Hello! After the reasonable success of posting my first puzzle here before, I have decided to post another. I would like to share this puzzle with people and get some feedback on it. It is also possible that there exist solutions to the puzzle besides my intended solution, so if anyone finds such a solution I would be very happy to know it. If you wish to post or comment on a solution, please hide it in a "Spoiler" box so that people who are attempting the puzzle do not have to look at solutions when scrolling through the forum if they do not want to.
I hope everyone enjoys the puzzle!
Instructions:
The contents of Graveyards and Exile zones at the start of this puzzle are irrelevant. Your opponent will not cast any spells or activate any abilities during your turn, but will only make choices in response to the options you present to him.
Your solution must be valid regardless of the choices your opponent chooses to make, such as declaring blockers.
The puzzle starts at the beginning of your precombat main phase with nothing having happened this turn besides your regular untap step, upkeep, and draw step. You must win this turn.
The story so far:
After many turns of the game, you built an engine of advantage combining the abilities of your creatures with several enchantments. However, your opponent managed to find a combo that let him put as many copies of Platinum Angel onto the battlefield as he wanted. “How about an army of 50,000 Platinum Angels? Beat that!” he said. Little did he know that you have the tools to do exactly that. You untap, draw Demonic Tutor, and realize that you can win this turn.
I call it the thinking mage's version of brute force.
Tap all lands except the Island and one Swamp. This gives 2W, 2U, 7B, 1R.
Pay BBR for Demonic Tutor, copying once with the red ability of Izzet Guildmage. Find High Tide and an Island, then play the Island. 2W, 2U, 5B left.
Use the two blue mana to play High Tide and copy it once with the blue ability of Izzet Guildmage, 2W 5B left. Let the copy resolve (islands +1) but then you're going to do a lot of stuff in response to the original spell.
Tap the first Island for UU, immediately spending it to make 2 more High Tide copies (+3). Still 2W 5B left.
Tap the second Island for 4U, make 2 more High Tide copies (+5), and then pay UUBBB to activate monstrous on Sealock Monster. Put 6 +1/+1 counters on, which don't matter, and choose to make your last untapped Swamp into an Island. 2W 2B left.
Tap your Island-Swamp for 6U, then make 4 High Tide copies (+9) and pay UUBB for Turnabout. 2W left, 15 untapped lands (three of which are Islands).
Tap the first Island for 10U, spending all of it to make High Tide copies (+19). Repeat for the second Island (+39). Still 2W left, 13 untapped lands.
Tap the third Island for 40U. This time, make only 35 High Tide copies (+74), leaving 2W 5U left. Pay U to flicker Deadeye Navigator, bonding to Sealock Monster, then another U to flicker Sealock Monster, which makes Battle Mastery fall off to the graveyard, and the monster revert to a non-monstrous state (oxymoronic as it may sound). Sealock Monster bonds to Deadeye Navigator, as it will at every possible opportunity from now on. 2W 3U left, 12 untapped lands.
Empty the pool to make the Monster monstrous again, turning one of the other 12 lands into an Island.
Tap the newly flooded land for 75U. Make 69 High Tide copies (+143), leaving yourself with 6 mana. 6 is just enough to flicker Sealock Monster and make it monstrous again, turning one of your other lands into an Island just in time for you to tap it.
Repeat this process for the remaining lands:
Land 5 - 138 High Tide copies (+281)
Land 6 - 276 copies (+557)
Land 7 - 552 copies (+1109)
Land 8 - 1104 copies (+2213)
Land 9 - 2208 copies (+4421)
Land 10 - 4416 copies (+8837)
Land 11 - 8832 copies (+17,669)
Land 12 - 17,664 copies (+35,333)
Land 13 - 35,328 copies (+70,661)
Land 14 - 70,656 copies (+141,317). Actually, at this point you might as well let the stack clear, so the original High Tide can finally resolve (+141,318).
After the 15th and final land has been turned into an island, tap it for 141,319 blue mana. Pay 1 to flicker Deadeye Navigator, this time bonding it to Sparkmage Apprentice, then start paying mana to flicker Sparkmage Apprentice, dealing 1 damage at a time.
It takes 100,010 flickers to ping the army of Platinum Angels to death (they can keep the two green creatures for all you care), then you can start pinging to the dome. Win with 41,264 mana left in your pool.
Maybe next time they'll be smart enough to choose a bigger number.
Congratulations to SadisticMystic on being the first to solve the puzzle.
My comments on his solution:
Actually, if you do things a little differently and use Sealock Monster twice before casting Turnabout, you can generate 184,327 mana. I believe this is the most you can make, but I could be wrong.
Actually, you can do even better than that.
Leave two more lands untapped at the start. For simplicity's sake, I'll assume these are the two Plains, so you can simply scratch out the "2W" that lingers through the early part.
After the first monstrous trigger turns a land into an island, there's now 2B left, and 5 High Tides in effect with the original copy still on the stack.
Tap the new Island for 6, and spend just 1 mana to make a 6th High Tide copy. This leaves 2B 5U left, and after flickering the Navigator so it can pair with Sealock, there's the requisite 6 mana to flicker and monstrify. Give yourself a fourth island, with it and one untapped land left.
Tap this one for 7, and again there's only room in the budget for one High Tide copy (+7) before you have to flicker and turn the last land into island #5.
Tap for 8, spend 4 on copies (+11) and the other 4 on Turnabout. 15 untapped lands, and now you don't have to worry about flickering Sealock until #5.
Land 1 - 12 copies (+23)
Land 2 - 24 copies (+47)
Land 3 - 48 copies (+95)
Land 4 - 96 copies (+191)
Land 5 - 186 copies (+377), leaving 6 mana behind to allow the other lands to start being used as islands
Land 6 - 372 copies (+749)
Land 7 - 744 copies (+1493)
Land 8 - 1488 copies (+2981)
Land 9 - 2976 copies (+5957)
Land 10 - 5952 copies (+11,909)
Land 11 - 11,904 copies (+23,813)
Land 12 - 23,808 copies (+47,621)
Land 13 - 47,616 copies (+95,237)
Land 14 - 95,232 copies, let original resolve (+190,470)
The last land then taps for 190,471, winning with 90,416 to spare, or enough that one of the Curses (but not both) could be removed and the solution would still work.
I originally had NO Curses in the puzzle and the opponent had 20,000 Angels. However, at that time I did not have Solar Tide in the Puzzle; instead I had Forced March which I incorrectly thought killed token copies of Platinum Angel if you pay less than 7 for X. Thus, I included the Curses to make one of the red herrings of the puzzle still close to working (as otherwise it wouldn't even remotely work).
Thank you for putting together a puzzle for everyone!
As a point of respectful criticism: this would be more convenient and pleasurable to play if the visual version were large enough to read the text directly, though, as a player who does not have most of these cards memorized.
I think there is a solution that works with a sweeper to clear the angels. I tried the high tide + island + sealock route, but gave up before I realized it could chain high enough that you didn't need to tutor for a sweeper.
Anyway, I think this works too:
1) Tap all lands for:
U: 3
B: 8
R: 1
W: 2
2) Demonic tutor, copy with R. Allow copy to resolve and fetch Pthisis. Play turnabout on untapped lands, let it resolve and retap everything, giving:
U: 4
B: 12
R: 1
W: 4
3) Copy Demonic tutor for R. Allow both copies to resolve fetching Wing Splicer and Solar Tide. Play pthisis on mythic'ed angel and solar tide sweeping 2 and under. Opponent takes 20 and goes to 24, and has a kindercatch left.
U: 4
B: 3
4) Play Wing Splicer. Blink Deadeye, bond to Wing Splicer. Blink Splicer twice. Makes 6 golems.
5) Attack with everything. Sealock gets blocked, opponent takes 18 + 4 + 5 + 1, goes to -4 and dies.
I think there is a solution that works with a sweeper to clear the angels. I tried the high tide + island + sealock route, but gave up before I realized it could chain high enough that you didn't need to tutor for a sweeper.
Anyway, I think this works too:
1) Tap all lands for:
U: 3
B: 8
R: 1
W: 2
2) Demonic tutor, copy with R. Allow copy to resolve and fetch Pthisis. Play turnabout on untapped lands, let it resolve and retap everything, giving:
U: 4
B: 12
R: 1
W: 4
3) Copy Demonic tutor for R. Allow both copies to resolve fetching Wing Splicer and Solar Tide. Play pthisis on mythic'ed angel and solar tide sweeping 2 and under. Opponent takes 20 and goes to 24, and has a kindercatch left.
U: 4
B: 3
4) Play Wing Splicer. Blink Deadeye, bond to Wing Splicer. Blink Splicer twice. Makes 6 golems.
5) Attack with everything. Sealock gets blocked, opponent takes 18 + 4 + 5 + 1, goes to -4 and dies.
This doesn't work. All of the tokens are exact copies of Platinum Angel, so their converted mana cost is 7 and Solar Tide will do nothing to them.
I think there is a solution that works with a sweeper to clear the angels. I tried the high tide + island + sealock route, but gave up before I realized it could chain high enough that you didn't need to tutor for a sweeper.
Anyway, I think this works too:
1) Tap all lands for:
U: 3
B: 8
R: 1
W: 2
2) Demonic tutor, copy with R. Allow copy to resolve and fetch Pthisis. Play turnabout on untapped lands, let it resolve and retap everything, giving:
U: 4
B: 12
R: 1
W: 4
3) Copy Demonic tutor for R. Allow both copies to resolve fetching Wing Splicer and Solar Tide. Play pthisis on mythic'ed angel and solar tide sweeping 2 and under. Opponent takes 20 and goes to 24, and has a kindercatch left.
U: 4
B: 3
4) Play Wing Splicer. Blink Deadeye, bond to Wing Splicer. Blink Splicer twice. Makes 6 golems.
5) Attack with everything. Sealock gets blocked, opponent takes 18 + 4 + 5 + 1, goes to -4 and dies.
This doesn't work because Sealock Monster can't attack since your opponent controls no islands.
Indeed, 7thGate's solution puts the opponent to exactly one life instead of -4 since the Sealock Monster can't attack. This is by design; 7thGate found the second of my red herrings in this puzzle (frozen_braskamin found the first).
Indeed, 7thGate's solution puts the opponent to exactly one life instead of -4 since the Sealock Monster can't attack. This is by design; 7thGate found the second of my red herrings in this puzzle (frozen_braskamin found the first).
Aha, very nice. I was wondering if I was missing something, since it seemed to be just a bit too straightforward.
I am not sure if I am correct but I didn't use the flicker idea.
Tap all mana 3U, 2W, 1R, 8B. Use BRW to tutor plus copy for Vandalblast and Dark Imposter. (Left 3U, 1W, 7B)
Use Turnabout (2U, 1W, 1B), and copy once(1U) and tap all land again after copy resolve, then original resolve. (Left 6U, 4W, 2R, 22B)
Cast Dark Imposter. (Left 6U, 3W, 2R, 21B)
Use Monstrosity, making one of their land Island. Now you have a 11/11 Octopus with DS that can attack. (Left 1U, 3W, 2R, 21B)
Use Dark Imposter to eat 3 angels and the two other monsters, so your Dark Imposter is 12/12 (Left 1U, 3W, 2R, 1B)
Use Vandal Blast overload to kill the rest of the angels.
Attack with everyone, (4+5+1+2+ (22 octopus) + (12 Imposter)) for 46! Actually the more you copy Turnabout the better, you could win with just one dark imposter swinging.
I hope everyone enjoys the puzzle!
Instructions:
The contents of Graveyards and Exile zones at the start of this puzzle are irrelevant. Your opponent will not cast any spells or activate any abilities during your turn, but will only make choices in response to the options you present to him.
Your solution must be valid regardless of the choices your opponent chooses to make, such as declaring blockers.
The puzzle starts at the beginning of your precombat main phase with nothing having happened this turn besides your regular untap step, upkeep, and draw step. You must win this turn.
The story so far:
After many turns of the game, you built an engine of advantage combining the abilities of your creatures with several enchantments. However, your opponent managed to find a combo that let him put as many copies of Platinum Angel onto the battlefield as he wanted. “How about an army of 50,000 Platinum Angels? Beat that!” he said. Little did he know that you have the tools to do exactly that. You untap, draw Demonic Tutor, and realize that you can win this turn.
The puzzle:
Your Life – 48
Your Hand – Demonic Tutor, Turnabout
Your Graveyard – 21 cards
Your Library – Vandalblast, 2 Curse of Death’s Hold, Phthisis, Wing Splicer, Solar Tide, High Tide, Dark Impostor, 2 Island, 2 Swamp
Your Field – Loxodon Hierarch, Deadeye Navigator (paired with Loxodon Hierarch), Sparkmage Apprentice, Izzet Guildmage, Sealock Monster (not currently monstrous), Battle Mastery (enchanting Sealock Monster), Training Grounds, Doubling Season, Fervor, 2 Curse of Death’s Hold (both enchanting your opponent)
Your Lands on the Field – 2 Vivid Creek (no charge counters on either), 1 Island, 8 Swamp, 1 Mountain, 2 Plains
Opponent’s Life – 44
Opponent’s Hand – 3 cards
Opponent’s Graveyard – 20 cards
Opponent’s Library – 17 cards
Opponent’s Field – Platinum Angel, 50,000 token copies of Platinum Angel, Rumbling Baloth, Kindercatch, Mythic Proportions (enchanting the one nontoken Platinum Angel), 4 Rupture Spire (tapped), 12 Forest (tapped)
(All permanents are untapped unless otherwise specified.)
Visual Version:
Pay BBR for Demonic Tutor, copying once with the red ability of Izzet Guildmage. Find High Tide and an Island, then play the Island. 2W, 2U, 5B left.
Use the two blue mana to play High Tide and copy it once with the blue ability of Izzet Guildmage, 2W 5B left. Let the copy resolve (islands +1) but then you're going to do a lot of stuff in response to the original spell.
Tap the first Island for UU, immediately spending it to make 2 more High Tide copies (+3). Still 2W 5B left.
Tap the second Island for 4U, make 2 more High Tide copies (+5), and then pay UUBBB to activate monstrous on Sealock Monster. Put 6 +1/+1 counters on, which don't matter, and choose to make your last untapped Swamp into an Island. 2W 2B left.
Tap your Island-Swamp for 6U, then make 4 High Tide copies (+9) and pay UUBB for Turnabout. 2W left, 15 untapped lands (three of which are Islands).
Tap the first Island for 10U, spending all of it to make High Tide copies (+19). Repeat for the second Island (+39). Still 2W left, 13 untapped lands.
Tap the third Island for 40U. This time, make only 35 High Tide copies (+74), leaving 2W 5U left. Pay U to flicker Deadeye Navigator, bonding to Sealock Monster, then another U to flicker Sealock Monster, which makes Battle Mastery fall off to the graveyard, and the monster revert to a non-monstrous state (oxymoronic as it may sound). Sealock Monster bonds to Deadeye Navigator, as it will at every possible opportunity from now on. 2W 3U left, 12 untapped lands.
Empty the pool to make the Monster monstrous again, turning one of the other 12 lands into an Island.
Tap the newly flooded land for 75U. Make 69 High Tide copies (+143), leaving yourself with 6 mana. 6 is just enough to flicker Sealock Monster and make it monstrous again, turning one of your other lands into an Island just in time for you to tap it.
Repeat this process for the remaining lands:
Land 5 - 138 High Tide copies (+281)
Land 6 - 276 copies (+557)
Land 7 - 552 copies (+1109)
Land 8 - 1104 copies (+2213)
Land 9 - 2208 copies (+4421)
Land 10 - 4416 copies (+8837)
Land 11 - 8832 copies (+17,669)
Land 12 - 17,664 copies (+35,333)
Land 13 - 35,328 copies (+70,661)
Land 14 - 70,656 copies (+141,317). Actually, at this point you might as well let the stack clear, so the original High Tide can finally resolve (+141,318).
After the 15th and final land has been turned into an island, tap it for 141,319 blue mana. Pay 1 to flicker Deadeye Navigator, this time bonding it to Sparkmage Apprentice, then start paying mana to flicker Sparkmage Apprentice, dealing 1 damage at a time.
It takes 100,010 flickers to ping the army of Platinum Angels to death (they can keep the two green creatures for all you care), then you can start pinging to the dome. Win with 41,264 mana left in your pool.
Maybe next time they'll be smart enough to choose a bigger number.
My comments on his solution:
Actually, if you do things a little differently and use Sealock Monster twice before casting Turnabout, you can generate 184,327 mana. I believe this is the most you can make, but I could be wrong.
Actually, you can do even better than that.
Leave two more lands untapped at the start. For simplicity's sake, I'll assume these are the two Plains, so you can simply scratch out the "2W" that lingers through the early part.
After the first monstrous trigger turns a land into an island, there's now 2B left, and 5 High Tides in effect with the original copy still on the stack.
Tap the new Island for 6, and spend just 1 mana to make a 6th High Tide copy. This leaves 2B 5U left, and after flickering the Navigator so it can pair with Sealock, there's the requisite 6 mana to flicker and monstrify. Give yourself a fourth island, with it and one untapped land left.
Tap this one for 7, and again there's only room in the budget for one High Tide copy (+7) before you have to flicker and turn the last land into island #5.
Tap for 8, spend 4 on copies (+11) and the other 4 on Turnabout. 15 untapped lands, and now you don't have to worry about flickering Sealock until #5.
Land 1 - 12 copies (+23)
Land 2 - 24 copies (+47)
Land 3 - 48 copies (+95)
Land 4 - 96 copies (+191)
Land 5 - 186 copies (+377), leaving 6 mana behind to allow the other lands to start being used as islands
Land 6 - 372 copies (+749)
Land 7 - 744 copies (+1493)
Land 8 - 1488 copies (+2981)
Land 9 - 2976 copies (+5957)
Land 10 - 5952 copies (+11,909)
Land 11 - 11,904 copies (+23,813)
Land 12 - 23,808 copies (+47,621)
Land 13 - 47,616 copies (+95,237)
Land 14 - 95,232 copies, let original resolve (+190,470)
The last land then taps for 190,471, winning with 90,416 to spare, or enough that one of the Curses (but not both) could be removed and the solution would still work.
I originally had NO Curses in the puzzle and the opponent had 20,000 Angels. However, at that time I did not have Solar Tide in the Puzzle; instead I had Forced March which I incorrectly thought killed token copies of Platinum Angel if you pay less than 7 for X. Thus, I included the Curses to make one of the red herrings of the puzzle still close to working (as otherwise it wouldn't even remotely work).
As a point of respectful criticism: this would be more convenient and pleasurable to play if the visual version were large enough to read the text directly, though, as a player who does not have most of these cards memorized.
I would like to somehow have thread that you link to your puzzles, maybe even ahve it stickied. These puzzles are a lot of fun.
Cube on Cubetutor
Come trade with Puca Trade!, the best place to get those hard to get cards no one else will trade!
Anyway, I think this works too:
1) Tap all lands for:
U: 3
B: 8
R: 1
W: 2
2) Demonic tutor, copy with R. Allow copy to resolve and fetch Pthisis. Play turnabout on untapped lands, let it resolve and retap everything, giving:
U: 4
B: 12
R: 1
W: 4
3) Copy Demonic tutor for R. Allow both copies to resolve fetching Wing Splicer and Solar Tide. Play pthisis on mythic'ed angel and solar tide sweeping 2 and under. Opponent takes 20 and goes to 24, and has a kindercatch left.
U: 4
B: 3
4) Play Wing Splicer. Blink Deadeye, bond to Wing Splicer. Blink Splicer twice. Makes 6 golems.
5) Attack with everything. Sealock gets blocked, opponent takes 18 + 4 + 5 + 1, goes to -4 and dies.
Draft my cube! (630 cards)
Solar tide counts power, not CMC.
Draft my cube! (630 cards)
This doesn't work because Sealock Monster can't attack since your opponent controls no islands.
Reckless Waif; It's the red Delver of Secrets.
Indeed, 7thGate's solution puts the opponent to exactly one life instead of -4 since the Sealock Monster can't attack. This is by design; 7thGate found the second of my red herrings in this puzzle (frozen_braskamin found the first).
Tap all mana 3U, 2W, 1R, 8B. Use BRW to tutor plus copy for Vandalblast and Dark Imposter. (Left 3U, 1W, 7B)
Use Turnabout (2U, 1W, 1B), and copy once(1U) and tap all land again after copy resolve, then original resolve. (Left 6U, 4W, 2R, 22B)
Cast Dark Imposter. (Left 6U, 3W, 2R, 21B)
Use Monstrosity, making one of their land Island. Now you have a 11/11 Octopus with DS that can attack. (Left 1U, 3W, 2R, 21B)
Use Dark Imposter to eat 3 angels and the two other monsters, so your Dark Imposter is 12/12 (Left 1U, 3W, 2R, 1B)
Use Vandal Blast overload to kill the rest of the angels.
Attack with everyone, (4+5+1+2+ (22 octopus) + (12 Imposter)) for 46! Actually the more you copy Turnabout the better, you could win with just one dark imposter swinging.