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Don't Cross the Streams

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Ghost Council of Orzhova
“Yeah?” Janine asks, putting her phone to her ear. “Whaddaya want?”

Unfortunately, any likelihood of her ending her call and getting back to your game dematerializes when she stands up and starts pacing around the room. “No,” she says into her phone. “No . . .  no . . .  say that again?”

“I guess we’ve got a few minutes,” you tell CJ.

“Cool,” CJ says. “So what do you think of the deck?”

You glance at the cards in front of you. “It’s . . .  um . . .  interesting.”

“I know, right?” CJ says, grinning. “It’s got eighteen different ghosts, a couple of slimes . . . ”

“Is that why you had this in here?” you ask, picking up the Corrupted Zendikon attached to your swamp.

“Yeah, and I threw in a Necroplasm and Necrotic Ooze too. It’s all part of the theme! There’s even a single copy of Athreos, God of Passage in there.”

“So why the Athreos?” you ask, but the answer snaps into your head at the same time CJ tells you.

“Because that way,” CJ says, “when someone asks you if you have a god, you say ‘Yes!’”

You roll your eyes and glance back at your opponent, hoping that she’s about to end her call and save you from CJ’s attempts at humor. Unfortunately, it still looks like she’s trying to argue, negotiate and explain things to her caller at the same time.

“Yes,” Janine stresses into her phone, “of course they're serious . . .  you do? You have? No kidding!”

“You think she’s going to come back anytime soon?” CJ asks.

“When you work in the private sector,” you say, “they expect results.”

Fell the Mighty
You turn back to the board and replay Janine’s recent moves in your head. She’s playing the “Blessed” deck from the Duel Decks: Blessed vs Cursed package against you, mostly because that’s what your local game store had behind the counter at the time. The problem is that it’s loaded with more lifegain than you remember: Despite your having a Crypt Ghast and a Ghost Council of Orzhova at your disposal, finishing off this game has been remarkably difficult.

Just before her phone rang, Janine cast an Emancipation Angel, bounced and recast her Cathedral Sanctifier, and bumped herself up to 6 life. This came as a surprise, because you were expecting her to bounce her Mist Raven and use it to remove your Skulking Ghost . . .  but perhaps she just wanted to get a more comfortable life total first. In any event, you’re facing down quite a few flyers now, and need to make a move as soon as possible.

Janine suddenly sits down and starts scribbling something on your scorepad. “Just gimme the address,” she says, signaling to you that she’s ending her turn. “Sure . . .  sure, they’ll be totally discreet . . . ”

You untap your permanents and draw a card. Surprisingly, it’s a Fell the Mighty — you show it to CJ and ask the obvious question: “Uh . . .  why?”

“Oh yeah,” CJ says. “Well, you see, there’s this scene in the movie where . . . ”

“Spare me the details,” you say, shaking your head. With everything that’s going on, you’re starting to think that you should just finish this game, go home, and see what’s on TV.

“Seriously,” CJ says, “I’m sure it’s a great deck. I mean, it’s got the theme and everything.”

“Yeah, well,” you say, “I’m ready to believe you. Let’s do this.”

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

You are at 7 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 do not know the identities or order of any of the cards remaining in your library.

Janine is at 6 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 — Don’t Cross the Streams” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, October 29, 2017. We’ll include the best ones in next week’s article along with the next puzzle!

Last Week’s Puzzle

Gearseeker Serpent
Correct solutions to last week’s puzzle were received from Addison Fox, Russell Jones, Greg Dreher, Aaron Golas, Ryou Niji, Allen Smith, Matthew Harvey, Chris Billard, Hyman Rosen, and David Arnold.

“The first thing I noticed about this board,” Allen Smith writes, “is that we're nowhere close to dealing 15 damage via combat. We have a total of 11 power, and while Gearseeker Serpent has an easy way to get through all the blockers, neither of our other two creatures with power can get through, since they're too big for Pathmaker Initiate’s ability. Sure, we can make Shielded Aether Thief unblockable, but since we have no way to boost its power, that doesn't seem very helpful.”

“Dealing lethal damage through a stalled board generally asks us to do some math,” Addison Fox clarifies. “In this case, the equation looks like ‘2 damage times a number of sacrificed artifacts, plus an amount of unblockable damage’. So how many artifacts can we sacrifice, and how many attackers can we make unblockable? Surprisingly, the answer to both of these questions is ‘three’, and that makes the equation work out to 15 damage, coincidentally the amount of life Vish has remaining.”

“In the end,” Matthew Harvey notes, “I realized we need to use Cooperate to copy Dramatic Reversal, so we could turn everything sideways multiple times. But how do we get the Cooperate into our graveyard? We can't let it target our Depths of Desire, as then we are just dead to Vish's Lightning-Rig Crew. So it needs to target something that only costs 2 or less. That leaves Dramatic Reversal . . .  or a re-cast Shielded Aether Thief. That’s perfect for us:

On Vish's End of Turn:

  1. Tap Embraal Gear-Smasher and sacrifice Vanquisher's Banner to deal 2 damage to Vish, putting him to 13 life.
  2. Tap all our lands and Hierophant's Chalice for mana.
  3. Cast Depths of Desire to return Shielded Aether Thief to our hand and create a Treasure token.
  4. Cast Shielded Aether Thief.
  5. Holding priority, cast Refuse targeting Shielded Aether Thief. This deals 2 damage to us, putting us to 2 life, but most importantly, it also puts Refuse // Cooperate into our graveyard.

On our turn:

  1. Untap, Upkeep and Draw. The card drawn is not important.
  2. Go to combat, attack with Pathmaker Initiate (2/1), Embraal Gear-Smasher (2/3) and Gearseeker Serpent (5/6).
  3. Before blockers are declared:
  4. All three of our creatures are now "unblockable", so Vish can't block . . .  and takes 9 damage.
  5. VICTORY!

A lot of solutions seem to have been stymied by the second half of the sequence, coming up one mana short during your turn. It turns out that this is a matter of sequencing: “To get the eleven mana we need on our turn,” Ryou Niji writes, “we have to sacrifice Hierophant's Chalice after the second Dramatic Reversal, which means that the last thing that taps Embraal Gear-Smasher is its own ability. The solution, then, is to attack with your creatures first!”

“Things looked tough,” Greg Dreher remarks, “with a huge wall of creatures and comfortable life total for Vish. But we turned this one around 360 degrees.”


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