There’s no malice in his expression — at least none that you can see at first glance — so it seems that he’s just stating an opinion. It is true, though: You’re playing a bad Minotaur deck.

“One of my friends put it together,” you explain. “He has the creature base partially worked out, but the support spells need some work.”

“I can get my other deck and we can start over,” Tex says. “I mean, it’s not as though that’s going to stand a chance against something I’m testing for tomorrow’s Modern tournament.”

“No, it’s cool,” you tell him. “We can at least finish this game.”

“Suit yourself,” he says.

You have to admit that you’re impressed at his game plan. Tex’s deck is designed to attack through Ensnaring Bridge with a crowd of zero- and one-power artifact creatures, pumping them with cards like Signal Pest and Contested War Zone. While it’s not as fast as other Modern decks you’ve seen, it’s been effective against you so far.

To be fair, your deck got off to a good start, playing Gnarled Scarhide and Deathbellow Raider, followed by a Rageblood Shaman in your first few turns. Tex then took control, killing your Shaman and then following up with an Ensnaring Bridge to stop your offense cold. You took out one of his Signal Pests with a Magma Spray, but ended up watching helplessly as one of his Spellskites swallowed your second one.

After Tex took out your Minotaur Sureshot with a Galvanic Blast, nothing remained to stop him from attacking you. Now you’re at 2 life and looking at a loss next turn, assuming that you don’t draw a miracle — or for that matter, a Sign in Blood — from your deck.

Unfortunately, your draw isn’t the Sign in Blood you were hoping for. But Tremor is decent removal against Tex’s deck, and under the right circumstances, it can buy you some time. However, Tex also has two copies of Blinkmoth Nexus at his disposal, and can kill you with those two alone. At 8 life, he’s also got a fairly high life total at the moment.

“Got a plan?” Tex asks.

You think for a while. “No,” you finally say, “but I can try something . . . ”

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

You are at 2 life, with the following cards in play:

• Gnarled Scarhide
• Deathbellow Raider (with your Ghitu Firebreathing attached)
• Neheb, the Worthy
• Ragemonger
• 2 Cursed Minotaur
• Panic Spellbomb
• 3 Swamps
• 4 Mountains

You have the following cards in your hand:

• Tremor
• Disturbing Plot

You have not yet played a land this turn. You do not know the identities or order of any of the cards remaining in your library, except for the fact that you have a Sign in Blood in there somewhere . . . 

You have the following creature cards in your graveyard:

• Minotaur Sureshot
• Rageblood Shaman

Tex is at 8 life and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:

• Ornithopter (tapped)
• 2 Signal Pest (both tapped)
• Memnite
• 2 Spellskite
• Mox Opal
• Springleaf Drum
• Ensnaring Bridge
• 2 Blinkmoth Nexus (both tapped)
• Contested War Zone (tapped)
• Glimmervoid (tapped)
• Spire of Industry (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 — By the Horns” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, July 30, 2017. 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, Aaron Golas, Norman Dean, Matthew Harvey, Allen Smith, Dirk Bass, Michael Barnes, Hyman Rosen, Michael Shoemaker, Joe McIntosh, Caleb Schwepker, Subrata Sircar, ???, Greg Dreher, Anton Natter, Juan Nenna, Luca Cherpillod, Ryou Niji, Mike Ryan, Luke Paulsen, and Chris Billard.

“First of all,” Juan Nenna writes, “you immediately realize that there is no way of getting through on the ground, and that there is no way of milling out our opponent. That leaves us with three options: Hasting a flier, burning our opponent, or making one of our threats evasive. However, we don’t have enough information to know if we have sufficient burn in our deck or a haste spell to cast on our Ominous Sphinx (if we were to draw it).”

“Given what we know of our deck,” Allen Smith confirms, “there's only one way we can get through all of her blockers, and unfortunately, it's the Cartouche of Knowledge that we put on the bottom of our deck.”

“Basically,” Michael Barnes continues, “if you draw/mill yourself down to the last card in your library (Cartouche of Knowledge), then draw it and enchant Thresher Lizard with it, you can attack unblocked for 5 damage (assuming that there are one or fewer cards in your hand).However, you have other considerations, including tightness of mana and the fact that you need to avoid drawing a card with no cards in your library when casting the Cartouche. To do the latter, cast Bloodwater Entity before Cartouche of Knowledge (but after drawing it), making Tragic Lesson the last card in your library.”

With all that, we have Michael Shoemaker’s solution:

Note that this solution has one variant: For Step 5, you can activate the Seer of the Last Tomorrow before you draw a card from cycling the Vizier of Tumbling Sands. This allows you to get your Ominous Sphinx in hand . . .  although you’ll still end up pitching it to Hazoret's Monument for the Cartouche in any case.

“We also get to see a few more cards along the way,” Norman Dean remarks.“If any of those cards happen to be an Inferno Jet, an alternate solution presents itself.”

Seeing that you’re winning with three life and no cards remaining to draw, there was literally no tomorrow for you in this puzzle. But Subrata Sircar sums this one up nicely: “You don’t need cards in your library if you’re going to win before drawing, right?”