Locations
“That’s ironic,” you admit. “But then, well . . . ”
“I guess it does still happen nowadays, though,” Verne chuckles. “I didn’t expect it to happen here, though. What do you call this again? ‘Unabridged’?”
“It’s the Unabridged Cube,” you explain. “It supposedly has one of each card ever printed.”
“Including some that haven’t been released yet,” Verne says, looking at the Emrakul, the Promised End that you just played.
“Yeah, it does that.”
“Must be Magic,” Verne says, and breaks out into a smile. “Eh? Eh?”
You smile back, shaking your head. It turns out that the lone card in Verne’s hand is an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn; and, after counting his available mana, you realize that he would have played it the moment he drew another land.
“Well,” Verne says, “you know what’s in my hand, and that Putrid Cyclops showed you what’s on top of my library, so I guess you’ve got me dead to rights.”
“Not just yet,” you tell him. “I have control of you for just one of your turns. You get another turn after that.”
“And I might draw something that could kill you on my next turn,” Verne says. “That’s a fair point.”
“Right, so I still need to find a way to wreck your position.”
“Oh, I’m sure you will. You’re the creative sort,” Verne says. “In fact, you’ll be surprised how often that gets you the win. It’s like that time I got Mindslaver-ed at the Mirrodin prerelease . . . ”
It is the beginning of Verne’s upkeep; you control Verne during this turn. Defeat Verne before the start of his next combat phase.
You are at 5 life, with the following cards in play:
- Sunseed Nurturer
- Femeref Archers (owned by Verne, with your Domestication attached)
- Helium Squirter (with a +1/+1 counter and Verne’s Visions of Brutality attached)
- Emrakul, the Promised End
- 4 plains (all tapped)
- 5 islands (all tapped)
You have no cards in your hand.
You have the following cards in your graveyard:
- Steppe Lynx
- Killer Whale
- Disenchant
- Vengeance
- Aether Spellbomb
- Esper Cormorants
- Waterfront Bouncer
- Gilded Light
- Gather the Townsfolk
Due to Emrakul, the Promised End’s ability, you control Verne during this turn (after which Verne takes an extra turn under his normal control).
It is the beginning of Verne’s upkeep. You are currently putting Sheoldred, Whispering One’s ability on the stack, and need to choose a target for this ability.
Verne is at 6 life and has only one card in his hand: Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.
Verne has the following cards in play:
- Forcemage Advocate
- Rottenheart Ghoul
- Laquatus's Champion (with a +1/+1 counter and Verne’s Aspect of Mongoose attached)
- Sheoldred, Whispering One
- Doubling Cube
- Magewright's Stone
- 4 swamps
- 5 forests
- Deserted Temple
The top card of Verne’s library (which you will draw during Verne’s draw step this turn) is a Noxious Field. You do not know the identities of any of the other cards in Verne’s library.
Verne has the following creature cards in his 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 – One Good Turn” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, July3, 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 Dominic Chan, Ryou Niji, Aaron Golas, Russell Jones, Bill Murphy, Matt Ling, Paul Reilly, Kriz Lee, Alberto Galvan, Subrata Sircar, Andrew Muravskyi, Hyman Rosen, and Chadwick Bond.
Russell Jones observed that there were a lot of possibilities to sift through: “Between all the tempting chip damage — Flame Jab (possibly retraced), Keldon Marauders (possibly recurred), Deathrite Shaman's Black ability (possibly untapped with an Animate Dead-ed Wirewood Symbiote) — there still isn't enough to get anywhere close to 13 damage. You'll need to force some through in combat; and, with minimal removal at your disposal, it's going to take an all-hands-on-deck call for reinforcements.”
“This puzzle is all about outnumbering Octavia's blockers, since Torrent of Souls can make our lowliest creatures into 3-power beatsticks with haste,” Andrew Muravskyi writes.“However, it costs 5 mana, so we're left with only 4 mana to cast Flame Jab, Animate Dead, use Deathrite Shaman and/or Plague Witch. What card do we reanimate?
“Peregrine Drake is the most unorthodox choice — it can replenish our mana — but this would require us to tap Plague Witch and discard Mogg War Marshal. No card in our graveyard can help us overcome this deficit and beat Octavia's five blockers.
“Man-o'-War is basically a two-for-one, and our Flame Jab will be free to zap Wirewood Symbiote and a token. But six attackers against three blockers still isn't enough.
“What if we steal Wirewood Symbiote? Having access to Deathrite Shaman / Plague Witch shenanigans is nice, but we don't have the mana for this trickery. This leaves us only 2 mana (assuming that we cast Torrent of Souls), and using Deathrite Shaman for additional mana is a waste of its activations.”
Ironically, given all this analysis, we have to discard most of it. “I spent too long overthinking a long, complicated series of Flame Jabs, reanimated Man-o'-Wars, and optimal Deathrite Shaman usage,” Paul Reilly admits,“before I realized it would be more efficient to just go stupidly wide.”
Russell Jones explains why this is the case:
- Tap out for
. - Play Mogg War Marshal, getting a 1/1 Goblin token to go along with it.(
left.) - Sacrifice Mogg War Marshal to Carrion Feeder, which gets a +1/+1counter to become 2/2. Get a second 1/1 Goblin token from the death trigger.
- Play Animate Dead, getting back Mogg War Marshal along with a third 1/1 Goblin token. (left.)
- Sacrifice Mogg War Marshal to Carrion Feeder again. Carrion Feeder becomes 3/3 and you get a fourth 1/1 Goblin token. Animate Dead also falls off — not that a 0/1 War Marshal was worth anything except for its triggers.
- Play Torrent of Souls, using both and. Bring back Avarax, then give everything +2/+0 and Haste. (It doesn't actually need to be Avarax; any of the creatures will suffice, but this way lets you shuffle your library to no effect and possibly have Octavia get suspicious of your magic touch while doing so.)
- Swing with everything. Carrion Feeder, Keldon Marauders, and Avarax each have 5 power; Deathrite Shaman, Plague Witch, and the four Goblin tokens each have 3 power.
- By blocking all the 5-power creatures and two of the others, four 3-power creatures will get through for 12 damage.
- If Brawn is blocking Keldon Marauders, the Marauders will naturally die in combat and give a trigger for 1 damage, taking Octavia to 0 and winning.
- If anything else is blocking Keldon Marauders, just sacrifice Marauders to Carrion Feeder and get the last point of damage that way.
- Note that you can bring back Mogg War Marshal one more time with Torrent of Souls, but the Marshal’s ability will only resolve after the Torrent’s effect — which means that the newest Goblin token won’t get +2/+0 or haste. (You could use it as another snack for the Carrion Feeder, though!)
“The one and only action Octavia can take outside of declaring her blocks is using Wirewood Symbiote’s ability,” Chadwick Bond notes.“She can return her Elf Token to her hand (which would destroy it, since it is a token) in order to untap one of her creatures.If she tries to do this to Jetting Glasskite, though, then Jetting Glasskite's ability will counter it and Octavia will have sacrificed her token for nothing. If she untaps Peregrine Drake, then she will have effectively exchanged her 1/1 blocking creature for a 2/3 blocking creature. This would have no effect on this solution to this puzzle.”
Aaron Golas observes that there is one variant to consider: “Instead of casting Animate Dead on Mogg War Marshal, you can use it on the Man-o'-War in Octavia's graveyard to Unsummon one of her blockers. You end up with one fewer attacker, but Octavia has one fewer blocker, so the solution plays out as above.”
“Note that you mustn't reanimate Skulking Ghost at all for the above solution to work,” Aaron continues.“If you did, then Octavia could declare blocks, leaving Skulking Ghost unblocked. Before damage, she could then activate Wirewood Symbiote targeting Skulking Ghost, forcing you to sacrifice it!”
So despite the presence of more than a few interactions, the best thing to do in this case is to get as many creatures in play, and then attack with all of them. “It's like those instances of the 24 Game,” Ryou Niji muses,“where you might try many possibilities, only to realize that the numbers add to 24.”
