Locations
“He got back up to twenty life, did he?” you ask.
“No, thirty!” Verne grins. “It was a lot of Pegasus tokens, I’ll tell you that.”
Your opponent, Dug, gives you similar grin. “I’ll attack with my Severed Legion and my Exalted Angel. You’re at, um . . . eight life and can’t block either of them, right?”
“Nope,” you say, “but I’ll cast Canopy Claws now to make your Angel lose flying.”
“It still has protection from Red,” Dug adds. “Are you blocking it with your Nantuko Elder or your Twigwalker?”
“Neither,” you say.“I can block it with my Giant Warthog. It’s still got your Sandskin on it, so any damage dealt to it is prevented. You don’t gain any life.”
Dug chuckles. “Oh yeah, I see. Very clever.”
“Where’d you get these cards, Verne?” you ask.
Verne shrugs. “I had a lot of them sitting around. I played a lot of Limited during the early two-oughts — back when Booster Draft was coming into its own as a format — and that was enough to put a few decks together.”
“So now you have an Odyssey block deck and an Onslaught block deck,” you say. “And maybe then some. That’s neat.”
“Well, the Onslaught block deck is alpha dog right now,” Dug laughs. “Take two from the Severed Legion? I’ll tap four to cast a Screeching Buzzard, then pass the turn over. I’ll lose one from the Wretched Anurid, but it’s not like I haven’t got more to spare.”
"I'm at six, then," you say, untapping and drawing your card for the turn.
“Against twenty-one life?” Dug asks. “We might be better off shuffling for a new game.”
You study the cards on the table. Dug might be right, but maybe there’s some redeeming value in this board somewhere; you’ve fought uphill battles before.
“Say, Verne,” you ask, “how did that game of yours turn out?”
“What game?”
“The one with the Congregate.”
Verne laughs. “I still won!” he says. “Took me a while, though. The guy had, like, ten Pegasus tokens, but they couldn’t get through the Crosswinds I topdecked next turn!”
“Well, then,” you say, “if I’m reading this right, you’re probably going to want to see this.”
It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Dug before the beginning of his next combat phase.
You are at 6 life, with the following cards in play:
- Nantuko Elder
- Twigwalker
- Whipkeeper (with Dug’s Guilty Conscience attached)
- Anger
- Giant Warthog (with Dug’s Sandskin attached)
- 5 Mountain
- 6 Forest
You have the following cards in your hand:
You do not know the identities or order of any of the remaining cards in your library.
You have the following relevant cards in your graveyard:
Dug is at 21 life and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:
- Starlight Invoker
- Wretched Anurid
- Severed Legion (tapped)
- Screeching Buzzard
- Thrashing Mudspawn
- Exalted Angel (tapped, with Dug’s Crown of Awe attached)
- 5 Plains (one tapped)
- 7 Swamp (three 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 — Sciurophilia” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, February 12, 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 Aaron Golas, Hyman Rosen, Russell Jones, Norman Dean, Dom Guido, Paul Seitz, Matthew Harvey, David Jacobs, Mike Ryan, Guy Ronen, Sidney Parham, Subrata Sircar, Spencer Salas, Dominic Chan, Addison Fox, Tristan Tollisen, Alex P., Sean Dennehy, Ryou Niji, David Solomon, Greg Dreher, Matt Stanford, Michael Feldman, Jeremy Caramico, Luke Paulsen, and Bill Murphy.
“It breaks my heart to have to beat Lois,” Dominic Chan writes.“It's so refreshing to see a mother take interest in her sons' hobbies, but hopefully this loss won't diminish her interest in this awesome game.
- Just from evaluating the board, there's not a high chance we can swing for game, with our attackers being outnumbered by Lois' blockers.
- Our next option is to activate Aethertorch Renegade's second ability which conveniently deals 6 damage to our opponent, but we'll need to generate eight energy counters.
- Lastly, we have the option to sacrifice our artifacts to Embraal Gear-Smasher, but we can only activate it twice, once during Lois's turn and once on ours . . . so we'd have to muster the last 2 damage from elsewhere.
- Ballista Charger can deal 1 damage from its ability by attacking, but crewing it and activating Embraal Smasher's ability will net us a loss of creatures to attack with, and Lois might survive on 1 life.
Note that getting the extra 1 damage from Aethertorch Renegade isn’t an option, as the Renegade’s first ability can only target creatures. But it turns out that getting from zero to eight energy counters isn’t as difficult as it sounds, as Jeremy Caramico posits:
- At the end of Lois' turn, use Acrobatic Maneuver to blink your Aethertorch Renegade (4 mana left). You gain five Energy counters thanks to Decoction Module (one for the Renegade’s enters-the-battlefield ability, and one for Decoction Module’s triggered ability).
- Use your remaining mana to bounce your Ruinous Gremlin with the Module's activated ability.
- On your turn, replay the Ruinous Gremlin (
left), which leaves you with six Energy counters. - Then enchant your own Cogworker's Puzzleknot with Gremlin Infestation ( left).
- Sacrifice the Cogworker's Puzzleknot to make a 1/1 Servo token and a 2/2
GoblinGremlin token, netting the last two Energy counters from Decoction Module). - Spend eight Energy counters to deal 6 damage to your opponent with the Aethertorch Renegade.
“We have a creature with an ability that conveniently does an amount of damage that matches our opponent’s life total,” Mike Ryan remarks.“I do love it when things work out so nicely.”
The above solution does give Aethertorch Renegade summoning sickness at some point, but it does this before the end of Lois’ turn. By the time your turn rolls around, the Renegade will have lost summoning sickness in time for you to take advantage of its tap abilities.
“However,” Luke Paulsen writes, “the board position also gives us multiple angles to work from. In fact, we can set up a kill using either ability of Gremlin Infestation!”
“At first,” Tristan Tollisen writes, “I was thinking that you could just use the Embraal Gear-Smasher on Lois's end step, then use it again on your turn and play Gremlin Infestation on her Renegade Map. Then I realized that Lois could sacrifice her Renegade Map to avoid the loss of life.”
Taking this approach would therefore require you to give Lois an artifact that isn’t as immediately disposable as the Renegade Map. Paul Seitz explains:
At the end of Lois' turn:
- Activate Embraal Gear-Smasher, sacrificing our Cogworker's Puzzleknot to deal 2 damage to Lois (down to 4 life).
- Cast Acrobatic Maneuver targeting Fairgrounds Warden (and spending ). Once it resolves, we flicker the Warden and return Lois’ Dawnfeather Eagle to her, exiling Countless Gears Renegade in its place. (We also draw a card, we get an Energy counter, and her creatures get +1/+1 and vigilance, but that's all immaterial.)
- After we imprison the Renegade, activate Decoction Module (spending ), returning our Fairgrounds Warden to our hand and releasing Countless Gears Renegade back to Lois’ control. Because it left the battlefield earlier in the turn, its Revolt ability triggers and Lois gets a 1/1 Servo token.
Then we start our turn:
- Untap, upkeep, draw as always.
- Activate Embraal Gear-Smasher, sacrificing our Ballista Charger to deal 2 damage to Lois (down to 2 life).
- Cast Gremlin Infestation (spending ), targeting her Servo token. Lois has no way to remove the Servo token, so we move past combat to our end step. Gremlin Infestation triggers, and Lois takes a final 2 damage (down to 0 life).
Finally, Luke points out that there’s a variant to this solution that involves taking advantage of your combat phase:
- At the end of Lois’ turn, instead of using Decoction Module to bounce Fairground Warden, sacrifice Cogworker's Puzzleknot to make a 1/1 Servo token and get two Energy counters (Decoction Module triggering on the Servo and the Fairgrounds Warden).
- Sacrifice Decoction Module to Embraal Gear-Smasher for 2 damage.
- On our turn, cast Caught in the Brights on our own Fairgrounds Warden.
- Tap Fairgrounds Warden, Ruinous Gremlin, and the Servo token to crew Ballista Charger.
- Activate Aethertorch Renegade to ping Narnam Renegade for 1 damage.
- Attack with Ballista Charger and stack the attack triggers so that Ballista Charger deals 1 damage to Narnam Renegade – destroying the Renegade – before Caught in the Brights exiles Fairgrounds Warden.
- At that point Countless Gears Renegade re-enters and makes its 1/1 Servo token since Narnam Renegade has already died and turned on Revolt for Lois.
- To avoid having Lois block with the Servo, use Embraal Gear-Smasher to sacrifice Ballista Charger before blockers are declared!
- At this point we can continue with the Gremlin Infestation plan. Whew!
