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"Okay then," Tomoe says.
It's also not as though you're under a lot of pressure at the moment. Your opponent, Tomoe, is somewhat new to Cube-drafting, so some of her card choices have been... interesting. She's managed to wrestle you to a stalemate, though: Your Yargle, Glutton of Urborg is by far the largest creature on the table, but Tomoe has assembled quite a few creatures that are capable of taking it on in combat.
"I'll activate and sacrifice my Scrabbling Claws," Tomoe says. "I'll exile that Unmake in your graveyard, and draw a card."
You glance at your graveyard. When did you cast an Unmake? You can barely remember, for some reason. You simply push it to the side and nod.
Tomoe draws her card from the Claws. "I'll cast Goblin Lore," she says.
"On an empty hand?" you ask. "That's brave of you."
"At least I know how this card works," she says, "unlike how I obviously misread what Mercenaries does. And I might just get lucky, for once."
As it turns out, Tomoe indeed gets lucky - she pitches two lands and a Clergy en-Vec. This leaves her with a Nacatl Hunt-Pride that she immediately drops onto the table.
"Hah!" Tomoe exclaims. "In your face! Let's see if you can match that!"
You grin as you untap your permanents and draw your card for the turn. A Painsmith obviously doesn't compare to a 5/4 creature, but it does still add to your board presence. At the very least, it's not another land.
You double-check your life totals before you turn your attention back to the table. You'd like to find a way to break this stalemate if you can, but you're not sure if the cards are agreeing with you at the moment. Maybe you're missing something...
"Okay then," Tomoe says.
There's that feeling of déjà vu again. You can't imagine where it's coming from, especially considering that all you're doing is sitting down to a nice match with your local game store's Unabridged Cube. You're not exactly playing with the best card pool ever, but that's completely normal: After all, it's not as though you can expect anything different from a Cube that has one of each card ever printed.
It's also not as though you're under a lot of pressure at the moment. Your opponent, Tomoe, is somewhat new to Cube-drafting, so some of her card choices have been... interesting. She's managed to wrestle you to a stalemate, though: Your Yargle, Glutton of Urborg is by far the largest creature on the table, but Tomoe has assembled quite a few creatures that are capable of taking it on in combat.
"I'll activate and sacrifice my Scrabbling Claws," Tomoe says. "I'll exile that Vindicate in your graveyard, and draw a card."
You glance at your graveyard. When did you cast a Vindicate? You can barely remember, for some reason. You simply push it to the side and nod.
Tomoe draws her card from the Claws. "I'll cast Goblin Lore," she says.
"On an empty hand?" you ask. "That's brave of you."
"At least I know how this card works," she says, "unlike how I obviously misread what Mercenaries does. And I might just get lucky, for once."
As it turns out, Tomoe indeed gets lucky - she pitches two lands and a Samite Healer. This leaves her with a Nacatl Hunt-Pride that she immediately drops onto the table.
"Hah!" Tomoe exclaims. "In your face! Let's see if you can match that!"
You grin as you untap your permanents and draw your card for the turn. A Cartouche of Ambition obviously doesn't compare to a 5/4 creature, but it does still improve your position slightly. At the very least, it's not another land.
You double-check your life totals before you turn your attention back to the table. You'd like to find a way to break this stalemate if you can, but you're not sure if the cards are agreeing with you at the moment. Maybe you're missing something...
"Okay then," Tomoe says.
There's that feeling of déjà vu again. You can't imagine where it's coming from, especially considering that all you're doing is sitting down to a nice match with your local game store's Unabridged Cube. You're not exactly playing with the best card pool ever, but that's completely normal: After all, it's not as though you can expect anything different from a Cube that has one of each card ever printed.
It's also not as though you're under a lot of pressure at the moment. Your opponent, Tomoe, is somewhat new to Cube-drafting, so some of her card choices have been... interesting. She's managed to wrestle you to a stalemate, though: Your Yargle, Glutton of Urborg is by far the largest creature on the table, but Tomoe has assembled quite a few creatures that are capable of taking it on in combat.
"I'll activate and sacrifice my Scrabbling Claws," Tomoe says. "I'll exile that Mortify in your graveyard, and draw a card."
You glance at your graveyard. When did you cast a Mortify? You can barely remember, for some reason. You simply push it to the side and nod.
Tomoe draws her card from the Claws. "I'll cast Goblin Lore," she says.
"On an empty hand?" you ask. "That's brave of you."
"At least I know how this card works," she says, "unlike how I obviously misread what Mercenaries does. And I might just get lucky, for once."
As it turns out, Tomoe indeed gets lucky - she pitches two lands and a Femeref Healer. This leaves her with a Nacatl Hunt-Pride that she immediately drops onto the table.
"Hah!" Tomoe exclaims. "In your face! Let's see if you can match that!"
You grin as you untap your permanents and draw your card for the turn. A Raiders' Wake obviously doesn't compare to a 5/4 creature, but it does still give you another avenue to explore. At the very least, it's not another land.
You double-check your life totals before you turn your attention back to the table. You'd like to find a way to break this stalemate if you can, but you're not sure if the cards are agreeing with you at the moment. Maybe you're missing something...
"You're really quiet, you know that?" Tomoe adds, interrupting your thoughts.
You look up. "Say that again?" you ask.
"You've been quiet for a while. What, are you considering every little possibility or something?"
"Uh... you could say that, I suppose."
It is the middle of your draw step. The card that you draw this turn can be one of three different possibilities. For each of these three possible scenarios, defeat Tomoe before the beginning of her next combat phase.
Your board state and your existing card in hand both remain the same for each scenario. The only difference is the card that you draw for the turn.
You are at 9 life, with the following cards in play:
- Selfless Cathar
- Undertaker
- Pawn of Ulamog
- Moriok Replica (with your Lashknife attached)
- Tethmos High Priest
- Blood-Chin Fanatic
- Yargle, Glutton of Urborg (with your Deviant Glee attached)
- 5 Plains
- 3 Swamps
- Crypt of the Eternals
You have the following card in your hand:
The card that you draw this turn will be exactly one of the following:
You have not yet played a land this turn. You still have a substantial number of cards remaining in your library, although you know neither the identities nor the order of those cards.
You currently have no cards in your graveyard.
Tomoe is at 8 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:
- Goblin Banneret
- Chandra's Magmutt
- Ironclad Slayer
- Mercenaries
- Frontline Devastator (with Tomoe's Squee's Embrace attached)
- Cubwarden
- Nacatl Hunt-Pride
- 4 Mountains (all tapped)
- 5 Plains (all tapped)
If you've got a solution in mind, don't put it in the comments! Help keep this puzzle a mystery to other readers!
Instead, if you think you've got a great solution (partial or complete), you can send your solution to puzzles@gatheringmagic.com with the subject line "Puzzle - Variations on a Theme 4" by 11:59 P.M. EST on Monday, October 12, 2020. 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, Dave Fallon, Greg Dreher, Sean Patrick Keatley, Jacob Butcher, David Arnold, and Michael Feldman.
"Nifty puzzle!" Dave Fallon writes. "This was very much Magic Aikido, where the plan only works because of our opponent's board and creatures. There was a clear signal with the Blackbloom Rogue and Nimana Skitter-Sneak that we wanted to get to eight cards in Roque's graveyard, and even then it wasn't obvious how to get the necessary damage past the remaining blockers.
"I first started down the road of using Into the Roil to get Bubble Snare back in hand, but that wasn't going to be enough. I then re-read Roque's board, and realized he had two abilities that would give him us the necessary two cards to discard with Mind Drain, and it all started coming together."
"The hardest part here," Sean Patrick Keatley continues, "was trying to figure out how to fill their graveyard. Then I realized I needed to force them to draw so I could make them discard:
- Before the end of your opponent's turn, tap all of your lands for mana.
- Cast Subtle Strike, killing the Malakir Blood-Priest and putting a +1/+1 counter on Expedition Diviner.
- Cast Into the Roil to return Zareth San, the Trickster to our hand, sending Bubble Snare to your opponent's graveyard (4 cards in their graveyard).
- Use your remaining 3 mana to cast Deadly Alliance (reduced by
because you control a Rogue and a Warrior) on the Expedition Diviner. Your opponent draws two cards - one from Expedition Diviner and one from Skyclave Shadowcat - and now has 5 cards in their graveyard. - End the turn and move to our turn.
- Cast Mind Drain on your opponent. They go to 7 life, discard both cards in their hand, and mill another card - for a total of 8 cards in the graveyard.
- Swing with everything. We have a 2/1 flying creature, a 5/3 menace creature, a 4/4 menace creature, and an 8/6 creature.
The fact that you're using a Zendikar Rising card pool benefits you here: Your opponent has no access to cards that they can cast for zero mana, or cards with abilities that triggers when they hit the graveyard (such as Gaea's Blessing).
At this point, Michael Feldman points out that things get interesting:
- It takes six creatures to block all of your attackers: two each for the menacing Blackbloom Rogue and Nimana Skitter-Sneak, and one each for Nimana Skydancer and Sea Gate Colossus.
- Roque controls only five creatures, meaning that at least one attacker goes unblocked.
- If your 8/6 Sea Gate Colossus is unblocked, it deals 8 lethal damage to Roque. Roque therefore needs to block the Colossus.
- However, if Sea Gate Colossus is blocked, at least one of your other attackers (all of which are Rogues) is unblocked.
- Skyclave Shadowcat is the only blocker with at least 3 power, so your opponent needs at least three blockers to kill your 8/6 Sea Gate Colossus in combat. However, if three creatures block Sea Gate Colossus, at least two of your Rogues go unblocked.
Although you have multiple blocking scenarios available, they can be summed up as follows:
- Activate Zareth San and put any unblocked rogue in your hand to have Zareth San enter the battlefield tapped and attacking.
- Your 4/4 Zareth San deals 4 damage to Roque (3 life left).
- If another Rogue is also unblocked, it deals at least 2 damage (1 life left, if any).
- Use Zareth San's trigger to return Malakir Blood-Priest to the battlefield under your control.
- If you still control Sea Gate Colossus, Malakir Blood-Priest's entrance has it take 3 life (1 each for rogue Zareth San, warrior Sea Gate Colossus, and cleric Malakir Blood-Priest) from Roque (0 life left).
- If Sea Gate Colossus died (meaning that Roque was dealt damage by two creatures and has 1 life left), Malakir Blood-Priest's entrance has it take 2 life (1 each for rogue Zareth San and cleric Malakir Blood-Priest) from Roque (0 life left).
Because you know that at least one of your Rogues is going unblocked, your next move capitalizes on this:
"As it turns out," Greg Dreher muses, "thieves can."
