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Mind Twists #5

After taking last week off since he was at SCG Open Series: Seattle, Dayv Doberne is back with the fifth edition of Mind Twists. Time to exercise those brain muscles!

Hello everybody! Welcome to the fifth edition of Mind Twists. We were on vacation last week (that is, I was at SCG Open Series: Seattle—more on that later), but it’s good to be back to exercising those brain muscles. As always, thank you to everybody who submitted a solution. This week’s winners are Michael Turpyn ("Krenko’s Recruitment") and Oleksandr Drapailo ("Vigilante Injustice"). Check your inboxes!

Here are the solutions to our last edition’s puzzles:

Krenko’s Recruitment

Puzzle

As with all of these deck-searching puzzles, this one had a few different angles of attack. Here’s our winner’s solution:

Every solution required the use of Goblin Recruiter to find Goblin Ringleader for the virtual draw four, and then a Skirk Prospector for additional mana. There were two other main solutions that I saw in the responses. One involved an infinite loop between Lightning Crafter; Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker; and a sacrifice outlet (use Kiki-Jiki to make a copy of the Lightning Crafter, Champion Kiki-Jiki, hit them for three, then sacrifice it to Skirk Prospector restoring Kiki-Jiki). The other involved making tokens with Krenko, then sacrificing himself and some of his tokens in order to cast him again, making more tokens and creating an infinite loop where you cast Krenko infinite times despite his increasing cost. I’ll admit, I laughed pretty hard when I saw that one.

Anyway, congratulations to Michael Turpyn; you will receive a signed Krenko, Mob Boss!

Vigilante Injustice

Puzzle

Here is the solution I received from Leo McDonnell, the designer of this puzzle:

Fortunately, that wasn’t the only solution. Here is what our winner came up with:

Congratulations Oleksandr Drapailo; you will receive a signed Vigilante Justice!

Puzzle #1: What Does That Mechanic Do?

This week’s first puzzle is a submission from Dominic DeCesare—it’s a pretty sweet one that involves cards I had to look up! Here it is:

"You are playing a casual game with an old friend. Your G/W deck was making short work of his U/R deck until last turn, when he cast Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and made a trillion copies of Deceiver Exarch. Your opponent is so confident of his victory that he shows you his hand contains nothing but lands. Luckily for you, you have your singleton copy of Orim’s Chant in your hand, which you cast and kick to prevent yourself from dying from the ensuing attack. You both know there is no way to survive a repeat performance on his next turn, but luckily you can see a way to win before that happens.

It is your precombat main phase.

Opponent:

You:

Win this turn!"

Puzzle 1

Winner will receive a signed Nature’s Blessing!

Puzzle #2: Spelltwining

It’s not looking good for your Mono-Blue Dig-‘n-Counter deck. Avacyn, Angel of Hope joined forces with Kamahl, Pit Fighter to take out a huge chunk of your health, and you can’t afford to let your opponent take another turn. Your opponent has exiled most of your graveyard with a Tormod’s Crypt, and you only have five cards left in your library. All that is left of your army is Talrand, Sky Summoner and the 2/2 flying Drake token that entered the battlefield as you flashed back Forbidden Alchemy on your opponent’s end step.

It is your opponent’s end step, and you are currently resolving a Forbidden Alchemy. The cards you see are Spelltwine, Spelltwine, Memory’s Journey, and Time Warp.

You have:

Your opponent has:

Win before your opponent can untap!

Puzzle 2

Winner will receive a signed Spelltwine!

Other Tidbits

Last week, a few friends and I made the long trek up to SCG Open Series: Seattle (hence the week off for this column). While I wasn’t in the best mindset to play Magic well, I still had a great time. I can’t express how amazing of a format Legacy is—those of you who don’t play should at least proxy up decks and jam games with your friends. I only wish that there was more support for Legacy on Magic Online so that the format would get more widespread attention. In case you didn’t catch it, here’s my feature match against Cedric Phillips where I cast Elspeth, Knight-Errant then immediately passed the turn in game 3.

Moving forward, the release of M13 has me excited to try out a few new deck ideas. I’m currently working on a Battle of Wits deck (along with everybody else it seems), and I vow to play it at the first Standard tournament it is legal. I’ll post my list at the end of next week’s article. The other deck idea is a Bant Aggro list where you try to land Ajani, Caller of the Pride or Geist of Saint Traft on turn 2 and then back it up with Restoration Angel or a fast Venser, the Sojourner. Here is the current list we are working on:


Still a work in progress, and the biggest issue is coming up with a strong two-drop for the deck. Elvish Visionary is kind of like a two-mana Divination with the Blink effects and Loyal Cathar does a decent job of protecting the planeswalkers, but neither is as aggressive as I’d like. Got suggestions? Post them in the comments!

That’s all for this week! As always, if you have any puzzles you’d like to show me, comments, criticism, etc., just email me at [email protected]. Enjoy the M13 release this weekend, and I’ll see you next week!

Dayv Doberne

@Sunyveil on Twitter