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Puzzling Magic #16 – Ship Shape Shape Shift Shuffle

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You’re playing a Lorwyn/Shadowmoor game against Chris, and you’re pretty far behind. Chris is about to attack you with all his creatures, and all you want to do is survive.

You’re at 3 life with no cards in hand. You control Mana Reflection, Crag Puca, Cemetery Puca, Shapesharer, ten Islands, and four Forests. Chris is at 12 life with no cards in hand. He has Nova Chaser equipped with Cloak and Dagger and championing Manaforge Cinder, Hamletback Goliath with seven +1/+1 counters and enchanted with Epic Proportions, Fire-Belly Changeling, and Rustrazor Butcher. He has five Mountains and three Forests, all of which are tapped.

Click here to see the board state for the challenge.

Challenge

Survive Chris’s attack.

Send your solutions to nex342+puzzle@gmail.com with the subject line “Puzzle – Ship Shape Shape Shift Shuffle” and I’ll include the best ones in next week’s article, along with the next puzzle!

Good luck!

Special thanks to Liz Cady for creating the board-state image for this puzzle.

Solutions to Last Week’s Puzzle

This was almost another solutionless week. I guess the puzzle was harder than I thought! Only one person, Mechalink, submitted a correct solution:

Play Mana Cards in Graveyard Life Cards in Hand
Turn 1 0 0 20 7
Island u 0 20 6
Retraced Image revealing Island u 0 + 1 known 20 4
Mental Note 0 2 + 2 20 4
Turn 2 uu 2 + 2 20 5
Swamp uub 2 + 2 20 4
Mental Note ub 4 + 3 20 4
Cabal Ritual bbbbb 4 + 4 20 3
Charmed Pendant b 4 + 4 20 2
Tap Charmed Pendant, milling Atogatog wubbrg 4 + 5 20 2
Flash back Deep Analysis wbrg 3 + 5 17 4
Charmed Pendant 0 3 + 5 17 3
Tap Charmed Pendant, milling Atogatog wubrg 3 + 6 17 3
Flash back Deep Analysis brg 2 + 6 14 5
Cabal Ritual bbbbbg 2 + 7 14 4
Cabal Ritual bbbbbbbbg 2 + 8 14 3
Charmed Pendant bbbbg 2 + 8 14 2
Tap Charmed Pendant, milling Atogatog wubbbbbrgg 2 + 9 14 2
Flash back Deep Analysis wbbbbrgg 1 + 9 11 4
Krosan Restorer wbbbr 1 + 9 11 3
Accelerate targeting Krosan Restorer wbb 1 + 10 11 3
Tap Krosan Restorer wuubbb 1 + 10 11 3
Immobilizing Ink targeting Krosan Restorer wubb 1 + 10 11 2
Flash back Deep Analysis wb 0 + 10 8 4
Cabal Ritual bbbbb 0 + 11 8 3
Skeletal Scrying with x set to 3 b 0 + 9 5 5
Untap and tap Krosan Restorer, discarding Riftstone Portal uub 0 + 10 5 4
Untap and tap Krosan Restorer, discarding Obsessive Search and paying the Madness uuub 0 + 11 5 4
Untap and tap Krosan Restorer, discarding Obsessive Search and paying the Madness uuubb 0 + 12 5 4
Untap and tap Krosan Restorer, discarding Obsessive Search and paying the Madness uuuubb 0 + 13 5 4
Untap and tap Krosan Restorer, discarding Obsessive Search and paying the Madness uuuubbb 0 + 14 5 4
Untap and tap Krosan Restorer uuuuubbbb 1 + 14 5 3
Skeletal Scrying with x set to 4 uubb 1 + 10 1 6
Retraced Image revealing Charmed Pendant ubb 1 + 11 1 4
Tap Charmed Pendant, milling Atogatog wuubbbrg 1 + 12 1 4
Mirari’s Wake uur 1 + 12 1 3
Untap and tap Krosan Restorer uuuuwwgg 2 + 12 1 2
Untap and tap Krosan Restorer uuuuuuwwwwggg 3 + 12 1 1
Breakthrough with x set to 4 uuuuwwggg 3 + 13 1 4
Mirari’s Wake uuwg 3 + 13 1 3

From here, we can use Krosan Restorer to convert a card in our hand to 11 mana, Breakthrough to convert that mana into cards, and Dwell on the Past to reshuffle everything. This gives us infinite mana and access to whatever cards we need. We can get Red mana with Mossfire Egg. From there, it’s easy to cast all the win-condition enchantments. It’s easy to fill up your graveyard using Traumatize, which allows you to trigger Mortal Combat and Test of Endurance (via Ancestor’s Chosen). Chance Encounter can be triggered using Crazed Firecat, and Epic Struggle by looping Squirrel Nest into your land-untap loop. Finally, Battle of Wits works automatically if you start with a large enough library.

For comparison, here’s the solution I came up with:

Play Mana Cards in Graveyard Life Cards in Hand
Turn 1 0 0 20 7
Forest g 0 20 6
Krosan Wayfarer 0 0 20 5
Sacrifice Krosan Wayfarer to put Tarnished Citadel onto the battlefield g 0 + 1 known 17 4
Krosan Wayfarer 0 0 + 1 17 3
Sacrifice Krosan Wayfarer to put an Island onto the battlefield u 0 + 2 17 2
Mental Note 0 2 + 3 17 2
Turn 2 ubg 2 + 3 14 3
Mental Note bg 4 + 4 14 3
Cabal Ritual bbbbb 4 + 5 14 2
Darkwater Egg, sacrifice ubbb 4 + 6 14 2
Cabal Ritual ubbbbbb 4 + 7 14 1
Charmed Pendant ubb 4 + 7 14 0
Tap Charmed Pendant, milling Atogatog wuubbbrg 4 + 8 14 0
Flash back Deep Analysis wubbrg 3 + 8 11 2
Cabal Ritual wubbbbbrg 3 + 9 11 1
Charmed Pendant ubbbg 3 + 9 11 0
Tap Charmed Pendant, milling Atogatog wuubbbbrgg 3 + 10 11 0
Flash back Deep Analysis ubbbbrgg 2 + 10 8 2
Unifying Theory bbbbgg 2 + 10 8 1
Charmed Pendant, drawing 0 2 + 10 8 1
Tap Charmed Pendant, milling Atogatog wubrg 2 + 11 8 1
Cabal Ritual, drawing bbbbbg 2 + 12 8 1
Dwell on the Past, targeting three Atogatogs and Cabal Ritual, drawing bbb 2 + 9 8 1
Stitch Together targeting Worldgorger Dragon b 1 + 10 8 0
Flash back Cabal Therapy, sacrificing Worldgorger Dragon b 0 + 11 8 0
Tap lands and Charmed Pendants, milling two Atogatogs and a Deep Analysis 1wwuuuubbrrggg 0 + 14 8 0
Flash back Deep Analysis, drawing uuubbrrggg 0 + 13 5 3
Cabal Ritual uuubbbbbrrggg 0 + 14 5 2
Begin loop
Dwell on the Past, targeting two Atogatogs, Dwell on the Past, and Stitch Together, drawing uuubbbbbgg 0 + 10 5 2
Dwell on the Past, targeting Dwell on the Past, as well as Innocent Blood and Atogatog if they’re in the graveyard, drawing uubbbbb 0 + 10 5 2
Stitch Together targeting Worldgorger Dragon, drawing bbb 0 + 10 5 2
Innocent Blood, sacrificing Worldgorger Dragon, drawing 0 0 + 12 5 2
Tap lands and Charmed Pendants, milling three Atogatogs 1wwwuuuubbbrrrgggg 0 + 12 5 2
End loop

This loop can be repeated indefinitely, netting 5 mana each turn. Getting infinite cards as well can be done easily by having a Cephalid Sage in play as the loop proceeds. From there, we can cast and activate the enchantments as above.

In addition to last week’s solutions, I received a solution to the bonus puzzle from Commander Challenge 2 from Jason Doan:

Play Mana Cards in Hand Creatures Storm
0 7 0 0
Leyline of Anticipation 0 6 0 0
Gemstone Caverns, exiling Plains b 4 0 0
Dark Ritual bbb 3 0 1
Lotus Petal bbbr 2 0 2
Manamorphose bbuu 2 0 3
Mana Crypt 2bbuu 1 0 4
Time Spiral b 7 0 5
Dark Ritual bbb 6 0 6
Lotus Petal bbbr 5 0 7
Sol Ring 2bbr 4 0 8
Exile Elvish Spirit Guide 2bbrg 3 0 8
Empty the Warrens bg 2 18 9
Manamorphose ug 2 18 10
Crop Rotation, sacrificing Gemstone Caverns and finding Gaea’s Cradle ugggggggggggggggggg 1 18 11
Read the Runes with x set to 5, sacrificing three Goblin tokens, Mana Crypt, and Sol Ring ggggggggggggg 5 15 12
Gemstone Array, activate ggguub 4 15 13
Cloud of Faeries, untapping Gaea’s Cradle uuubbgggggggggggg 3 16 14
Cavern Harpy, returning Cloud of Faeries to your hand uubgggggggggggg 3 16 15
Return Cavern Harpy to your hand uubgggggggggggg 4 15 15
Repeat the previous three steps ten times uub, g×102 4 15 35
Helix Pinnacle uub, g×101 3 15 36
Activate Helix Pinnacle for 100 uubg 3 15 36

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