Those mean judges like to tell us that there is no such thing as infinity in Magic, only arbitrarily large numbers. I think they say that just to ruin our fun. So to put some fun back into infinitely arbitrarily large numbers, today’s challenge will be to create unlimited supplies of various Magical things.
Solution to last week’s puzzle.
1. Play Island.
2. Tap all lands for mana.
3. Cast Dream Stalker.
4. Stalker returns Utopia Vow to your hand.
5. Cast Utopia Vow on Veiling Oddity.
6. Tap Oddity for red mana.
7. Pay U to activate Tolarian Sentinel, discarding Lightning Axe, returning Utopia Vow.
8. Cast Utopia Vow on Ivory Giant.
9. Cast Grapeshot, targeting token.
10. Storm triggers. Target Stormfront Riders with all three copies.
11. Attack with Ultimus, Parasite, Husher. No blocks (Djinn can’t block non-fliers). Opponent takes 7 damage (Opponent: 10 life).
12. Pass turn.
Turn 1 (opponent’s):
Opponent untaps and draws Island, then passes the turn. If opponent attacks with Djinn, you take 3 damage and survive at 1 life.
Turn 2 (yours):
1. Untap.
2. Draw Island.
3. Attack with Ultimus, Parasite, Husher, Oddity, Stalker. No blocks (Djinn still can’t block, even if he was untapped.) Opponent takes 10 damage and loses the game.
Congratulations to Gabrosin, a new name to the Magic Puzzles leader board. He managed to provide a solution for the puzzle that has stumped the fans longer than any other so far.
Current Scores:
Gabrosin – 10
This Week’s Puzzle (30 points total)
Difficulty: 4/5
These puzzles will follow the rules of Brian McKay’s puzzles from a few years back. Those rules are:
* There are no permanents in play, in hand, in the graveyard, or in either library.
* Both players are at twenty life.
* You may "create" any legal (Un-cards are excluded) Magic card currently in print and put it into your hand by spending its mana cost. However, once you create a card, you may not create it again in any of the puzzles for this week.
* You have unlimited mana at your disposal, but the goal is to spend as little as possible.
*You start in your pre-combat main phase and can advance to your combat phase if you wish, however, those are the only two phases you have.
*You may only play one land per turn unless you play a card that lets you play more than one land per turn.
* You may create mana of any color to play your spells with, but you may not use any mana that isn’t created by the puzzle rules. For example, if you wanted to, you could play a Dark Ritual and add BBB to your pool, but you wouldn’t be able to spend it on anything. You can play a Rishadan Port, and you can use its ability to tap a land, but you can’t tap it to generate mana.
With that in mind you goals are to:
1) Have an arbitrarily large (abbreviated as infinite) life total.
2) Create a creature with an infinite power and toughness.
3) Deal infinite damage to Bad Beat Phil, your opponent.
4) Have infinite mana in your mana pool.
5) Have an infinite number of creatures in play.
6) Have an infinite number of permanents named Akroma, Angel of Wrath in play.
7) Have an infinite number of non-basic Islands in play.
8) Have an infinite number of non-basic Mountains in play (without using Blood Moon or any non-basic lands).
9) Have an infinite number of Green permanents that are not lands, enchantments, creatures, or artifacts in play.
10) Have an infinite number of auras attached to a creature.
Remember, your goal is to minimize the total mana used without repeating any cards throughout the puzzles.
Scoring Breakdown:
Two points will be awarded for the answer to each puzzle that uses the fewest mana.
An additional ten points will be awarded to the person who presents a solution to all puzzles using the fewest total mana. When constructing your complete solution, you may copy from any previous solutions, as long as your final solution does not repeat any cards.
Submit your answers in the forums. I will post solutions in next week’s article.
Good luck!