You, however, aren't playing much in the way of the great and terrible lizards. You did manage to score a Polyraptor and a Thrashing Brontodon in your Sealed pool, but the rest of your Green cards just weren't up to snuff. In fact, if your forty-card pile does focus on a specific tribe, it's probably the pirates. With a few dinosaurs. And a couple of vampires.

Okay, your creature base probably needs a little work. But you have a decent amount of removal, and that's what counts, right?

Your opponent, Gloria, would beg to differ. She's playing a rather slow dinosaur-based deck, which allowed you to get a very fast start on her. Unfortunately, despite dropping her life total to single digits quickly, you haven't been able to finish her off. Now she's regained the creature advantage . . .  and the creatures in her deck are obviously bigger and more numerous than the ones in yours.

On her last turn, Gloria disabled your Deathless Ancient with a Luminous Bonds, then paid 2 life to attack with a flying Glorifier of Dusk. While you still have some life to spare, Gloria's move put you in a bad spot: She's likely to attack with all of her creatures next turn, and you don't like the idea of getting forced into a bunch of bad blocks.

The good news is that you've been saving your cards for one big push. To be fair, you're not quite sure what you want to do with a Fanatical Firebrand and a March of the Drowned, but you'll find some way to make them work.

Then you untap your permanents and draw your card for the turn. You smile at the Reckless Rage in your hand: It's not quite the signal you were expecting, but it's definitely an indication that it's time to make your move. Gloria may have the bigger creatures in play, but with a little luck, she'll eventually be the one who won't realize what just hit her.

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

You are at 9 life, with the following cards in play:

• Pitiless Plunderer
• Needletooth Raptor
• Orazca Raptor (with your Strider Harness attached)
• Deathless Ancient (with Gloria's Luminous Bonds attached)
• 4 Swamps
• 2 Mountains

You have the following cards in your hand:

• March of the Drowned
• Fanatical Firebrand
• Reckless Rage

You have the following cards in your graveyard:

• Sure Strike
• Dinosaur Hunter
• Oathsworn Vampire
• Headstrong Brute
• Impale
• Moment of Craving

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.

Gloria is at 4 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:

• Hardy Veteran (with Gloria's Squire's Devotion attached)
• Looming Altisaur
• Knight of the Stampede
• Grazing Whiptail
• Imperial Ceratops
• Spike-Tailed Ceratops
• Glorifier of Dusk (tapped)
• 4 Forests (two tapped)
• 3 Plains (one 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 -- Don't Feed the Animals" by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, January 21, 2017. 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 Norman Dean, Simon Lazarus, Bill Cheng, Ryou Niji, Russell Jones, Aaron Golas, Addison Fox, Greg Dreher, Maarten Wybaillie, Michael Feldman, Michael Shoemaker, Micah Dilts, Chris Billard, David Arnold, Davide Giacomello, and Subrata Sircar.

"Ironically," Michael Feldman writes, "there's not much fire in this puzzle (there's no way to return the Lavamancer or the Whelp), but there sure is a lot of smoke (and mirrors). Fearsome Temper is especially tempting, but there's not enough mana or extra damage to make it work. But there is definitely a lot of fuel if you time it right."

"How could Sigarda's Aid possibly be the key to the puzzle?" Ryou Niji notes."We don't have an Aura or Equipment spell to cast unless we do some shenanigans with Auramancer, and the Fearsome Temper in our graveyard is fairly underwhelming with so many blockers and without a ton of mana. Of course, that leads us to the other Aura on the board, Shielded by Faith. And there's just a perfect body to carry that Aura."

Bill Cheng's solution explains this further, since you have to play with the stack a little:

"Interestingly," Ryou writes, "this puzzle manages to be both a case of 'the perfect draw' and of 'opponent dead on board'. Without Sigarda's Aid, we would have to settle for targeting the opponent with the second Goblin Bombardment activation, before we could cast a sorcery-speed Shielded by Faith."

Micah Dilts, however, points out that since damage is cleared at the end of each turn, you don't have to find a way to get Shielded by Faith onto the Deathspitter. You do, however, need to use the other Aura at your disposal:

"This board state is, if nothing else, a demonstration of how powerful Goblin Bombardment is as both a damage source and a free sacrifice outlet," Addison Fox notes."At 16 life, the Frilled Deathspitter represents in its dying gasps almost all of Vincent's life total, and Goblin Bombardment makes enraging it trivial with the number of bodies at our disposal."

"This is a lot like the way most of us old-school gamers played the 16-bit Super Mario World," Michael adds. "As a reward for its faithful service and out of recognition for all the abuse you've caused it to endure, you eventually sacrifice your magical, indestructible, projectile-spitting dinosaur at just the right moment to save your own skin."