Locations
It's theme night at your local game store, and Mari is absolutely dumbfounded.
"So let me get this straight," she says. "You had all these good artifact cards."
"And artifact-related cards," CJ adds.
"Oh, silly me," Mari says, "how could I forget the artifact-related cards?"
"But you're right anyway," CJ says, smiling.
"You had all these good artifact cards," Mari continues, "and you had all these bad artifact cards. That's because you took about one of every on-theme card that looked interesting, and you divided them into those two piles."
"Right," CJ says.
"Now, any sane person would take the good cards and make a deck out of them. It wouldn't have to be coherent, but it would at least fit today's deck construction requirements. But what you did was..."
"I shuffled everything together and added lands," CJ says.
"You. Shuffled. Everything. Together," Mari says, in a very defeated tone. "And added lands."
"Uh-huh."
Mari drops her head into her hands. "Why?" she asks.
"I just wanted to see how it played."
With a 102-card artifact-themed deck, CJ's ranked dead last going into the third round of today's tournament. You're laboring under some very specific deck construction rules, particularly the fact that you can have only one copy of each card except for basic lands, and all the cards in your deck have to stick to single common element.
You can understand Mari's frustration - she spent the entirety of last week coming up with a playable Bear deck (complete with cards like Drop of Honey and Hibernation's End). Given CJ's track record at terrible game decisions, you're surprised that she hasn't torn her hair out yet.
Ingrid pauses, one hand on her Guardian Seraph. "Does that mean you're not blocking?" she asks.
"No, sorry," CJ says. "How much damage is that?"
"Three from Guardian Seraph, and three from Voice of Reason," Ingrid says. "That's six. You'll go down to five."
"Okay dokey," CJ says, adjusting his spindown. Mari shakes her head.
"It's not like I was going to block anyway," CJ points out. "I wouldn't have been able to remove either the Guardian Seraph, or the Voice of Reason."
"Or you could have activated Foundry of the Consuls for blockers," Mari points out.
CJ glances at his lands. "Oh yeah," he says. "Why didn't I think of that?"
Ingrid looks like she's about to complain, but you interrupt her with an apology. "She's just frustrated," you explain. "She's not going to call out every play she sees, I promise."
"I hope not," Ingrid says. "I'm not going to second-guess everything he does. This game has gone on long enough already."
You look at Mari to see if she's going to say anything else, but she's apparently busy pressing her head to the table.
"I'll tap out," Ingrid says, "and I'll cast Seraph of the Suns. Your turn."
"I like Angel decks," CJ says. "They start off slow, but they're easy to get to critical mass around the midgame."
"You'll still have a problem with that Worship, though," you point out.
"Hey, I was losing this game anyway," CJ says, untapping his permanents and drawing a card. "That's cool," he adds.
"What's that?"
CJ shows you and Mari the Prototype Portal he just drew. "Now if I only had another artifact in hand, I'd be set."
Mari looks like she's about to say something, but then she suddenly closes her mouth and stares at the board. She then opens her mouth again, as though she's about to say something else.
"No play advice," you tell her. "It's still a tournament game."
A disappointed look comes over Mari's face, and she resumes pressing her head to the table.
It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Ingrid before the beginning of her next combat phase.
You are at 5 life, with the following cards in play:
- Aphetto Alchemist
- Myr Retriever
- Mirran Spy
- Thermal Navigator
- Salvage Scuttler
- Mana Vault
- Hierophant's Chalice
- 4 Islands
- Darksteel Citadel
- Foundry of the Consuls
You have the following card 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:
Ingrid is at 20 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:
- Bishop of Wings
- Voice of Reason (with Ingrid's Bladed Bracers attached)
- Angelfire Crusader
- Guardian Seraph (tapped)
- Seraph of the Suns
- a 1/1 Spirit token (created by Bishop of Wings)
- Worship
- Mountain
- 4 Plains
- Godless Shrine
- Seraph Sanctuary
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 - Assembly Line" by 11:59 P.M. EST on Monday, September2, 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 Addison Fox, Russell Jones, Max Bernstein, Sean Patrick Keatley, Damien Dupré, Hyman Rosen, Ross, and David Arnold.
"This is an interesting one," Addison Fox writes. "Volrath, the Shapestealer puts a -1/-1 counter on a creature every turn, but the copy ability doesn't care what kind of counter is on the thing we copy, and conveniently, Bellowing Aegisaur is very accommodating in that respect:
- Pay
to cast Crown of Vigor on Volrath. Put the +1/+1 counter from Oath of the Ancient Wood on Volrath. - Move to combat. Put Volrath's -1/-1 counter on Triskelion, killing it. Riku's Unruly Mob gets a counter.
- Pay to have Volrath copy Unruly Mob.
- Pay and tap Stun Sniper to ping Bellowing Aegisaur, putting a +1/+1 counter on Riku's board.
- Pay to sacrifice Thrashing Brontodon targeting Animate Dead. Our "Unruly Mob" Volrath gets two additional +1/+1 counters.
- Attack with Mortis Dogs and Volrath. The Dogs become a 4/2.
- Pay to copy Skyship Stalker with Volrath.
- Volrath is now a 7/5 with three +1/+1 counters on it (and an enchantment giving +1/+1) and can't be blocked since none of Riku's creatures have reach. Mortis Dogs is a very fragile 4/2 that can only be blocked by creatures large enough to trade with it, which would trigger it and cause Riku to lose 4 life. Whether Riku blocks to trade or not, we get in for 15.
This approach has plenty of variants because you have a lot of counters flying around. You can use Volrath's -1/-1 counter to convert Tuktuk, the Explorer into a 5/5 Goblin Golem token, for example, and remove Triskelion by means of your Brontodon, as Damien Dupré writes:
- Tap a forest to use the Brontodon's ability destroying Triskelion. This puts a +1/+1 counter on Unruly Mob.
- Tap a forest and a swamp to cast Crown of Vigor on Volrath making it 8/6. This triggers the Oath of the Ancient Wood, and we put the +1/+1 counter on Mortis Dogs making it 3/3.
- Go to combat. With the triggered ability of Volrath, kill Tuktuk, the Explorer. Tuktuk the Returned then enters the battlefield, and the Unruly Mob gets another +1/+1 counter.
- Still before attacks, tap a Swamp to activate the Stun Sniper ability targeting the Bellowing Aegisaur. This puts +1/+1 counters on all our opponent's creatures except for the Aegisaur.
- Tap a forest to make Volrath a copy of our Mortis Dogs, then attack with both creatures triggering their abilities. While the Volrath ability is on the stack, tap an Island to make Volrath a copy of the Skyship Stalker.
- Volrath is now a 10/6 with flying (basically unblockable for our opponent) and the Mortis Dogs are 5/3. Because we triggered the enrage ability of the Aegisaur, all of our opponent's creatures can kill our Mortis Dogs if they block it with one of them, so that we are pushing the last points of damage whatsoever.
It's also possible to have Volrath throw more counters at things, by allowing him to copy Triskelion. The trick to this, as Ross notes, is to make sure that Triskelion never actually gets a +1/+1 counter (or otherwise it'll kill you!):
- Pay to play Crown of Vigor, enchanting your opponent's Triskelion (now a 2/2). This triggers Oath of the Ancient Wood, allowing you to place a +1/+1 counter on Mortis Dogs (now 3/3).
- Move to combat and use Volrath's ability to place a -1/-1 counter on Triskelion (now 1/1 again).
Before declaring attackers:
- Pay and tap Stun Sniper to deal 1 damage to your opponent's Tuktuk, the Explorer. Tuktuk dies, creating a 5/5 golem and triggering your opponent's Unruly Mob, which gets a +1/+1 counter.
- Pay to make Volrath a copy of Unruly Mob.
- Pay and sacrifice Thrashing Brontodon to destroy your own Animate Dead, which kills Stun Sniper. Since two creatures you controlled died, Mob-Volrath gets two +1/+1 counters (now 9/7).
- Pay to make Volrath a copy of Mortis Dogs.
- Declare Mortis-Volrath and Mortis Dogs as attackers. Both get +2/+0 because of the Mortis Dogs ability (now 11/7 and 5/3, respectively).
Before blockers are declared:
- Pay to make Volrath a copy of Triskelion.
- Sacrifice Crown of Vigor. This causes Triskelion to die immediately, but all creatures sharing a type with it (i.e. constructs) get +1/+1 from Crown of Vigor's effect, including Triskelion-Volrath, now 12/8.
- Remove a +1/+1 counter from Triskelion-Volrath (11/7) to deal 1 damage to your opponent's Bellowing Aegisaur. Enrage triggers, placing a +1/+1 counter on each of your opponent's other creatures.
- Remove the final +1/+1 counter from Triskelion-Volrath (now 10/6) to deal 1 damage to your own 5/3 Mortis Dogs.
- Pay to make Volrath a copy of Skyship Stalker.
- Move to damage. Your opponent can't block your flying Stalker-Volrath and takes 10 damage (4 life remaining). No matter how they block your damaged Mortis Dogs, it will die, causing your opponent to lose 5 life and the game.
Almost all of these solutions put your opponent in a quandary: They can't block a flying Volrath and must take at least seven damage from it, and they lose life from Mortis Dogs regardless of whether or not they throw something in its way. That's almost all solutions, though - can you still win this game even if the Skyship Stalker isn't on the table?
