Revisitting Tortise #1

[wonkey_donkey]

How about this mana engine/deck?

Volcanic Island
Black Lotus
Upwelling
Death Wish
Death Wish
Reality Twist
Naked Singularity

Caribou Range
Mirari
7 Leviathan
Scattershot
Lightning Coils

This way you need to have enough U to pay for enough upkeeps on the RT to make enough G when the NS is down (which needs its upkeeps paid for) to death wish for first mirari, then Caribou Range (get the W from the volcanic island when NS or RT is down) then gain enough life to filter through the death wishes to scattershot the 7 leviathans that you also will need to wish for at some stage (on the turn that you scattershot, I expect).

Uses a lot of coloured mana, so needs a lot of upkeeps to be paid. There's a lot of life to be made, too, so it ought to take a while. Thoughts? If it doesn't work, then sorry, am in a rush once more.

EDIT: What if I use 20 leviathans and mortal combat as my kill condition? I can up the storm by playing the 20 leviathans and the mortal combat, but everything else is death wish-based. That's a good 2^179 life, meaning at least 2^180 mana (not counting the cumulative upkeeps) - I need to do a bit more to make this anything like limbo-sized, though.

Tom

[Nibble]

Requirements in the winning turn:
1 loop costs:
half your life
....

It costs half your life twice. You're Death Wishing and Forking it every time through the loop

This ups it to something like 2^398. Which is well over a googol. (6 x 10^119 or so)

Oy.

[Limbo]

Requirements in the winning turn:
1 loop costs:
half your life
....

It costs half your life twice. You're Death Wishing and Forking it every time through the loop

This ups it to something like 2^398. Which is well over a googol. (6 x 10^119 or so)

Oy.

Oops, I forgot that the lifeloss is a part of the card resolving, not of the casting cost.

OMFG, 6 x 10^119 is friggin awesome  

Btw, we need a slower lifegain engine. I am sure we can find something that gains less life then 1 per turn. And in addition, as life is the limiting factor here, not mana or mana burn, I think we can free up some space in the main deck to allow a way slower lifegain engine:

Maindeck:
Tolarian Academy
Spellbook
Mishras Workshop
Gemstone Array
Death Wish
Fork
One slot free

This allows for a non mana burning storage of mana, making it easier to think of a more sick and slow life engine. We just have to make sure it doesn't interfere with the obligation to cast spellbook or library of leng.

Edit: Replacing Nights Whispers with Infernal Contract. This adds another 199 life divisions, so I am up to 2^597, which equals 5 x 10^179 turns.

[virtual]

Alright, I haven't been able to keep up with this thread since I posted it.  Looks like you've made a lot of progress...  Glad to see death wish is working out.  

Here are some other ideas I came up with:

Get all of your black mana from Black Market.  And force lots of creatures to die in your loop so the mana requirement just gets worse.  

(probablly reccuring nightmare for a tinder wall in order to cast the fork)

Use Death wish for Elvish spirit guide to provide green mana.

Also I like having to use krosan reclamation to get the cards in the sb into the library...

Another thought is that we can play overlad terrain and tabernacle to make tabernacle need to be in play.  Or, maybe we can use glacial chasm for something, and force ourselves to pay the life... that's another nasty nasty old trick.

-Virtual

[fadeblue]

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.

[theorigamist]

fadeblue, since you need the Library of Leng for Urn mana you can't discard your Final Fortunes.  So you need to cast all of them in order to get them into your graveyard and then Reclamate them into the deck for Battle of Wits to win.  Since you cast the Final Fortunes, you need to cast them all at once so you can win the next turn, otherwise you lose.  So you really do need to cast all the Death Wishes at once, and you can't just rebuild after each one.  (Don't forget your life gaining mechanism taps to gain life, and you have no way to untap it.)

[fadeblue]

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.

[combo_dude]

wonkey_donkey is struggling with his internet, but his email is fine - he asked me to post this for him:

Edit: Replacing Nights Whispers with Infernal Contract. This adds another 199 life divisions, so I am up to 2^597, which equals 5 x 10^179 turns.

Does this beat it?
 
[card]Taiga[/card]
[card]Black Lotus[/card]
[card]Upwelling[/card]
[card]Naked Singularity[/card]
[card]Reality Twist[/card]
[card]Death Wish[/card]
[card]Death Wish[/card]
 
Sideboard:
[card]Mirari[/card]
[card]Caribou Range[/card]
[card]Scattershot[/card]
[card]Mortal Combat[/card]
20 [card]Leviathan[/card]
 
Now, as far as I can see the only way to win is as follows:
 
Drop Upwelling
Build up lots of 'colourless' mana
Drop Naked Singularity
Whilst paying for the upkeeps of that, build up to 80 U to play the leviathans and enough to pay the upkeeps of the reality twist
Death wish for Mirari (10 life)
Death Wish+Mirari it (2 Life) for death wish and Caribou Range
Let Naked Singularity die+cast reality twist
Build up enough white mana to pay for all the effects of the caribou range
Cast caribou range and start gaining life
Whenever you reach 4 life, death wish+Mirari it for a Leviathan/Scattershot/Mortal Combat until you have 7 cards in hand.
Build up to 2^189 (I think) life, before then dropping all the cards in hand and death wishing for either death wish or mirariing it to get a leviathan too (so that you end up with all your sideboard in hand). Drop 20 leviathans and scattershot them, taking you to 20 leviathans in your graveyard and exactly 1 life.
Win next upkeep from mortal combat.
 
The reason that this takes so long to win is that you need to build up to enough mana with the NS to pay each upkeep of the RT to gain enough life from the caribou range. To gain enough life, you're going to need twice that amount of white mana. This means that, as you get W per turn, you need to have enough U to pay for (2^190)-2 W with the RT, i.e. you need 3(2^190-1)(2^190-2)/2 as mana total for the RT. However, some of that is needed as U, so that means that you've got to get that with the NS. I can't do the rest, numbers are too big and I can't get my head around the required number-crunching.
 
Don't know if that's a new winner (thinking about it I may only be hovering around the 10^125 mark) but I'm not a million miles away.
 
Tom

Seems fair enough. Is there no way we can work another cumulative upkeep into the deck? I think that combined with some sort of Death Wish+Storm-to-kill-creatures is great, but combining that with the original b0rkenness ought to be even more ridiculous.

[theorigamist]

fadeblue, Morality Shift will be slower than Piper's Melody, if only a little.

FYI, 2^2000 is approximately 10^602.  That's not the number of turns it would take.  That's just the amount of life.  Then you need mana to cast 2000 Death Wishes (the copies cost the same, so I'll just lump them together and call that 6000 mana), 200 Leviathans (1800), and Scattershot (3) for a total of 7803 turns.  That doesn't really seem like enough, but don't forget the need to cast the Stream of Life all at once.  You need 2^2000 life, so Stream costs 2^2000 + 1 mana, and therefore takes 2^2000 + 1 turns.  

I'm sure we can think of a slower mana engine, though, as you're building up mana at a rate of 1 per turn.  Also, you're primary land is blue, so you'll lose at least a few turns on the end by being able to directly help in casting a Leviathan.

Unfortunately, wonkey_donkey, 10^125 is not enough anymore.  Fortunately, I tried to start calculating the turn count, and I think you're way off.  Specifically, 80U just covers the Leviathans.  You said you needed 2^189 life, so you need 2^190 white mana, plus a relatively insignificant amount of mana for the earlier Death Wishes.  So where you said: 3(2^189)(2^188)/2, I think you actually need 3(2^189)(1+2^190).  Like you said, 2 thirds of that will be U, so 2(2^189)(1+2^190)U mana that you need to get from Naked Singularity.  I'll be back in a little while with more calculations.  Huge numbers are getting to my head, and I need to organize my scratch paper.

EDIT: Yay calculations!  Caveat: I assumed you were right about needing 2^189 life, so I didn't check it.  A slight deviation in the amount of life you need would drastically change the calculations.  Also, I'm not calculating the total turn cost.  I'm ignoring a lot of smaller things like the little life gaining you need for the independent Death Wishes.  Also, the random +80 in the calculations is for the 80 blue at the end to cast the Leviathans.  Unfortunately, this makes the calculations horribly messy.  Here goes nothing:

A. (2^379 + 2^189)  <-- Building Upwelling for colorless cost of RT
B. [3(2^379 + 2^189) + 80] + 3(2^379)[(2^190)+1]^2 + 80(2^379 + 2^189) + 240(2^380 + 2^190) + 6400    <--- Building Upwelling for the cost of Naked Singularity
C. (2^380+2^190)  <--- Building up blue mana for RT with NS in play
D. (2^190)  <--- Building up white mana for CR with RT in play

A+B+C+D = Turns for building up mana, independent of casting things and the turns it actually takes to gain the life (which, at 1 life per turn, is another 2^190).

[wonkey_donkey]

Remeber that you can only make black mana under the naked singularity, though, so it's not going to be totally insignificant. I concur that it's a real sod to calculate, though. I also feel that there must be a way of getting a nice, slow kill that doesn't involve battle of wits (I think we all realise that it's got to be the best single kill card).

Tom

[theorigamist]

Yeah, I hadn't calculated in the Death Wish mana yet.  That's a huge bitch of a calculation now.  I'll do it later (perhaps in a few days when I have some more free time).

If you exchange Mortal Combat for Battle of Wits and 20 Leviathan with 200 Leviathan, your deck slows way the hell down.  I think it would easily beat the previous one.  But then you need some way to force the Leviathans to stay in your hand so you can Scattershot to kill all of them.

[wonkey_donkey]

I can play them all on the same turn that I scattershot. Polar Kraken would be even better, meaning the storm needs to hit 219. I'll see what I can come up with (probably post-3CB stuff) for a figure for this one. At least we're now at the stage where it's about orders of magnitude rather than exact figures.

Tom

[Limbo]

I can play them all on the same turn that I scattershot. Polar Kraken would be even better, meaning the storm needs to hit 219. I'll see what I can come up with (probably post-3CB stuff) for a figure for this one. At least we're now at the stage where it's about orders of magnitude rather than exact figures.

Tom

Indeed, all we have to do is maximize both A and B:

Ax2^(B-1) turns

With A the number of turns required to gain one life, and B the number of life divisions. The only two usable life divisions are death wish (forked or not) and infernal contract. If we can maximize these in some sick way, we can get even more insane amounts then what we have now.

[Alfred]

Wonkey, why are you using taiga and not timberland ridge???? That doubles the amount of time it takes to generate mana.

[wonkey_donkey]

Wonkey, why are you using taiga and not timberland ridge???? That doubles the amount of time it takes to generate mana.

Because reality twist and naked singularity only affects each basic land type. A non-basic land's a no-go for this mana engine (which may not be optimal, but it's pretty slow).

Tom

[Alfred]

Right, right..... I'm retarded. Couldn't you make this deck even more stupid by using ~ 200 leviathans, a digger and battle of wits? That would just push the deck over the edge of sillyness.

[Nibble]

Couldn't you make this deck even more stupid by using ~ 200 leviathans, a digger and battle of wits? That would just push the deck over the edge of sillyness.

I was just thinking the same thing. Basically, combine the ridiculous Reclamation/Battle of Wits win of the Final Fortune deck with the ridiculous Leviathan/Scattershot/Death Wish engine of wonkey's decks.

The problem arises, though, of how to make it so that you must get a 1900+ point Scattershot up. It's easy in the current LeviaShot builds because there's no way to recurse graveyards, meaning you only have one Scattershot at your disposal. If you're looking to win with BoW, though, you absolutely need a graveyard-to-library mechanism. There's also the need to make it impossible to spread out the graveyard-recursion over a number of turns, which is easy with Final Fortune but not so easy with Leviathans.

In short, if the idea can be made to work, it would easily be the best deck we have. It's just going to be tough to do.

Polar Kraken would be even better, meaning the storm needs to hit 219.

But you won't be able to pay their upkeep, and they'll die of that. No life required.

[theorigamist]

@Nibble and Alfred:  Actually, these decks would be faster since you don't need to use all the Death Wishes at once.  You can gain 3 life, Death Wish + Mirari it, get 1 Leviathan, then gain 3 life and do it again.  It means you only need about 600 life instead of the 2^2000 that somebody had in the previous BoW/Leviathan/Death Wish deck.  The difference is the Library of Leng.  You need to force yourself to play all the Leviathans and a huge Scattershot all at once, so that the life needed for Death Wish becomes huge.  The problem is, the way to force Library of Leng into play was with the specific mana engine used before.  So it looks like you can't have the Upwelling/Naked Singularity/Reality Twist mana engine and the Death Wish/Leviathan/Library of Leng/Scattershot/BoW win.

[fadeblue]

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.

[wonkey_donkey]

The big problem is forcing a Library of Leng or Spellbook into play (wonkey's version needs to address that)

Why do I need a library of leng or a spellbook? I simply mirari the death wishes on the turn I go for the scattershot to take a leviathan and a death wish and cast the leviathan. No artifact needed, surely?

Is there a slower mana/life engine than taiga/upwelling/naked singularity/reality twist/caribou range? That's got to be the way to slow this down (if that's possible).

Tom

[fadeblue]

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.

[virtual]

There's also the need to make it impossible to spread out the graveyard-recursion over a number of turns, which is easy with Final Fortune but not so easy with Leviathans.

That's not so hard I think.  Just don't include enough leviathans, make it 1 card short and have a single final fortune in the side, so that in order to get to the requisite # of spells in the graveyard, they have to cast the single final fortune.

-Virtual

Edit:  You still need to force the spellbook/library.

[Alfred]

But couldn't you just wish until you have more than 7 cards in your hand at the end of the turn and just discard the final fortune???

[wonkey_donkey]

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.

True. My inability to see the blindingly obvious strikes once again. At least this won't be a problem with battle of wits as a kill condition, anyway.

Tom

[Alfred]

Scattershot is probably not the win condition you want then. Okay, I've got the solution. 200 leviathans, Ether Well and Steam Claw. Not only does this require that you put all of the leviathans on top of your library at once, it requires you to cast them AND wish over and over for the Ether Well. You then win with Battle of Wits. BOOYAH!

[fadeblue]

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.

[Alfred]

Very true about steamclaw. Your solution sounds much worse (better) anyway. It was a simple logical problem anyway, because we wanted to be forced to cast the leviathans before they were either put into the graveyard or the library, to avoid the pesky "discard problem". Thus the effect that put them into the library had to target them when they were in play.

P.S. I don't even want to think about calculating this. First of all, this adds 10 times more leviathans to the SB. Secondly it forces you to play them all in the same turn. Thirdly, the thing that puts them into the library must be wished for each time. Fourthly the things that remove the things from the game must be wished for each time. How many zeros will this monstrosity have when it is done??????

P.P.S. This deck incorporates all of the most broken things from every tortiose format. Cumulative upkeep, unlimited sideboard space, death wish, upwelling and Battle of Wits. I don't know if this is the slowest deck that could possibly be made, but I'm sure it's pretty goddamn close to it.

[Nibble]

There's also the need to make it impossible to spread out the graveyard-recursion over a number of turns, which is easy with Final Fortune but not so easy with Leviathans.

That's not so hard I think.  Just don't include enough leviathans, make it 1 card short and have a single final fortune in the side, so that in order to get to the requisite # of spells in the graveyard, they have to cast the single final fortune.

I thought the same way, then realized with a graveyard of 190 Leviathans, you can get those all into your library at your leisure, then just do the FF last. Admittedly, the one card drawn per turn make this less simple that it sounds, but it's still not requiring a full 200 Death Wish/Reclamation loops in one turn.

I'm thinking Guiding Spirit, some source of haste, and a way to kill the Spirit. It doesn't interfere with Scattershot (ie, you can't recurse Scattershot and therefore need to kill all the Leviathans at once). It forces you to put all the Leviathans back at once, too, I believe - consider that you can only gain 1 life/turn. Then:

Start with 32 life
Activate Spirit to put a Leviathan on top of library
Kill Spirit with Gale Force
Remove Spirit and Gale Force with Coffin Purge (note that you must use its flashback, otherwise it'll stop the Spirit from working)
Wish for Wish (16 life)
Mirari Wish for Spirit (8 life)
Wish for Wish (4 life)
Mirari Wish for Gale Force (2 life)
Wish for Wish (1 life)
Use Fountain of Youth (2 life)
Mirari Wish for Decompose (1 life)
(Technically it'd be like, Wish, Mirari Wish, Mirari Wish resolves, use Fountain, Wish resolves)

Point being, in order to get more than one Leviathan into your library at once, you'd need 32 life at the start of the turn, which is clearly impossible at the rate of one life per turn.

The problem using Spirit is that it can attack, which I feel can be solved by a mana engine needing Serra's Sanctum, and Arboria as the only initally playable enchantment. (Probably the only enchantment at all, or else it may be too fast. Although, Sanctum/Arboria/Caribou Range/Upwelling is a 2 turns per 1 life engine..)

Another concern is how this would affect the Scattershot process. Being able to play Spirit, Gale Force, Coffin Purge, etc, may hurt it. Well, let's see:

Doh, nevermind. Coffin Purge kind of ruins Scattershotting. (build to Storm 8, Scattershot + Mirari killing one Leviathan, Purge Shot, Wish for Wish, Mirari Wish for Shot, every other turn Wish for Wish, Mirari Wish for Purge)   However, it might be worth it. The win loop I've described requires 6 life payments each time through, and must be done for a full 200 Leviathans, since they're the only type of card that can be put into your library, and Spirit can never place itself. (2^6)^200 is.. 1.72 x 10^361.

My brain hurts, so I'm going to stop now.

[Alfred]

I think that the ether well/decompose engine is probably better than that anyway.

[Nibble]

I think that the ether well/decompose engine is probably better than that anyway.

Ether Well/Decompose/Decompose requires 200 Leviathans in play, and each loop you need to retrieve 2 cards with Death Wishes (a Well and a Decompose), making for 4 life payments per loop.

Guiding Spirit/Gale Force/Coffin Purge requires 200 Leviathans in the graveyard, hopefully from being killed by Scattershot and not just discarded. Each loop when putting them into your deck, you need to retrieve Spirit, Force, and Purge, so you need 6 life payments.


Edit: I remember things good. Fixed