“I have no idea what I’m doing,” CJ says.

"You think that’s bad?” Harvey asks. “I have no idea what you're doing.”

It’s only the first game of his first match, and CJ hasn’t been able to make much of a dent in his opponent’s life total. Not that that matters: Harvey gained most of that life back with a Needlebite Trap, and he’s been able to savage CJ’s own life total despite most of the board being gummed up.

CJ eventually lucks into a Sun Titan—which he uses to bring back a Seedcradle Witch from his graveyard—and things start looking good for him. On his next turn, however, Harvey top-decks a Faceless Butcher to remove the Titan and continue his air assault with Serum Raker. Irritatingly enough, CJ either refuses to use his Blazing Torch on the Raker . . . or has forgotten that he even has it in play.

Harvey sighs, tapping his Organ Grinder on his second main phase. “Exile a few more cards from my graveyard,” he says, “and you lose 3 life. That puts you at 3.”

“I’ll end my turn now,” Harvey says. “I don’t suppose you want to play anything in response?”

CJ glances at the board. “No cards in my hand,” he says. “I don’t have a lot of options.”

Your mind starts melting at the sheer irony of that last sentence. You desperately want to take over, but CJ’s in the pilot’s seat here.

“Er . . . CJ,” you say, “are you sure?”

“Why?” he asks. “I’m half dead already. It’s not like I’m going to be able to win this game.”

Now you really wish you had that aspirin, if only to save CJ from himself.

Harvey has just declared the end of his turn; you may still cast spells or activate abilities in response.

Defeat Harvey before the start of his next turn.

You are at 3 life with the following cards in play:

• Seedcradle Witch
• Field Surgeon
• Oreskos Sun Guide (with Blazing Torch attached)
• Nullmage Advocate
• Karametra's Acolyte
• Wirewood Channeler
• Journey to Nowhere (exiling Harvey’s Taurean Mauler)
• Test of Endurance
• 3 Forests (all tapped)
• 4 Plains (three tapped)

You have no cards in your hand.

You do not know the identity of any of the cards that are currently on top of your library.

Harvey is at 19 life and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:

• Brain Maggot (exiling your Obstinate Baloth)
• Vodalian Zombie
• Psychic Membrane
• Organ Grinder (tapped)
• Faceless Butcher (exiling your Sun Titan)
• Serum Raker (tapped)
• Nekusar, the Mindrazer
• Pit Trap
• 2 Islands (one tapped)
• 4 Swamps (three tapped)
• Temple of Malice

Harvey has the following cards in his graveyard:

• Darkness
• Needlebite Trap

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 — Fifty Fifty”. 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, Kriz Lee, Norman Dean, Aaron Golas, David Jacobs, Hyman Rosen, Andrew McLaren, Ryou Niji, Garrett Lingard, Sean Dennehy, Andrew Muravskyi, Dorian Sinclair, Brian Langley, Travis Brown, Jackson Kelly, Etienne Brosse, Robin Westphal, Caleb Davis, Sanjay Saith, Nate Burgess, Cody Pulvermacher, Chadwick Bond, Bohdan Yarema, Quadrangolo Tetra, Nicolaas Netherland, George Leung, Tim Reinholz, Aaron Tesler, Mark Simpson-Black, Jonathan Kustina, Bill Murphy, Chung Jun Ying, Andrew Montoya, Subrata Sircar, Frankie Punzi, Luciano Robino, and Mike Atkinson.

“This puzzle is inverted in more than one way,” Caleb Davis writes. “It's not often that the upkeep takes longer than the entire rest of the turn combined!

“Cécile only has 3 life left, and if you manage to play one colorless spell, your Sky Scourer and Pilgrim's Eye (neither of which she can block) will be lethal to her. The hard part is surviving until then.”

“There are two ways we avoid losing in our draw step,” Dorian Sinclair continues. “We can either defeat Cécile before then or somehow put a card on top of our library. A quick scan of the battlefield shows no way for us to deal her damage outside of combat, so we have to look to the latter.

“The only card that can put a card on top of our library is Mortuary Mire, meaning our new goal is to somehow put a creature into our graveyard and then cause Mire to reenter the battlefield. And with that, our only viable line of play becomes clear.”

Travis Brown’s solution goes as follows:

“The thing I like here,” Bill Murphy adds, “is that you can solve this puzzle in reverse.”

Cécile’s handling of her Eldrazi Displacer garnered a lot of critique. For starters, Ryou Niji points out that Cécile could have activated the Displacer in response to Altar's Reap: “Assuming no further response, this would shuffle only the Territorial Baloth into our library. Altar's Reap would then have forced us to draw two cards, and we would have lost before we could untap.”

“If only Cécile had waited until your upkeep to do these blinking shenanigans,” Cody Pulvermacher adds, “it would've made this much more difficult for you. One blink takes care of the Inverter, another blink on her own Drowner of Hope brings more Scions for tapping down the flyers, and everything becomes a lot more complicated from there.”

Chadwick Bond goes further: “Other things Cecile could have been doing with her Displacer include: Displacing Wall of Resurgence to grow a massive land, displacing our Tajuru Stalwart or Harvester Troll to reset the counters on them, holding up Displacer to counter our spells that target her creatures, or just tapping down our creatures during our upkeep. The displacing-Inverter-of-Truth plan wasn't terrible, but she could have left herself in a better position if she had used the second or third Displacer activations more effectively. The third displacement of Inverter was overkill.”

“It's a good thing Cécile had to tap out in order to put us in such a precarious position,” Dorian adds, “as even one untapped Plains would have meant she could have survived our attack. Of course, she had absolutely no reason to expect we'd even be able to make it through this one!”