[card]Diamond Kaleidoscope [/card]
[card]Fasting[/card]
[card]The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale [/card]
[card]Strength of Cedars [/card]

turn 1 Lotus->Channel... pay 6 life (and G) for Kaleidoscope & token, 2 life for the digger, use the prism for fasting, and 4 more life for digging the channel and lotus back.  
8 life.  
Skip 5 turns of drawing, and gain 10 life.  
18 life.  
turn 6 draw channel.
turn 7 draw lotus. play lotus, channel, pay 2 life (and G) for prism, 6 life to digger fasting, lotus, channel.
10 life.  
Turn 8, Draw channel:
Turn 9, Draw lotus
Turn 10, Draw fasting.  Cast fasting.  
Turns 11-15: Gain 10 life
20 life
Turn 16:  fasting dies.  Lotus, channel, pay 8 life and G to digger all 3 back, and create a prism.
12 life.  
Turn 17, turn 18:  draw
turn 19:  draw fasting.  Cast fasting.
Turn 20-24:  Gain 10 life
22 life.  

There... QED... it can get much slower with fasting this way.  Granted it no longer will take 8 turns to dig... but instead of gaining 1 life/turn we gain  2 life/9 turns... (I believe)

Jro... wanna do the calcs on this beast too?  Your way seems much cleaner than mine... =D.  I'm pretty certain this overtakes the old one...

-Virtual

[fadeblue]

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.

[virtual]

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.

Can't you just gain 261000 life, then mana burn back (1/turn) down to greater than 81 while making the 260k tokens.  Then you can just attack every turn, and even if you mana burned from the 4 mana each turn you were winning (which you wouldn't have to because of the prism, and you can pay upkeep with the mana), you would still win in 20 turns... so I think this deck is probably something in the range of 260k.  Am I missing something?

-Virtual

[fadeblue]

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.

[Limbo]

Not that I have the time atm to check your billions of turns estimate, but maybe we should re-open tortoise #1 to see if we can get even higher? The way I see it now, if we unban wishes and cumulative upkeep, we can get even higher then this according to the tortoise #1 not() banned list.

[virtual]

I was thinking the same thing Limbo.  

There was no soul foundry for tortise #1.  (it wasn't yet printed).  Also, I don't know that we had explored wishes (though a >15 card sideboard is kinda bs to me... just my opinion =D ) .  We can totally cheat with them, but the problem is, doing the calculations will be UBER hard... I did them originally for tortise 1, but now I actually have to work @ work =D

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.

I agree with the 260000 #.  That's how many tokens you need in order to cast verdant field and kill with 1 token remaining.  

However, here's how I see your deck functioning.  

#1 do the loop gaining 1 life per turn until you have > 261000 life
261000 turns
#2 Make 261000 tokens mana burning for 1 each turn, bringing you back down to about 1000 life
260000 turns
#3 play tabernacle and kill them.  Ignore the mana burn.  
20 turns

Granted, ignoring the mana burn, may not be optimal, but this is a proof of concept that the deck doesn't need in the billions of turns to kill.  There is no compounding of the life back into mana like there is with the recycling channel engine.  

Keep it up though... new ideas are always welcome =).  

@jro:
Lastly... stupid fasting only gives 8 life I think too.  Hence we make no progress and can't use it.... (9 mana to do the loop, 6 to dig all 3 back, 3 to make a prism, and we get 1 for free from the lotus).  

I'm still tempted to think that we might be able to make fasting work somehow... it's Soooooo close.

-Virtual

[fadeblue]

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.

[CaptainPlanet.dec]

Black Lotus
Peat Bog
Solevi Digger
Diamond Kalidoscope
Energy Flux
Ancestral Mask

Turn 1: Bog, Lotus.
Turn 2: Digger.
Turn 3: Sac Lotus, dig Lotus, dig Bog.
Turn 4: Bog.
Turn 5: Lotus, Diamond.
Turn 6: Dig Lotus.
turn 7: Lotus, Dig Bog.
Turn 8: Bog
Turn 9: Dig Lotus.
Turn 10: 0/1, Dig Bog.
Turn 11: Bog
Turn 12: Dig Lotus.
Turn 13: 0/1, Dig Bog.


3 Turns for one token. 177,153 tokens needed.

531,472 turns. And I can still add one card that potentially makes it slower.

[fadeblue]

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

[Godder]

Actually, banning regular upkeep would be interesting too.

Here's an effort that doesn't use upkeep, although it does use a storage land...

Mana Generation and Fixing
Hollow Trees
North Star (4 to play, 4 to activate)

Engine
Obliterate (8)
Dragon's Claw (2)
Reito Lantern (2, then 3 per permanent)
Reito Lantern (2, then 3 per permanent)

Win Condition
Test of Endurance (4)

Basically, the idea is to win with Test of Endurance by playing Obliterate with a Dragon's Claw in play to gain one life. Since that kills everything except Test of Endurance, you have to recycle everything using Reito Lantern...

The North Star is required to fix the green mana to White and Red, while two Reito Lanterns are required because you have to have one in hand after Obliterate, but also have to return one for the next cycle.

Step One
Cast and activate North Star (8) + Test of Endurance (4) = 12

Step Two
Then cast Dragon's Claw (2) + activate North Star (4) + Obliterate (8) + cast Reito Lantern (2) + activate Lantern 4 times (12) = 28 mana, + gain 1 life (21 life)

Step Three
After that, cycle to gain one life requires 2 + 8 + 8 + 2 + 15 (have to activate Lantern 5 times to return the first Lantern as well) = 35 mana = 37 turns to generate (have to play Hollow Trees each cycle, and then untap it after generating 35 mana)

Step One (Win condition - 14 turns)
T1: Hollow Trees
T2-13: storage counters
T14: play North Star and Test of Endurance

Step Two (first cycle - 29 turns)
T15-42: storage counters
T43: Gain 1st life (21 life), drop Lantern, recycle everything

Step Three (engine - 37 turns per cycle, 28 cycles required)
T44: Draw and play Hollow Trees
T45-79: storage counters
T80: Gain 1 life (22-49 life), drop Lantern, recycle everything

For the 50th life point, it only requires 18 mana, as Lantern isn't required (21 turns total - play Hollow Trees, then 18 counters, then use, then win the following turn).

Summing up then: 14 turns + 29 turns + 1036 turns + 21 turns - 3 turns (don't need to return the Lantern after the Obliterate that puts your life total to 49) = 1097 turns.

With upkeep effects, Energy Flux + Ancestral Mask + Kaleidoscope seems pretty good stuff...

[fadeblue]

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.