After your Booster Draft tournament ended early, you found yourself in a conversation with Steph, one of your local game store’s semi-regulars. Steph mentioned that she was flying out in a couple of days for Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch in Atlanta—but before that, she was getting in a few more practice games.

You’re now in the late stages of your fifth game. Predictably enough, Steph’s Zoo variant is a lot more efficient and streamlined than your forty-card construction, and this is the first game you’ve had that’s lasted more than a few turns. You managed to stay alive by trading several creatures in the early stages and using From Beyond to produce a steady stream of blockers. However, you’ve been having trouble getting your threats to stick; as it turns out, Path to Exile is really effective against Eldrazi.

Eventually, Steph casts the last two cards in her hand—a Loxodon Smiter and an Eidolon of the Great Revel—and passes the turn. She’s given up on attacking you and has instead chosen to sit back and sling burn spells in the general direction of your head. You’re at a low enough life total that you’re not comfortable with the possibilities of Steph’s next draw, so you need to do something fast.

After scrying with your Seer's Lantern, activating your Malakir Soothsayer, and then untapping and taking your normal draw, you find yourself with quite a few cards in hand. But are they enough for you to shut down the Zoo?

It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Steph this turn.

You are at 3 life with the following cards in play:

• Zulaport Cutthroat (with a +1/+1 counter on it)
• Lifespring Druid
• Saddleback Lagac
• Malakir Soothsayer
• 2 Eldrazi Scion tokens
• Seer's Lantern
• 4 Swamps
• 3 Forests
• Wastes
• Sacred Foundry (played via Oblivion Sower, which eventually became the target of Path to Exile)

You have the following cards in your hand:

• Mortuary Mire
• Bone Splinters
• Visions of Brutality
• Unnatural Aggression
• Flaying Tendrils (drawn during your draw step)

You have the following creature cards in your graveyard:

• Baloth Pup
• Slaughter Drone
• Vampire Envoy

You have not yet played a land this turn. You do not know the identity of any of the cards that are currently on top of your library.

Steph is at 7 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:

• Noble Hierarch
• Wild Nacatl
• 2 Kird Ape
• Eidolon of the Great Revel
• Qasali Pridemage
• 2 Voice of Resurgence
• Loxodon Smiter
• Forest (tapped)
• Copperline Gorge (tapped)
• Stomping Ground (tapped)
• 2 Temple Garden (both 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 — Zookeeper”. 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 Russell Jones, Norman Dean, Aaron Golas, Mark Churchwell, Ryou Niji, Andrew Muravskyi, Jamie Ganner, Martin Zacques, Nate Cleveland, Matthew Harvey, David Jacobs, Oliver King, Vincent Bud, George Leung, Nathan K., Regis Michelena, Luciano Robino, Frankie Punzi, Dorian Sinclair, Rob Salisbury, Sanjay Saith, Jon Betts, Bob Wilson, Wesley Hatin, Chadwick Bond, Subrata Sircar, Paul Reilly, Bohdan Yarema, Eero Reiniaho, Nick Zeitler, Nicolò Brandolese, Eduardo Racciatti, Alex Haney, Ettore Ozzy, Evelyn Kokemoor, Brian Grigg, Seth Keller, Mike (Noble.Mich), Tim Hermann, joshtheimmortal, Suraj Srinivasan, Quadrangolo Tetra, Mike Rudi, Tim Reinholz, Anand Chivukula, Andrew McLaren, and Kriz Lee.

“Being at 1 life has us in a peculiar precarious predicament presently,” Matthew Harvey writes. “Each of Brandon's four attackers are lethal on their own, especially the 4/3 trampling Embodiment of Fury and the 5/4 trampling Mountain. So we need to either remove or block all of them, while taking the trample damage into account.

“It is also worth pointing out that Immobilizer Eldrazi's ability doesn't specifically say that none of our creatures can block. Rather, it sets up a blocking restriction that affects what can be legally declared as a blocker. All of this boils down to the fact that if we can get one of our creatures—namely Kozilek's Sentinel—to have toughness less than or equal to its power, it can block this turn.”

Eduardo Racciatti adds:

Putting everything together, it turns out that we have just enough mana to get the plan working. Jamie Ganner’s solution lays this out:

Most solutions in this vein dismissed the Volcanic Upheaval in your hand as a red herring. Interestingly, however, there is a solution that uses the Upheaval—and we also have just enough mana to pull it off. Quadrangolo Tetra writes:

This solution is notable in that it doesn’t bother blocking with Kozilek's Sentinel, allowing you to deal more damage on the counterattack. The tradeoff is that you need to time it just right, by sacrificing that Eldrazi Scion token for mana only after blockers are declared.

“Taking the Ruination Guide was a very good play on Brandon's part,” Evelyn Kokemoor points out, “since, otherwise, Immobilizer Eldrazi's ability wouldn't do much. Press into Service on the stack is the point when I think it would have been smartest to cast Expedite; without knowledge of Abstruse Interference, the game is lost between Press into Service and Immobilizer Eldrazi, and a card now is better than a card later. [If the Interference had been drawn earlier,] the outcome would have been either no Press into Service, no Immobilizer activation, or no Mountain attacking.”

Several people also noted that Brandon may have made an error by distributing his +1/+1 counters incorrectly. “We're lucky that he did not choose to put a +1/+1 counter on the Embodiment of Fury,” Rob Salisbury writes. “If it had been a 5/4, it would still have been able to trample over for 1 damage, and we would be leaving without that consolation pack.”

“Why on earth didn't Brandon support the Embodiment of Fury instead of the Immobilizer?” Chadwick Bond asks. “Giving your bonus power to the creature with trample is almost always the correct play, instead of the 2/1 creature that is probably going to die horribly in combat. Silly Brandon.”