Locations
It’s the day of the Magic Origins prerelease, and a lot of things have already gone wrong. For starters, you overslept and only arrived just as your local game store was closing the signup table—you had to plead with them to let you in. Then, you found that they had run out of your first and second choices for prerelease packs, and you had to settle for a random color. Finally, you opened no value rares among your cards, although you built your deck as best as you could.
You can’t deny your bad luck, however, when your first match threatens to send you into the 0–1 bracket. Your opponent, Ronan, played three Faerie Miscreants in his first four turns, quickly shredding through your life total. You managed to recover in time with a Chandra's Fury, only to find no shelter from the storm: Ronan emptied his hand to cast Anointer of Champions and Ringwarden Owl—and you have nothing that can block the Owl at this point.
On his last turn, Ronan drew and cast Healing Hands to bring his life total back to double digits, and then he attacked with his buffed Ringwarden Owl. Fortunately, his bonus draw turned out to be a land, and you were able to keep the Call of the Full Moon that you cast earlier.
You untap, draw your card (a Reclaim), and attempt to figure out your next move. However Ronan attacks, you’re not likely to survive—and that means that you need to win the game this turn somehow. A lesser player would give up at this point, but you can’t be what you’re not. You’re going to go out swinging; that’s all that matters to you.
It is the beginning of your first main phase. Defeat Ronan before your turn ends.
You are at 4 life with the following cards in play:
- Bellows Lizard
- Valeron Wardens
- Akroan Sergeant
- Llanowar Empath (with your Call of the Full Moon attached)
- 3 Mountains
- 3 Forests
You have the following cards in your hand:
- Might of the Masses
- Reclaim (drawn during your draw step)
- Subterranean Scout
You have not yet played a land for this turn. You do not know the identity of any of the cards that are currently on top of your library.
You have the following cards in your graveyard:
Ronan is at 13 life and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:
- Anointer of Champions (tapped)
- Maritime Guard
- Ampryn Tactician
- Ringwarden Owl (tapped)
- Heavy Infantry
- 3 Plains (one tapped)
- 4 Islands (two tapped)
If you think you have a great solution in mind, don’t put it in the comments! Instead, send what you believe is true to puzzles at gatheringmagic dot com with the subject line “Puzzle — No Matter What”. 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 John Newby, Jeffrey Clinard, Bernd Schwabe, Daniel Posner, Norman Dean, Stuart Crawford, Evelyn Kokemoor, Eric Williams, Aaron Golas, Chris Johnson, Matthew Wilson, Matthew Harvey, Russell Jones, Markus Leuthner, Jonathan Kustina, Joe Gelazela, David Jacobs, Patrick Jenke, Hyman Rosen, Nicolaas Netherland, Brandon Wharton, John Healy, Tony Zhao, Miko Losantas, Andrew Muravskyi, Flakey the Leper, Chris Cordell, Tom Kellett, and Mattias "Slanfan" Berggren.
Joe’s solution follows below:
Here are my steps in order:
- Tap Alloy Myr for
. - Spend to activate Plagued Rusalka, sacrificing Alloy Myr and targeting Aquastrand Spider to kill it. (Josefine will probably use her last
to give Precursor Golem reach at this point.) - Tap Swamp for and activate Plagued Rusalka again, sacrificing Cathodion and targeting Precursor Golem. Float
from Cathodion dying.
At this point, you only have two artifacts in play, and Rusted Relic is no longer a creature, so the Arrest falls off due to state-based actions.
- Tap Island for
, and spend 
to cast Wings of Velis Vel targeting Plagued Rusalka or Thief of Hope to make one of them a 4/4 flying creature that is also—among other things—a Golem. This also gets a Thief of Hope trigger for 1 life. - Spend
to cast Kitesail. You now again have three artifacts, which turns Rusted Relic back into a creature. - Tap Swamp and Darksteel Citadel for to cast Nameless Inversion targeting your Rusted Relic, making him an 8/2. That triggers Precursor Golem's ability and allows you to copy and target all other Golems. Target the 4/4 Plagued Rusalka/Thief of Hope to make it a 7/1 flying creature. Then, target the Precursor Golem, which, when combined with the prior -1/-1 from step 3, kills it. Casting Nameless Inversion also nets another Thief of Hope trigger for 1 life. Note that you target the Golem token as well, but that has no bearing on the win condition.
- Tap the remaining two lands to equip Kitesail to the Rusted Relic.
- You can now attack with your flying 7/1 Winged Vel creature and your flying 9/2 Kitesail’d Rusted Relic to hit for 16 points of damage.
Several people pointed out that this is indeed overkill: Josefine loses a total of 18 life in this manner. Evelyn also notes that with the above solution, “Thief of Hope, for all its inviting abilities and all the ways to trigger them, is completely redundant and may as well not exist.”
Surprisingly, however, a solution does exist that takes advantage of Thief of Hope. Aaron Golas, Markus Leuthner and Nikolaas Netherland all came up with this result, with Aaron’s solution given below:
- Tap your Islands and Swamps for mana. (Mana pool: .)
- Pay and sacrifice Cathodion to Plagued Rusalka to give Aquastrand Spider -1/-1. Add to your mana pool. Josephine probably responds by giving Precursor Golem reach. Aquastrand Spider dies. (Mana pool: .)
- Pay to cast Wings of Velis Vel targeting Plagued Rusalka. Thief of Hope triggers; you gain 1 life to go to 4, and Josephine loses 1 to go to 15. (Mana pool: .)
- Pay to cast Nameless Inversion targeting Precursor Golem. Triggered abilities from Thief of Hope and Precursor Golem go on the stack in that order. (Mana pool: .)
- In response, pay and use Plagued Rusalka to sacrifice Thief of Hope and give Precursor Golem -1/-1. Soulshift triggers; use it to return Wings of Velis Vel to your hand. Pay to cast Wings of Velis Vel targeting Alloy Myr. (Mana pool empty.)
- Precursor Golem's ability resolves, making copies of Nameless Inversion for the Golem token (irrelevant), Rusted Relic (irrelevant), 4/4 Plagued Rusalka, and 4/4 Alloy Myr. The copies resolve, giving each of those creatures +3/-3. Thief of Hope's ability resolves, putting you to 5 life and Josephine to 14. The original Nameless Inversion resolves, finishing off Precursor Golem.
- Attack with Plagued Rusalka and Alloy Myr (both 7/1) for 14 flying damage.
“The Algae Gharial is a very clever red herring in this problem,” Tony remarks. “It gains +1/+1 counters from all of our sacrificing, but it can’t be given reach because of shroud.”
“I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to play around Algae Gharial and its interaction with Plagued Rusalka and Aquastrand Spider,” Evelyn writes, “until I remembered some comment about “pros playing Algae Gharial wrong left and right,” and realized: There is no interaction! We can't deal with a reaching Algae Gharial, but that's fine because shroud means Josefine can't have a reaching Algae Gharial at all.”
