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The Unfriendly Skies

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Raking Canopy
You don’t remember drafting Raking Canopy, so it must have come to you as a 14th or 15th pick. But if a patron deity of the booster draft does exist, you’re probably thanking it from the bottom of your heart right now.

It is, of course, just another day drafting the Unabridged Cube, your local game store’s special collection that contains one of each card ever printed. Your opponent, Enid, is clearly on her way to winning this tournament: She’s drafted a defensive wu deck with a few sizeable flyers, and your middling rg construct doesn’t have enough consistency to go toe-to-toe with it in a fair fight.

Fortunately, that’s what sideboard cards are for. Between the Thunderbolt that took out Enid’s Serra Sphinx and the Raking Canopy that’s stopping her from attacking effectively, you’ve clearly stalemated your second game. Enid still has a Vedalken Entrancer that’s putting you on a clock, but it’s a slow clock at best, and you have a couple more turns to figure out how to win.

Enid draws her card for the turn, frowns, and then lays out another Plains. “What’s your life total again?” she asks.

“Twelve,” you say. “And you’re at eight life, right?”

“Eight, yes.”

“Are you attacking?”

Enid looks at the table and thinks for a while. “You’ve got that Raking Canopy and three cards in your hand,” she says. “I’m going to sit here and wait for my Disenchant.”

“So you’re not attacking,” you clarify.

She glares daggers into you. “No, I am not attacking,” she says, “and I am so taking you down.”

“Just wanted to make sure,” you say, smiling as you untap your cards.

Your draw turns out to be a Wing Snare, which probably won’t make Enid any happier than she is right now. You wonder if it’s worth killing her Requiem Angel, seeing that it’s going to continue making Spirit tokens if you don’t do something soon.

Then you take a second look at your side of the table and see a possible way to approach this situation. You’re going to need to think this through, but it looks promising.

“You’re at eight life?” you ask again.

“For the last time, yes,” Enid says, clearly frustrated. “What does it matter, anyway? It’s not like you’re going to win this game anytime soon.”

It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Enid before the beginning of her next combat phase.

You are at 12 life, with the following cards in play:

You have the following cards in your hand:

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.

Enid is at 8 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:

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 — The Unfriendly Skies” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, June 11, 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 Aaron Golas, Russell Jones, Allen Smith, Addison Fox, Daniel Ray, Ryou Niji, Enrique Cordero, Florian Kupferschmid, David Arnold, Dominic Chan, Hyman Rosen, and Greg Dreher.

“I'm not sure if us helping CJ constitutes cheating,” Dominic Chan writes, “or if Qiu is okay with it since we can only understand every second word he says. Regardless, this was one of those puzzles where if you keep doing things the answer soon becomes apparent.”

The key things to note are:

“My first thought when looking at this puzzle,” Daniel Ray adds, “is that my opponent had both the ground and the air covered. One thing in the description that caught my attention, though — and helped guide me toward the answer — was the statement that I have ‘a substantial number of cards remaining in [my] library’. This was an unusual description, considering that many of these puzzles don't rely on cards from the library, especially when the identity of those cards are unknown. But Rites of Initiation doesn't care what the cards are, just that you have them!”

“Right now,” Allen Smith continues, “we have six possible attackers (well, sort of — we'd have to do some work to crew Mobile Garrison and attack with the creature crewing it), and Qiu only has three blockers. That means that Rites of Initiation represents 3X damage, where X is the number of cards we can discard to it. Unfortunately, that's not very many right now.

“The key to this is going to be drawing as many cards as we can, and the only way we have to do that is to tap Fallowsage as many times as possible. That’s relatively easy, thanks to Mobile Garrison. Of course, tapping it multiple times is also going to require untapping it multiple times, and that's where things get tricky. But here's the plan:

  1. Tap Fallowsage to crew Mobile Garrison. We draw a card. (Unknown cards in hand: 1.)
  2. Tap Wizard Mentor to return Signal Pest (and itself) to our hand.
  3. Tap an Island to cast Signal Pest. Mirran Spy triggers; untapFallowsage.
  4. Tap Fallowsage to crew Mobile Garrison. We draw a card. (Unknown cards in hand: 2.)
  5. Tap three islands to cast Ghostly Flicker, targeting Fallowsage and Dispersal Technician. Technician triggers; return Signal Pest to our hand.
  6. Tap Fallowsage to crew Mobile Garrison. We draw a card. (Unknown cards in hand: 3.)
  7. Tap an Island to cast Signal Pest. Mirran Spy triggers; untapFallowsage.
  8. Tap the last two Islands and a Mountain to cast Wizard Mentor. (We just need him as another body.)
  9. Move to combat. Attack with all six of our creatures (which all have haste, thanks to Fervor). Signal Pest, Mobile Garrison, and Fallowsage all trigger. Creatures other than Signal Pest get +1/+0, Mobile Garrison untaps Fallowsage, and we draw a card. (Unknown cards in hand: 4.)
  10. Go to blocks. Qiu's best blocks are on our two 4-power creatures (Mobile Garrison and Dispersal Technician) and one of our 3-power creatures (Fallowsage or Wizard Mentor), but it hardly matters which ones. Signal Pest, Mirran Spy, and either Fallowsage or Wizard Mentor goes unblocked.
  11. Tap Fallowsage to crew Mobile Garrison. We draw a card. (Unknown cards in hand: 5.)
  12. Cast Rites of Initiation, discarding the rest of our hand (five unknown cards). All of our creatures get +5/+0. Signal Pest is a 5/1, Mirran Spy is a 7/3, and Fallowsage and Wizard Mentor are both 8/2. (Our blocked creatures are also huge, but they don't have trample, so who cares.)
  13. We deal 20 points of combat damage, which is enough to get through Qiu's 17 life plus the 3 life he gains from Abzan Kin-Guard's lifelink.

It’s also possible to perform the Ghostly Flicker sequence first, before performing the Wizard Mentor sequence — this gives you the same number of “untaps” for Fallowsage, and thus the same number of draws. ”Fallowsage must have left all sorts of arcane wisdom in the glove box of the Mobile Garrison,” David Arnold muses.

While this solution works with Qiu at 17 life, the original image for this puzzle listed an incorrect life total of 15. If this is the case, then an alternative solution is possible . . .  although it’s a complex one. Addison Fox’s analysis goes along these lines:

  1. Crew Mobile Garrison with Fallowsage. This draws us a card off the trigger, and brings us up to three cards in hand.
  2. Tap Wizard Mentor to bounce Signal Pest, then spend four of our 9 mana to recast both of them.
  3. When we cast Signal Pest, untap Fallowsage using Mirran Spy.
  4. Thanks to Fervor, everything has haste. Move to combat and attack with everything.
  5. Signal Pest's Battle Cry, Fallowsage becoming tapped (giving us four cards in hand), and Mobile Garrison's attack all trigger (untapping Fallowsage).
  6. Tap Fallowsage again to crew Mobile Garrison (giving us five cards in hand).

“Qiu has 3 blockers to our six attackers. Our blocking scenarios break down into one of the following:

“If Dispersal Technician and Mobile Garrison are blocked:

  1. If Fallowsage is also blocked:
  2. If either Wizard Mentor, Signal Pest or Mirran Spy is also blocked:

“If Wizard Mentor and Fallowsage are blocked:

  1. Cast Ghostly Flicker targeting Wizard Mentor and Fallowsage.
  2. Tap Fallowsage to crew Mobile Garrison and draw a card(giving us five cards in hand).
  3. Tap Wizard Mentor to return it to your hand as well as whatever creature Abzan Kin-Guard blocks (giving us seven cards in hand).
  4. Cast Rites of Initiation discarding six cards to give +6/+0 to our three unblocked creatures for lethal.

“If Wizard Mentor, either Signal Pest or Mirran Spy, and either Mobile Garrison or Dispersal Technician are blocked:

  1. Cast Ghostly Flicker targeting Wizard Mentor and the blocked Signal Pest / Mirran Spy (leaving us with four cards in hand).
  2. Tap Wizard Mentor to return itself and the blocked Mobile Garrison / Dispersal Technician to hand (giving us six cards in hand). This guarantees that Abzan Kin-Guard isn't blocking, since we've removed all three blocked creatures from combat.
  3. Cast Rites of Initiation discarding five cards to give +5/+0 to our three unblocked creatures for lethal.

“If Fallowsage, either Signal Pest or Mirran Spy, and either Mobile Garrison or Dispersal Technician are blocked:

  1. Cast Ghostly Flicker targeting Fallowsage and the blocked Mobile Garrison / Dispersal Technician. This guarantees that Abzan Kin-Guard isn't blocking, since we've removed both blocked non-fliers from combat.
  2. Tap Fallowsage to crew Mobile Garrison and draw a card (giving us five cards in hand).
  3. Cast Rites of Initiation discarding four cards to give +4/+0 to our three unblocked creatures for lethal.

Surprisingly, this covers all blocking scenarios that follow from the opening sequence — it’s worth noting that Qiu can’t block both Signal Pest and Mirran Spy because he only has a single untapped creature that can do so (Trestle Troll). Your primary concern in this case lies in making sure that Abzan Kin-Guard’s lifelink ability never becomes effective.

“I'm going to have to report Fallowsage to the Magic authorities for fraud,” Greg Dreher remarks.“It claims(up to) four shifts on the crew of Mobile Garrison, even though witnesses report it was engaged in battle in person.”


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