Locations
When you first met Minette during your Unabridged Cube draft this morning, she mentioned about how she had a Dwarf theme deck. Apparently, after the Mothership revealed that dwarves were returning to the game with Kaladesh, she dusted off the deck, tossed some random cards into some missing slots, and brought it over.
“I don’t remember it being any good,” she admits, “and it probably got worse after I sold all my copies of Balthor the Stout. But it’s playable.”
You’re not sure when you volunteered to pilot the deck against Minette’s draft deck, but you’re regretting the gesture now. It turns out that Minette has a very loose definition of the word “playable” (and likely one that can describe all sorts of shenanigans).
Your game started out surprisingly well: a single Dwarven Catapult wrecked Minette’s early game, and your Dwarven Miner has been instrumental in keeping her non-basic lands off the table. Unfortunately for you, however, your dwarves are too small compared to most of Minette’s creatures — nope, no joke there —and you’ve been having trouble holding your position.
Last turn, Minette tapped 7 mana and dropped a Gruul Ragebeast on the table, killing the Giant Strength-ed Dwarven Grunt you’ve been using to scoot past her defenses. She then attacked with her Skyshroud War Beast and her Cudgel Troll, and you were forced to chump-block them with a couple of your less useful creatures.
On your turn, you chose to untap your Dwarven Hold and have its storage counters at the ready: Maybe Minette has a Fireball in her dwarf deck, or something like that. Instead, you pull yet another land. Seeing that it’s a Looming Spires, it won’t even be useful for mana this turn.
You drum your fingers on the table, wondering what you can do in order to salvage this game. It’ll be nice to show Minette that her deck does have some fight in it, and that it’s not merely something that comes up short.
It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Minette before the start of her next combat phase.
You are at 6 life, with the following cards in play:
- Bloodfire Dwarf (with your Thornbite Staff attached)
- Dwarven Berserker
- Dwarven Miner
- Bomb Squad
- 4 mountains
- Dwarven Ruins
- Dwarven Hold (with five storage counters on it)
- Mutavault
- Cavern of Souls (naming Dwarf)
You have the following card in your hand:
You do not know the identities of the any of the next cards of your library.
Minette is at 6 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:
- Skyshroud War Beast (tapped)
- Goblin Masons
- Yotian Soldier
- Cudgel Troll (tapped)
- Gruul Ragebeast
- 5 mountains (four tapped)
- 5 forests (three 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 — Get Shorty” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, September 18, 2016. 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 Norman Dean, Dominic Chan, Ryou Niji, Aaron Golas, Dom Guido, Alfred Hsie, Hyman Rosen, Subrata Sircar, Jordan Fitzgerald, Kevin Muehlenthaler, Frankie Punzi, Miko Losantas, Victor Munson, Kriz Lee, Chadwick Bond, and Michael Feldman.
“First off,” Miko Losantas writes,“Casting Spells 101 says that you use your removal at the very last moment. It leaves you more information, and maybe gets you more bang for your buck. Vijay's Death Wind at the end of his own turn is probably not the smartest move.
“The obvious key here is Stormchaser Chimera made unblockable by Goblin Tunneler, then pumped somehow. But the other part of the puzzle is finding where the additional damage should come from: Your big trampler? That Guttersnipe at the top of your library?”
A closer look at the situation reveals that if you’re going to figure out how to get eleven damage through, you’re first going to need to figure out how to distribute your resources. “It may not seem like it,” Ryou Niji observes,“but we are actually choked on both Red and Blue mana.”
Chadwick Bond notes: “The biggest red herring for this puzzle seems to be Guttersnipe. There are a few big problems with trying to win with him. The first is our lands: We only have so many to use between Stormchaser Chimera's ability, Hired Heist's cost, and our spells in hand. Another problem is that we have to decide whether to use our spells to push through combat damage, or use our spells to fuel the Guttersnipe. We can't do both, since Guttersnipe can't be drawn except by Hired Heist.”
Based on all this, you need to find a way to fix your mana. And as it turns out, you can — with the only caveat being that you have to become the monarch first. Aaron Golas’ solution goes as follows:
- Tap Goblin Tunneler to make Stormchaser Chimera unblockable until end of turn.
- Pay
to cast Besmirch targeting Omenspeaker. (One island, one mountain, and six forests remaining.) - Pay to cast Coordinated Assault targeting Regal Behemoth and Omenspeaker.(One island and six forests remaining.)Omenspeaker is a 2/3 flying creature, even if Vijay still controls Kitesail.
- Attack with Stormchaser Chimera, Regal Behemoth, and Omenspeaker.
- Stormchaser Chimera can't be blocked, but Vijay has some options for blocking your other two attackers. If he lets either through unchecked, you're golden. However, we must assume that he'll see the threat of your activating Stormchaser Chimera, and block so as to keep your first-strikers from stealing the crown for your Regal Behemoth. His best option, therefore, is to block Omenspeaker with Blood-Toll Harpy and block Regal Behemoth with everything else.
- Before damage, pay to cast Beast Within targeting Vertigo Spawn, destroying it and giving Vijay a 3/3 Beast token. (One island and three forests remaining.)
- Go to first strike damage. Omenspeaker kills Blood-Toll Harpy. Regal Behemoth tramples over Fleshbag Marauder and Cloaked Siren to deal 3 damage to Vijay, putting him to 8. You become the monarch.
- Before normal damage, tap your four remaining lands for mana. Regal Behemoth triggers; add a total of
to your mana pool. Activate Stormchaser Chimera twice. - With the first activation, scry Guttersnipe to the bottom of your library and then reveal Sylvan Bounty, giving Stormchaser Chimera +6/+0.
- With the second, leave Sylvan Bounty on top and reveal it again for another +6/+0.
- Of course, the first activation is enough to make your Chimera lethal on its own. If you want to be cheeky, you can scry away Sylvan Bounty with the second and see what's underneath! Or, if you want to be merciful (read: boring), you can forego the second activation entirely. You're the monarch now; your whim is law.
- Finally, go to normal damage. Stormchaser Chimera leaves Vijay somewhere between exactly dead and exceedingly dead.
Note that you don’t have to steal the Omenspeaker; you can actually steal any of Vijay’s flyers with Besmirch. Vijay’s best move is the same in each case: he’ll need to block your attacking flyer with one of his own, then block the Regal Behemoth with whatever is left — leaving him vulnerable to a well-timed Beast Within.
With that said, however, it’s possible to forego massive Stormchaser Chimera damage and win the game via Guttersnipe, although this requires a bit of rules knowledge. Dom Guido writes:
- We tap Goblin Tunneler to make Stormchaser Chimera unblockable.
- We move to combat and declare the unblockableStormchaser Chimera as an attacker.
- After Vijay's declaration of "no blocks",we tap our remaining Island, a Mountain, and two Forests to activate Stormchaser Chimera's ability. (We now have two Mountains and five Forests untapped.)
- We scry 1, seeing Guttersnipe. We keep it on top, revealing it to give Stormchaser Chimera +3/+0.
- We move to combat damage and deal 5 to Vijay. He is now at 6 life.
- The "whenever" triggers of both the Monarch ability and Hired Heist are triggered. Hired Heist goes on the stack first, then the Monarch ability goes on top of it.
- The Monarch ability resolves: We become the Monarch.
- The Hired Heist trigger resolves: We tap a Forest, adding to our mana pool (thanks to Regal Behemoth’s ability). (We now have two Mountains and four Forests untapped.)
- We spend to pay for Hired Heist's triggered ability, drawing Guttersnipe.
- We move to our second Main Phase, and the in our mana pool goes away.
- We tap our remaining mountains for (thanks to Regal Behemoth’s ability). We now have four Forests untapped.
- We pay to play Guttersnipe. We still have floating.
- We pay our remaining to cast Coordinated Assault. We target Goblin Tunneler, because giving a tapped creature first strike is funny.Guttersnipetriggers, and we deal 2 damage to Vijay. Vijay is now at 4 life.
- We tap three of our remaining four untapped forests for . (We still have one lonely Forest untapped.)
- We spend to cast Beast Within, targeting Cloaked Siren (it doesn't really matter, but I don't like the cut of the Siren's jib). We still have in our mana pool.Guttersnipe triggers, and we deal 2 damage to Vijay. Vijay is now at 2 life.
- We spend our last to play Besmirch targeting the Beast token. We brought it into the world, after all, it should end the game on our side.Guttersnipe triggers, and we deal 2 damage to Vijay. Vijay is now at 0 life.
The latter solution works due to a couple of quirks in the rules. First, the Monarch triggered ability is controlled by the player who is currently the Monarch — so in this case it would go on top of your triggered abilities. Second, the mana cost for Hired Heist’s triggered ability only needs to be paid upon its resolution, by which point you’ve already become the Monarch (albeit for only about a couple of seconds so far).
“Clever misdirection was particularly salient in this puzzle,” Michael Feldman notes.“Hired Heist combined with an untapped Island and two revealed cards on top of the deck makes it hard to accept that Stormchaser Chimera wouldn't need to attack Vijay for anything other than damage. And who would think, off the bat at least, that you would only be one Mountain short of the Red mana you need, yet have to resort to Regal Behemoth's overabundant mana ability rather than Sylvan Bounty's basic landcycling?”
