Locations
"Uhh, not really..."
"The way I remembered it," Gregor says, ignoring you, "Selesnya was the most playable guild back during the Return to Ravnica prerelease. And some of the old-timers had good things to say about it back during the original triple-Ravnica. So I thought, okay, I guess I know what I'm playing today!"
"Okay," you shrug. To be honest, you're running with Dimir at the moment because you - like most of the people at your local game store - caught hold of the early card previews. Unfortunately, you pulled mostly White cards in your booster packs, and have had to struggle for playables in your colors as a result.
You survey the board. You and your opponent are well and truly stalemated right now: Gregor has a slight advantage in terms of creatures, and he's got a Conclave Guildmage that's dangerous if left unchecked. However, he's lacking in big creatures, and his Hitchclaw Recluse is the only thing preventing your Watcher in the Mist from coming in for damage. You're also holding onto a Sinister Sabotage in case he does cast something you can't deal with.
Gregor draws his card for the turn, smiles, and starts tapping lands. Your fingers tighten on the Sinister Sabotage in your hand.
"I'll tap six," Gregor says, "including my Mountain and Gateway Plaza for Red, and cast Inescapable Blaze. Six damage to your Watcher in the Mist?"
You reach for your Islands, then pause. "Wait," you say. "That can't be countered, right?"
As soon as the words are out of your mouth, you realize that you've just given your plan away. "Sorry, no Sinister Sabotage for you," Gregor says, smiling.
You mutter something under your breath and drop your flyer into your graveyard. Gregor pushes a couple of his creatures forward.
"I'll attack with my Parhelion Patrol and my Swiftblade Vindicator," he says. "Neither of them taps because of Vigilance. Mentor triggers, and I'll put a +1/+1 counter on the Vindicator."
You glance at your creatures. Unfortunately, you don't like the idea of losing any of them to a double-striking 2/2... and throwing away one of your more disposable creatures isn't even that good a prospect, seeing that Gregor can activate his Conclave Guildmage for Trample. That leaves you with a single option.
"No blocks," you say, surprising Gregor. "I'll take them both."
"That's six damage," Gregor says. "Are you sure?"
"The way I see it, I'm dead on board anyway without a solid blocker in the air. I'm going to see if I can pull something off with whatever I have left."
"Suit yourself," Gregor says, rotating the die on his side of the table. You scratch out the "9" on your scorepad and replace it with a "3".
"I'll end my turn," Gregor says.
"In response, I'll pay four and sacrifice my Dimir Locket."
If there was any time when you needed cards, it's this one. Unfortunately, your draw isn't very good: You pull an Island and a Maximize Altitude, and your eye is immediately drawn to the fact that the latter is a sorcery card.
"You've still got a draw step coming," Gregor says.
"Yeah, I know," you say, untapping your permanents. This draw turns out to be slightly better: a Radical Idea isn't much, but it'll at least give you access to more cards.
"So," Gregor says, "Anything you can do?"
You play your Island and survey the board again. "What's your life total?" you ask.
Gregor looks amused. "I'm at 8 life," he says. "What, are you going to win out of nowhere or something like that?"
"I'd love to, but I need to figure this out first. Give me a few minutes."
It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Gregor before the beginning of his next combat phase.
You are at 3 life, with the following cards in play:
- Nightveil Sprite
- Whispering Snitch
- Fire Urchin
- Goblin Electromancer
- Blood Operative
- Undercity Necrolisk
- 4 Island
- 1 Swamp
- Dimir Guildgate
- Izzet Guildgate
You have the following cards in your hand:
You have already played your land for the turn. You know neither the identities nor the order of the cards remaining in your library.
Neither you nor Gregor currently have any relevant cards in your graveyards.
Gregor is at 8 life and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:
- Conclave Guildmage
- Swiftblade Vindicator (with a +1/+1 counter on it)
- Generous Stray
- Hitchclaw Recluse
- Wary Okapi
- Parhelion Patrol
- Ledev Guardian
- a 2/2 Elf Knight creature token (created by Conclave Guildmage)
- 1 Mountain (tapped)
- 3 Forest (two tapped)
- 2 Plains (both tapped)
- Selesnya Guildgate
- Gateway Plaza (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 - Watch Closely" by 11:59 P.M. EST on Monday, October 8, 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 Hyman Rosen, Greg Dreher, Russell Jones, Ryou Niji, Sean Patrick Keatley, Matt Bocek, Addison Fox, Marco Majoor, Michael Feldman, Chris Billard, and David Arnold.
"This puzzle has some hoops to jump through," Marco Majoor writes, "but when you spot the hoops, the jumping gets a lot easier, as they're just smaller puzzles to solve:
- We need to control an enchantment at all times, or else we lose one of our fliers, which are our win condition.
- We need to get rid of two out of three creatures which can block our fliers. As we cannot get rid of Sky Swallower, it's easy to guess which two blockers those are.
- As our fliers only generate 4 damage (using Qilin's Blessing), we need to get 1 more point from the Ghost Council of Orzhova.
"The tricky bit is making sure we always control an enchantment so that Tethered Griffin does not die," Hyman Rosen elaborates."We'll need the enchantment creature that Forlorn Pseudamma can make - and in order to untap it for that effect, it needs to be tapped, which we can do with convoke."
Because you need to balance this requirement for enchantments, each of your moves has some specific timing requirements. Michael Feldman covers this:
- Tap your lands for
, half of each mana type necessary for color costs (functionally, 
). - Sacrifice Fume Spitter to put a -1/-1 counter on Talas Air Ship (now 2/1).
- Sacrifice Seal of Doom to kill Grazing Whiptail. (You now control two enchantments - No Rest for the Wicked and Guard Duty - keeping Tethered Griffin alive.)
- Pay
(
left) and sacrifice Ledev Guardian to have Ghost Council of Orzhova exile itself for a return at the end step. - Sacrifice No Rest for the Wicked to return to your hand all your creatures that were killed this turn: Fume Spitter and Ledev Guardian. (Guard Duty is now your only enchantment keeping the Griffin alive.)
- Pay ( left) to cast Fume Spitter.
- Pay (
left) and convoke, tapping Fume Spitter and Forlorn Pseudamma, to cast Ledev Guardian. (Forlorn Pseudamma is not using its own ability here, circumventing the Arachnus Web's restrictions.) - Attack with the 2/3 Tethered Griffin and the 2/1 Dauntless Aven, the latter of which triggers to untap one of your creatures.
- Untap Forlorn Pseudamma, inspiring it to allow you to pay for a 2/2 enchantment Zombie. (This is a triggered ability, not an activated ability, which again circumvents Arachnus Web.)
- Pay ( left) for the inspired ability, creating a 2/2 black enchantment Zombie creature token. (This provides an enchantment other than Guard Duty to secure the Griffin.)
- Before blockers are declared, sacrifice Fume Spitter to put another -1/-1 token on Talas Air Ship, killing it as a 0/0.
- Guard Duty goes to the graveyard for lack of an attached permanent, which is why it's key that you have that enchantment Zombie keeping the Griffin alive.
- Sybil's Simic Sky Swallower (say that three times fast!) is now her only creature left with Flying or Reach, thus the only one capable of blocking your two flyers.
- Pay to cast Qilin's Blessing to give +2/+2 for the turn to whichever attacker is unblocked, raising the 2-powered creature's power to 4. (The toughness bonus doesn't matter.)
- If neither attacker is blocked (pretty implausible), your 2-powered and 4-powered creatures deal 6 damage total, overkilling Sybil to -1 life.
- More likely, the Simic Sky Swallower kills the creature it blocks, and your unblocked creature deals 4 damage to Sybil, leaving her with 1 life.
- End your turn, which returns the Ghost Council of Orzhova to your battlefield, in turn causing it to drain 1 life from Sybil (0 left) to you (4 life).
This solution has one variation: Instead of sacrificing Seal of Doom to destroy Grazing Whiptail in Step 3, you can instead first sacrifice Fume Spitter to put Talas Air Ship (and Guard Duty) into the graveyard. This means that you'll then have to keep the Seal of Doom as your sole enchantment until you have the Zombie token secured.
"An impressive feature of this puzzle is a hand consisting of what looks like a get-out-of-jail-free card for a creature with a nasty enchantment," Michael notes, "thus making the Qilin's Blessing's correct use less obvious: the remarkably mundane act of pumping up an unblocked attacker."
"What I like about this puzzle," Ryou Niji adds, "is that the difficulty lies less in setting up some condition, and more in keeping a preexisting condition from being broken - namely, that of controlling an enchantment. Currently we control a total of three enchantments, but if we pursue the straightforward route of removing the opponent's sky defenses and attacking for lethal, then all three enchantments will be used up, leaving one of our attackers to suddenly disappear from the sky. To prevent this, we have to somehow create a fourth enchantment between the other actions of the obvious solution."
