Revisitting Tortise #1

[virtual]

The Tortoise Format is a deckbuilding challenge that involves creating a deck of 7 cards. The objective is to have the deck's optimal win be as slow as possible.

Here are the rules:

- 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.
- The Type 1 banned and restricted list are in effect
- You and your goldfish opponent do not lose as a result of not being able to draw a card
- Cumulative Upkeep is banned (**)


Here is an example decklist I created to illustrate.

1 Hollow Trees
1 Sulfur Vent
1 Alladin's Lamp
1 Epic Struggle
1 Spiny Starfish
1 Decimate
1 Soldevi Digger


I'm sure that with the Type 1 card pool available, many decks can be created that are far slower. (I believe the above deck takes around 700 turns to kill).

Please take up the challenge and post any decks you come up with (along with an explanation of how they work if they are particularly convoluted), regardless of how fast/slow they are!


===================================
** Explanation of why Cumulative Upkeep is banned:
I ran the first Tortoise format on the old TMD, and we did not have cumulative upkeep banned. Virtual, Cyberknight, and I collaboratively developed the following list:

1 Black Lotus
1 Mountain
1 Upwelling
1 Naked Singularity
1 Reality Twist
1 Sustaining Spirit
1 Cocoon

I can't remember the exact math, but this monstrosity takes trillions upon trillions of turns to win IIRC. And of course, it was cumulative upkeep that was so broken.
===================================

Given Tortise #2, and #3, we have learned some more, and so I think we should revisit Tortise #1 with 0 bannings

Here's my current best deck... I really don't want to try to calculate this monstrosity:

Deck:
Black Lotus
Mana Cache
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Mirari
Death Wish
Braidwood Cup
Diamond Kaleidoscope

Sideboard:
Death Wish
Timetwister
Battle of Wits
250+ other meaningless sorceries

The Plan... play the tabernacle & the mana cache... accrue lots of colorless mana.  Simultaneously probably gaining lots of life with the cup.
Cast mirari and then death wish for the other death wish, and a card.  
Do this 250 times, then timetwister.  Finally, win.  

This has a lot of holes... you can accumulate life & mana at the same time.  The colorless cache can pay for token upkeeps, etc.  Let's break it even more...  This isn't even using cumulative upkeep which was the most broken thing in #1...

-Virtual

[jro]

Here's my current best deck... I really don't want to try to calculate this monstrosity:

Unfortunately, I think this might be a lot less than you might initially expect.  I think you were trying to exploit the "half your life" notion from Death Wish as another source of an "exponential" type cost, which is a fantastic idea, since the deck needs to cast Death Wish ~250 times to win.  If you had to save up the life for Death Wish all at once, you'd need about 9 * 10^74 turns to save up the life!  But, unfortunately, this is not the case.

Here's the central loop of how you would optimally play this deck (I'll assume you're at 1 life to start with, since that's the best place to be when you start doing this):

Code:

gain 1 life, 2 life
gain 1 life, cache.3->make prism, 3 life
gain 1 life, cache.1->upkeep prism, cache.3->make prism, prisms.2+cache.1->deathwish, cache.3->mirari, 1 life
repeat

So the only real delay here comes from saving up enough mana on the cache to repeat this loop, which takes about 11 turns per cycle.  So the total number of turns is about (11 turns making mana + 3 turns casting Wish) * 250 times needed to cast wish = 3500 turns.

What other potential sources of "exponential"* type effects are there, besides Tabernacle and Energy Flux?  I don't think any of the black "half your life" cards will work, unless they can are forced to be played one right after the other.  Murderous Betrayal looks the most promising in this light.

* Exponential effects are those that require "^N" of some resource, like how Energy Flux plus Kaleidoscope requires 3^N prisms, where N is the number of turns the prisms must stay in play.  This is as opposed to order "N^2" type effects like cumulative upkeep.  Where each of these get really ridiculous is if you can chain them together, which is what the old Tortoise 1 deck did.  That deck was basically an ((N^2)^2)^2 = N^8 deck, because it had three dependent N^2 effects.

EDIT:  Here's a deck that is technically slower than the old Tortoise 1 deck, but in a completely stupid way:

Black Lotus
Channel
Braidwood Cup
Panoptic Mirror
Death Wish
Conjurer's Bauble
Urza's Bauble

Sideboard:
Taiga
Upwelling
Naked Singularity
Reality Twist
Sustaining Spirit
Cocoon[/list:u]

[fadeblue]

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...

[jro]

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.

Even worse than that, using the general components I used above, you can use the sideboard to make a deck with as few or as many cards as you want.  The "seven card" rule can be totally ignored-- you just wish for all the cards you need for your convoluted 20-card kill.  The only real restriction on how it would work is that you can't use a strategy that depends on you having a certain (low) life value, because of the Braidwood Cup.

Using Pox is a good thought, but casting it 7 times without giving your opponent some life gain will kill them, so I'm not sure it's a good candidate for recursion.  Even if you had prisms in play (say to pay for the Pox and recurring it with Reito Lantern), the exponential effect would only occur over 7 turns.  With exponential effects, increasing the time it takes for the kill is enormously valuable, as every extra turn effectively doubles (for Tabernacle) or triples (for Energy Flux) the total turns needed.

[virtual]

I figured that might happen actually jro.  

One possibility is to cast death wish for death wish 19 times, then use a storm spell that pumps the creatures +1/+2 storm...

The trick would be to figure out how to make those cumulative upkeep cards required to pay for that.  But then we can't use the prism engine because prisms produce mana of any color.  

Upwelling, cumulative upkeep was broken.  

The lotus digger engine is broken as well, but there *MUST* be a way like fasting *almost* was, to make the life gain much slower.  Maybe it can be done by starting with Mirari as one of the cards.  I looks, but I can't find anything that seems ot give enough life for little enough mana.  

Another engine i had was to use 2 elvish spirit guides, and channel, in order to power out a death wish on that recurring sorcery artifact.  Then if you have a slow enough life gaining engine you can only sit back and then just death wish in everything else.  

The ideal situation is to string these, like you said, so to start out you need some piss poor life gaining engine... aka, something that gains you 1 life/x turns.  Then you need a way to turn that life into another required resource (channel for colorless mana, or death wish for cards.)   How about a forcing function like blinkmoth urn as fadetoblue suggested.  That I must say is a stroke of genius... yet another step in ridiculous tortise decks.  Anyways, then you need a way to filter that colorless mana into another color, and thne through a few levels of filters...  I had used a deck that gained a lot of life, then kept glacial chasm in play to generate a ton of colorless mana (mana cache)  Then there needs to be a way to turn that colorless mana into colored mana.  Ideally we can come up with a forcing function such that it requires a sacrifice of an enchantment, or artifact (forge armor for instance) so that you can get around keeping things in play that actually help for the later stages of the combo.  


For this tournament lets allow wishes even though it does break the spirit of the game a bit... (I posted a few times about this in the Tortise #2 thread)... When we revisit Tortise #1 again, we'll make sideboards only 15 cards... I think that is reasonable.... at least somewhat... It takes away battle of wits, which as the inner most exponent will make this competition overflow int64 easily.

-Virtual

[Limbo]

@Virtual: I had exactly the same idea of (ab)using death wish/mirari. However, timetwister is WAY to optimal to use as a BoW resetter.

Why not use krosan reclamation to put back cards slowly.

Also, I think Death Wish / Fork is quite nice to abuse the death wish engine, as it is more mana intensive then just using mirari. In order to use fork, we need to wish for a planar portal as well, because once you start putting cards back in your deck, you need a way to actually know for sure you get the fork to continu the death wish krosan reclamation loop.

Black Lotus
Mana Cache
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Fork
Death Wish
Braidwood Cup
Diamond Kaleidoscope

Sideboard:
Death Wish
Krosan Reclamation
Planar Portal
Battle of Wits
250+ other meaningless sorceries

When you start wishing, the first Death wish / Fork is for another Death Wish + Krosan Reclamation. Reclamate Lotus + Fork. Death Wish/ Fork for Death wish + planar portal. After that, start rebuilding your deck with continuous streams of Death wishes, Forks and Krosan Reclamations. Somehow forcing yourself to not be able to discard would be awesome, as you then need to cast every single sorcery you have.

Adding decree of anihilation somehow to force yourself to use the starting 7 cards to be wished for to reach 200 cards would be awesome as well

[Nibble]

The ideal situation is to string these, like you said, so to start out you need some piss poor life gaining engine... aka, something that gains you 1 life/x turns.

Tangle Wire / Tablet of Epityr is a pretty slow lifegain engine. You get one life on the fifth turn after you cast the Wire. Extra fun if you find a way to use Roar of Reclamation as the return condition.

I was trying to find a way to give the Wire Phasing, just to abuse more mechanics and slow down the lifegain even more, but I don't think there's a way. Oh well.

[fadeblue]

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

[Limbo]

Adding decree of anihilation somehow to force yourself to use the starting 7 cards to be wished for to reach 200 cards would be awesome as well

Ok, why not add vedalken Orrerey in the mix with the decree of annihilation? With a right combination of Death Wishes and forks on the stack and planar portals in play we can cast the decree of anihilation, and afterwards return the removed 4 cards with the reclamations, forks and death wishes.

A few more things:

1: In order to garantee we draw the fork every turn, I need to play an aladdins lamp instead of the planar portals, this would allow for a sure way to get to a fork.

2: In addition, Whispers of the muse can be added to get the fork back after each reclamation.

3: And finally, the rest of the like 190 or so cards need to be final fortunes. Now, in order to win, multiple final fortunes need to be cast, in order to get cards in the graveyard. To make it entirely insane, I need to work in a library of leng, so I need to cast every single final fortune, since I can't discard them anymore.

At the moment, I think this is best (worst), remember that the fountain, diamond and urn are the last few cards required for the battle of wits win:

black lotus
channel
fountain of youth
diamond kaleidoscope
blinkmoth urn
Death Wish
Fork

SB:
Decree of Anihilation
Vedalken Orrery
Battle of Wits
Krosan Reclamation (in multiples)
Death Wish (multiples)
Alladdins Lamp
Whispers of the Muse
Final Fortunes (enough to meet Battle of Wits condition)

If I can somehow force myself to cast all Final fortunes in order to put them back in my deck, I need to win in one turn. That would require the most tokens, and as a consequence, the most life to survive the insane amounts of mana burn.

[fadeblue]

3: And finally, the rest of the like 190 or so cards need to be final fortunes. Now, in order to win, multiple final fortunes need to be cast, in order to get cards in the graveyard. To make it entirely insane, I need to work in a library of leng, so I need to cast every single final fortune, since I can't discard them anymore.

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?

[Limbo]

Ok, the one life can be reached by using spellbook instead of the library of leng. It's mana cost is zero instead of one, so it saves you one channel damage

So at this point, we need to build up to a single turn, where we can cast loads of final fortunes. Before that, this starting hand needs to be build up using some Death Wish/Fork tricks.

The growth of the deck loop looks as follows:

Starting Hand:
Death Wish, Fork, Nights Whispers
In play:
Alladins Lamp, Battle of Wits (Blinkmoth Urn, Spellbook, Diamond Kaleidoscope)
In graveyard:
Night's Whispers

Death Wish for Death Wish
Simultaneously, Fork Death Wish for Krosan Reclamation
Reclamate Nights Whispers + Fork
Cast Nights Whispers
Nights Whispers draw (activate alladdins lamp) for a Nights Whispers
Nights Whispers draw (activate alladdins lamp) for a Fork
Death Wish for a Death Wish
Simultaneously, Fork Death Wish for Final Fortune
Flashback Reclamation for Nights Whispers + Fork
Cast Nights Whispers
Nights Whispers draw (activate alladdins lamp) for a Nights Whispers
Nights Whispers draw (activate alladdins lamp) for a Fork
Cast Final Fortune

This entire loop puts one card in the graveyard every time the loop is traversed. So after 4 loops, the loop can be done to get a krosan reclamation in hand, to reclamate 4 final fortunes.

Someone dare to start calculating the turns this monstrosity takes to win? Remember the mana requirement for the alladins lamp increases everytime you add a card to your deck.

[wonkey_donkey]

I've come up with a deck that doesn't involve using an absolutely enormous sideboard that has some promise:

[card]The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale[/card]
[card]Mana Cache[/card]
[card]Black Lotus[/card]
[card]Diamond Kaleidoscope[/card]
[card]Death Wish[/card]
[card]Death Wish[/card]
[card]Staff of Domination[/card]
SB:
[card]Soul Foundry[/card]
[card]Leviathan[/card]
[card]Scattershot[/card]
[card]Lighning Coils[/card]
[card]Mirari[/card]

For setting up the kill, you need to get lots of mana stored in the mana cache. You'll need to have gained a lot of life and made a few (but not too many) tokens. You then death wish for mirari before death wish (and mirari'ing it) for leviathan, soul foundry, lightning coils and scattershot.

To kill, you need to have 7 leviathans down and scattershot each one of them to death so as to trigger the lightning coils. The only way of upping the storm count to get it to 69 is to play the coils and 68 death wishes (for death wish). You then just need to wait for next upkeep and win that turn.

I think this works, but if not then just let me know and it's back to the drawing board. I'll calculate at some other stage, but considering you're looking at 2^68 life (and hence at least 2^69 mana for the staff alone) with expensive extras like playing the leviathans and the lots of upkeeps for the kaleidoscope tokens, it's got some promise.

Tom

EDIT: Oh, and the limbo/fadeblue collaboration doesn't work. Playing spellbook gets you onto 9 life rather than 8 when the first death wish is played. That still leaves you with 4 life, so you're one life short.

[Nibble]

Soul Foundry + Lightning Coils is a no-go. 'Nontoken' stops the Prism tokens from being able to help, but unfortunately it also stops Soul Foundry.

You can simply run seven copies of Leviathan, but this has the bad side effect of lowering the Death Wish count a bit. You need to do 70 damage, which now becomes: 1 from Scattershot, 1 from Mirari, 1 from Coils, x from Leviathans, and 67-x from Death Wishes. It lowers the life requirement quite a bit, although it does increase the mana requirement a little.

About the x's, I'm not entirely sure what's the best way to actually play the Leviathans now. The most you can hold in hand is 4 (Leviathan, Leviathan, Leviathan, Leviathan, Scattershot, Coils, Wish), which means your final turn would be 4 Leviathans and 63 Wishes. However, since you have to Wish + Mirari to get the Leviathans, they'd have to be played before your big lifegain run, which means you'd be paying 2^63 or so for each of them in upkeep.

The other option is to enter the last turn with four in hand, three still in sideboard. You play Leviathan, Leviathan, Leviathan, Leviathan, Death Wish for Death Wish, Mirari Wish for Leviathan, Leviathan, etc. This gets you a total of 7 Leviathans for the storm count, but the last three also require a life payment with no addition to storm count. So by this method, your storm will be from 7 Leviathans and 60 Wishes, but with 3 extra Wish payments. I think this is the more optimal play, but feel free to correct.

[combo_dude]

Does Soul Foundry make tokens? I know that it makes a "copy of the creature imprinted on Soul Foundry", but I don't know if that counts as a token as it has a CMC of X.

[Nibble]

Does Soul Foundry make tokens? I know that it makes a "copy of the creature imprinted on Soul Foundry", but I don't know if that counts as a token as it has a CMC of X.

X T: Put a creature token into play that's a copy of the imprinted card. X is the converted mana cost of that card.

It's definitely a token. And the token doesn't have a CMC, it's just referring to the CMC of the imprinted card to determine the cost of the token-making ability.


Edit: I'm actually only fairly sure on this, now that I think about it. But I'm pretty sure CMC isn't inherited when copied. I believe a Clone copying a Draco has a CMC of 4, therefore a token copying anything has no CMC.

[Jacob Orlove]

No, copies also copy casting costs. Sould Foundry is one of the few cards that makes tokens that don't have a CMC of 0.

[wonkey_donkey]

Soul Foundry + Lightning Coils is a no-go. 'Nontoken' stops the Prism tokens from being able to help, but unfortunately it also stops Soul Foundry.

Ah. Bugger. How silly of me.

I feel sure there must be a way of getting this to work, though - I'll have another think. Maybe just use something like phyrexian reclamation or malevolent awakening with either 1 or 2 leviathans respectively?

Tom

[Nibble]

* Most creature tokens have mana cost and converted mana cost zero, but a creature token put into play by Soul Foundry has the same mana cost and converted mana cost as the card it copies.

Indeed, you are right. Learn something new every day, eh?

I feel sure there must be a way of getting this to work, though - I'll have another think. Maybe just use something like phyrexian reclamation or malevolent awakening with either 1 or 2 leviathans respectively?

I'm not seeing how either of these would work with Scattershot at all, really. The Scattershot idea is brilliant, as it creates the need for a ludicriously high storm count, and when you can only do it by Death Wish, makes for an incredibly slow deck overall.

[wonkey_donkey]

Nope, they don't work with scattershot. You're quite right, I was in a hurry and briefly thinking of ways of getting creatures back. I'm not sure I like the idea of having 7 leviathans - it just seems so inelegant. If there's no other way, then never mind, I'll see how best to use that.

Tom

[Limbo]

EDIT: Oh, and the limbo/fadeblue collaboration doesn't work. Playing spellbook gets you onto 9 life rather than 8 when the first death wish is played. That still leaves you with 4 life, so you're one life short.

I have a solution for that, and it is playing Mishras Workshop + Irrigation Ditch instead of Black Lotus + Channel for that.

Mishra's Workshop
Irrigation Ditch
Library of Leng
Diamond Kaleidoscope
Blinkmoth Urn
Death Wish
Fork

SB:
Battle of Wits
Krosan Reclamation
Death Wish
Alladdins Lamp
Nights Whispers
Nights Whispers
196 Final Fortunes

1. Irrigation Ditch (tapped)
2. Mishra's Workshop, play Library of Leng
3. Play Diamond Kaleidoscope
4. Sac Dwarven Ruins, play Blinkmoth Urn
5. 3 Urn mana, prism.1
6. 4 Urn mana, prism.2 (19 life)
7. 5 Urn mana, prism.3 (17 life)
8. 6 Urn mana, prism.4, sac 4 prisms, Death Wish (8 life) + Fork (getting Death Wish and Krosan Reclamation) (6 life)
9. 3 Urn mana, prism.1
0. 4 Urn mana, Prism.2, sac 1 prism, Reclamation for Irrigation Ditch and Fork
1. draw Fork, 4 Urn mana, prism.2 (5 life)
2. draw Irrigation Ditch, 5 Urn mana, prism.3, Play Irrigation Ditch(3 life)
3. 6 Urn mana, prism.4, sac 4 prisms, Death Wish (1 life) + Fork (getting Death Wish and Fountain of Youth) (2 life)

From this point, I can start gaining life, and building board position from my sideboard to start the following loop:

Starting Hand:
Death Wish, Fork, Nights Whispers
In play:
Alladins Lamp (Battle of Wits, Blinkmoth Urn, Library of Leng, Diamond Kaleidoscope)
In graveyard:
Night's Whispers

Death Wish for Death Wish
Simultaneously, Fork Death Wish for Krosan Reclamation
Reclamate Nights Whispers + Fork
Cast Nights Whispers
Nights Whispers draw (activate alladdins lamp) for a Nights Whispers
Nights Whispers draw (activate alladdins lamp) for a Fork
Death Wish for a Death Wish
Simultaneously, Fork Death Wish for Final Fortune
Flashback Reclamation for Nights Whispers + Fork
Cast Nights Whispers
Nights Whispers draw (activate alladdins lamp) for a Nights Whispers
Nights Whispers draw (activate alladdins lamp) for a Fork

With this loop, I can add a Final Fortune to my hand. I can't discard it as a result of the Library of Leng, so I can build up tokens to support one loop, execute the loop, and build up tokens again. Once I have enough Final Fortunes in my hand to cast them all in one turn, but them in my deck and win the next turn with the Battle of Wits, I need to perform this loop over and over again:

Cast Final Fortune
Cast Final Fortune
Death Wish for Death Wish
Simultaneously, Fork Death Wish for Krosan Reclamation
Reclamate Nights Whispers + Fork
Cast Nights Whispers
Nights Whispers draw (activate alladdins lamp) for a Nights Whispers
Nights Whispers draw (activate alladdins lamp) for a Fork
Flashback Reclamation for two Final Fortunes.

This will make my deck grow, enabling the Battle of Wits. My deck will look like this when I am done with the loop:
1 Irrigation Ditch
1 Fork
2 Nights Whispers
196 Final Fortunes

Anyone see a flaw in this decks strategy? I am also fairly sure there is something less optimal then nights whispers to keep drawing the Fork when in the final loop.

[fadeblue]

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.

[Jacob Orlove]

If you want a mana-intensive, non-tapping Lamp, just run Soothsaying.

Type 4 tech 4L.

[Limbo]

If you want a mana-intensive, non-tapping Lamp, just run Soothsaying.

Type 4 tech 4L.

Correct, but running Capsize to recast the Aladins Lamp is better, err worse

Edit: But that would mess up the Library of Leng trick, so that doesn't work

[theorigamist]

wonkey_donkey, you wouldn't need to Scattershot for your deck because you could let Tabernacle kill all the Leviathans, and charge the Coils that way.  If you use a non Tabernacle land that doesn't produce mana on its own (like Adventurer's Guildhouse or something) then you can still use Cache for mana and still need Scattershot.  But since you can't have both Scattershot and Tabernacle together, I'm not sure which you want to keep and which you want to toss.  I'd think the Scattershot would be the one to keep, since the life requirement of sixty-something Death Wishes is so significant.  

Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think the life requirement is quite as bad as we have been thinking.  You only really need to kill 3 Leviathans in the same turn.  The other four you could kill over a number of turns without triggering Coils yet.  That drops the storm count you would need from 70 to 30, so only twenty-something Death Wishes, and then four other Death Wishes during prior turns that, since they are separate, do not really need a buildup of life.  Is this deck worth it anymore?

[Nibble]

wonkey_donkey, you wouldn't need to Scattershot for your deck because you could let Tabernacle kill all the Leviathans, and charge the Coils that way.

Doh. Good point. I missed that one...

Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think the life requirement is quite as bad as we have been thinking.  You only really need to kill 3 Leviathans in the same turn.  The other four you could kill over a number of turns without triggering Coils yet.

There's only one Scattershot.

[theorigamist]

There's only one Scattershot.

Doh. Good point. I missed that one...

But the deck is still significantly speeded up by not having Tabernacle, I think.  I'll try, and probably fail, to calculate the number of turns for:

Adventurer's Guildhouse
Black Lotus
Mana Cache
Diamond Kaleidoscope
Death Wish
Death Wish
Staff of Domination

SB:
7 Leviathan
Scattershot
Lightning Coils
Mirari

[CaptainPlanet.dec]

MAIN
Black Lotus
Channel
Armistice
Soldevi Digger
Diamond Kalidoscope
Death Wish
Death Wish

SB
Mirari
Energy Flux
Ancestral Mask
Death Wish
Convalescence


That thing takes sooo long.

[Nibble]

Taking out Tabernacle means the Mana Cache engine really isn't worth it. How about:

Sand Silos
Capsize
Celestial Prism
Death Wish
Death Wish
Staff of Domination
something else (Mirari or Coils or whatever)

Lotus/Veldt/Upwelling/Kaleidoscope might also be worth examining. Less required to go off, but 2 turns per mana generated. I actually think this will be better because:

With the Capsize/Prism engine, you're looking to make the cost of filtering mana really prohibitive. Getting all your U into the 120+ B needed to cast the Death Wishes suddenly takes upwards of 1320 mana.

However, when you consider you need 2 mana a turn to gain life with Staff, and we're going to need to gain something like 19 or 20 figures' worth of life, I think doubling the turns required to make each generic mana is much much slower.

Anyway, I'm going to put some of my spare time into calculating the play of this deck as well. Oy.

[fadeblue]

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.

[Limbo]

Requirements in the winning turn:
1 loop costs:
half your life, 6 R, 3 B, 2 G, (4+x) colorless, where x is the number of cards in your deck
Simplified cost:
98*(11 colored mana, 4 colorless mana, half your life)+(2+4+6+... ...+194+196+198) colorless mana
Total:
2156 colored mana
10884 colorless mana
2^97 life = 1.6 x 10^29 life!!!

I can use the blinkmoth urn to provide colorless mana, so I need (2156+10884)/2 tokens, so 6518 tokens. This will burn me for (6510+6509+6508+... ...+3+2+1) approximately 20 million life. But this can be neglected in comparison to the death wish life requirement. Nothing I do in the setup will affect the life requirement either, so basically, this monstrosity takes in the order of 1.6 x 10^29 turns to win. If we can increase the death wish requirement some more, we can get even higher, as every Death Wish increase will double the life requirement. Any suggestions? Any way to put only one card each step back would be awesome, as that would increase the death wish count to 198, and the life requirement to 2^198.

Edit: Replaced one Nights Whispers for an Obsessive Search. This way I can only reclamate one Final Fortune at a time. In addition, I forgot the last Nights Whispers makes you lose relevant life as well, so turn requirement bumped to 2^199. Lets see if we can cross googol (10^100) soon

Turn requirement : 2^199 turns = 8 x 10^59 turns.