After having your fill of Shadows over Innistrad, you’re back to drafting your local game store’s Unabridged Cube, a collection of one of each card ever printed. You pulled together a rather middling deck in your initial foray, and unfortunately for you, you’re now facing the best deck from your table.

The good news is you’ve drawn and played your copy of Rubinia Soulsinger. However, you still had to wait one turn before Rubinia would come online, and Rain took advantage of that delay: She cast Enlisted Wurm, cascading into an Ursapine and suddenly making combat math a nightmare. You took 5 damage last turn on her attack, with Rain untapping most of her creatures due to a Copperhorn Scout.

You started your turn at 4 life, hoping for something that can turn this game around; while Rubinia can certainly help, she won’t be able to cut it on her own. Your draw is a Valorous Stance, which gets you considering the possibilities. Rain’s at a mere 8 life due to several Pain Seer activations, and you can’t help but think victory lies just at the edge of your grasp.

Unfortunately, you still have Rain’s defensive line to consider, with no fewer than six creatures waiting for your next move. You’re not sure if you have enough tools to get the job done, but there’s a strong chance Rain will break your defense over her knee next turn. If you’re going to put a plan together, now’s the time.

It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Rain before the start of her next combat phase.

You are at 4 life with the following cards in play:

• Devout Harpist
• Whisperer of the Wilds
• Sandsower
• Rubinia Soulsinger
• 1 Forest
• 3 Plains
• 2 Islands
• Sapseep Forest

You have the following cards in your hand:

• Alarum
• Triclopean Sight
• Valorous Stance

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

Rain is at 8 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:

• Copperhorn Scout (tapped)
• Gatecreeper Vine
• Pain Seer
• Thalakos Mistfolk (with Avacyn's Collar attached)
• Ink-Treader Nephilim
• Ursapine
• Enlisted Wurm
• 1 Mountain (tapped)
• 3 Forests (tapped)
• 1 Plains (tapped)
• 1 Island (tapped)
• Badlands (tapped)
• Razorverge Thicket (tapped)
• Simic Guildgate (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 — Striking Distance” by 11:59 P.M. on Sunday, May 1, 2016. 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, Aaron Golas, David Jacobs, Matthew Harvey, Doug Potter, Hyman Rosen, Michael Blanchard, Kriz Lee, Bob Wilson, Andrew Muravskyi, Subrata Sircar, and Jack Guan.

“The decisions tree of this puzzle is really expansive,” Andrew Muravskyi remarks. “However, there are two chokepoints: First, we aren't going to win this battle without Reaper of Flight Moonsilver dealing some damage, so we have to cast her before our first turn ends. Second, we can't let Ming Han draw a random card—something like Pore Over the Pages can insta-kill us (draw two Fiery Tempers, cast one of them via madness, and hard-cast the other). This means we have to spend 5 mana on Reaper and 2 mana on Not Forgotten, and the only way to use the remaining 1 mana is Gryff's Boon.”

“Since we will be attacking entirely in the air,” David Jacobs continues, “Ming Han’s Dance with Devils is not relevant at all. However, we would like to keep our opponent from gaining life by stealing our Nearheath Chaplain and attacking.”

“Of course,” Matthew Harvey notes, “in order to pump Reaper of Flight Moonsilver, we need to activate delirium. We are currently half way to this with a land and some creatures in our graveyard. We can add a sorcery quite easily, so the question lies in how to add either an artifact or enchantment.”

As it turns out, you need to do both in order to win. Bob Wilson writes:

Other solutions suggested returning either Dissension in the Ranks or Niblis of Dusk with Not Forgotten: You won’t be blocking with more than one creature, so the Dissension won’t have enough targets, and even if the Niblis represents a potential flying blocker, you can sacrifice a land to pin it down with Bound by Moonsilver.

“It's worth pointing out that it's a good thing that Reaper of Flight Moonsilver's Delirium ability specifies another creature,” Matthew Harvey clarifies. “Otherwise, Ming Han could have stolen it and had it sacrifice itself to make us lose our win condition!”

That said, you can still pull off a win if you decide to shackle your own Reaper. Kriz Lee does this for style points:

Notably, Ming Han has one more option: He can cast Niblis of Dusk and then cast Malevolent Whispers on the Niblis for a 5/2 flyer with haste . . . which will run right into your Spirit token when it attacks.

There are two more steps needed to close out this puzzle, as Michael Blanchard writes:

Considering you just knocked your opponent down from 20 to 0 life in the course of two turns, you probably earned it.