Youâre playing a Lorwyn/Shadowmoor game against Chris, and youâre pretty far behind. Chris is about to attack you with all his creatures, and all you want to do is survive.

Youâre at 3 life with no cards in hand. You control Mana Reflection, Crag Puca, Cemetery Puca, Shapesharer, ten Islands, and four Forests. Chris is at 12 life with no cards in hand. He has Nova Chaser equipped with Cloak and Dagger and championing Manaforge Cinder, Hamletback Goliath with seven +1/+1 counters and enchanted with Epic Proportions, Fire-Belly Changeling, and Rustrazor Butcher. He has five Mountains and three Forests, all of which are tapped.

Click here to see the board state for the challenge.

Challenge

Survive Chrisâs attack.

Send your solutions to nex342+puzzle@gmail.com with the subject line âPuzzle â Ship Shape Shape Shift Shuffleâ and Iâll include the best ones in next weekâs article, along with the next puzzle!

Good luck!

Special thanks to Liz Cady for creating the board-state image for this puzzle.

Solutions to Last Weekâs Puzzle

This was almost another solutionless week. I guess the puzzle was harder than I thought! Only one person, Mechalink, submitted a correct solution:

From here, we can use Krosan Restorer to convert a card in our hand to 11 mana, Breakthrough to convert that mana into cards, and Dwell on the Past to reshuffle everything. This gives us infinite mana and access to whatever cards we need. We can get Red mana with Mossfire Egg. From there, itâs easy to cast all the win-condition enchantments. Itâs easy to fill up your graveyard using Traumatize, which allows you to trigger Mortal Combat and Test of Endurance (via Ancestorâs Chosen). Chance Encounter can be triggered using Crazed Firecat, and Epic Struggle by looping Squirrel Nest into your land-untap loop. Finally, Battle of Wits works automatically if you start with a large enough library.

For comparison, hereâs the solution I came up with:

This loop can be repeated indefinitely, netting 5 mana each turn. Getting infinite cards as well can be done easily by having a Cephalid Sage in play as the loop proceeds. From there, we can cast and activate the enchantments as above.

In addition to last weekâs solutions, I received a solution to the bonus puzzle from Commander Challenge 2 from Jason Doan: