Locations
“Does that mean you’re not attacking?” you ask.
Vish gives his side of the table another look. “No,” he says. “I must say that that was some good timing on the Serpent.”
You have to agree: Vish has been beating down on you with some sizeable creatures for most of this game. Currently your biggest problem is a Charging Monstrosaur that was running over your blockers until recently; it looks like the Gearseeker Serpent you cast a couple of turns ago finally stabilized the board.
This is your second try at your local game store’s Standard Sealed format, which involves one pack each of Kaladesh, Aether Revolt, Amonkhet, Hour of Devastation and Ixalan, plus one additional Standard booster pack of your choice. Unfortunately, your card pool for this tournament isn’t very good — your 
deck is more an exercise in deck-building compromises than anything else.
In contrast, Vish’s deck is of two extremes: his creatures are either cheap or expensive to cast. They’re still capable of dishing out a lot of damage without attacking, though, and you suspect that that’s his plan now. With you down to 4 life and an active Lightning-Rig Crew in play on his side, you don’t have more than a few turns to bring this game around.
“I’ll end my turn,” Vish says. “Are you doing anything in response?”
“Huh,” a voice behind you says. “That’s interesting.”
Vish looks up. You slowly turn around to see your friend Mari standing behind you, staring intently at the board.
“What do you mean?” Vish asks.
“Nothing,” you say quickly. “I’m sure she knows that we’re supposed to be playing a match without any outside intervention. Aren’t you, Mari?”
“Yes,” Mari says, “but I think . . . ”
“I think we should just get back to the game,” you interject.
Vish gives you an amused look. “Yes,” he finally says, “we should. Although I must admire your friend for her enthusiasm.”
You glance at Mari to see if she’s about to say anything else, but she’s moved on and is now watching the matches on the next row of tables.
“So,” Vish continues, “are you going to do anything else before your turn starts?”
Vish has just declared the end of his turn; you may still cast spells or activate abilities in response.
Defeat Vish before the beginning of his next combat phase.
You are at 4 life, with the following cards in play:
- Shielded Aether Thief (tapped)
- Pathmaker Initiate
- Embraal Gear-Smasher
- Gearseeker Serpent
- Hierophant's Chalice
- Vanquisher's Banner (with Humans as its chosen creature type)
- 6 Islands
- 2 Mountains
You have the following cards in your hand:
You currently have no energy counters.
You have not yet played a land this turn. You do not know the identities or order of any of the cards remaining in your library.
Vish is at 15 life and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:
- Ixalli's Diviner
- Wily Goblin
- Naga Vitalist
- Fathom Fleet Firebrand
- Lightning-Rig Crew
- Ornery Kudu
- Charging Monstrosaur
- Treasure token
- 4 Mountains
- 6 Forests
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 – 360 Degrees” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, October 22, 2017. We’ll include the best ones in next week’s article along with the next puzzle!
Last Week’s Puzzle
“With a name like No Strings Attached,” Greg Dreher remarks, “you know Marionette Master will play a role in your sudden victory.”
“Even if the title didn't give it away,” Ryou Niji continues, “it's easy to notice that nothing other than Marionette Master deals nearly enough damage. The problem is that we need to have our Servos and eat them (with a large enough Marionette Master) too. Although it's possible to do this the hard way (using Fabricate both ways) with many of our ETB-reusing cards, we notice that Supernatural Stamina straight up gives +2/+0.”
Most solutions took this route, which has the added bonus of going into overkill. Allen Smith writes:
- Play Swamp.
- Cast Take into Custody, targeting Archfiend of Ifnir. Primal Amulet gets a charge counter, and Archfiend is tapped.
- Cast Aether Tradewinds, targeting Marionette Master and Sky Skiff. Primal Amulet gets a charge counter, and Sky Skiff and Marionette Master are returned to their owners' hands.
- Cast Marionette Master. With the Fabricate trigger, make three 1/1 Servo tokens.
- Go to combat, attacking with Skyship Plunderer. Carmilla now has no flying blockers, and must take three damage, down to 10 life.
- Skyship Plunderer's ability triggers; target Primal Amulet to give it a third charge counter.
- In your second main phase, cast Lethal Sting targeting Wretched Camel, putting a -1/-1 counter on Dire Fleet Hoarder. You get a Treasure token, and Primal Amulet gets its fourth charge counter and transforms. Hold priority here.
- Tap Primal Wellspring for
, and use that to cast Supernatural Stamina targeting Marionette Master. Have the copy also target Marionette Master, making the Master a 5/3. - Let Lethal Sting resolve. Wretched Camel dies; because we control a Desert, we can make Carmilla discard the Sky Skiff we put in her hand earlier. This triggers Archfiend of Ifnir.
- Archfiend's trigger resolves, putting a -1/-1 counter on each of our creatures. This kills all three Servo tokens, triggering Marionette Master three times.
- After the -1/-1 counter, Marionette Master is a 4/2, so Carmilla loses 12 life, going to -2.
- To add insult to injury, you can also sacrifice the Treasure token to make Carmilla lose an extra 4 life, putting her at -6.
“Marionette Master is a tremendous problem,” Addison Fox notes, “provided we can discover a few artifacts we can actually get into the bin instead of hanging around like a useless lump the way this Primal Amulet has for the last several turns. Of course, the Master itself is going to need a lot more power for those artifacts to make a meaningful difference in the game.
“The large amount of mana we have at our disposal enables us to cast all our spells and somehow get the Master to re-Fabricate itself. Luckily, we have a mandatory trigger on Carmilla's side that will be able to swing things our way. Sometimes to go big, you have to go very small.”
- Play our swamp, so we're up to eleven mana.
- Spend
to cast Aether Tradewinds, returning our Miasmic Mummy and Carmilla's Sky Skiff to hand. The Amulet both reduces the casting cost and gains a charge counter. - Spend to cast Take Into Custody on the Archfiend. This is Carmilla's last flying blocker, so the way is clear for the Skyship Plunderer. The Amulet gets a second charge counter.
- Attack with Skyship Plunderer. Combat drops Carmilla to 10 life, and the Plunderer lets us proliferate a single counter onto a single target permanent. Give the Amulet a third charge counter, meaning it will transform the next time we cast a spell.
- Cast Lethal Sting for targeting our Dire Fleet Hoarder, putting a -1/-1 counter on the Marionette Master; it becomes a 0/2 creature. The Amulet gains its fourth counter and we can transform it into Primal Wellspring, which taps for any color of mana and copies a spell cast with it.
- In response to the Lethal Sting, tap the Wellspring to cast Supernatural Stamina on the Dire Fleet Hoarder. The copy is created, and we can target the Marionette Master with the copy.
- Lethal Sting resolves. The Hoarder gives us a Treasure token, and also returns to play fresh as a daisy.
- We have one remaining card in hand, a Miasmic Mummy. Go ahead and cast it, making each player discard a card. We have nothing, but Carmilla has a Sky Skiff. That triggers the Archfiend, which puts a -1/-1 counter on each of our creatures.
- The Wretched Camel, Dire Fleet Hoarder, and Festering Mummy all die, resulting in some triggers. Target the Marionette Master with the Mummy’s ability, and it doesn't matter who discards to the Camel since we're all out of cards. We get a second Treasure.
- The Master, which has since dropped to a -1/1 off the Archfiend, perishes when the Mummy makes it a -2/0. Supernatural Stamina returns it to play, and we can use Fabricate to have it become a 4/6 — a much more formidable drain on Carmilla's life total.
- Pay to equip Honed Khopesh to the Master. Skyship Plunderer dies, since it has a -1/-1 counter from the Archfiend, but Master becomes a 5/7 creature.
- Sacrifice two Treasure tokens for mana and give Carmilla 10 points of life loss.
Notably, Addison also recommends using that last move to get some green mana with your Treasure tokens. That way, he writes, “we use our treasures to float ‘
’.”
