It’s prerelease weekend, and you’re sitting across the table from Maeve. Your Silumgar deck has spent most of the game outmaneuvering her slower Atarka deck, but you haven’t been able to seal the deal in the last ten minutes, and she’s now starting to gain the upper hand.
After your flyers got stopped cold by her Aerie Bowmasters, you continued to bring the beats with a megamorphed Gudul Lurker. At first you thought that the Lurker was going to go all the way, but everything changed when Maeve suddenly tapped seven lands and summoned the big bad Dragonlord Atarka himself. Not only do you now have to deal with an 8/8 flying trampler on the table, but Atarka ate all of your evasive creatures when he appeared, and now you have no offense to speak of.
Your Hand of Silumgar might be able to buy you a little more time, but then you realized: Maeve is likely to activate her Atarka Pummeler‘s ability on her next turn. Considering that you’re three creatures down, you’re going to be the unfortunate recipient of some massive damage at that point.
Almost as though it knows what’s about to happen, your deck serves up a little help in your next draw: Ancestral Statue. You’ve managed to get Maeve down to single digits so far this game… maybe, with a little effort, you can get her down to zero.
It is the start of your first main phase. Can you win the game this turn?
Maeve is at 7 life, has no cards in her hand, and has no untapped lands. She has the following cards in play:
- Atarka Beastbreaker
- Hardened Berserker
- Kolaghan Forerunners
- Aerie Bowmasters
- Atarka Pummeler
- Stampeding Elk Herd
- Dragonlord Atarka
- 4 mountains (all tapped)
- 3 forests (all tapped)
You are at 12 life. You have the following cards in play:
- Sidisi’s Faithful
- Hand of Silumgar
- Dutiful Attendant
- Ambuscade Shaman
- Profaner of the Dead
- Silumgar Monument
- 4 islands
- 4 swamps
You have the following cards in your hand:
You have the following relevant cards in your graveyard:
Attack with everything, cast Foul-Tongue Shriek.
If he kills Dutiful attendant return Quarsi Sadist to your hand, cast it and exploit it to kill him.
If he does not kill it, you can Foul-Tongue Invocation yourself, sacrifice Dutiful attendant return Quarsi Sadist to your hand, cast it and exploit it to kill him.
Was my solution invalid???
Hmm… I don’t see alternate solutions to the puzzles here very often, but yours is entirely valid as well. 🙂 I’m going to have to make an edit to the solution post…