Locations
“I’m actually wondering if it’ll work in my Commander deck,” Jackson chuckles.
Apparently, your Not-So-Reject Rare Draft has gone worse than expected. You thought you pulled a nice pool of cards in your forty-five, but Jackson has access to some nice synergy on his side, and you’re almost certain you’re going to lose this game.
“That’s a lot of goblins,” Mari says, taking a seat next to you.
“That’s from the Mogg Infestation he cast last turn,” you tell her. “Jackson here got twelve goblins, and hit me for twelve damage with the Pandemonium.”
“I count eleven goblins, though.”
“Consuming Vapors got one of them on the rebound,” you explain.
Mari glances at your side of the table. “You survived twelve damage and your own Grinning Demon?” she asks.
“At three life,” you say. “Well . . . it was three life once the Consuming Vapors resolved.”
“Right,” Mari says. “And Jackson’s at . . . ?”
“Fifteen,” you say, rubbing your eyes.
“Oh. But you’ve still got some good creatures, right?”
You point at Jackson’s board. “Statecraft,” you groan. “And if he didn’t have enough blockers before, he’s got a ton of them now. And the Mogg Infestation got more than a few counters on his Lightning Coils, so I’m looking at a loss next turn.”
“Okay then. Evasion?”
Mari leans over to take a closer look. “Nothing with trample?” she asks.
“Phantom Nantuko,” you point out. “It’ll take a while before it gets enough +1/+1 counters, though. And the Allosaurus Rider doesn’t have trample regardless of how big it might get.”
“No artifact or enchantment removal?”
“Only in my sideboard,” you shrug.
Mari picks out the Setessan Tactics in your hand. “Did you just draw this?” she asks.
“Yeah, on my draw step this turn.”
Mari looks over the board situation once again. She reads the text on Iname, Life Aspect, looks over the cards in your graveyard, canvasses your available mana, and recounts Jackson’s Goblin tokens . . . twice.
“Does she always do this?” Jackson asks, amused.
“Only when she thinks there’s a way to win,” you say.
“Seriously? On this table?”
“It’s her thing,” you say. “Sometimes it takes a while, but normally I just go with it.”
It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Jackson before the start of his next combat phase.
You are at 3 life, with the following cards in play:
- Nether Traitor
- Phantom Nantuko (with four +1/+1 counters on it)
- Crypt Ghast
- Iname, Life Aspect
- Grinning Demon
- Allosaurus Rider
- 4 swamps
- 7 forests
You have the following cards in your hand:
- Setessan Tactics (drawn during your draw step this turn)
- Restock
You do not know the identities of the top cards of your library.
You have the following cards in your graveyard:
Jackson is at 15 life, and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:
- 11 Goblin tokens
- Lightning Coils (with 7 charge counters on it)
- Statecraft
- Delusions of Mediocrity
- Pandemonium
- 6 islands (three tapped)
- 6 mountains (two tapped)
- High Market
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 — A Fistful of Rares” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, October23, 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 Aaron Golas, Russell Jones, Siang Koon Kwek, Alfred Hsie, Ryou Niji, Bill Murphy, Subrata Sircar, José Manuel González Sepulveda, Sean Dennehy, Kriz Lee, Dominic Chan, Hyman Rosen, and Victor Munson.
“This problem offers a couple of blind alleys to follow,” Hyman Rosen writes:
- We can cast Hijack on Gearseeker Serpent and make it unblockable.
- We can cast Hijack on Elegant Edgecrafters, use Aether Tradewinds to return Giant Spectacle to our hand, and recast it to give Elegant Edgecrafters menace, which would also make it unblockable since Kiara would then have only Arborback Stomper as a creature with power greater than 2.
- Finally, there's the unlikely plan of casting Hijack on Dynavolt Tower.
“To figure out how we’re going to win against Kiara, however,” Siang Koon Kwek notes, “we need some elements that can deal out massive damage. And Aethertorch Renegade is just the right tool for the job.
“Thus, we need to figure out a way to generate a lot of Energy. On our side, the only relevant creatures are Aether Theorist, which give us 3 Energy, and Aethertorch Renegade itself, which give us 4 Energy.
“On Kiara’s side, her available Energy generators are Sage of Shaila's Claim, Empyreal Voyager and Dynavolt Tower. Sage of Shaila's Claim is useless to us, since it can only generate Energy when it enters the battlefield. Dynavolt Tower is also out of the question, because of the limited number of instant and sorcery cards we have in our hand. The only option left is Empyreal Voyager, which will definitely generate at least 2 Energy after we steal it.”
All this leads up to a solution, as Sean Dennehy writes:
- While it's still Kiara's end step, cast Aether Tradewinds. Target her Fairgrounds Warden and your own Aether Theorist; his Energy is going to be important to fuel the Renegade in a few moments.
- When the spell resolves, the Aethertorch Renegade comes back into play, and gives you 4 more Energy counters (for a total of 5).
- Use your remaining mana to activate and sacrifice the Fireforger's Puzzleknot, damaging Kiara for 1 and bringing her down to 16 life. That's all you can do for now, so go ahead and move on to the beginning of your turn.
- On your turn, play your Aether Hub and get another energy counter (6).
- Hijack the Empyreal Voyager. Once that resolves, equip the Voyager with your Torch Gauntlet and enter your attack step.
- Attack with just the Voyager. Kiara has no flying blockers, so you'll gain 4 more Energy counters(10), and she goes to 12 life.
- Using 8 of your 10 Energy counters, tap your Renegade and deal 6 damage to her. She is now down to 6 life.
- Cast Select for Inspection targeting your Renegade. You'll scry, but that hardly matters.
- Recast the Renegade, which will give you another 4 Energy (6).
- Recast the Aether Theorist with your last remaining mana. You get 3 more Energy (9).
- Spend one Energy counter to activate your Spontaneous Artist, giving your Renegade haste.
- Spend you last 8 Energy counters and tap Renegade to deal 6 more damage to Kiara for exactly lethal damage.
“We are pretty lucky that those Servo tokens are not Thopter tokens,” Siang Koon Kwek adds, “otherwise we would have no ways to win against Kiara.”
“It becomes clear that ‘charge’ here does not mean an all-out attack,” Ryou Niji muses.“Instead, we need to charge up, where the word ‘charge’ means ‘energize’. Kiara may have 17 life, but we have 17 energy.”
