“It was still worth a try,” you point out.

“It didn’t stand a chance against Nahiri's Machinations,” she says, “But at least the Bond Beetle got Bruna off my back for another turn.”

“So that Back from the Brink is working for you?”

“I still think it’s too expensive for the maindeck, but it’s working for me right now.”

Mari is locked in a battle over the Unabridged Cube, a special collection of cards maintained by your local game store. It supposedly contains one of each card ever printed, which makes any of its Booster Drafts an exercise in strange interactions. Fortunately, today just happens to be a casual tournament: It’s not serious enough for a full-time judge, but everything becomes a headache when Mari’s involved.

Until recently, Mari has had a slight advantage in her Back from the Brink, since it allows her to get back any creature she’s lost over the course of the game (in token form, yes, but that’s still pretty good). Unfortunately, she lost that advantage a little while ago: On the next turn, her opponent, Harper, dropped a Bruna, the Fading Light into play — which returned a Skyknight Legionnaire and set herself up for some serious pressure in the air.

“Luck of the draw,” you say. “It’ll be online soon enough.”

“Not soon enough for my taste,” she says, untapping her cards. “I think my opponent’s going to alpha strike next turn, now that my only Protection-from-Red creature is gone.”

“You’ve still got the Crackdown Construct.”

“That’s just one creature, and it’s not going to be able to take down four Red attackers.”

“And the Elite Inquisitor?”

“And the Elite Inquisitor.”

You both glance at Harper, who gives you a strange look from the other side of the table. “Uhh,” she says, “did I . . .  do something wrong?”

“No, no, sorry,” you say, waving a hand. “We’re just being creepy. Carry on.”

When you turn back to Mari, she’s holding a card in her hand. She tilts it in your direction, just enough for you to see that she’s drawn a Phantasmal Image.

“That’s interesting,” she says.

“Yeah,” you answer. “That might help with your blocking plans.”

Mari looks up at you. “Blocking?” she asks. “I was looking into winning this game.”

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

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

• Bloom Tender
• Matsu-Tribe Sniper
• Wind Dancer
• Kiora's Follower
• Crackdown Construct
• Runed Stalactite
• Back from the Brink
• 4 Forests
• 4 Islands

You have the following card in your hand:

• Phantasmal Image

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 creature cards in your graveyard:

• Bond Beetle
• Naya Battlemage
• Keymaster Rogue

Harper is at 12 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:

• Elite Inquisitor
• Goblin Piledriver
• Skyknight Legionnaire (tapped)
• Tormentor Exarch
• Steamflogger Boss
• Skyraker Giant
• Bruna, the Fading Light
• Nahiri's Machinations
• 5 Mountains (four tapped)
• 3 Plains (two 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 – Activation Mechanism” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, August 6, 2017. We’ll include the best ones in next week’s article along with the next puzzle!

Last Week’s Puzzle

“Ensnaring Bridge is a tricky card to play with and against,” Addison Fox writes. “Against creature decks with no artifact destruction, it can be a hard lock, but at the same time, it has a secret built-in weakness to bounce spells. Even empty-handed as he passes the turn, Tex is vulnerable to attacks if we can somehow get some cards back in there before combat.”

“At first glance, things look dire,” Allen Smith continues. “We have no way to get Ensnaring Bridge off the board, and we have no way of shrinking our creatures small enough to make them able to attack Tex.

“That said, it turns out that Disturbing Plot has some interesting wording that might be of use to us in this game. Notably, it returns target creature card in *a* graveyard to it's *owner's* hand. Normally, you'd never use that on anyone but yourself (at least in a two-player game), but here we have one of the rare exceptions. By putting Tex's creatures back in his hand, we can — for one turn — get around Ensnaring Bridge as long as our creatures have power two or less.

“Now, there are two problems with this plan. First, Tex doesn't have any creatures in his graveyard, and second, Neheb (in his misguided enthusiasm) is going to grow our creatures beyond two power as long as we have one or fewer cards in hand. Thankfully the Tremor we drew will take care of the first problem, and the second problem can be solved by a few of the cards we already have in play.”

Ben O’Callaghan’s solution handles all these. Conveniently enough, it works around the possibility that Tex might activate Spellskite:

“At this point,” Russell Jones remarks, “If Neheb wasn't blocked, it will trigger. Contested War Zone will also trigger twice regardless. However, none of those triggers can ever amount to anything since Tex loses and the game ends first.”

“Of course,” Aaron Golas adds, “with Ghitu Firebreathing on the stack and death unavoidable, Rex also has the option of committing suicide by paying 2 life to Spellskite four times to redirect your enchantment. Perhaps he'd prefer that to being gored by your advancing horde. Or he could just concede, I guess.”

“We don't even need to cast Ghitu Firebreathing if we draw a land or another Gnarled Scarhide (which costs thanks to Ragemonger) off the Spellbomb,” Addison notes. “But we probably should anyway, just so Tex can feel like there's a decision to be made in redirecting it.”

All this, however, assumes that we never draw the Sign in Blood hiding in our deck somewhere. But what if we do draw it from the Panic Spellbomb? Chris Billard looks into that possibility:

“However,” Chris writes, “this will fail if Tex happens to draw an instant with converted mana cost two or less from Sign in Blood. In this case, Tex can cast the instant and lower his hand size to three before we attack. Ensnaring Bridge will then prevent our creatures from attacking. We have no cards in hand and returning Ghitu Firebreathing will not be enough to lower our creatures’ power and allow them to attack.

“So even if we draw Sign in Blood,” Chris concludes, “we are better off not using it.”