“Qiu’s the quiet type,” CJ explains. “He’s been like that the whole game. Then again, he’s winning, so I guess he’s got a good reason.”

As if on cue, Qiu opens his eyes. “Silence is the true friend that never betrays,” he says.

You glance at CJ, who shrugs. “He’s like that,” CJ repeats.

The game looks somewhat lopsided at this point. CJ kept a dubious hand with good removal and subpar creatures, and now that removal has been used up, so he’s stuck with a disadvantage in board presence. Seeing Mirran Spy try to face off against Kodama of the North Tree is just what you would expect from the Unabridged Cube’s one-of-every-card-ever-printed distinction.

“That Kodama was just cast last turn, by the way,” CJ says, drawing a card. He skims over the text of his new Ghostly Flicker, then gives it to you for a closer look. “I can’t kill that Hypnotic Specter,” he says, “and that Tormented Soul’s gaining him one life per turn, so I think my chances are slim to none.”

You both glance at Qiu, whose expression hasn’t changed one bit.

“Sorry about the delay, dude,” CJ says. “Me and my friend here just want to think this over.”

“It does not matter how slowly you go,” Qiu nods, “as long as you do not stop.”

“ . . . Yeah,” CJ says. “So, anyway, I figured you’d want to have a look at this. Mari’s pretty good at the whole ‘board setup’ thing, but you’re better at the one-shot play.”

“Life is truly simple,” Qiu says, “but we insist on complication.”

CJ looks up at him. “Are you always like that, dude? Like, seriously?”

“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

“ . . . Ooookay,” CJ says. “So, do you have any ideas? I kind of want to get as far away from this guy as possible, if you know what I mean.”

It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Qiu before the beginning of his next combat phase.

You are at 9 life, with the following cards in play:

• Signal Pest
• Mirran Spy
• Wizard Mentor
• Fallowsage
• Dispersal Technician
• Mobile Garrison
• Fervor
• 7 Islands
• 2 Mountains

You have the following cards in your hand:

• Rites of Initiation
• Ghostly Flicker

You have not yet played a land this turn. You still have a substantial number of cards remaining in your library, but you do not know the identities or order of those cards.

Qiu is at 17 life and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:

• Tormented Soul (tapped, with Qiu’s Vampiric Link attached)
• Trestle Troll
• Hypnotic Specter (tapped, with Qiu’s Feral Invocation attached)
• Abzan Kin-Guard
• Kodama of the North Tree
• Rowen
• 4 Swamps (two tapped)
• 6 Forests (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 — Sage Advice” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, June 4, 2017. 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 Matthew Harvey, Aaron Golas, Russell Jones, Addison Fox, Ryou Niji, Steven Schrag, Hyman Rosen, Allen Smith, Subrata Sircar, Florian Kupferschmid, Alex Jagrowski, Ben Goldstein, and Eli and Will Clendenning. Paul Seitz’s solution was very close as well . . .  but there were quite a few efforts that unfortunately came up short, for reasons that will become clear below.

“Dealing 1 point of damage to someone hasn't seemed so difficult than it does right here against Fah,” Matthew Harvey writes.“The more I looked, the more I saw how Fah can stop us from killing her.”

“This is one of the rare puzzles that are really harder than they seem,” Ryou Niji remarks. “You think you find an easy solution, then you realize that it doesn't work. You fix that solution, then you realize that it still doesn't work. And then, after staring at the puzzle for quite a while, you realize that thanks to all your previous efforts, an approach that seemed impossible from the initial configuration now works as the final fix.”

“Frankly,” Addison Fox adds, “it's a miracle you've gotten her this low in the first place. Getting her to 1 life was clearly a herculean effort, and getting her past that is going to require pushing through a lot of free activations at her disposal.”

“The important thing to note,” Allen Smith writes, “is that Fah has three different ways to either gain 1 life or prevent 1 damage at instant speed, so she's effectively at four life:

“That makes things a bit trickier. We should also avoid playing any of our own creatures or letting any of them die to prevent her from gaining any more life; our job is tricky enough as it is.

“Given that each of Fah's creatures can block multiple creatures, and that she has both fliers and non-fliers, and that she also has multiple colors of creatures, getting through any combat damage is going to be quite difficult. Our only source of non-combat damage, however, is Forgeborn Oreads, and we have no enchantments to cast . . .  or do we? Fiery Mantle has a very interesting clause that causes it to come back to our hand when it ‘dies’, ready to be re-cast (at a discount, no less, thanks to Ruby Medallion). That means that all we need is a way to kill Fiery Mantle repeatedly.”

“While Fah can use these three abilities at instant speed and in any order,” Steven Schrag writes, “these will also involve her three potential flying blockers (seeing that she has the mana to activate Kor Sky Climber). When each measure is used, that creature can't later block.

“You can therefore win by doing the following:

Note that in Step 4 above, you can cast the Fiery Mantle on any creature except for Armor Thrull. You’ll be destroying/bouncing it in Step 5 anyway, and putting it on Shinewend for the final blow soon afterwards.

“So, the opponent may have been hanging by a thread,” Ryou muses, “but our dull knife couldn't quite cut it. We had to find another angle of attack, stretching it inch by inch to increase the strain. That seemed to be working, but before it broke, we ran out of wiggle room. We were stumped for a while, until we realized that all the straining left the thread even thinner than before, exposing its points of weakness. So we brought the dull knife out once again, and this time it cut.”