Locations
As you sit down to the first match of your latest Eternal Masters booster draft, you’re surprised to see Octavia sitting across the table from you. In a way, she looks dreadful . . . mostly because she’s dressed up like Visara the Dreadful, horns and all.
“There’s a joke here,” you tell her, “but I’m not going to make it.”
“You’ve probably already made it in your head,” she says, smiling.
You shrug. Come to think of it, you have.
“It’s for a photoshoot,” she tells you, as though she’s been explaining it the whole day.
“Ah.”
It turns out that Octavia is playing a very tempo-oriented U/G deck with multiple copies of Man-o'-War, as well as some substantial flyers. Your deck has been on the back foot for most of your first game as a result, and you’ve only managed to get Octavia down to 13 life from a single attack and a couple of Deathrite Shaman activations.
After she attacked with her Peregrine Drake and Jetting Glasskite last turn, Octavia played the last card in her hand — a Brawn — and passed the turn to you. At 3 life, you’re not likely to be in the game much longer, but you can take some consolation in the fact that you still have some options in hand. You untap, draw a Mogg War Marshal, and start thumbing through your graveyard to see if anything’s worth reanimating.
“It’s time for your miraculous play,” Octavia says.
You look up at her. “Say that again?”
“Your miraculous play,” Octavia says, laughing a little. “I’ve seen you get into situations like this before. You always find a way to keep from losing.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure if there’s one this time.”
“You have five cards in your hand. I’m sure you have something.” Octavia punctuates this last remark with a shake of her head, which gets her horns bumping into the person seated at the next table.
You look at the board again. You honestly don’t think there’s a way for you to get out of this predicament. But maybe there’s something you’re not seeing yet.
It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Octavia before the start of her next combat phase.
You are at 3 life, with the following cards in play:
- Carrion Feeder
- Deathrite Shaman
- Plague Witch
- Keldon Marauders (with one time counter on it)
- Worn Powerstone
- 4 swamps
- 2 mountains
- Bloodfell Caves
You have the following cards in your hand:
- Flame Jab
- Animate Dead
- Mogg War Marshal (drawn during your draw step this turn)
- Torrent of Souls
- Bloodfell Caves
You have the following cards in your graveyard:
You have not yet played a land this turn. You do not know the identities of any of the next cards in your library. You do not have any other copies of Avarax beyond the ones that are already in your graveyard.
Octavia is at 13 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:
- Wirewood Symbiote
- Giant Tortoise
- Man-o'-War
- Brawn
- Peregrine Drake (tapped)
- Jetting Glasskite (tapped)
- Elf Warrior token (from Lys Alana Huntmaster)
- 6 forests (three tapped)
- 2 islands (one tapped)
Octavia has the following cards in her graveyard:
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 – The Quick and the Dead” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, June26, 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, Dominic Chan, Aaron Golas, Hyman Rosen, Jonathan Kustina, Victor Munson, Dan May, David Jacobs, Bill Murphy, Yavuz Yildiz, Andreas Wolff, Alex van der Bie, Kriz Lee, Sean Dennehy, Chadwick Bond, Subrata Sircar, Miko Losantas, Alberto Galvan, Jordan Crittenden, Danilo Kanno, and Andrew Muravskyi.
Several people first tried a strategy of breaking through Rodrigo’s blockers. “Initially I tried to just bust through with Soulcatcher,” Miko Losantas writes,“along with the protection from Benevolent Bodyguard, but I could only pump Soulcatcher to 7/7.”
“I was 50% through solving this using Pro-Green and blowing up the Blue creatures before I realised that the Spirit tokens were colourless,” Jordan Crittenden adds.
In the end, however, this path was dismissed as unworkable. “It may seem worthwhile to give our creatures protection and sneak pass Rodrigo's blockers,” Dominic Chan concludes, “but we simply do not have enough targets or attack power to deal lethal damage thanks to Skulking Ghost being phantasmal, and Calciderm having shroud.”
This logic led most people toward Soulcatcher, however, eventually identifying it as a key element in the win. “Soulcatcher gets +1/+1 whenever a creature with flying dies,” Aaron Golas writes.“So how large can you pump it? As it turns out, large enough.”
“The trick to this puzzle is getting the Soulcatcher big enough to attack for lethal damage,” Alex van der Bie explains. “Luckily, the opponent has a Wonder in play to give all your opponent's creatures flying. You'll need the Havoc Demon to die if you want to kill them all, though. Not only that, but when the trigger resolves, the Soulcatcher has to be a 6/6 or greater.
“This means you have to get the Havoc Demon in your graveyard first, then get it into play, and eventually have it die too. That’s no small feat. Luckily, Cabal Therapy is the perfect tool for the job.”
So with all that in mind, we have a solution. As Alberto Galvan notes:
- Use
to cast Cabal Therapy on yourself, naming Havoc Demon, and discarding it. - Use
to cast Victimize, sacrificing Skulking Ghost to return Havoc Demon and Welkin Guide to the battlefield tapped. Soulcatcher gets a +1/+1 counter and becomes 2/2. As Welkin Guide enters the battlefield, target Soulcatcher with its ability, making it 4/4. - Use to cast Malicious Affliction targeting Wonder. As Morbid is active due to Skulking Ghost’s death, target either Warden of Evos Isle or Welkin Guide with the copy. The two spells resolve, the creatures die, and Soulcatcher becomes a 6/6 (it’s now a 1/1 with +2/+2 and three +1/+1 counters).
- As Wonder is now in the graveyard and your opponent controls an Island, all your opponent's creatures have flying.
- Cast the Cabal Therapy using its Flashback cost, sacrificing Havoc Demon. It does not matter who you target or what card you name, as both players hands are empty at this point.
- Havoc Demon's ability triggers, giving all creatures -5/-5, and its death also gives Soulcatcher an additional +1/+1 counter.
- All creatures die with exception of Soulcatcher, which gets an additional seven +1/+1 counters from all of your opponent’s flying creatures dying, ending up as a 1/1 Soulcatcher with +2/+2, eleven +1/+1 counters and -5/-5, which makes it a 9/9 creature.
- Attack with Soulcatcher to deal 9 damage and win the game.
Notably, you don’t have to sacrifice the Skulking Ghost to Victimize. You can sacrifice the Benevolent Bodyguard, for instance, or the Calciderm. The only difference is Soulcatcher is a 5/5 creature at the point where Havoc Demon dies, and you’ll need to stack the triggers so that Soulcatcher gets the +1/+1 counter before it gets the -5/-5.
Dan May and Bill Murphy also point out one more variant: By using your Benevolent Bodyguard’s ability to kill your Skulking Ghost, you can enable Morbid early on which means you can use Malicious Affliction to kill Rodrigo’s two flyers before getting to the Havoc Demon play.
“It seems we’re in a pretty good position even without the win-enabling Cabal Therapy,” Chadwick Bond observes.“The combination of Victimize and Malicious Affliction meant that the board was likely about to swing in our favor. How does trading in a soon-to-die Calciderm for a Serra Angel and a Twisted Abomination and killing Emperor Crocodile and Sentinel Spider sound? Sure, the Honden was going to be annoying, but considering how much life we had, we could probably wait a turn to stabilize and then start turning things around.”
There’s also the question of what card to name for the flashbacked Cabal Therapy, and people seemed to have their own preferences on this one. “I went with the classic Abandon Hope,” Chadwick says,“but you can chose the right card for your situation. Other good choices for the rubbins include Drown in Sorrow, Cower in Fear, Seal of Doom, and Gruesome Slaughter. If you prefer a more humble victory (and I don't know why you would), you could name Reparations or Sorry. Other interesting options include 1995 World Champion and Borborygmos.”
Other ideas involved Force of Will (“So that you can con him into giving it away as a sort of hush money,” Russell Jones says) or Jace, the Mind Sculptor (“Because DIE JACE DIE,” Miko Losantas notes). I have a soft spot for Bill Murphy’s suggestion of Sarpadian Empires, Vol. VII, if only because this puzzle’s now clearly in the books.
