It’s time for another Magic Puzzles article! Last time out, we looked at a ridiculous game state in which there were enough errors to make any judge’s head spin. This time, we’ll look at a couple of the situations that are not quite errors, even though they shouldn’t come up in your average game of Magic. Can you make sense of all the red herrings?
Solution to puzzles in the last article.
There were at least twenty errors to be found:
You cannot have infinite life.
Goofus drew before his upkeep
Goofus did not trigger his Darksteel Reactor (and win the game)
Newton tapped an Island to cast Flight, but Islands produce G due to Naked Singularity
Bog Serpent Should be dead (no Swamp)
Newton should have a card in hand from Grafted Skullcap
Clone and Mistform Ultimus should die to the Legend Rule
Goofus has 5 Clones
Goofus has Skullclamp (banned in Legacy)
Newton has Jalum Grifter (banned in Legacy)
Goofus has 8 cards in hand
Upkeep on Naked Singularity was not paid
Mistform Ultimus should not be tapped
Merfolk Looter should be dead to Ascendant Evincar
Mistform Ultimus should be dead to Ascendants plus Engineered Plague
Engineered Plague cannot name Forest
Voice of reason can’t be enchanted (pro Blue)
Upkeep trigger of Unstable Mutation was not resolved
Call of the Herd is a Sorcery, and cannot be in play
The original error (trying to attack with Sea Serpent)
The New Puzzle
Difficulty: 3/5
Feel free to post solutions to the forums this week. I will post the “official solutions” in the forums some time soon.
For each of the following situations, explain concisely how this game state could have come about in a perfectly legal manner, based on the constraints in the last puzzle article:
A Gemstone Mine is in play with no counters on it.
Bog Serpent has charge counters on it.
Land Equilibrium is in play but each player has a different number of lands.
A Forest has several +1/+1 counters on it.
Only 1 card was drawn off of Grafted Skullcap.
A Call of the Herd Elephant token is tapped after the untap step.
And here are some situations that would have been illegal in the last puzzle article, but could have come about in another game:
A player has 4 Clones in play and 1 in hand.
A card named Engineered Plague is in play naming Forest.
A creature that has been enchanted with Unstable Mutation for several turns never accumulated a single -1/-1 counter (without the help of Stifle-like effects).
A Darksteel Reactor is in play with 23 charge counters and the game is not over (or about to be over).
And finally, a scenario completely unrelated to the last puzzle article:
You have 141,000 2/2 non-token creatures in play, and they all have "2: This creature gets +0/+1 until end of turn." and "Pay 2 life: Return this creature to owner’s hand."
Thanks for all your feedback and participation. I hope to write for you again soon.
Good luck!