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Perhaps you made a mistake at some point.
It’s the third game of your Magic Origins match against Rachel, and your Demonic Pact has been doing some work for you. That said, it’s also put you on a very limited clock, and you haven’t been able to draw your single Enlightened Ascetic to save your life. (Literally!)
Kothophed, Soul Hoarder himself showed up on your last turn, and you couldn’t help but smile at his appropriate timing. That said, it seems unlikely that Kothophed will help much, considering that Rachel has a Skysnare Spider standing watch on her side.
“Five turns,” the head judge says. You nod, and so does Rachel.
Looking at your audience for any reactions, you don’t notice Rachel’s play at first. She casts Gather the Pack (with spell mastery), pulling Nivix Barrier and Willbreaker from among the top five cards of her library. She immediately casts the Willbreaker, but she chooses to keep the Barrier in her hand—which makes sense since she’ll want to take advantage of its ability when the time comes.
Only the next-to-last option remains on your Demonic Pact, and you use it to draw two cards at the beginning of your upkeep. Between those and your regular draw, it becomes obvious that your Enlightened Ascetic isn’t going to show up. The Pact’s last clause is going to take effect next turn, and that spurs you to action: It’s time to get down to business.
You survey the table, trying to figure out how to break Rachel’s defenses. With the new cards in your hand, you should have everything you need to get through, deal damage, and forestall your own loss.
Do you?
It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Rachel before she defeats you.
You are at 9 life with the following cards in play:
- Bonded Construct
- Fleshbag Marauder
- Knight of the Pilgrim's Road
- Undead Servant
- Blightcaster (tapped, with your Grasp of the Hieromancer and Rachel’s Claustrophobia attached)
- Kothophed, Soul Hoarder
- Demonic Pact (all modes already chosen except for “You lose the game.”)
- 6 Plains
- 5 Swamps
You have the following cards in your hand:
- Enshrouding Mist (drawn via Demonic Pact)
- Touch of Moonglove (drawn during your draw step)
- Grasp of the Hieromancer (drawn via Demonic Pact)
- Auramancer
You have no enchantment cards in your graveyard.
You do not know the identity of any of the cards that are currently on top of your library.
Rachel is at 8 life. She has the following cards in play:
- Tower Geist
- Willbreaker
- Woodland Bellower (with your Weight of the Underworld attached)
- Skysnare Spider
- 5 Forests (three tapped)
- 6 Islands (four tapped)
Rachel has only one card in her hand, which you know because she got it from her Gather the Pack:
If you think you have a great solution in mind, don’t put it in the comments! Instead, send it to puzzles at gatheringmagic dot com with the subject line “Puzzle — The Writing on the Wall.” We’ll include the best ones in next week’s article along with the next puzzle!
Last Week’s Puzzle
Correct solutions were received from Russell Jones, Maarten Wybaillie, Aaron Golas, Norman Dean, Erin Dixon-Gonzalez, Andrew Muravskyi, Christopher McCormick, Hyman and Martin Rosen, Ahniwa Ferrari, Paul Eveslage, Quadrangolo Tetra, Kha Chu, Alexander Breuers, and Vik Patel. A comprehensive partial solution was also provided by Aaron Orians.
Several respondents noted that this puzzle looked easy on the surface: All you have to do is get Avenging Angel back on top of your library and cast To Arms!, right? Unfortunately, your situation complicates matters: You’re currently in Michael’s first main phase, so you need to survive both the draw from To Arms! and your own draw step.
Aaron Orians put together a very good analysis of the To Arms! strategy and arrived at a startling conclusion:
We must deal combat damage to win due to the Leyline of Sanctity. Akroma seems to be our most obvious choice to deal that damage (pro-white and pro-blue makes it essentially unblockable), but only if she can become untapped.
Akroma alone cannot defeat our opponent. We either need 2 red mana available to pump her up or another creature to be able to get through.
We have two options of making Akroma untapped—either play To Arms! or find a way to kill her, return her to our hand, and recast her on our turn.
For Option A, this means that we have to be able to draw a card for our draw step and draw a card when playing To Arms!. Hence, we have to kill the Avenging Angel twice (and recast it somewhere in there).
- We have no way of casting the Avenging Angel on the opponent's turn, so we have to use all the mana on our turn to cast Avenging Angel, kill Avenging Angel, and then cast To Arms!.
- The cheapest this can be accomplished is with 9 mana (Avenging Angel, Fling, To Arms!), so we commit ourselves to Akroma needing support—at least one other creature is going to have to be able to deal damage to our opponent.
- On Michael's turn, we must kill the Avenging Angel (to have it available for our draw step), and our only other card is the Warleader's Helix, which then must target the Avenging Angel.
- Now we figure out which creatures to target with Fling. One of them must be the Avenging Angel, but whomever else we sacrifice either puts us down a creature or takes out a single Guard Gomazoa (not enough for more damage to get through). I just can't see how resolving To Arms! would get us a win.
This is indeed the case. “To Arms! is a trap,” Kha Chu concludes, “and trying to incorporate it into your plan will not lead to victory.”
Aaron Orians continues:
This leaves us with Option B. The method of killing Akroma is straightforward—we must cast Fling, sacrificing Akroma—she has protection from everything else!
- When choosing whom to kill with the Fling, we know that we have to destroy the Twilight Shepherd (to get Akroma back in our hand) and the Avenging Angel (to survive our next draw step).
- We have three avenues of killing creatures: the Fling damage, the Warleader's Helix, and the potential combat damage that could result if we kill the Haunted Angel.
- So at this point, we can use Fling to take out the Haunted Angel, putting a 3/3 token on the opponent's side.
- We can then use Basandra, Battle Seraph to force that token to attack and then target it with Serra Advocate to make it large enough to take out the Twilight Shepherd.
With this latter plan in mind, the solution becomes clear. Hyman and Martin Rosen collaborated on the solution below:
In Michael's first main phase:
- Cast Warleader's Helix for
targeting Avenging Angel. - Avenging Angel dies.
- Choose to put Avenging Angel on top of our library.
- We go to 40 life.
- Cast Fling for
, sacrificing Akroma, Angel of Fury and targeting Haunted Angel. - Haunted Angel dies.
- Haunted Angel’s ability triggers, exiling it.
- Michael gets a 3/3 black Angel token with flying and haste (due to Mass Hysteria).
- Activate Basandra, Battle Seraph for targeting the Angel token. The Angel token must attack.
In Michael's combat step:
- Michael attacks with the 3/3 Angel token.
- Activate Serra Advocate’s ability, targeting the Angel token. The Angel token becomes 5/5.
- Block the Angel token with Twilight Shepherd.
- Twilight Shepherd and Angel token both die.
- Twilight Shepherd's persist ability triggers.
- Twilight Shepherd returns to the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter.
- Twilight Shepherd's enter-the-battlefield ability triggers.
- Akroma, Angel of Fury and Pledge of Loyalty return to our hand.
On our turn:
- Serra Advocate and our lands untap.
- Draw Avenging Angel.
- Cast Akroma, Angel of Fury as a face-down creature for
. It’s a 2/2 creature with haste (due to Mass Hysteria). - Attack with the face-down Akroma, Angel of Fury.
- Before Michael declares blockers, activate Serra Advocate’s ability targeting the face-down Akroma, Angel of Fury. The face-down Akroma, Angel of Fury becomes 4/4.
- Unmorph Akroma, Angel of Fury for .
- Akroma, Angel of Fury is 8/8 and cannot be blocked by Michael's blue and white defenders.
- Michael takes lethal damage.
“Akroma would have protection from Serra Advocate while face up,” Aaron Golas adds, “so you can only pump her that way by casting her face down first. While she does have firebreathing as well, you don't have enough mana to cast her face up and use that to bring her to 8 power.”
“So Team Angel is victorious at 40 life with no library and one card in hand,” Maarten Wybaillie muses. “We used all our creatures but dipped into necromancy a bit. That's okay, I guess—it was for a good cause.”
