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Laughter in the Dark

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“ . . . Then, she used this card to steal my Gibbering Hyenas,” Lalitha tells you.

Gibbering Hyenas
Dominate,” Kiara corrects. “I cast Dominate on her Hyenas.”

“Does that mean that they’re yours now?” Lalitha asks her.

“No, that just means that I gained control of them. You’ll get them back after we finish this game. Now let’s continue.”

It’s the classic underdog story, you think. On one side of the table, Kiara’s playing a W/U deck with cards from four different Commander sets. On the other side of the table, nine-year-old Lalitha is playing a B/G deck that’s been built out of her father’s old cards as well as a few recent store purchases.

Surprisingly, Lalitha’s handled herself well for most of the game. But her creatures simply haven’t been able to get around Kiara’s control elements, and as much as you don’t like seeing kids lose, it’s starting to appear that’ll be the result here.

“I’ll tap two Plains and two Islands to cast Angel of Finality,” Kiara says, “and I’ll exile all the cards from your graveyard.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll equip Lightning Greaves to my Angel and then attack with the Angel and True-Name Nemesis. You can’t block them, so you take 6 damage.”

“Okay.”

“After combat, I’ll equip Lightning Greaves to Gibbering Hyenas, and then I’ll end my turn.”

Golgari Charm
“Okay,” Lalitha sighs, untapping her cards. She then takes her draw, adding Golgari Charm to her hand, and then thinks for a bit.

“I’m not sure if I can win,” Lalitha eventually says.

“It’s okay,” Kiara answers. “Just do your best.”

Something hits you about the cards in Lalitha’s hand, and you crack a smile. “Do you mind,” you ask Kiara, “if I offer some guidance?”

Kiara shrugs but doesn’t say no.

You whisper something in Lalitha’s ear, and suddenly, the little girl brightens up. She still has to figure out the rest of her turn, but at least you know you’ve put her on the right path.

After a long while of thinking, Lalitha smiles and reaches for her lands. All is right with the world once more.

It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Kiara before the end of your turn.

You are at 4 life with the following cards in play:

Llanowar Druid

You have the following cards in your hand:

You have not yet played a land this turn. You do not know the identity of any of the cards that are currently on top of your library. You currently have no cards in your graveyard due to Kiara’s Angel of Finality.

Kiara is at 5 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:

Azure Mage

If you think you have a great solution in mind, don’t put it in the comments! Instead, send it to puzzles at gatheringmagic dot com with the subject line “Puzzle — Laughter in the Dark”. We’ll include the best ones in next week’s article along with the next puzzle!

Last Week’s Puzzle

Correct solutions to last week’s puzzle were received from Russell Jones, Andrew McLaren, Aaron Golas, Norman Dean, Andrew Muravskyi, Evelyn Kokemoor, Lane Engelberg, Sanjay Saith, Vincent Bud, Miko Losantas, Bill Murphy, Mitch Winkens, Jeff Wang, Nathan Thompson, and Sander Rogiers.

“The first thing you need to recognize,” Andrew McLaren writes, “is that you simply can't do enough damage through combat to kill your opponent. This means you must augment your damage. The only additional source is your opponent's own Guerrilla Tactics.”

He continues:

In order to get that to happen in this game, Mindslicer needs to die while it is under your control. Fortunately, you have a Clone and a Brago, King Eternal with which to “reset” your Clone.

Now that the victory condition is laid out, you need to sequence things properly so that the only available target for Guerrilla Tactics is Azrul's own face. This means:

There are multiple ways to do the above. Miko Losantas gives one such method:

“In all my years playing,” Miko observes, “this is the first time I've heard of someone being hit with his own Guerrilla Tactics.”

Most submissions actually went deeper into stack manipulation. The result was more than a few solutions that involved blinking your own Parallax Wave with Brago’s ability. Bill Murphy’s solution demonstrates:

Note that you will need to trigger Aven Riftwatcher’s ability before resetting the Runed Halo—otherwise, as Jeff Wang notes, “Azrul could cast Lightning Bolt on us with Aven Riftwatcher's trigger on the stack.”

Curiously, Andrew Muravskyi mentions a particularly relevant passage from Hamlet in his submission, which I reference below. It’s oddly appropriate for the situation, and it makes me wonder what colors Shakespeare would have played:

For 'tis the sport to have the engineer

Hoist with his own petard. And 't shall go hard

But I will delve one yard below their mines

And blow them at the moon.


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