Locations
Your opponent eyes your half of the table, paying close attention to your Fire-Omen Crane. "That's a 3/3, right?" she asks.
"Right," you say.
Sandra looks at the Coral Helm you have off to the side. "And you have one card in your hand?" she asks.
You glance at the Infernal Harvest you've been holding for a couple of turns now. "Just the one," you say.
Sandra considers this for a few seconds, then taps her Exultant Skymarcher. "I'll send in my 5/6 flyer, then. Just that and nothing else."
"No blocks," you say, nodding. You really don't like the possibility that the last card in Sandra's hand might be a Titanic Growth - or worse - but sometimes you just have to take your chances with what the Unabridged Cube gives you. Besides, if she's not attacking with all of her flyers, you're guessing that she doesn't have a combat trick available.
Sandra gives you a measured look, sighs, and then taps her smartphone a few times. "Five damage to you," she says. "That puts you at four life."
"Four life," you echo, scribbling on your notepad.
"You're in barney now, you know."
"Yeah, I know. Are you casting that card you're holding?" you ask.
Sandra taps all six of her lands and drops a Bellowing Aegisaur on the table. "That should answer your question," she says.
You shake your head. "That was a risk on my part," you mutter. "You can't anticipate anything when you to have to account for one of each card ever printed."
"What's that?"
"Nothing. I was just musing."
"Well, you can muse all you want now," Sandra says. "It's your turn."
You untap what few tapped permanents you have, then settle back and draw your card for the turn. A Deadly Allure isn't quite what you were hoping for, though, and you wish it were an instant rather than a sorcery. But you'll take what you can get.
After a tense back-and-forth game, you're aware that Sandra is within striking distance at nine life. But she's also got an array of blockers at her disposal, and the prospects of you being able to get through for enough damage are quite slim. Still, if you have to make a move, you'd better do it now.
It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Sandra before the beginning of her next combat phase.
You are at 4 life, with the following cards in play:
- Cinder Wall
- Dire Fleet Hoarder
- Phyrexian Rager
- Keldon Raider
- Fire-Omen Crane
- Coral Helm
- 3 Swamp
- 5 Mountain
You have the following cards in your hand:
You have not yet played a land this turn. You know neither the identities nor the order of the cards remaining in your library.
Sandra is at 9 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:
- Sedge Scorpion
- Leonin Skyhunter
- Sporecap Spider
- Exultant Skymarcher (tapped, with Sandra's Oakenform attached)
- Angelic Protector (with Sandra's Fruit of the First Tree attached)
- Argothian Swine
- Bellowing Aegisaur
- 3 Forest (all tapped)
- 3 Plains (all tapped)
Sandra has 21 cards remaining in her library.
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 - You Had One Job" by 11:59 P.M. EST on Monday, September 3, 2018. 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, Dennis Ruppe, Matt Bocek, Russell Jones, Jamie Ganner, James Ogier, Sean Patrick Keatley, Greg Dreher, Tomasz Murawski, Dan Christman-Crook, Ryou Niji, Michael Feldman, Hyman Rosen, Chris Billard, and David Arnold.
"Steve has a large army, including flying creatures," Greg Dreher writes, "so winning requires somehow getting past them. You have only one way to potentially do that in Tanglewalker."
"We need to make use of Tanglewalker's evasion ability," Dennis Ruppe continues, "which means giving our opponent an artifact land. Toward this end, we need Awakener Druid, Ashnod's Transmogrant, and Nylea's Presence. Of course, those are all on the battlefield, so we need to find a way to reuse each of them. We also want to be economical in our use of creatures in order to get to 11 damage."
Jamie Ganner's solution therefore points out that if the breakthrough doesn't yet exist, then you have to build it yourself:
- Tap the Plains with Nylea's Presence for
, a Plains, Awakener Druid and the Forest with Vow of Malice on it to cast Gleeful Sabotage with Conspire. Target your own Oath of Ajani and Nylea's Presence. (Both hit the bin.) - Tap Selesnya Sanctuary to activate Ulvenwald Tracker. Have Awakener Druid fight Oona's Gatewarden. Awakener Druid hits the bin (as does the Gatewarden).
- Sacrifice Tragic Poet to get Nylea's Presence out of your graveyard and into your hand.
- Tap a Forest and a Plains to cast Nylea's Presence on any of your opponent's lands.
- Tap a Plains to cast Ashnod's Transmogrant. This triggers Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle, returning Tragic Poet to the battlefield.
- Equip Lightning Greaves to Tragic Poet.
- Sacrifice Tragic Poet to get Oath of Ajani out of your graveyard and into your hand.
- Tap a Forest and a Plains to cast Oath of Ajani.This triggers Teshar, returning Awakener Druid to the battlefield.
- Using Awakener Druid's ETB effect, change the land with Nylea's Presence on it into a 4/5 Green creature.
- Oath of Ajani's ETB trigger goes off, giving +1/+1 counters to all your creatures. Your untapped creatures are now a 3/3 Leonin Squire, a 2/2 Awakener Druid, a 4/4 Tanglewalker, and a 4/4 Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle.
- Tap Ashnod's Transmogrant and sacrifice it to change the opponent's 4/5 land into a 5/6 artifact creature. Because it's now both an artifact and a land, our creatures are unblockable because of Tanglewalker.
- Equip Lightning Greaves to Awakener Druid for good measure. Swing for 13.
Considering that Awakener Druid is only a 1/1 creature, it's not too difficult to get it into your graveyard for Teshar's effect. Various solutions suggested getting it to fight your opponent's Oona's Gatewarden or Baleful Strix for the value, but you can also have it go up against the Demon of Death's Gate itself for style points (and a messy end).
The Leonin Squire doesn't do much in this solution beyond acting as a 3/3 attacker, but Michael Feldman notes that there's a way you can take advantage of its ability:
- Start by casting Gleeful Sabotage to destroy Nylea's Presence and Oath of Ajani, then cast Ashnod's Transmogrant and have Teshar return Tragic Poet to the battlefield.
- Tap and sacrifice Ashnod's Transmogrant to put a +1/+1 counter on Awakener Druid (now 2/2) and make it an artifact creature.
- Activate Ulvenwald Tracker to have it force the 2/2 Leonin Squire and 2/2 Awakener Druid to fight, killing both creatures. Awakener Druid's death stops your 4/5 Treefolk Forest from being a Treefolk, sending Vow of Malice to Steve's graveyard for lack of attachment.
- Cast Oath of Ajani. Before it resolves, the legendary spell triggers Teshar's historic ability. Return Leonin Squire to the battlefield.
- Leonin Squire's ability triggers to return Ashnod's Transmogrant, the only artifact card in your graveyard (with a casting cost of 1 to boot), to your hand.
- Oath of Ajani resolves, adding a +1/+1 counter each to Ulvenwald Tracker (now a tapped 2/2), Leonin Squire (now 3/3), Tanglewalker (now 4/4 including both counters) and Teshar (now 4/4 including both counters).
- Equip Tragic Poet with Lightning Greaves, giving it haste and shroud.
- Tap and sacrifice the hasted Tragic Poet to return Nylea's Presence to your hand. Lightning Greaves detaches.
- Cast Nylea's Presence on any one of Steve's lands, making the land every basic land.
At this point, you can cast Ashnod's Transmogrant a second time, returning Awakener Druid to enable the original solution. The only difference with this route is that you don't attack with Awakener Druid: Instead, you need to attach Lightning Greaves to your 3/3 Leonin Squire for exactly 11 points of attacking damage.
"Knowing CJ, though," Russell Jones muses, "even if he were magically imbued with the foresight to see this line during the game, he'd just misclick on Scrounger of Souls as the fight target anyway, so Steve would survive with 1 life after all that. We'd better hope that card draw from Nylea's Presence is something like Erase, Giant Growth, or even Gut Shot..."
