Compounding things further is the fact that Jason's wearing a gray hoodie and a surgical mask, and you assume that that's because he's got a cold that he doesn't want anyone to catch. (Unless he thinks it's Halloween or something.) You can hear him breathing quietly from across the table - silent enough to be subtle, but loud enough to get your attention - and it's starting to get annoying.

Your other problem is that this game has turned out to be anything but child's play. You drafted a nice Green-White deck from your local game store's Unabridged Cube, one with workable creatures and a lot of ways to give them +1/+1 counters. Unfortunately, your deck seems to like giving you a lot of the former and very little of the latter. Considering that the Cube contains one of each card ever printed, you should have expected your deck to be as just temperamental as your draft pool.

Jason, on the other hand, seems to be banking on a few big flyers to win his games: You've already taken down a Skaab Ruinator with a well-timed Plummet and removed a Cloud Djinn with a freshly-drawn Swords to Plowshares. Jason has taken all this in stride, though, and you can't help but think that he's got nastier stuff in store for you.

On his upkeep, Jason surprises you by dropping his Molting Harpy into his graveyard shortly after he scrys a card to the top of his library. "You're not paying its upkeep cost?" you ask, and Jason shakes his head.

Shortly after he draws his card for the turn, you find out why: Jason taps three lands and casts his Skaab Ruinator from his graveyard, exiling Molting Harpy and two other creature cards. You're not very thrilled at that move, seeing that you now have to find a way to deal with the 5/6 flyer once more.

Then Jason taps the rest of his lands to activate the Evershrike in his graveyard, attaching his newly-drawn Strength of Lunacy to it.

"Uh... okay," you say.

Jason nods. You can't tell if he's smiling behind that mask.

You do some quick mental calculations. The Evershrike turns out to be a 6/5 creature, leaving you with what looks like a significant disadvantage on the table. Given that your only flyers are a 1/1 Skyshroud Falcon and a 0/3 Galepowder Mage respectively, you're feeling more than a little alone in the dark right now.

Jason waves you off, indicating the end of his turn. You untap and draw a Survive the Night, which is especially fitting for a situation where you're at five life and facing two massive flyers.

You've done some of your best thinking with your back to the wall, though, and this would be a perfect opportunity to escape Jason's clutches. After all, if one of you is heading off to the losers' bracket for your final destination, you'd rather that it not be you.

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

You are at 5 life, with the following cards in play:

• Diregraf Escort (paired with your Galepowder Mage)
• Deranged Outcast
• Skyshroud Falcon
• Femeref Archers
• Rishkar, Peema Renegade (with a +1/+1 counter on it)
• Devoted Crop-Mate
• Galepowder Mage (with Jason's Slimebind attached, paired with your Diregraf Escort)
• 5 Plains
• 3 Forests

You have the following card in your hand:

• Survive the Night

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 currently have no relevant cards in your graveyard.

Jason is at 11 life and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:

• Mothdust Changeling
• Geist of the Archives
• Fathom Fleet Boarder
• Skaab Ruinator
• Youthful Scholar
• Evershrike (with Jason's Strength of Lunacy attached)
• Phyrexian Bloodstock
• 4 Islands (all tapped)
• 3 Swamps (all 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 - Crystal Lake" by 11:59 P.M. EST on Monday, February 25, 2019. 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, Ryou Niji, Sean Patrick Keatley, Hyman Rosen, James Dunlap, Matt Bocek, James Wilson, David Arnold, and Michael Feldman.

"This is an interesting puzzle," Matt Bocek writes, "because with multi-target removal and tons of mana, it should be easy. In fact, the first 6 damage jumps right off the page at you. But finding that last point of damage proves much more difficult and technical, with multiple instances of trigger-stacking."

"We cannot just use Call of the Swine to deal 8 damage to Portia," Hyman Rosen writes, "because:

"Furthermore," Ryou Niji adds, "the ability of Enslaved Dwarf can target Ashenmoor Liege, the one unremovable blocker, and with first strike it could block Elite Skirmisher without suffering Repercussion damage, leaving us 1 damage short."

This leaves you only three creatures on your opponent's side for Curse of the Swine to target... and if Portia activates her Sengir Nosferatu in response, you're not even going to get the satisfaction of a third Boar token.

"We still have Vesuvan Shapeshifter left," Ryou continues, "but it still doesn't provide any easy way for us to finish off the opponent. Interesting choices for copying include Exuberant Firestoker, whose trigger condition we cannot satisfy; Ashenmoor Liege, which we cannot force the opponent to target because she could target the real thing at first opportunity; and Sengir Nosferatu, whose ability we may be able to activate, but eventually does a whole lot of nonsense: the Bat token even only returns an exiled card named Sengir Nosferatu under its owner's control."

That said, you at least have one safety valve available. "One key realization is that you aren't as locked-down as you first appear," Matt remarks. "Using your cheap sacrifice outlet, you can still play your creatures for their enters-the-battlefield abilities without dying for it:

"There is a tiny rules matter that I had to look up to be sure," James Wilson writes. "Morph abilities do not use the stack, and happen as a state based effect - so Portia can't respond to your Vesuvan Shapeshifter copying her Sengir Nosferatu as long as you do it as your first move.

"Should Morph have been something that does use the stack, Portia could exile her own Nosferatu in response to the Shapeshifter's ability, and blow out the whole plan before it begins."

"So the Pearls only got used once," Michael Feldman notes, "and after the Swine, I might add. But it's forgivable because they both distract from what is one of the best rule-manipulations I've seen in a puzzle: Taking advantage of the game's necessarily awkward wording with regard to specific exiled cards to force an opponent to inherit the second half of a nonexistent creature's metamorphosis!"