Locations
“Are you all right?” Narumi asks.
“I’m sorry,” you tell her, “you lost me there for a second. Where were we?”
“You were about to take your draw,” Narumi answers.
You survey the board. When you and Narumi showed up on a Friday night without your decks, you decided to play a few games using the cards in your local game store’s bargain box. Cards like Quilled Slagwurm and Caustic Hound aren’t exactly your idea of great deck tech, but they’re working for Narumi right now, and that’s what matters for her.
Narumi attacked with her Quilled Slagwurm last turn, and you had to feed it a blocker in order to prevent it from taking you to 0 life. Having just played a Kezzerdrix, she’s sitting on a fairly solid defense right now, and she’s just waiting to see what you’re going to do.
You reach for the top card of your deck and slowly slide it into your hand: Immolation. Too bad Narumi doesn’t have anything with 2 or less toughness, you muse.
You stare at the table for a while, pondering the cards in your hand and going over more than a few possible moves. You think there’s a way you can win the game this turn, but you’re not sure where . . . Ah, wait. There it is.
Narumi looks up as you start to speak. “Are you all right?” she asks.
“I’m, ah . . . ”
“Are you all right?” Narumi asks.
“I’m sorry,” you tell her, “you lost me there for a second. Where were we?”
“You were about to take your draw,” Narumi answers.
You survey the board. When you and Narumi showed up on a Friday night without your decks, you decided to play a few games using the cards in your local game store’s bargain box. Cards like Caustic Hound and Sultai Flayer aren’t exactly your idea of great deck tech, but they’re working for Narumi right now, and that’s what matters for her.
Narumi attacked with her Quilled Slagwurm last turn, and you had to feed it a blocker in order to prevent it from taking you to 0 life. Having just played a Kezzerdrix, she’s sitting on a fairly solid defense right now, and she’s just waiting to see what you’re going to do.
You reach for the top card of your deck and slowly slide it into your hand: Rupture. That’s an overly risky card to have at 5 life, you muse.
You stare at the table for a while, pondering the cards in your hand and going over more than a few possible moves. You think there’s a way you can win the game this turn, but you’re not sure where . . . Ah, wait. There it is.
Narumi looks up as you start to speak. “Are you all right?” she asks.
“I’m, ah . . . ”
“Are you all right?” Narumi asks.
“I’m sorry,” you tell her, “you lost me there for a second. Where were we?”
“You were about to take your draw,” Narumi answers.
You survey the board. When you and Narumi showed up on a Friday night without your decks, you decided to play a few games using the cards in your local game store’s bargain box. Cards like Sultai Flayer and Quilled Slagwurm aren’t exactly your idea of great deck tech, but they’re working for Narumi right now, and that’s what matters for her.
Narumi attacked with her Quilled Slagwurm last turn, and you had to feed it a blocker in order to prevent it from taking you to 0 life. Having just played a Kezzerdrix, she’s sitting on a fairly solid defense right now, and she’s just waiting to see what you’re going to do.
You reach for the top card of your deck and slowly slide it into your hand: Bone Saw. At least it’s cheap to cast and equip, you muse.
You stare at the table for a while, pondering the cards in your hand and going over more than a few possible moves. You think there’s a way you can win the game this turn, but you’re not sure where . . . Ah, wait. There it is.
Narumi looks up as you start to speak. “Are you all right?” she asks.
“I’m . . . wait. What did you just say?”
“I said, are you all right?” she asks again.
You think for a little while. “Yes,” you answer, “I’m okay. Now let’s finish this game.”
It is the middle of your draw step. The card that you draw this turn can be one of three different possibilities. For each of these three possible scenarios, defeat Narumi before the start of her next combat phase.
Your board state and your other cards in hand remain the same for each scenario. The only difference is the card that you draw for the turn.
You have the following other cards in your hand:
The card that you draw this turn will be one of the following:
You have not yet played a land for this turn. You do not know the identity of any of the cards that are currently on top of your library.
- Sultai Flayer
- Kezzerdrix
- Caustic Hound
- Quilled Slagwurm
- 4 Swamps (two tapped)
- 3 Forests (two tapped)
If you think you have a great solution in mind (partial or complete), don’t put it in the comments! Instead, send it to puzzles at gatheringmagic dot com with the subject line “Puzzle — Variations on a Theme”. We’ll include the best ones in next week’s article along with the next puzzle!
Last Week’s Puzzle
“Mari, I’ve got a question.”
“Okay, what?”
“How do you manage to figure these things out in minutes? Some of the people who sent in solutions said that they took a few days to find it.”
“You said it yourself last time. I must be a genius.”
“Really?”
“Of course not,” she says, punching you in the arm. “It’s my own personal secret. I’m obviously not going to tell you.”
You sigh. “Well, whatever the case, we received correct solutions from Russell Jones, David Jacobs, Carlo Picar, Aaron Golas, Andrew Muravskyi, Norman Dean, Matthew Spreeman, Chris Cordell, Matthew Harvey, Lane Engelberg, Caleb Howell, Tony Zhao, Max Takano, Thomas Manderla, Robert Rugart, Jun Weng, Alan Coombe and friends, Hyman Rosen, Vik Patel, Rey Susanto, Mattias "Slanfan" Berggren, Heiko Maurus, Joseph Megill, and Sebastian Pesic.”
“Slanfan had a great analysis of the situation,” you continue. “He pointed out a lot of details:”
- The Deep-Sea Terror is stranded until we can fill the graveyard, and because the wide range of blockers stand in the way on the other side, we need creatures that have evasion.
- By combining spell mastery and filling the graveyard to release the Terror, we can use the Necromantic Summons to reanimate any creature with two +1/+1 counters. This creature needs both haste and evasion. The only creature(s) for this job would be the Gold-Forged Sentinel together with the Thopter Engineer.
- So by timing a cheap targeting spell, we can gain access to the Sentinel via Willbreaker, and this gives us the opportunity to sacrifice it to Nantuko Husk. Then, the summoning can begin.
“You’re just reading the mailbag,” Mari says. “I know that.”
“Did you know that there were three possible ways to make the win?”
Mari frowns. “No, I guess not,” she admits.
“The most popular solution we heard involved countering one of your own spells with Calculated Dismissal. Matthew Spreeman’s solution explains how this works.”
- Play Island. Tap all lands for mana, removing all counters from Mage-Ring Network. (
in mana pool.) - Play Bonded Construct. (
in mana pool. Zero cards in graveyard.) - Activate Alchemist's Vial, targeting Thopter Engineer. Resolve Willbreaker’s ability to gain control of Thopter Engineer. (
in mana pool. One card in graveyard.) - Cast Disperse targeting Gold-Forged Sentinel. Resolve Willbreaker’s ability to gain control of Gold-Forged Sentinel. Cast Calculated Dismissal targeting Disperse. Let Calculated Dismissal counter Disperse. ( in mana pool. Three cards in graveyard. Spell mastery is on.)
- Sacrifice Gold-Forged Sentinel to Nantuko Husk.
- Cast Necromantic Summons targeting Gold-Forged Sentinel. It enters play with two +1/+1 counters on it due to spell mastery and has haste due to Thopter Engineer. (Four cards in graveyard.)
- Tap the Bonded Construct and the Thopter token to use the Whirler Rogue’s ability, targeting the Deep-Sea Terror and making it unblockable.
- Sacrifice the Bonded Construct, the Whirler Rogue, and the Nantuko Husk to the Nantuko Husk. (Seven cards in graveyard.)
- Enter attack step, attack with the Gold-Forged Sentinel and the Deep-Sea Terror. Deal 12 damage, winning the game.
“There’s a small variant to this—Chris Cordell notes that you can use Alchemist's Vial on Gold-Forged Sentinel and Disperse on Thopter Engineer. The rest of the solution is the same though.”
“Okay,” Mari says, “but what about the others?”
“Well, the second most popular solution involved casting Tormented Thoughts on yourself. Here’s an excerpt from Heiko Maurus’s solution that explains how that works:”
- Play Disperse on Gold-Forged Sentinel. This triggers Willbreaker, gaining control of Gold-Forged Sentinel. With Disperse still on the stack, sacrifice the Gold-Forged Sentinel to Nantuko Husk. (One card in graveyard.)
- Use Alchemist's Vial to target Thopter Engineer. This triggers Willbreaker, gaining control of Thopter Engineer. (Two cards in graveyard.)
- Use Whirler Rogue's ability, tapping Bonded Construct and thopter token to make Deep-Sea Terror unblockable.
- Play Tormented Thoughts on yourself, sacrificing Bonded Construct. Discard Island/Rogue's Passage (whichever land you didn’t play) and Calculated Dismissal. (Six cards in graveyard. Spell mastery is on.)
- Play Necromantic Summons on Gold-Forged Sentinel. With spell mastery now active, it enters play with two +1/+1 counters on it. (Seven cards in graveyard.)
“Wait,” Mari says. “Neither of those was my solution. Mine involved casting Tormented Thoughts on the opponent, and some people did write in with that. I mean, look at this one from Carlo Picar:”
- Cast Disperse on Gold-Forged Sentinel. Willbreaker's ability triggers which gives us control of Gold-Forged Sentinel but it would be returned to its owner's hand due to Disperse.
- Sacrifice Wielder Rogue, Bonded Construct, and the Thopter token to Nantuko Husk. Nantuko Husk is now 8/8.
- Cast Tormented Thoughts, sacrificing the 8/8 Nantuko Husk as part of the cost and targeting your opponent. Your opponent discards 8 cards, which is his whole hand.
- Cast Necromantic Summons targeting Gold-Forged Sentinel in your opponent's graveyard. Spell mastery takes effect due to Disperse and Tormented Thoughts in your graveyard, giving it two +1/+1 counters.
“Solution or no solution,” you finally say, “Norman Dean also noted that even if Day's Undoing hadn’t been cast, we might still have been able to pull off the win:”
- Providing that Orhan does not top-deck something, you can use the Alchemist's Vial to steal his Chimera, leaving him with five attackers and you with four blockers.
- Once you draw the Rogue's Passage, you can steal one of his surviving creatures, probably the Guardian Automaton. Start beating down with the Sentinel for 4 each turn while holding everything else back to block, and you should be all set . . . provided that nothing happens to the Willbreaker!
