CJ plops down on the seat next to you and Mari, a dejected look on his face.

“Your last match didn’t go well?” you ask.

“Nope,” CJ says. “I thought I had it after the first game, too.”

You glance at Mari. She’s chewing on a sandwich at the moment, and she shrugs.

“So, what happened, CJ?”

“I wrote it down,” he says, pulling a greasy piece of paper from his pocket. “It was the third game, and the board was all gummed up. Chester—that’s my opponent’s name—had a couple of flyers out, but my life total was still pretty high. I couldn’t break through, though, because he had a lot of creatures on the table.”

You stare at his notes. CJ doesn’t have the best handwriting in the world, but it’s obvious that he was dealing with a complicated board. Mari reaches out with one free hand, gesturing for you to hand over the paper, and you do so.

“It didn’t make a difference,” CJ says. “He had a lot of creatures. I was even holding an Evolving Wilds in my hand so that I could trigger landfall twice in one turn, but it never became relevant.”

“But he couldn’t break through either, right?”

“He played From Beyond the turn before,” CJ explains, “and after I passed it back, he sacrificed it to fetch his Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. The game was all downhill from there.”

“He didn’t use it to grab Ulamog on the same turn?” you ask.

Mari answers the question for you. “Considering that he still needed to pay the activation cost, he was 1 mana short,” she says, handing back the piece of paper.

“Right,” CJ says. “So he cast a Serene Steward that turn instead.”

Mari sighs. “I think we ought to buy you a drink, CJ.”

“That’s nice, but what for?”

“’Cause you’re probably going to need it after we show you what you missed,” Mari says. “By the way, where’d you practice your handwriting? It looks like a bunch of random squiggles from here.”

It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Chester before the end of your turn.

• Firemantle Mage
• Halimar Tidecaller
• Ruination Guide
• Vestige of Emrakul
• Eldrazi Scion token
• Retreat to Valakut
• 5 Islands
• 5 Mountains
• Blighted Gorge

You have the following cards in your hand:

• Evolving Wilds
• Clutch of Currents (drawn during your draw step)
• Sure Strike

You have not yet played a land for this turn. You do not know the identities of the cards on top of your library, but you do know that you have a few basic Islands and Mountains in there.

You have exactly one card with awaken in your graveyard:

• Coastal Discovery

• Stone Haven Medic
• Serene Steward
• Pilgrim's Eye
• Shadow Glider
• Makindi Patrol
• Giant Mantis
• Brood Monitor
• 5 Eldrazi Scion tokens
• From Beyond
• 5 Plains (two untapped)
• 5 Forests (two untapped)

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 — Lost in the Crowd”. 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 David Jacobs, Russell Jones, Scott Stoops, Andrew Muravskyi, Carlo Picar, Anthony Roy, Norman Dean, Sanjay Saith, James Parmenter, Dirk Bass, Quadrangolo Tetra, Rio Huenemann, Martin Bobovsky, Aaron Golas, Ryan Ward, Steve Serksnis, Ahniwa Ferrari, Kevin Gottlieb, Erin Dixon-Gonzalez, Maarten Wybaillie, Chris Cordell, Nick Fera, Cody Pulvermacher, Matthew Harvey, Hyman Rosen, Nicolaas Netherland, Iniui Yuan, Simon, and Vik Patel. Partial solutions were received from Rob Salisbury, Jonathan Kustina, and Volz Andrew.

“Even if you could manage to awaken a land, that would only put 8 power of creatures on the board. Not only is this not enough to kill Octavia, but Rising Miasma would also kill the rest of your creatures and put you further away from victory. So combat alone isn't going to be enough, any way you look at it. The other big thing is Zulaport Cutthroat. But even if we use Mortuary Mire and Grave Birthing to bring back a dead Eyeless Watcher, that's only a maximum of seven creatures that could die.”

Scott Stoops therefore concludes: “We clearly need to combine combat damage with the life-drain triggers from our Zulaport Cutthroat and Dominator Drone. So we must attack with our three creatures and from there craft a winning scenario with Grave Birthing, Mortuary Mire, Rising Miasma and the life-drain trigger from our creatures.”

The problem is that Octavia has a Coralhelm Guide ready to block, and you can’t predict how she assigns it. But as it turns out, you can clinch the win regardless of what she does. Several people noted that there are four possible scenarios, and Carlo Picar outlines these below:

While it’s a plausible move, the last of the four scenarios above left some people mystified. “Fortunately,” Quadrangolo Tetra points out, “Grave Birthing doesn't actually require the opponent to have stuff in her graveyard.”

More than a few people assumed that Octavia would choose to block the Dominator Drone, but Rob Salisbury notes that the fourth scenario would actually reflect Octavia’s most likely move. “She has you dead on the backswing,” Rob writes. “She doesn't want Zulaport Cutthroat gaining you life, and she wants to make things unblockable in case you play something that gets you three or more creatures for blocking (such as a second Eyeless Watcher).”

“This felt a bit like chess,” Chris Cordell muses, “where you often have to plan for all possible actions your opponent could take. In this case, it meant planning for all four possible blocking scenarios to an all-out attack, with four similar but not identical plays.”