I hope everyone had fun at the Dark Ascension prerelease this weekend! I was pretty amused by the monster game that some prereleases did—dividing the players into Humans and the Spirits, Zombies, Vampires, and Werewolves that preyed upon them. It got me to wondering which of the tribes was the strongest. Of course, there’s only one way to find out: puzzles!

Challenge

Figure out which tribe can deal the most damage to the opponent by turn five on the play.

Each tribe may not use other tribes’ cards (cards that say the name of the tribe anywhere on them count, so Moonmist is a Werewolf card and Heavy Mattock is a Human card). In addition, each tribe may only use cards in its own colors (green and white for Humans, white and blue for Spirits, blue and black for Zombies, black and red for Vampires, and red and green for Werewolves).

Assumptions

You have perfect luck; for example, even after you shuffle your library, it's ordered how you want. You may not assume anything about your opponent's hand or library, except that he won't do anything relevant and he's at an arbitrarily high life total.

All damage dealt up to the end of your fifth turn counts, not just damage dealt on the final turn.

Solution to Last Week’s Puzzle

You folks sure did a good job of topping the record of Essence copies! With only Innistrad, Rast was able to create 11,696 copies of Essence of the Wild. Using Dark Ascension as well, Jonathan Zolot was the first to send in this solution for infinite Essences:

Play	Mana	Cards in Hand
Turn one		7
Forest		6
Avacyn's Pilgrim		5
Turn two		6
Hinterland Harbor		5
Avacyn's Pilgrim		4
Avacyn's Pilgrim		3
Turn three		4
Hinterland Harbor		3
Rooftop Storm		2
Grimgrin, Corpse-Born		1
Turn four		2
Requiem Angel		1
Turn five		2
Gravecrawler		1
Essence of the Wild		0

You can now create infinite Essences by repeatedly sacrificing and recasting Gravecrawler, creating a new Essence with Requiem Angel each time.

Rast also provided a solution for infinite Essences in only four turns on the play, with nary a Gravecrawler to be found:

Play	Unknown Cards in Graveyard	Mana	Cards in Hand
Turn one	0		7
Forest	0		6
Avacyn's Pilgrim	0		5
Turn two	0		6
Hinterland Harbor	0		5
Avacyn's Pilgrim	0		4
Deranged Assistant	0		3
Turn three	1		4
Mountain	1		3
Avacyn's Pilgrim	1		2
Mentor of the Meek	1		1
Avacyn's Pilgrim, drawing from Mentor	1		1
Turn four	2		2
(a) Village Bell-Ringer, untapping mana-producers, and then drawing from Mentor	3		2
(b) Fiend Hunter exiling Village Bell-Ringer, drawing from Mentor	3		2
(c) Infernal Plunge, sacrificing Fiend Hunter, untapping, then drawing from Bell-Ringer	4	7×	2
Repeat steps (a), (b), and (c) three more times, netting and two cards in the graveyard each time.	10	9× 16×	2
Flash back Unburial Rites targeting Drogskol Reaver.	8	9× 12×	2
Demonmail Hauberk	8	6× 11×	1
(d) Sacrifice all four Bell-Ringers to the Hauberk.	8	6× 11×	1
(e) Archangel's Light, drawing from Reaver	0	7×	1
(f) Repeat (a), (b), and (c) four times, followed by (d) and (e)	0	10×	1

You can now produce infinite mana. To turn this into infinite Essences, use two more Unburial Rites to get another Drogskol Reaver and an Essence of the Wild. Now that you’re drawing two cards with each loop, cast Midnight Haunting before each Archangel's Light to net two Essence tokens.