It’s the third game of your first match in the Shadows over Innistrad prerelease, and you’re already in a fix. Your opponent Darnell seems nice enough—it’s just that, between mana flooding, transforming creatures, and multiple spots of removal, you’re starting to get a headache from the experience.

Your match has run well over time, though. The head judge called the end of the round a few minutes ago, giving you and Darnell five extra turns to finish your game. You weren’t sure how you were going to win against a heavily populated board, so you figured it would be best to shore up your defenses and wait for an opening.

On the second of those last five turns, you drew another Swamp for your land-flooded board. This allowed you to activate your Magnifying Glass for a Clue token, though, which you then sacrificed to draw an Ever After . . . which then returned a Kindly Stranger and an Avacynian Missionaries from your graveyard. (Sure, that sequence also gave you five transforming creatures on your side of the table, but stranger things have happened in the course of your Magic-playing career.)

On the next turn, however, Darnell surprises you by casting Ghostly Wings on his Hulking Devil! The 6/3 flyer takes you down to a precarious 1 life—and with one more turn coming, there’s a strong possibility Darnell can take you down before your extra turns end.

As the fourth extra turn starts, you pray for a top-deck that can turn your game completely around. Unfortunately, your draw is an Anguished Unmaking—an excellent card under normal circumstances, but not at your current life total. You curse your luck.

“Bad draw?” Darnell asks.

You shake your head.

“You do have the Kindly Stranger to kill off my Devil this turn,” he says, glancing at your creature base. “With that in mind,” he laughs, “I’m wondering where I can get that last point of damage.”

“I think there’s a huge possibility that we’ll have to draw,” you say.

Darnell goes quiet for a while as he studies the board. You study it as well.

Eventually, your opponent speaks. “I’m good for a draw, if you want it,” he says.

You think for a while longer before reaching for your lands. “On second thought,” you tell him, “I’ll see where this goes.”

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

You are at 1 life with the following cards in play:

• Harvest Hand
• Pious Evangel
• Kindly Stranger (counts as a black Zombie due to Ever After)
• Avacynian Missionaries (counts as a black Zombie due to Ever After)
• Accursed Witch
• Magnifying Glass
• 7 Plains
• 5 Swamps

You have the following card in your hand:

• Anguished Unmaking

You do not know the identity of any of the cards that are currently on top of your library.

You have the following cards in your graveyard:

• Dead Weight
• Devilthorn Fox
• Rottenheart Ghoul
• Vessel of Malignity
• Thraben Inspector
• Explosive Apparatus

Darnell is at 8 life and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:

• Skin Shedder
• Seagraf Skaab
• Niblis of Dusk (with your Bound by Moonsilver attached)
• Uninvited Geist
• Hulking Devil (tapped, with Ghostly Wings attached)
• 5 Islands (one tapped)
• 5 Mountains (one 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 — What Lies Beneath”. We’ll include the best ones in next week’s article along with the next puzzle!

Last Week’s Puzzle

Zoinks! Correct solutions to last week’s puzzle were received from Russell Jones, Norman Dean, Ryou Niji, Aaron Golas, Matthew Harvey, Andrew Muravskyi, Bohdan Yarema, Victor Munson, Quadrangolo Tetra, Etienne Brosse, Alexander Breuers, Kriz Lee, Andrew McLaren, George Leung, Hyman Rosen, James Parmenter, David Solomon, and Chadwick Bond.

“With a total of 9 mana at our disposal,” Matthew Harvey observes, “we can only activate Shattergang Brothers at most three times. But the question becomes, What do we sacrifice—creatures, artifacts, or enchantments?

“We could go for enchantments to try to get Velma to sacrifice Spirit Away, but as she has Ulvenwald Mysteries, we won't be gaining our creature back that way. Choosing artifacts is currently pointless, as Velma doesn't have any. But on that note, it’s good to point out that Ulvenwald Mysteries can produce Clue tokens and will trigger no matter how a Clue token is sacrificed.”

“Nullmage Shepherd can free your Night Revelers from the clutches of Velma's Spirit Away,” Aaron Golas adds. “However, because you won’t have controlled Night Revelers continuously since the start of your turn, it will have summoning sickness and be unable to attack unless you can give it haste.

“That's where Ulvenwald Mysteries comes in. Note that it triggers when its controller sacrifices a Clue for any reason, not just to draw a card. Giving Velma a Clue by killing one of her creatures, and then forcing her to sacrifice that Clue to Shattergang Brothers, will give her the Human you need for Night Revelers to have haste.”

The resulting solution is unique, as Victor Munson writes:

“An understanding of timing is critical to solving this puzzle,” George Leung muses. “In particular, knowing to time spells and abilities while one of your own spells or abilities is on the stack is something players have to learn in order to progress to better gameplay. It's important to understand that Shattergang Brothers's abilities have us sacrifice permanents as part of a cost, and the abilities that trigger from those sacrifices must be resolved before the effects of the Brothers’ abilities resolve.”

“Velma won't be needing any clues or Scooby Snacks to solve the mystery of this game,” Matthew concludes. “It was Ravnica's gang of goblins, the Shattergang Brothers, that were clearly responsible for her defeat today.”