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"Uhh... what?"
"I mean these," Tally says, pointing at the goggles sitting atop her hairline. "I wear them when I'm on my Vespa."
"Your Vespa?"
"Sometimes I get bugs, though. Especially along the highway. But then I think about what it might be like if I didn't have the goggles, and then... I try not to think about that anymore, actually."
"I'm sorry," you say, "but why are we talking about goggles, again?"
Tally points at the Pyromancer's Goggles sitting on your side of the table. "That's not something you see every day," she says.
"We're playing the Unabridged Cube," you answer. "You get used to it - when your card pool has one of each card ever printed, you sometimes get to build decks with weird stuff."
"Is that why I got the Boreal Elemental?"
"Yeah, sometimes we pull a few unreleased cards from the Cube. People come in looking for them; it gives them a way to take the cards on a test run."
Tally folds her arms. "Well, it's not like I got much more than thirty seconds out of it."
"It was too good a target for my Bombard," you admit. "I only wish I had the Goggles in play when I cast it."
"And you have no idea how grateful I am for that missed opportunity," Tally says. "Attack with my Phyrexian Delver?"
You glance over at the Delver, which is currently a 5/4 after receiving Tally's newly-cast Copper Carapace. Five damage won't quite kill you, but it'll put you in a very uncomfortable situation, so you probably want to throw something in the way.
"I'll block with my Royal Trooper," you say. "That'll make it a 4/4."
Tally smiles. "I'll cast Coat with Venom. That makes my Phyrexian Delver a 6/6. With deathtouch."
You pause for a moment, thinking.
"Are you tapping your Heavy Ballista for damage, or casting whatever you have in your hand?"
"No," you finally say. "Not with the Brink of Disaster on it. I'll save the Ballista for next turn. And whatever's in my hand isn't going to be a piece of instant-speed removal regardless of how much I want it to be one."
"You can take your turn now," Tally says, leaning back. "Unless your Pulsemage Advocate gives me something, I won't be able to do much except attack."
"Not much chance of that," you say, untapping your cards. You draw an Orim's Thunder to join the Angel of Glory's Rise in your hand. It might not be Red removal for your Pyromancer's Goggles, but at least it's removal.
"The way I'm looking at this situation," you say, "I'm thinking that the Goggles can at least give me a bit of mana."
"I did say that the goggles do something," Tally points out.
It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Tally before the beginning of her next combat phase.
You are at 6 life, with the following cards in play:
- Voltaic Servant
- Dire Fleet Daredevil
- Pulsemage Advocate
- Heavy Ballista (with Tally's Brink of Disaster attached)
- Pyromancer's Goggles
- 3 Mountains
- 2 Plains
You have the following cards in your hand:
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:
Tally is at 7 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:
- Wall of Mist
- Black Cat (with a +1/+1 counter on it)
- Spellkeeper Weird
- Gavony Unhallowed
- Phyrexian Delver (tapped, with Tally's Copper Carapace attached)
- 2 Islands (both tapped)
- 3 Swamps (all tapped)
- Submerged Boneyard
Tally 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 Goggles Do Nothing" by 11:59 P.M. EST on Monday, July 8, 2019. 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 James Hueston, Sean Patrick Keatley, Gerard Munoz Soler, Max Bernstein, Kirk Maijala, Evan Thompson, Chris Billard, Hyman Rosen, clsalo, Addison Fox, and Michael Feldman.
"This one took me awhile," Kirk Maijala writes. "I didn't realize until typing out my solution how much it relies on a hilarious series of cascading sequential triggers without any intervening player actions (besides choosing targets).
"Basically, we need to figure out a way to kill our own Retributive Wand for 5 damage, and then squeeze Outland Boar through a clogged board for the last few points. This is going to require setting up a graveyard that guarantees a particular creature from the Haunted Fengraf, and also triggering our opponent's Noxious Ghoul to make his creatures too small to block our Boar."
"Waste Not has never been a more appropriate name," Evan Thompson writes, "as we'll be making ample use of our opponent's board in this solution:
- In our first main phase, we begin by tapping one Forest for mana. We'll then use that mana to move the Strider Harness from Outland Boar to Quakefoot Cyclops, putting the Cyclops at 4 toughness after factoring in its Crippling Blight.
- With our Cyclops protected, it's time to Firespout. We'll activate Goblin Clearcutter, sacrificing the Forest we tapped, to generate three Red mana. We'll now use that mana to cast Firespout.
- The Clearcutter and Rooting Kavu both die from the Firespout damage. Penumbra Bobcat, Quakefoot Cyclops, and the Boar are reduced to one point of toughness each. When the Clearcutter and the Kavu hit the graveyard, the Kavu's ability triggers and shuffles all our deceased creatures back into our deck.
- We now have nine untapped lands (not including the Fengraf). We'll tap a Forest to move the Strider Harness back onto the Boar. At this point, the Cyclops has lethal damage and goes to the graveyard.
- We'll tap three more Forests and activate Haunted Fengraf, which returns the Cyclops (as the only creature in our graveyard) to our hand.
- We now have five untapped lands - a Forest and our four Mountains. We'll tap two Mountains to cycle Quakefoot Cyclops, targeting Noxious Ghoul and preventing it from blocking this turn.
- And now things get... interesting. When we cycle the Cyclops, we discarded a creature. This triggers our opponent's Waste Not, which creates a 2/2 Zombie token. This in turn triggers our opponent's Noxious Ghoul, which gives all non-Zombies -1/-1.
- Let's start with our opponent's board. We only care about their creatures with power greater than two, because the rest can't block our Outland Boar. The Silver Knight and Rakshasa Gravecaller both shrink down to 2 power. The Noxious Ghoul can't block because of our Cyclops, and the Order of Yawgmoth is tapped. This leaves no potential blockers for our Outland Boar.
- Now on to our board. The -1/-1 is enough to kill our Penumbra Bobcat after the Firespout damage, which means its Boar Umbra falls off. However, it still has -1/-1 from the Noxious Ghoul, which means that even after removing damage, it dies. Outland Boar fares better, dropping to 1 toughness after factoring in the Strider Harness and the Firespout damage. Qasali Slingers also holds on at 1 toughness.
- The Bobcat dying triggers its ability, which means we get a Cat token. This triggers our Qasali Slingers, and allows us to destroy our Retributive Wand. We could activate it in response to deal one point of damage... so why not? We'll tap our remaining three lands and activate the wand to ping our opponent down to 8.
- The Wand is now destroyed by our Qasali Slingers, which means we can dome our opponent for 5 damage. They're now at 3 life.
- Our Outland Boar conveniently has no remaining potential blockers at this point. This leaves us free to go to combat, and attack for the win.
Conveniently, this puzzle comes with a bit of assurance: Even if you mess up the timing slightly and leave the Penumbra Bobcat at 1 toughness, you can simply use your remaining mana to ping it with your Retributive Wand.
"Note that the Strider Harness equips are vital," Max Bernstein writes, "so that the Quakefoot Cyclops doesn't die too soon, and so that your Outland Boar doesn't die when the Noxious Ghoul triggers (since the 3 damage plus the -1/-1 would be enough to kill it)."
"Somehow," Max adds, "the fact that you don't really kill any of Harry's creatures and instead kill most of your own works perfectly fine. Go figure."
