You sigh. Vanessa is one of those opponents who gives their turn a lot of thought — so much, in fact, that you’re hovering dangerously close to your match’s time limit. Considering that it’s your third and final game, however, you can understand the size of the stakes involved.

With the Hour of Devastation prerelease events one week away, the Unabridged Cube — with its one of each card ever printed — has been a little more generous with cards from the new set. The good news is that you got quite a few bombs from your card pool. The bad news is that almost all of them were wiped out when Vanessa got her False Prophet to have an Epic Confrontation with your Rakdos, Lord of Riots.

Even if Vanessa has a Scuttling Doom Engine in play, though, you currently have an Elixir of Immortality to soften the blow, as well as an Awaken the Sky Tyrant just waiting to go active. Vanessa seems to consider this for a while, eventually choosing to tap four lands and play her last card in hand — a Shaman of Spring.

She looks up at you. You’re sure that she’s expecting a reaction of some sort, but it’s hard to tell with those lenses of hers. In any case, you shake your head.

She nods, draws a card, and thinks for a long while. Then, to your surprise, she taps a good number of her creatures, as well as all of her remaining lands.

“Chord of Calling,” she says. “For nine.”

Nine? You’re wondering what she could possibly have in her deck, but Vanessa quickly answers the question. Simply put, Reya Dawnbringer is bad news — in addition to being able to bring things back from Vanessa’s graveyard, the legendary Angel can easily block the 5/5 Dragon token from your enchantment. On top of that, you’re already low enough on removal spells as it is.

To your relief, however, Vanessa then chooses to end her turn. Maybe she’s concerned about her life total? That Chord of Calling did deprive her of the majority of her blockers . . . 

You tap your Fervent Paincaster in response, bringing her to 9 life. Then you start your turn, untap and draw a card.

Gravegouger is a sure sign that your deck is trying to be merciful. It won’t completely take away the threat of Vanessa’s Reya Dawnbringer, but it’ll at least limit her options. You’re figuring out what to exile from your opponent’s graveyard when time is called for the round.

Vanessa’s face is still expressionless, and you can already see a judge heading toward your table. You’ll definitely need to finish this game, but how can you do it to your advantage?

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

You are at 6 life, with the following cards in play:

• Painsmith
• Defiant Salvager
• Fervent Paincaster
• Scrap Trawler
• Elixir of Immortality
• Awaken the Sky Tyrant
• 6 Swamps
• 4 Mountains

You have the following cards in your hand:

• Claim // Fame
• Gravegouger

You have not yet played a land this turn. You do not know the identities or order of any of the cards remaining in your library.

You have the following cards in your graveyard:

• Fire-Belly Changeling
• Fatal Frenzy
• Vault Skirge
• Oblivion Strike
• Chainer's Edict
• Swelter
• Forge Devil

Vanessa is at 9 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:

Vanessa has the following cards in her graveyard:

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 – All or Nothing” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, July 9, 2017. We’ll include the best ones in next week’s article along with the next puzzle!

Last Week’s Puzzle

“When looking at the board,” Allen Smith writes, “it becomes pretty clear that we're not going to win by attacking. After all, it doesn't matter how much clever mental gymnastics we do when Nox can just sacrifice Spore Frog to prevent all of the damage.

“Further investigation reveals that there are only three sources of non-combat damage on the board, and given the state of things, we're going to be hard-pressed to take and use either of the ones that Nox controls. That leaves us with the lone Starlit Sanctum with which to actually defeat Nox. Of course, there's a problem: Even with the Murderer's Axe, none of our clerics are powerful enough to take out Nox completely. Without a way to untap Starlit Sanctum, things look bleak.”

“With Starlit Sanctum alone we can at most have Nox lose 5 life if we equip Disciple of Tevesh Szat with Murderer's Axe,” Max Cejuela adds.“The only way to have Nox lose 9 life is to sacrifice both Banisher Priest (4 life) and Disciple of Tevesh Szat (5 life), each equipped with Murderer's Axe since our other clerics won't make the cut.

“Untapping Starlit Sanctum is out of the question, so it boils down to getting Ramunap Excavator on our side of the battlefield, sacrificing Banisher Priest (equipped) to Starlit Sanctum, playing Starlit Sanctum from our graveyard, and finally, sacrificing Disciple of Tevesh Szat (equipped) to Starlit Sanctum.”

Aaron Golas goes into the details with the following solution, which answers the critical question of exactly how you get Ramunap Excavator on your side of the battlefield to begin with:

It’s worth noting that after you first trigger Grave Peril’s ability and get it into your graveyard, you use this window to get two creatures into play that it would otherwise have destroyed: an Eldrazi Spawn token (from Tragic Poet’s death), and Banisher Priest.

“Interestingly,” Ryou Niji continues, “Orzhov Signet is not just a generic mana producer here: replace Crystal Vein and Orzhov Signet with a Wastes, a Plains and a Swamp, and the solution would not work. The reason is that this solution needs every mana we can produce, including the from sacrificing our two Eldrazi Spawn tokens.

“Since we want to tap our Eldrazi Spawn and sacrifice them too, we can sacrifice them only after Endless Obedience, which necessarily happens after we cast Banisher Priest and recast Grave Peril. So the only outlets for their are the generic mana in the mana cost of Pegasus Stampede— and the activation cost of Orzhov Signet. If we didn't have Orzhov Signet, we waste at least one mana, regardless of whether we sacrifice the Eldrazi Spawn before Endless Obedience, or after it.

“Could we have saved some mana by tapping more creatures for convoke? The only extra creature we could have tapped, without immediately triggering a logical paradox, is the 1/1 Pegasus token. That seems to save 1 mana . . .  but then we will have absolutely nothing to do for colorless mana after Endless Obedience, resulting a wastage of two mana! Even Orzhov Signet here only converts one useless colorless mana to one useless White mana. Therefore, we can only tap a maximum number of four creatures to convoke Endless Obedience without color-screwing ourselves.”

“I really wanted to find a way to use the Ramunap Excavator itself as one of the clerics I sacrificed,” Josh Tutt adds.“But even this way, I was able to use Nox’s own pieces against him. It’s a fitting end after the threat of a recurring Blighted Gorge.”