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Today, you’re playing a W/R deck that has a little bit of everything: removal, combat tricks, midrange creatures, and auras. However, your opponent’s, Felicity’s, deck is a lot more focused than yours, and she’s been shutting you out through a ton of flyers and lifegain.
As recently as a few turns ago, the table was clogged with a bunch of creatures. But that was before Felicity pulled out a Zealous Persecution during combat to almost completely wipe your side of the table. Your lone saving grace — an Angel of Salvation — ended up on the receiving end of an Enduring Victory, leaving you very short of options.
“How many cards do you have in your hand?” Felicity asks.
“Four,” you say.
“I wonder why you’re not playing anything,” she says, giving you a suspicious look.
Felicity seems to be overthinking her current situation. There’s a simple reason why you haven’t played anything recently: You haven’t drawn any creatures at all, and considering this, you figure that it might be best to try and maximize the Grapeshot in your hand. But Felicity doesn’t know that, and you’re not going to complain as long as it keeps her from attacking you.
Unfortunately, between Felicity’s Cackling Imp, Basilica Guards, and Nyx-Fleece Ram, your life totals are slowly going in different directions. On top of that, she spends her turn casting a Vampire Nighthawk, extorting you for one life, then equipping her Black Cat with a Neurok Hoversail. With you at five life, you’re going to need some drastic action to keep yourself from dying on her next turn.
You untap and take your draw, adding a Crackling Club to your hand. It seems that your deck is adamant about not giving you any more creatures, which means that you need to work with what you have.
On the other side of the table, Felicity pipes up. “You’re being really quiet,” she says. “Are you going to win this turn or something?”
It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Felicity before the beginning of her next combat phase.
You are at 5 life, with the following cards in play:
- Weaver of Lightning
- Voice of Truth (with your Kite Shield attached)
- 4 Mountains
- 2 Plains
- Stone Quarry
You have the following cards in your hand:
You have not yet played a land this turn. You do not know the identities or order of any of the remaining cards in your library.
Felicity is at 14 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:
- Nyx-Fleece Ram
- Black Cat (with a +1/+1 counter on it, and with Felicity’s Neurok Hoversail attached)
- Mesmeric Fiend (exiling your Volcanic Fallout)
- Basilica Guards
- Vampire Nighthawk
- Cackling Imp
- Screeching Harpy
- Helm of Awakening
- 3 Plains (two tapped)
- 4 Swamps (three tapped)
If you think you’ve got a great solution in mind, don’t put it in the comments! Instead, send it to puzzles@gatheringmagic.com with the subject line “Puzzle — No Such Luck” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, March 19, 2017. We’ll include the best ones in next week’s article along with the next puzzle!
Last Week’s Puzzle
Hello to everyone from Reddit! Correct solutions to last week’s puzzle were received from Aaron Golas, Addison Fox, Russell Jones, Matthew Harvey, Jeff Johnson, Ryou Niji, Allen Smith, Alexander Shankland, Paul Solomon Raynes, Nate Bailey, Isaac Mehler, Justin Plaunty, Joe Cannon, Greg Dreher, Dominic Chan, Paul Seitz, Gary So, Subrata Sircar, Luke Paulsen, Will Clendenning, and Hyman Rosen.
“Looking at the board,” Allen Smith writes, “it seems clear that we aren't going to win by just attacking with creatures: Ryan has five untapped creatures, we have four creatures, and in general all of our creatures are smaller than his. Even using Seance to generate an extra tap with Captain of the Mists leaves us with three attackers to three blockers, and in any case, it's unlikely that Stuffy Doll gets blocked. We can't even make a giant Stuffy Doll and force Ryan to block it for more damage because he has Sylvan Caryatid, a 0-power blocker that we can't even tap or pump because it has hexproof.
“That means we need to do something pretty exceptional with our Seance. Looking at our options gives us the following:
- Thought Courier and Avacynian Priest can be ruled out immediately, as without haste, the only thing they do is trigger Captain of the Mists, which Daring Thief does better.
- Likewise, Kingfisher is similarly ruled out; we have no way to put the Seance token into our graveyard before it gets exiled, and all it does is trigger Simic Fluxmage, which the other three creatures all do better.
- Meadowboon at least does something useful other than trigger our already-in-play creatures. But it's unlikely that growing all of our creatures (or Ryan's, for that matter) will be useful at the end of our turn.
- Kinsbaile Skirmisher does something immediately, but we already determined that a small amount of pump isn't going to be enough on this board.
- That leaves Daring Thief. Daring Thief triggers Captain of the Mists, triggers Simic Fluxmage, and has an interesting ability that gives us lots of options — provided we can find a way touse it. Daring Thief will be our target on our turn.
- “This still leaves the question of what to exchange with Daring Thief's ability:
- Giving Ryan the Daring Thief token is attractive, as it will go away at the end of the turn, but none of his creatures will win the game outright for us.
- We could trade Seance for Orcish Oriflamme, but we still can't get through all the blockers.
- By the time we actually make the trade, we won't have enough mana to activate Valakut Invoker even once, much less the three times it would take to actually kill Ryan.
- In fact, about the only thing that we can steal to any effect is Ulrich of the Krallenhorde.
“A funny thing with Stuffy Doll,” Ryou Niji points out, “is that its ‘target’ is locked in as it enters the battlefield, and will remain unchanged even if that ‘target’ gains control of Stuffy Doll. Since Ulrich only fights creatures you don't control, we will need to give Stuffy Doll away to make this line possible.”
As Nate Bailey writes:
- Put Seance’s trigger on the stack targeting Daring Thief. This exiles Daring Thief from your graveyard and creates a Daring Thief token.
- The Daring Thief token enters the battlefield. Put Simic Fluxmage’s evolve trigger and Captain of the Mists’ untap trigger on the stack.
- In response to the Captain’s untap trigger, pay
and tap Captain of the Mists to tap Daring Thief. - The Captain’s trigger resolves, untapping itself.
- Simic Fluxmage’s evolve trigger resolves, giving itself a +1/+1 counter. (2/3)
- Attack with Stuffy Doll.
- Sacrifice Expendable Troops to deal 2 damage to Stuffy Doll.
- Stuffy Doll deals 2 damage to Ryan (8 life).
- Pay and tap Captain of the Mists to untap Daring Thief.
- Use Daring Thief's inspire trigger to exchange control of Stuffy Doll and Ulrich of the Krallenhorde.
- Pay and tap Fluxmage to give its +1/+1 counter to Ulrich (5/5).
- Ulrich and Seance both trigger. Séance's trigger goes on top of the stack targeting Kinsbaile Skirmisher. (This resolves before Ulrich’s ability, because the non-active player’s triggers resolve first.)
- Skirmisher enters the battlefield and gives +1/+1 to Ulrich (6/6).
- Ulrich’s trigger resolves. He transforms (8/8) and fights Stuffy Doll.
- Stuffy Doll takes 8 damage and deals 8 damage to Ryan. (0 life)
Upkeep
Combat
Second Main
Ryan's Upkeep
There are a couple of variants here. You could, for example, also cast Wojek Siren on Ulrich for the final +1/+1 bonus. Or you could bring back Expendable Troops with Seance on Ryan’s turn, trigger both Captain of the Mists and Simic Fluxmage again, then untap the Fluxmage and use it to give a second +1/+1 counter to Ulrich.
Matthew Harvey notes that there’s an alternate solution as well. You still win via Daring Thief’s exchange and Ulrich’s transformation, but your timing is slightly different:
- Target Meadowboon with Seance's ability. Let the ability resolve, creating a token copy of Meadowboon.
- The 3/3 Meadowboon token triggers Simic Fluxmage's evolve ability, giving the Fluxmage a +1/+1 counter.
- Combat — Attack with Stuffy Doll. (Ryan can just put Sylvan Caryatid in front, to avoid any chance of taking damage from the attack or Stuffy Doll's ability.)
- Tap and sacrifice Expendable Troops to deal 2 damage to our attacking Stuffy Doll. Stuffy Doll triggers and deals 2 damage to Ryan, putting him to 8 life.
- End our turn — The Meadowboon token is exiled due to Seance. When it leaves the battlefield, target Ryan to give each of his creatures a +1/+1 counter. Notably, Ulrich is now a 5/5.
- Ryan's Upkeep — As no spells were cast last turn, Ulrich's transform ability triggers. Our Seance's ability also triggers. They are put on the stack in Active Player / Non-Active Player (APNAP) order, so our ability will resolve first. Target Daring Thief with Seance's ability.
- Let Seance's ability resolve, creating a token copy of Daring Thief. As this token is a Human Rogue Spirit, it triggers Captain of the Mists' untap ability.
- In response to the untap ability, pay and tap Captain of the Mists to tap Daring Thief.
- Let the untap ability resolve, to untap Captain of the Mists.
- With Ulrich's transform ability still on the stack, pay and tap Captain of the Mists to untap Daring Thief.
- This triggers Daring Thief's Inspired ability, allowing us to exchange control of Ryan's Ulrich of the Krallenhorde and our Stuffy Doll.
- Finally allow Ulrich's transform ability to resolve, transforming it into Ulrich, Uncontested Alpha (7/7) and triggering its fight ability.
- Target Ryan's Stuffy Doll with the fight ability.
- In response, cast Wojek Siren targeting Ulrich, to give all Red and Green creatures +1/+1 until end of turn. Ulrich is now an 8/8.
- Let the fight ability resolve. Ulrich deals 8 damage to Stuffy Doll, and Stuffy Doll deals 8 damage to Ryan, putting him to 0.
“Ryan can try to interrupt our plan by activating Valakut Invoker on his turn to try and deal 3 damage to either our Captain of the Mists or our Daring Thief token,” Matthew writes. “If this happens, we just have to pay and tap Simic Fluxmage in response to move its +1/+1 counter to whichever creature Ryan targets with the Invoker.”
“Ryan can throw 3 damage at any target creature or player with the Valakut Invoker on his turn,” Addison Fox observes.“This doesn't accomplish much, though, as Stuffy Doll is indestructible and Ulrich is well over 3 toughness, so he can't use this to fizzle the fight. We also have 6 life, so he can't finish us off in response either.
“The best he can do,” Addison concludes, “is take the opportunity to quote from Moby Dick: ‘From Hell's heart, I stab at thee.’”
