Locations
Your mouth is dry, and you think there’s a headache brewing in the back of your skull. This, of course, is to be expected—you’re playing the Unabridged Cube again, which is a Booster Draft collection that contains one of each card ever printed. At the very least, your opponent Choi is probably as confused as you are.
Choi eventually draws and plays Pin to the Earth on your Gargantuan, but you flash in an Ambush Viper when he attacks, forcing him to set up the Cockroaches and Wargear again over the next couple of turns. By the time he has the 4/3 ready, you’ve managed to put a Fangren Firstborn in play, and you hope it’ll be able to lead the remains of your army to a quick win.
But Choi does something you don’t expect: He casts Midnight Covenant, the last card in his hand, on his Ghost Ship. With the Ghost Ship as the only flying creature on the table, he doesn’t hesitate to send it into the red zone to take off half your life total!
In short, you’re in a bad situation. You’re not sure if you have the means to stop a pumpable regenerating flyer, so you probably have one turn left to get your act together. But Choi has a formidable defense, and you have a headache—things that haven’t been very encouraging so far.
It is the start of your first main phase. Defeat Choi before the start of his next combat phase.
You are at 5 life with the following cards in play:
- Frostling
- Arcbound Hybrid
- Raven's Run Dragoon
- Fangren Firstborn
- Rakeclaw Gargantuan (with Choi’s Pin to the Earth attached)
- Ashnod's Transmogrant
- 1 Mountain
- 4 Forests
- 4 Plains
- Gruul Turf
You have the following cards in your hand:
You have not yet played a land this turn. You do not know the identity of any of the cards that are currently on top of your library.
You currently have the following relevant cards in your graveyard:
Choi is at 9 life and has no cards in his hand. He has the following cards in play:
- Brood of Cockroaches (with Choi’s Grafted Wargear attached)
- Dream Fighter
- Escaped Null
- Ghost Ship (tapped, with Choi’s Midnight Covenant attached)
- Scion of Glaciers
- 7 Islands (one of which is tapped)
- 4 Swamps (all tapped)
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 — Closing the Gap”. 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 Aaron Golas, David Jacobs, Martin Bobovsky, Norman Dean, Hyman Rosen, Sanjay Saith, Sebastian de Villa, Michael DeGrave, Andrew Muravskyi, James Sweet, Luke Pebody, Maarten Wybaillie, Quadrangolo Tetra, Rob Salisbury, Russell Jones, David Robinson, Paul Reilly, Mark Koster, James Parmenter, Vik Patel, Charles Davis, Matt Rasmussen, Matthew Harvey, Chadwick Bond, and Tomáš Surýnek.
“The general line of play is pretty clear here,” Norman Dean writes. “Ursula has way too many blockers to make attacking profitable, and using the Barrage Tyrant to clear them out of the way won't help. So you need to find a way to throw 6 power worth of colorless creatures at Ursula.”
The problem is that the only colorless creature you control is a Kozilek's Sentinel. You can indeed cast a second Kozilek's Sentinel during your turn, but that’ll merely give you two colorless creatures with 2 and 1 power, respectively.
At this point, Aaron Golas observes: “Note that you have two awaken spells, and animated lands count as colorless creatures! Note also, however, that you'll need to find a tapped creature to target for the first half of Sheer Drop.”
In fact, once you settle on using the awaken ability, the question of how to use Sheer Drop becomes a major one. Martin Bobovsky outlines the issues that we have to face:
- We have two rally triggers (Makindi Patrol and Hero of Goma Fada). Therefore, it is impossible, because of the vigilance ability, to cast Cliffside Lookout and then attack and cast Sheer Drop on one of the attackers.
- It's also very risky to just attack without casting Cliffside Lookout, as Ursula can block and therefore kill all our attackers—and we would still be without a target for Sheer Drop!
- Because of the above, we want to make sure to use an awakened land for mana, so it will be tapped and therefore a legal target for Sheer Drop.
Fortunately, we have one other card in hand that has awaken . . . and, conveniently enough, it’s an instant spell. Paul Reilly put everything together for a final solution:
On Ursula's End Step
- Pay
to activate Barrage Tyrant and fling Kozilek's Sentinel at Ursula's face for 1 damage, bringing her life total to 5. - Pay to cast Encircling Fissure for its awaken cost, creating a 2/2 Plains of our choice.
On Our First Main Phase
- Tap our awakened Plains for , playing Cliffside Lookout. Rally triggers, making our creatures vigilant (from Makindi Patrol) and indestructible (from Hero of Goma Fada). Note that our 2/2 land was tapped for mana before this, so it remains tapped.
- Therefore, our 2/2 land is now a legal target for Sheer Drop. Pay to cast Sheer Drop for its awaken cost, targeting our indestructible land for both the spell effect and the +1/+1 counters. It resists death and swells to a 5/5.
- Tap out to activate Barrage Tyrant’s ability and fling the Plains (which is a colorless creature) at Ursula, for a 5-damage finishing blow.
“One thing to note,” Rob Salisbury adds, “is that you have to either tap your animated Plains to cast Cliffside Lookout or you have to declare that you are tapping your lands to for mana and then announce you're casting Sheer Drop. If you announce you’re casting Sheer Drop before tapping your lands, you won't have a tapped creature in play to legally target (since you choose targets before tapping lands to pay for your spell).”
“Perhaps the most noteworthy part of this solution,” Chadwick Bond remarks, “is how Eldrazi, Allies, and the land itself had to work together to bring about our victory. It was a fruitful, but doubtlessly brief, alliance.”
“It turns out that sitting behind a wall of Eldrazi doesn't prevent you from a Plains being hurled in your face and killing you,” Andrew Muravskyi adds. “That must be quite a sight.”
