In hindsight, perhaps you shouldn't have asked about your opponent's scar. That would have kept your conversation from being as awkward as it is right now.

"You're at nine life, right?" Harry asks.

"We're both at nine life."

"I thought I was at ten," Harry says suspiciously.

"Oh, sorry," you admit. "I haven't activated my Retributive Wand yet."

With Modern Horizons now on the shelves and Core Set 2020 previews ongoing, your local game store has returned to its weekend Unabridged Cube drafts. The Unabridged Cube is one of its bigger draws: it's a collection of one of each card ever printed, and the nearby gaming community seems to like figuring out how to get both old and new cards working with each other.

The other interesting thing about the Unabridged Cube, though, is that it somehow manages to acquire a number of cards from unreleased expansions. You're not sure how it's happening or who's adding them, but it's done wonders for the Cube's popularity. So far today, you've seen someone cracking heads with a Herald of the Sun, and someone else considering whether or not to use the Goblin Bird-Grabber in his draft pool.

You, on the other hand, have a Retributive Wand. It looked okay when you originally pocketed it - it's a strict upgrade over the classic Rod of Ruin, after all - but you soon found that it was quite slow as a recurring damage source. In addition to that, it's not exactly the best fit for your deck.

Harry taps five lands and lays a Strandwalker onto the table. "I'll pay an additional four," he says, "and attach it to my Order of Yawgmoth. That'll kill the Germ token."

You raise an eyebrow. "That's an interesting play," you admit.

"I'm at nine... wait, ten life... and you don't have any flyers," Harry points out. "I think I can afford to speed up the game a little."

"That's true. You're not holding back?"

"Not the way I was taught," Harry says.

"I take it that that's how you got into Magic."

"Guy with a beard offered to show me how to play, and gave me the speech. Said I was a planeswalker, and all that. Attack for four?"

You consider the board. "I still can't block that Order," you say, "so I'll take the damage. I'm down to five life."

Harry's deck has some remarkable synergy going for it: It pairs several discard effects with Waste Not, and runs a good number of Zombies-matters cards. At this point, he's used his Noxious Ghoul to clear the board of your smaller creatures, and backed you into a corner with his Order of Yawgmoth - the only truly evasive creature on the battlefield at the moment.

Unfortunately, the Order of Yawgmoth's two-damage-per-turn output is easily outracing your Retributive Wand. On top of that, its discard ability is forcing you to immediately play anything you draw, so it's difficult for you to form a long-term strategy.

"Are you done with your turn?" you ask.

"You said it, not me."

"Okay then. Ping you for one with my Retributive Wand?" you ask.

"That puts me at nine."

You untap and find a Firespout waiting on top of your library. That's just as well: You need the mass removal. The problem is that it's a turn too late to be able to get rid of the Order of Yawgmoth, so you'll need to find another way to deal with the unblockable zombie knight, and fast.

Then again, you can also take the alternative route and end the game before Harry can put any more pressure on you. That'll take more than just a swish and a flick, though.

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

You are at 5 life, with the following cards in play:

• Penumbra Bobcat (with your Boar Umbra attached)
• Goblin Clearcutter
• Rooting Kavu
• Outland Boar (with your Strider Harness attached)
• Qasali Slingers
• Quakefoot Cyclops (with Harry's Crippling Blight attached)
• Retributive Wand
• 4 Mountains
• 6 Forests
• Haunted Fengraf

You have the following card in your hand:

• Firespout

You have not yet played a land this turn. You still have a substantial number of cards remaining in your library, but you know neither the identities nor the order of those cards.

You have the following cards in your graveyard:

• Sylvan Brushstrider
• Volcanic Rambler
• Prodigal Pyromancer
• Llanowar Elves
• Mountain
• Incinerate
• Goblin Cratermaker

Harry is at 9 life and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:

• Fortified Rampart
• Silver Knight (with Harry's Sentinel's Mark attached)
• Those Who Serve
• Order of Yawgmoth (with Harry's Strandwalker attached)
• Noxious Ghoul (with Harry's Mark of the Vampire attached)
• Rakshasa Gravecaller
• 2 Zombie tokens
• Waste Not
• 4 Plains (all tapped)
• 6 Swamps (five 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 - In Case of Emergency" by 11:59 P.M. EST on Monday, July 1, 2019. We'll include the best ones in next week's article along with the next puzzle!

Last Week's Puzzle

Wow, this was tough! Correct solutions to last week's puzzle were received from Hyman Rosen, Sean Patrick Keatley, and Michael Feldman.

"Insidious!" Michael Feldman writes. "What this puzzle lacks in concrete steps/decisions for you to make, it more than makes up with the wide variety of available choices for each decision and the large number of possibilities for the opponent. I find it funny that, because of the nature of this puzzle, the choice is technically important not to damage the opponent (there is no true victory possible) but to avoid losing your own precious life points!

"There are so many things to drive you batty here:

Ultimately, Penelope's Cunning Evasion makes a massive difference for this puzzle, and somewhat justifies her decision not to blink her Windcaller Aven. "Using Cunning Evasion," Hyman Rosen writes, "Penelope can do two things when we block:

"Penelope has enough mana to do both, if needed. If she does either, and Bellowing Elk is still on the battlefield, it will gain trample and indestructible from the creature(s) entering the battlefield."

The trampling attackers are actually your biggest concern: Even though you can put together as many as four blockers, you need to do something about Murasa Behemoth and Bellowing Elk - either by removing them, or by placing some high-toughness creatures in the way. This latter insight implies that Bogardan Dragonheart should be your Ephemerate target so that it can stand in the path of the Behemoth, and Hyman's solution shows that this is the case:

Seeing as the Segovian Angel and the Vengeful Devil have the same toughness, their blocking roles are interchangeable: You can have both Red creatures block the Behemoth while the Angel blocks the Tusker, for example.

Interestingly enough, leaving the Mist-Syndicate Naga unblocked leaves you open to its three damage, but reduces Penelope's options: This prevents her from using its Ninjutsu ability to bounce anything, makes her attacking 0/1 Aven a non-issue, and stops a possible trigger for Bellowing Elk's ability. Any blocker that would normally stand in front of the Naga would then also be able to help reduce the Behemoth's trample damage.