“Except by Walls,” Mari says, almost as an afterthought.

Her opponent pauses, probably wondering if she has something up her sleeve. After a moment’s thought, he attacks with the Ogre anyway.

“Take seven?” he asks, sounding unsure of himself.

“Because of the Ogre’s trigger?” Mari asks. “Yeah, I’ll go to nine life.”

“I’ll tap my last 3 mana to cast a Boros Reckoner, then.”

You scan the table. Mari’s obviously in trouble at this point: Despite being at a lower life total, her opponent’s slowly coming back from a creature deficit, and Mari hasn’t been able to draw a creature within the last couple of turns. Her last draw, in fact, was a Helix Pinnacle that she immediately played — and it’s not exactly the sort of thing you expect from a stellar Sealed pool.

“Having a tough time?” you ask.

Mari looks up at you. “You must be kidding,” she says. “I’ve got Centos here on the run.”

This gets Centos’ attention, and he wipes his forehead. “I swear,” he says, “you’ve been trying to intimidate me throughout the whole game. I’m starting to think you don’t have anything at all.”

“You’d be surprised,” Mari says. “This is the Unabridged Cube we’re talking about. One of each card ever printed, and then some. I have things you wouldn’t expect.”

“Okay, prove it,” Centos says. “I’ll end my turn. Is there anything you want to play in response?”

“You’ve still got a couple of games left in this match, Mari,” you point out. “You could just shuffle up for the next one.”

“Not when I’m about to win this game,” Mari says. “You see it, don’t you?”

It takes you more than a few minutes to see what she’s talking about, but when you do, you can’t help but shake your head. It’s probably one of those things that’s not likely to happen for another hundred games or so, you think.

Centos has just declared the end of his turn; you may still cast spells or activate abilities in response.

Defeat Centos before the beginning of his next combat phase.

You are at 9 life, with the following cards in play:

• Gyre Sage
• Boggart Loggers
• Ivy Lane Denizen
• Aerie Ouphes (with a -1/-1 counter on it)
• Uktabi Wildcats
• Helix Pinnacle
• Golgari Germination
• 3 Swamp
• 5 Forest (one tapped)

You have the following cards in your hand:

• Mutant's Prey
• Serpent's Gift
• Rites of Reaping

You do not know the identities or order of any of the remaining cards in your library.

Centos is at 7life and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:

• Lightwalker (with Centos’ Mardu Runemark attached)
• Boros Reckoner
• Indomitable Ancients
• Reckless Ogre (with Centos’ Dragon Scales attached)
• Changeling Hero (exiling Centos’ Flametongue Kavu)
• Thunderstaff
• Joven's Tools (tapped)
• 4 Mountain (all tapped)
• 3 Plains (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 — Pinnacle” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, February 26, 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 Norman Dean, Aaron Golas, Russell Jones, Subrata Sircar, Bill Murphy, Guy Ronen and Phil Maconi, Jeff Thomas, Hyman Rosen, Addison Fox, Paul Seitz, Dominic Chan, Ryou Niji, Greg Dreher, Matt Stanford, Matthew Harvey, Will and Eli Clendenning, Luke Paulsen, and Michael Feldman.

“First,” Matt Stanford writes, “you can’t kill the Hypnox, so all the juicy-looking tech that was in your hand is destined to languish in exile. It’s all only useful during combat anyway.

“Secondly, you can rid your Timbermare of Weight of the Underworld by giving it protection from Black, but this results in Octavia still having blocking creatures that you can’t get around. Using Niblis of the Mist to tap the Rock Jockey and giving out protection from Black a couple of times would be nice, but we’re a couple of mana short. So we need to cast the Timbermare itself to get that rather tasty enters-the-battlefield trigger.”

“This was a complicated one,” Guy Ronen admits.“I was confused with Hua Tuo, Honored Physician’s ability until I realized I could just activate him anytime during my first main phase. At that point it boils down to, ‘How do I draw a card?’. I need to be dealt 4 damage for Angelheart Vial, but Thunderbreak Regent deals 3 damage each time you target it (and I would die from that). So I would need to also prevent some of this damage.”

With that idea in mind, the solution is a matter of sequencing. Paul Seitz writes:

“It's notable that Timbermare needs to be cast before Child of Thorns,” Paul adds, “because if it were the other way around, then Timbermare would end up tapping our own Vengevine.”

Since you can sacrifice any combination of creatures to Caregiver (as long as you use it to both target Thunderbreak Regent and prevent two damage that it would deal to you), there are multiple minor variants to the above solution. You could even, for example, sacrifice Timbermare, Hua Tuo and Caregiver to Caregiver’s ability, then sacrifice Moonlit Strider to its own ability.

“With more mana,” Greg Dreher adds, “there would be several ways to win. With a mere ten lands, though, there's (more or less) only one way to cut through the hearts and flowers and find sweet, sweet victory.”

“I've always heard that true love is self-sacrificing,” Luke Paulsen muses, “but this isn't quite what I had in mind.”