Locations
Editor's Note: A wild Desert appeared! Seriously, though -- an extra Desert somehow snuck into this puzzle and prevented its correct solution from working. This puzzle has therefore been corrected from its original version, and we apologize for the inconvenience! (The Desert has been taken out and buried in our backyard.)
Unfortunately, you've been saddled with a not-so-good deck in Blue and Black. You have an interesting amount of removal and control elements, but the packs never actually came through for your creature base. You've had more than a few hard-fought battles as a result, not all of which have fallen in your favor.
Tami - your opponent this round - is currently playing a 
deck with several big creatures and not much removal. You managed to set up a good early game, then pinned down her Starlit Angel and Siege Wurm with a timely Meekstone just as she was taking control. This slowed down her offense considerably, but she's been trying to claw her way back with the help of a Nylea, God of the Hunt.
The first thing that Tami does on her current turn is to cycle the Haze of Pollen in her hand. She draws her card, and then makes a face.
"Bad draw?" you ask.
"No," she says, "It's just funny that I would draw another card with cycling. I'll tap a Plains to cycle Secluded Steppe."
"Ah, sure. Go ahead."
Tami draws another card, and this one now looks like it meets with her approval. She taps six lands and casts it -- a Felidar Sovereign. "Now that's closer to what I needed," she adds.
You can see how a 4/6 with both lifelink and vigilance can be a problem for you. Your Meekstone won't lock it down, and even though you can try to tackle it with multiple blockers, that'll leave your defensive line in ruins. On top of that, it's likely to gain Tami some life while you're already having problems with her Honden of Cleansing Fire.
"I'll end my turn," Tami says. "Isn't your Apprentice Wizard supposed to be tapped?"
"I untapped it a while ago when I had a spare land card. I figured that I might need the extra blocker."
"Okay then."
You add another counter to your Dreadship Reef, then untap your permanents and take your draw. It's never good to pull a counterspell after your opponent has resolved the very thing you want to get rid of, so the new Arcane Denial in your hand is obviously mocking you.
"Bad draw?" Tami asks in return.
"No," you say. "Just some bad timing."
"We can shuffle up for the next game if you like," she says. "But you've still got some life to go -- you might draw something better next turn."
You glance at your cards. "I'll... play this one out," you tell Tami. "For all I know, there's a way I can win this one before you do."
It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Tami before the beginning of her next combat phase.
You are at 7 life, with the following cards in play:
- Festering Mummy
- Ridged Kusite
- Umara Entangler
- Apprentice Wizard (with your Immobilizing Ink attached)
- Courtly Provocateur
- Razorfin Abolisher
- Meekstone
- Faith of the Devoted
- 5 Islands
- 2 Swamps
- Dreadship Reef (with five storage counters on it)
You have the following cards in your hand:
You have not yet played a land this turn. You still have more than a few cards remaining in your library, but you do not know the identities or order of any of them.
Tami is at 12 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:
- Dragon's Eye Sentry
- Hinterland Logger
- Selesnya Sentry
- Starlit Angel (tapped)
- Felidar Sovereign
- Siege Wurm (tapped)
- Nylea, God of the Hunt
- Honden of Cleansing Fire
- 4 Forests (all tapped)
- 6 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 -- Nope, Nada, Negative" by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, March18, 2018. 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, Sean Rowe, Greg Dreher, Ryou Niji, Kevin Finkle, and Michael Feldman. Solutions from Addison Fox, Enrique Cordero, and Ed Grabianowski were also significantly close.
The complexity of last week's puzzle was based on a lot of moving parts:
- Phyrexian Negator is the obvious weak spot in your opponent's defense, but they have a lot of permanents that they can sacrifice to its ability (and Mutiny, sadly, only deals damage and doesn't actually make two of their creatures fight one another).
- Crusader of Odric is the likeliest candidate that you can force to Mutiny against Phyrexian Negator. However, the Oathsworn Giant isn't just there for its vigilance-granting ability: its +0/+2 bonus means that you might not be able to kill the Negator with Mutiny alone.
- Lava Dart could help out, but you're limited to being able to this twice -- once for its mana cost and once for its flashback cost.
- There's also the possibility of stealing creatures with Akroan Conscriptor, but the only card you have that can target the Conscriptor is Lava Dart, and taking away creatures will only shrink your opponent's Crusader of Odric.
That said, you do have an advantage in terms of mana production. "It's surprising that the Armageddon hurt us more given that we have an Earthcraft," Ryou Niji points out, "but the secret to profiting from an Armageddon is not being able to produce mana afterward; it's being ahead on board when it happens.
"Still, with at least 10 mana available -- and probably more -- for us after the Browbeat, giving us the extra cards was almost certainly a mistake. Sure, the two Red cards in our hand are already enough to wreck the opponent's board, but it takes the three Green cards and some creative thinking to turn the big play into a full wipe and a clean win."
"Earthcraft is banned in Legacy for a reason," Addison Fox notes. "We can even use summoning-sick creatures to activate it. We may only have two lands in play, but one of them taps for two, allowing any of our creatures to act as both ramp and fixing. It's enough to cast everything in our hand if we want to (and boy, do we)."
The solution is somewhat counterintuitive in that it gives your opponent more creatures before shutting his defense down. Russell Jones' solution goes as follows:
- Tap Akroan Conscriptor for Earthcraft, untapping the enchanted Mountain. Tap it for
. - Cast Lava Dart targeting Akroan Conscriptor. left.
- Heroic triggers, allowing you to gain control of Fendeep Summoner. If Nox wants to tap it in response to animate his tapped Swamp, so much the better.
- Lava Dart resolves and deals 1 damage, which isn't lethal.
- Tap Nettle Sentinel to untap the enchanted Mountain with Earthcraft, then tap it for another .
- Cast Nylea's Presence on Forbidden Orchard. left.
- Nettle Sentinel triggers and untaps.
- You draw a face-down mystery card, and Forbidden Orchard now has all basic land types.
- Tap the stolen Fendeep Summoner to forcefully animate Nox's Swamp, as well as the Plains-Island-Swamp-Mountain-Forest named Forbidden Orchard. Nox now controls 6 creatures.
- Flashback Lava Dart by sacrificing your non-enchanted Mountain, dealing a second point of damage to Akroan Conscriptor, which will put it and Pacifism in the graveyard.
- But before that, it triggers and lets you gain control of Forbidden Orchard, which was a 3/7 Treefolk Warrior Plains Island Swamp Mountain Forest . . . but drops to 3/5 as soon as it comes onto your side. (It also conveniently untaps.) Nox now controls 5 creatures.
- Tap Forbidden Orchard for . Forbidden Orchard triggers, giving Nox a 1/3 Spirit token for a total of 6 creatures.
- Tap Seeker of Skybreak to untap the animated Forbidden Orchard. Fortunately, Contaminated Bond is not Lust for War, since it only triggers on attacking or blocking.
- Tap Forbidden Orchard for a third . It triggers again, giving Nox a total of 7 creatures.
- Use Wirewood Symbiote's ability to bounce Seeker of Skybreak and untap Forbidden Orchard. Contaminated Bond goes to the graveyard.
- Tap Forbidden Orchard for a fourth . It triggers again, giving Nox a total of 8 creatures. Meanwhile, you have just four: Wirewood Symbiote, Nettle Sentinel, Fendeep Summoner, and Forbidden Orchard.
- Tap Nettle Sentinel for Earthcraft to get , then do the same for Wirewood Symbiote. left.
- Cast Pulse of the Tangle.
- Nettle Sentinel triggers and untaps.
- You get a 3/3 Beast token, but Nox still leads you in creatures by 8 to 5, so Pulse goes right back to your hand. left.
- Tap Nettle Sentinel and the new Beast token to untap your land with Earthcraft two more times. left, so this process produces a net gain of .
- Repeat this for three more castings of Pulse of the Tangle, until you pull into an 8-8 tie with Nox on creatures, and Pulse goes to your graveyard on resolution. At this point, you now have left.
- Cast Mutiny, forcing Crusader of Odric (8/10) to deal 8 damage to Phyrexian Negator (7/8). left.
- This kills the Negator through both the Unholy Strength and Oathsworn Giant boosts, so state-based actions send both Negator and Unholy Strength to the graveyard, then Negator triggers.
- Nox has to sacrifice eight permanents, which is everything he has: his seven remaining creatures plus the Underworld Connections attached to your stolen Forbidden Orchard.
- Recast Seeker of Skybreak. Nettle Sentinel triggers and untaps. left.
- Tap Nettle Sentinel and Seeker of Skybreak one last time for Earthcraft, going to .
- Cast Mistcutter Hydra for X=12. Nettle Sentinel triggers and untaps.
- Go to combat and swing with a 12/12 Mistcutter Hydra and a 3/3 Nettle Sentinel into a board completely devoid of permanents. The color should have drained from Nox's face somewhere around this point too, but all that matters is the 15 clear damage (to 0).
As per Step 14 above, Pulse of the Tangle costs 
and nets you via Earthcraft activations. However, even though you can cast the Pulse multiple times this way, you can't actually go infinite, since this depends on your opponent having more creatures than you. The only way you can keep this going is by tapping Forbidden Orchard for its ability, and you have limited means to untap it -- Seeker of Skybreak and Wirewood Symbiote can each only be used once. (Nylea's Presence doesn't make Forbidden Orchard a basic land, which means that Earthcraft can't untap it.)
Kevin Finkle proposes an alternative solution as well, and this one depends on some stack manipulation:
- Start by tapping Nettle Sentinel to untap our Wild Growth-enchanted Mountain ("the Mountain") using Earthcraft.
- Tapping the Mountain gives us which we use to play Nylea's Presence on Forbidden Orchard, untapping Nettle Sentinel and drawing an irrelevant card.
- Untap the Mountain with Sentinel again and use (floating ) to cast Lava Dart on Akroan Conscriptor. We gain control of Fendeep Summoner.
- Use the Summoner's ability to turn both of our opponent's lands into creatures.
- Use Seeker of Skybreak to untap Fendeep Summoner.
- Tap Wirewood Symbiote to untap the Mountain, tapping it again for a total of .
- Use the Symbiote's ability to return the Seeker to our hand and untap itself. Contaminated Bond goes to Nox's graveyard.
- Cast Pulse of the Tangle, untapping the Sentinel. We get a 3/3 Beast and have five creatures to our opponent's six, so Pulse returns to our hand.
- Tap the Beast and the Sentinel to untap the Mountain twice, then recast Pulse floating . We get another 3/3 Beast, but this time the Pulse does not return to our hand.
- Cast Mutiny targeting Crusader of Odric and dealing damage to Phyrexian Negator. Crusader is a 6/8 so it deals 6 damage. Negator lives because it is a 7/8, but its ability triggers.
- In response to the Negator's triggered ability, cast Lava Dart by paying its flashback cost and sacrificing our non-enchanted Mountain. Once again, we target the Conscriptor.
- The Conscriptor's ability triggers, and we grab Oathsworn Giant. State-based actions occur, and Negator is now a 7/6 and dies, taking Unholy Strength with it.
- Dart resolves and puts a second point of damage on Conscriptor, which lives as the Giant now makes him a 3/4.
- The Negator's ability resolves. Nox now has only 6 permanents: his God-Pharaoh's Faithful, Crusader of Odric, Swamp, Forbidden Orchard, Underworld Connections, and Pacifism. All of these are sacrificed.
- We do not have lethal yet, so we start building up for a large Mistcutter Hydra. Tap the Sentinel to untap the Mountain for mana.
- Recast Seeker of Skybreak, which untaps Nettle Sentinel. Use Sentinel, Symbiote, Seeker, and the last Beast token to untap the Mountain, tapping it for each time. This gives us which we use to cast Mistcutter Hydra for X=7, untapping Sentinel.
- Attack with Sentinel (3/5), Conscriptor (3/4), Summoner (3/7), Giant (3/4), and Hydra (7/9), dealing 19 damage to Nox's smug face.
"Well," Michael Feldman remarks, "Nox asked for Armageddon. We can't really say the job's done until the souls left behind meet their hideous fate, right?"
