You did get a little information about your opponent's deck, though. Dio's playing Black-Green on the back of several cards with the Escape ability, and even if he doesn't have a lot of removal, he's making up for it with some sizeable creatures and lifegain.

Fortunately, your Red-White deck is trying to make up for lost time. That doesn't mean that it's been effective, though: You started off with a host of small creatures, but Dio was able to stand his ground with a couple of high-toughness blockers. And now that you've crossed into the late game, Dio's creatures are now out-muscling yours.

Dio taps two lands. "Agonizing Remorse?" he asks.

You raise an eyebrow. "I don't have anything in my hand," you say.

"I just need another card in my graveyard."

"Oh yeah. Escape."

The new ability has been good for you, but it's been better for your opponent. You've used it to recur Underworld Rage-Hound a couple of times, and Dio has a boosted Loathsome Chimera on his side of the table. But he also has a Voracious Typhon in his graveyard, and it doesn't take a genius to know what he's planning to do with it.

"Before anything else," Dio says, "I'll attack with my Enemy of Enlightenment."

"I think I'll need to block it now."

"You're still at six life," Dio points out.

"Yeah, but I'd rather not be at one," you say. "I'll throw my Sunmane Pegasus in front of it."

"Are you activating it for vigilance and lifelink?"

"Yeah. That'll put me at eight after combat damage. It'll still kill the Pegasus, though."

"Cool," Dio says. "During postcombat main, I'll pay seven and exile the rest of my graveyard to bring back Voracious Typhon."

"Of course you will," you say.

"That'll make it a 7/7," Dio says. "And that ends my turn."

You untap your permanents and take your draw. Between Dio's Aspect of Lamprey and Enemy of Enlightenment, you're running lethally short on cards in hand, so this one needs to count. Fortunately, it's an Alseid of Life's Bounty as opposed to another basic land.

"Your move," Dio says.

You survey your board. You don't have anything that triggers on enchantments coming into play, so there's that. You also don't have a lot of removal beyond your Careless Celebrant (and to a limited extent, your Blood Aspirant), so that's something to consider as well.

What you also have to consider, though, is the fact that you really want to win this game. You already kicked off this prelease tournament with a bad start; landing yourself in the 0-1 bracket really isn't the direction you want to go.

It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Dio before the beginning of his next combat phase.

You are at 8 life, with the following cards in play:

• Blood Aspirant
• Careless Celebrant (with your Sentinel's Eyes attached)
• Dawn Evangel
• Skophos Warleader
• 5 Mountains
• 6 Plains

You have the following card in your hand:

• Alseid of Life's Bounty

You have not yet played a land this turn. You still have a substantial number of cards remaining in your library, but you know neither the identities nor the order of those cards.

You have the following cards in your graveyard:

• Sunmane Pegasus
• Underworld Rage-Hound

Dio is at 12 life and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:

• Thaumaturge's Familiar
• Loathsome Chimera (with a +1/+1 counter on it)
• Venomous Hierophant (with Dio's Aspect of Lamprey attached)
• Voracious Typhon (with three +1/+1 counters on it)
• Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• Enemy of Enlightenment (tapped, with Dio's Warbriar Blessing attached)
• 4 Swamps (all tapped)
• 6 Forests (five 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 - War Party" by 11:59 P.M. EST on Monday, January 27, 2020. 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 Max Bernstein, Sean Patrick Keatley, Russell Jones, Jacob Butcher, Mike Dartt, Drew Bunnell, Hyman Rosen, James Wheeler, Michael Feldman, and Addison Fox.

"Well, Camilla," Max Bernstein writes, "I'll see your infinite combo, and raise you... another infinite combo! The hard part is, of course, actually dealing lethal damage at the end of the infinity, but luckily we have juuuuuust enough power to pull it off."

"We don't have a repeatable bounce effect," Mike Dartt continues, "so the next place to look is bounce's terrifying-from-a-flavor-perspective cousin: Death + graveyard recursion. Lo and behold, we have Teshar, who brings something back from the graveyard, and Ferrovore, which puts things in the graveyard! However, the only thing in our graveyard that both can target is the Phyrexian War Beast, which doesn't provide any value or repeatability.

"Fortunately, our graveyard's got some treasure from the days of Antiquities, along with someone who can hunt it down. So put on some House music, 'cause we're about to play the same loop over five thousand times!"

"It wasn't terribly difficult to see that the main point of the puzzle was using another non-instant-victory infinite loop to counter Camilla's," Michael Feldman writes. "Sitting at the heart of it would be using ridiculous numbers of artifact castings to have D'Avenant Trapper tap Camilla's creatures. It's not hard to see how Paradise Mantle, Marauding Raptor, Dwarven Patrol, Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle, Treasure Hunter, and Su-Chi all come together.

"But boy is the devil in the details. Veteran Armorer and even Shielded by Faith threaten to let Treasure Hunter live. And with several moves required even after the infinite loop, this puzzle really doesn't seem to end!

There are some minor variations to this solution: You can attach Blight Sickle to D'Avenant Trapper for the final run, for example. Another alternative is to bring Treasure Hunter onto the battlefield with your first Teshar trigger, have it survive Marauding Raptor thanks to Veteran Armorer, and then cast Reckless Abandon to take away the Armorer's bonus.

Technically the combo is an infinite one: You can run this through far more than 2,502 iterations, since D'Avenant Trapper's ability can target creatures that have already been tapped. Much like Camilla's combo, though, you would need to end this at some point, because Treasure Hunter's ability is a "may" effect. (Your tournament judge would also have something to say about the delay.)

"Camilla used an unbounded loop to summon a horde of creatures," Jacob Butcher writes. "Mari uses an unbounded loop to tap a horde of creatures. Thus is balance maintained."