“What do you mean?” Ariel asks.

“Your deck,” Mari explains, “looks like it’s trying to get a lot of Merfolk on the battlefield so that you can attack with them. But you’ve got some strange choices in here, like Rootwater Hunter, Sigil Tracer, and Judge of Currents.”

“No, no,” Ariel says. “That wasn’t the idea at all — my idea was to attack with only a few creatures. Like getting in for regular damage with River Sneak, and then using everything else for defense and lifegain.”

You glance at the table. “Now that I think about it,” you mention to Mari, “it looks like that’s exactly how the deck is supposed to work. Maybe you’ve just been playing it wrong.”

“So what you’re saying is that the point of the Merfolk Sovereign I drew in our last game,” Mari asks, “was less to make my creatures bigger and more to make them unblockable?”

Ariel nods. “That’s what I’m saying.”

Mari stretches and thinks for a while. “Okay,” she finally says after a few minutes, “but you could have told me that before we started. What are our life totals again?”

“Ariel’s at twenty-four life from that Butcher's Glee a few turns ago,” you tell her, “and you’re at five life. She just cast a Stenchskipper, copied it with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, and attacked you with the copy plus a few other Goblins.”

“And I had to throw my Windrider Patrol in front of the Stenchskipper,” Mari says. “I remember.”

“And you returned Summon the School to your hand before the Patrol died,” you add.

“Didn’t I block the Goblin Wardriver with that Leech Bonder?” Mari asks. “Oh, wait . . .  you regenerated it with the Mad Auntie. Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” Ariel says. “It’s just nice to see that my Goblin deck works, at least. I’ll just cast a Mogg War Marshal and end my turn.”

Mari untaps her permanents while Ariel reaches for a Goblin token from her deckbox. You watch as your friend adds a High Tide to her hand and surveys the board. “I’m actually impressed at your theme,” Mari admits. “Even the non-Merfolk cards in this deck have something to do with Merfolk.”

“Thanks,” Ariel says. “I had to work with a budget for that.”

“I think I might even be able to win with your deck at this point,” Mari adds, much to Ariel’s surprise. “Let’s finish this and shuffle up for one more game so that I can try playing this with your original plan in mind.”

It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Ariel before the beginning of her next combat phase.

You are at 5 life, with the following cards in play:

• Stonybrook Banneret
• River Sneak
• Vodalian War Machine
• Sigil Tracer
• Surestrike Trident
• Merrow Commerce
• 3 Plains
• 4 Islands
• Tranquil Cove

You have the following cards in your hand:

• High Tide
• Summon the School

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.

Ariel is at 24 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:

• Mogg War Marshal
• A Goblin token
• Goblin Wardriver (tapped)
• Mad Auntie (tapped)
• Stenchskipper
• Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker (tapped)
• Goblin Bomb (with no fuse counters on it)
• 2 Swamps (all tapped)
• 4 Mountains (all 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 –Just Keep Swimming” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Sunday, November12, 2017. 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 Addison Fox, Norman Dean, Aaron Golas, Russell Jones, Matthew Harvey, Allen Smith, Julian Brunelle, Sean Dennehy, Hyman Rosen, Ryou Niji, Ian Hemming, Stephen Gross, Panard, Collin Malcolm, SubrataSircar, Tara Timmons, ??, Jonny Storms, Chris Billard, and Ali Nassar.

“Interestingly enough,” Tara Timmons writes, “it doesn't matter which of the three cards you draw – you can win the same way each time. Since damage can't be forced through such a gummed-up board, the key is getting Spitebellows to do a guaranteed 6 damage to Jigen's Hornet Nest.”

The problem, of course, is that you don’t have anything that can remove Spitebellows from the battlefield in order to trigger its ability. Attacking with Spitebellows into Jigen’s blockers presents another option, but Jigen can put either Kiln Walker or Guardians of Meletis in its way to ensure that the Spitebellows remains alive.

Fortunately, the Hijack in your hand isn’t too finicky about its choice of targets, as Stephen Gross writes:

This, coincidentally enough, is also the easiest method of winning the game if you draw the Viashino Bladescout. Of course, if Jigen blocks your Spitebellows with Hornet Nest, you can dispense with the Sacred Armory activation and just watch the fun.

If you draw a Vanquish the Weak, however, this presents you with an alternative win method that doesn’t involve Spitebellows and instead lets you use Hammerfist Giant. In order to do so, however, you need to raise your current life total. Julian Brunelle’s solution neatly covers this:

Finally, there’s the question of Malicious Intent. This presents an alternative win method as well, although it seemed to be the most difficult to find. “Malicious Intent combos well with Warchanter of Mogis,” Collin Malcolm observes, so you can secure the win as follows:

“It seems we are stuck in a déjà vu time loop again,” Matthew Harvey writes. “How many times have we been through this? But the time loop seems to be caused by the card we are about to draw. So I think that, to break this, we need to leave it face down and win without looking at it — which is quite possible!”