“When you have eliminated the impossible,” you mutter under your breath, “then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Your opponent looks up. “Can you hold the Sherlock Holmes references?” he asks. “The fact that my name’s Watson doesn’t mean that you get to start quoting the books.”

Despite the apology, your frustration is obvious. As it turns out, your Elemental theme deck needs more enchantment removal—and you only realized this when Watson played a Moat on his fourth turn of the game. You’ve spent the last fifteen minutes waiting behind a crowd of creatures, all while Watson shored up his defenses. Eventually, he wiped out your graveyard with an Angel of Finality and started attacking with his flyers.

Finally, you drew your one saving grace—your lone copy of Nature's Claim—and cast it, thinking that even if Watson had a counterspell in hand, you could still return the Claim with your Noxious Revival. But the last card in Watson’s hand turned out to be a Dissipate, and you had to be stopped from slamming your head on the table right then and there.

When he takes his next turn, Watson doesn’t do much: He draws and plays a land and then attacks and brings you down to 4 life. Then, he declares the end of his turn and asks if you have anything to play in response.

You don’t have much hope of winning this one, you admit. But as you survey the table, you also have to say that you’re not beaten yet. There may still be some way you can turn this situation around.

Magic may be a game of inches, but it’s up to you to turn this game afoot.

Watson has just declared the end of his turn; you may still cast spells or activate abilities in response. Defeat Watson before the start of his next turn.

You are at 4 life with the following cards in play:

• Sunflare Shaman
• Generator Servant
• Grinning Ignus
• Flame-Kin War Scout
• Flame Elemental
• Cytoplast Root-Kin (with four +1/+1 counters on it)
• Hollowhenge Scavenger
• 4 Mountains
• 2 Forests (one tapped)
• Raging Ravine
• Yavimaya Hollow

You have the following cards in your hand:

• Noxious Revival
• Pit Fight
• Briarhorn

You do not know the identity of any of the cards that are currently on top of your library.

You currently have no cards in your graveyard.

• Wall of Glare
• Wall of Denial
• Indentured Djinn (tapped)
• Angel of Finality (tapped, with Holy Mantle attached)
• Moat
• 4 Plains
• 3 Islands

Watson does have cards in his graveyard, but these are irrelevant to your current situation.

If you think you have a great solution in mind, don’t put it in the comments! Instead, send it to puzzles at gatheringmagic dot com with the subject line “Puzzle — Elementally, My Dear”. We’ll include the best ones in next week’s article along with the next puzzle!

Last Week’s Puzzle

Correct solutions were received from Zak Turchansky, Russell Jones, David Jacobs, Aaron Golas, Luke Pebody, Christopher McCormick, Andrew Muravskyi, Florian Hennig, Chris Cordell, Norman Dean, Geoff Piontek, Addison Fox, Some Person, Jonathan Kustina, gleeP, Ant Roy, Hyman Rosen, Chris Kaiser, Matthew Harvey, Matthew Spreeman, Carlo Picar, Tony Zhao, Joseph Megill, Lim Jun Weng, Ian Foster, An?elko Višekruna, Vik Patel, Dah Sol Noh, Mattias "Slanfan" Berggren, Scott Stoops, and Brad Soup.

As many people noted, this puzzle is solvable without having to draw any cards at all! This is an error on my part (whoops!), and the base solution is rather straightforward. gleeP writes:

Several people submitted solutions involving each of the three possible cards you draw, and we’ll take them one by one.

Scenario 1: Immolation

Addison Fox’s solution goes as follows:

Andrew Muravskyi notes that, instead of having Viashino Warrior fly over for the win, you can instead do the following: “Cast Hammerhand, enchanting Monastery Loremaster and making Sultai Flayer unable to block. Then, attack with Monastery Loremaster and Viashino Warrior. Narumi can block one of them with Kezzerdrix, but the other will go through and deal 4 damage.”

Casting Immolation on Caustic Hound turns out to be the critical play here. “Sultai Flayer's ability won't trigger,” An?elko Višekruna points out, “since the Hound now has 2 toughness.”

Luke Pebody also posits an alternate solution, which involves using Hammerhand twice:

• Cast Immolation on Caustic Hound.
• Cast Hammerhand targeting anything (say, the Quilled Slagwurm), stopping Sultai Flayer from blocking.
• Cast Banishing Knack targeting your Wind Dancer or Izzet Staticaster. Tap that creature to return the Hammerhand to your hand.
• Cast Hammerhand targeting your Monastery Loremaster, stopping Kezzerdrix from blocking.
• Attack with the Loremaster and the Viashino Warrior for 4 damage each. The only creature that can block either is the Hound, which would then die and cause the last 4 damage.

Scenario 2: Rupture

This win takes advantage of Narumi’s Kezzerdrix, as Joseph Megill’s solution shows:

• Tap Wind Dancer to give Sultai Flayer flying.
• Tap Izzet Staticaster to deal 1 damage to Wind Dancer, killing it.
• Cast Hammerhand on Kezzerdrix. The can’t-block trigger doesn’t matter.
• Cast Banishing Knack targeting Monastery Loremaster.
• Tap Loremaster to return Caustic Hound to your opponent’s hand.
• Cast Rupture, sacrificing Viashino Warrior. This kills all your creatures but none of your opponent’s and brings your opponent to 4 life.
• Pass the turn.
• On your opponent’s upkeep, Kezzerdrix deals 4 damage and kills your opponent.

Further, Joseph notes that Wind Dancer’s ability and Hammerhand can target any of Narumi’s untapped creatures—but that Banishing Knack should bounce any creature but the Kezzerdrix (since you need it to deal the killing blow).

Scott Stoops adds that you can also finish this by sacrificing Monastery Loremaster to Rupture instead:

• Tap Wind Dancer to give Viashino Warrior flying.
• Attack with Viashino Warrior, dealing 4 damage. Your opponent is at 4.
• Tap Izzet Staticaster to deal 1 damage to Wind Dancer.
• Cast Banishing Knack on Monastery Loremaster.
• Tap Monastery Loremaster to return Viashino Warrior to your hand.
• Cast Rupture and sacrifice Monastery Loremaster, which kills Staticaster and puts you to 2 and your opponent to 1.
• Pass the turn.
• You have no creatures in play, so Kezzerdrix deals a lethal 4 points of damage to your opponent.

Norman Dean notes that this approach has at least one variant:

• Cast Hammerhand on the Viashino Warrior.
• Tap Wind Dancer to give the Warrior flying.
• Attack for 5 damage.
• Cast Rupture, sacrificing Monastery Loremaster, which will kill Narumi but not any of her 4-toughness creatures.

The Loremaster solution has one interesting wrinkle: By dealing 3 damage to all creatures, you prevent Sultai Flayer’s ability from triggering. But Aaron Golas submits a solution that does trigger the Flayer—and it turns out that it’s simpler than we think:

• Tap Wind Dancer to give Viashino Warrior flying.
• Attack with Viashino Warrior, taking Narumi to 4.
• Cast Rupture, sacrificing Viashino Warrior. You go to 1, and Narumi goes to 0. Several of Narumi's creatures take lethal damage—her Sultai Flayer threatens to buoy her life total, and Caustic Hound threatens to take you down with her. But the game ends as soon as Narumi hits 0, so those abilities never have a chance to resolve.

Scenario 3: Bone Saw

This scenario appears to have only one base solution, with a slight variant. Geoff Piontek writes:

• Pay to cast Bone Saw.
• Pay to equip Monastery Loremaster with Bone Saw.
• Tap Wind Dancer to give one of those two flying.
• Pay to cast Banishing Knack on your Izzet Staticaster.
• Tap Izzet Staticaster to bounce Wind Dancer.
• Pay to cast Wind Dancer.
• Pay to cast Hammerhand on Wind Dancer. Choose to make Quilled Slagwurm unable to block (because the choice is irrelevant).
• Tap Wind Dancer to give the non-flying Loremaster or Viashino flying.
• Swing with Loremaster and Viashino for 8 total damage.

Russell Jones notes that you could equip Bone Saw to either the Monastery Loremaster or the Viashino Warrior: “You would swing for either 4 and 4 or 3 and 5, both with flying.”

“You're in an odd situation here,” Dah Sol Noh writes, and recommends that you draw the top card of your deck and never look at it. “Looking at the top card probably causes a space-time abnormality and traps you in an infinite draw-step loop!”

It then follows that, by winning the game, you probably free yourself from a space-time abnormality. “Afterward, dump your deck back in the store's bargain box,” Dah Sol continues. “Some hapless fella will eventually pick up the deck and enjoy his or her share of infinite draw steps!”