Locations
The last place you expected to run into the Orsini twins was the Oath of the Gatewatch prerelease tournament. Considering that the last time you saw Raffaela and Renata was back during your babysitting days, seeing them sitting across the table from you in matching red-and-green dresses has been a surreal experience thus far.
“Oh yes they do,” you tell her. “And you know how they are when their parents aren’t around?”
“Yes?”
“They’re even worse in a tournament setting.”
“Oh.”
As you’ve feared, the twins haven’t lost their mean streak. They’ve flooded the board with bigger, more evasive creatures, and it’s taken all of yours and Cécile’s efforts to keep up. Their last attack reduced you to chump-blocking, though, and the Angel of Renewal Renata cast last turn pushed their life total to the verge of unreachability. Cécile’s insistence on playing a more conservative game doesn’t help.
That’s how it is as you start your turn, with you drawing into an Elemental Uprising while Cécile finds a Gift of Tusks. Together, you study the table and try to ignore the twins’ “we’re-going-to-win-this-game” smirks.
“That’s ten creatures on their side, most of which are bigger than ours,” you say. “No pressure.”
“Then we need to find a way to beat them. It’ll knock them out of contention, but they’ll manage. Besides, now that they know you play Magic, too, they’ll make up for it by trouncing you with their Commander deck.”
“I don’t even play Commander.”
“You’ll learn soon enough.”
Cécile gives you a withering look. “It’s nice of you to give me something to look forward to,” she says.
“I aim to please,” you say. “Now, here’s what we’ll do . . . ”
It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Raffaela and Renata before the end of your turn.
You’re playing the Two-Headed Giant variant, which means that each of your respective teams shares a single life total. You also share a turn: You both untap your permanents during your team’s untap step, declare all of your attackers at once during your team’s combat step, and so forth. You know what cards are in each other’s hand, and you may coordinate your actions based on this knowledge.
You and Cécile are still considered to be individual players, but not opponents—your opponent here is the team composed of Raffaela and Renata. If you attack, you attack your opponent’s team rather than one of its players; your opponents may block any attacking creature as though it were attacking any one of them specifically.
Your team is at 7 life.
You have the following card in your hand:
- Elemental Uprising (drawn during your draw step)
Cécile has the following cards in play:
Cécile has the following cards in her hand:
- Clutch of Currents
- Gift of Tusks (drawn during your draw step)
- Bone Splinters
Neither of you has played a land this turn. Neither of you knows the identity of any of the cards that are currently on top of your libraries.
Raffaela and Renata are at 11 life, and each of them has no cards in her hand.
- Netcaster Spider
- Tunneling Geopede
- Harvester Troll (with two +1/+1 counters on it)
- Tajuru Pathwarden
- Ruin Processor (tapped)
- 3 Mountains (one tapped)
- 4 Forests (two tapped)
Renata has the following cards in play:
- Umara Entangler
- Ancient Crab
- Makindi Patrol
- Windrider Patrol
- Angel of Renewal
- 3 Plains (all tapped)
- 4 Islands (three tapped)
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 — Better Than One”. We’ll include the best ones in next week’s article along with the next puzzle!
Last Week’s Puzzle
Hello to everyone checking in from the Mothership! Correct solutions to last week’s puzzle were received from Russell Jones, Norman Dean, Andrew Muravskyi, Aaron Fleisch, Ryou Niji, Sean Marlow, Seth Milliken, Horace and Jan de Vlaming, Tim Broman, Ian Hancock, Lazy Zefiris, Teng Chi Lim, Carl Endres, Sanjay Saith, Andrew McLaren, Jacob B., Dorian Sinclair, Ryan Brossette, Travis Froggatt, jhawtrey, vegaboralis, Chadwick Bond, Connor O'Sullivan, Frank Sarcozy, Thor Taylor, Alex van der Bie, Luke Paulsen, Christophe Reijman, Tim Reinholz, X11, Aaron Golas, Kriz Lee, Evelyn Kokemoor, Warren Snider, Victor Munson, Yassin Luedemann, David Hatfield, Jiri Klaudy, Quadrangolo Tetra, Bram van Buuren, Doug Fedor, Bob Chen, and Mark Churchwell.
Needless to say, last week’s puzzle was quite popular. More than a few solutions pointed out that it’s fairly easy to deal a total of 6 damage to your opponent. The problem, however, is that your opponent is at 7 life.
“We can’t just cast Backlash on the Songstitcher and swing,” Ian Hancock writes, “since our Mogg Conscripts can’t attack. The biggest problem with this is that any creature we cast to bring our Mogg Conscripts online will give Verne two additional blockers. Luckily for us, we've just drawn exactly the card we need to use to win the game. With some clever sequencing, we can use Verne's pesky enchantments to our advantage thanks to our Backlash.”
Andrew McLaren adds: “There's a lot of unnecessary information in this one to distract you, but the really key thing to know is that when you cast a creature for its morph cost, it is a colorless creature spell. All of our creatures are red and black, but the Skirk Volcanist can be cast as a morph creature. Doing this will allow us to animate our opponent's Opal Titan without any protection on it, meaning we can Backlash it.”
I’ll refer to Alex van der Bie’s step-by-step solution for this one. One item that is particularly of note is that you have enough resources to activate Skirk Volcanist’s ability twice:
- First, tap all your lands for mana. Colors for the Blood Crypt don't matter, so let's just keep it at 7 mana.
- Sacrifice two Mountains to turn Skirk Volcanist face up. Have it deal 1 damage to itself and 2 damage to Songstitcher.
- Now, use 1 black mana to cast Boggart Birth Rite, bringing back Skirk Volcanist.
- Cast Skirk Volcanist face down for its morph cost, leaving 3 mana in your mana pool. Make sure to have at least 1 red and 1 black mana available.
- As you played a creature spell, the two sleeper enchantments become creatures, but Opal Titan does not gain protection from anything, as your morph does not have any colors.
- Now sacrifice another two Mountains (note that Blood Crypt is a Mountain, too) to turn the Volcanist face up once more, dealing 1 damage to the Songstitcher and 2 damage to the Opal Caryatid, killing both.
- The final thing to do before attacking is to use Backlash on the Opal Titan, dealing 4 damage to your opponent in the process (now at 3 life).
- Now attack with the Shambling Goblin, the Mogg Conscripts (which can attack because you cast a creature) and the Goblin Medics, dealing 1 damage to your opponent with the latter’s ability (opponent now at 2 life).
- The opponent’s lone blocker is Disciple of Law. The best it can do is to block the Conscripts, leaving your other two creatures to deal the last 2 damage.
“CJ was correct that none of the creatures in his graveyard could help him out of this pickle,” Chadwick Bond points out, “but a little creativity allows us to put one in there.
“Even though he didn't see the play that won the game this turn, CJ definitely should not have surrendered so quickly, as the game was really far from over. CJ could have easily turned Volcanist face up to kill Songstitcher and then cast Backlash on Pegasus Charger at the beginning of Verne's turn, dealing 3 damage to Verne and buying himself another draw step without awakening the Opal creatures.”
“I don't blame CJ for not seeing the kill,” Ryou Niji adds, “but he should have at least taken some time to think it over. And he could have at least taken his opponent to 1, like a good red mage should.”
“This puzzle also provides a nice teachable moment relevant to our Magic lives today,” Chadwick notes. “As we head into Oath of the Gatewatch, let the strange case of Opal Titan and morph creatures remind you: Colorless is not a color.”
