Your local game store’s Halloween event is taking place in a few days, and the preparations are growing more visible with each passing day. Some of the store employees are now having their measurements taken by the local cosplay chapter, and a couple of regulars have offered to make a run to the nearby market for some candy.

And that, of course, is why they stuck you with a witch deck. Even the worst decks have to have playtesters, after all.

Despite the deck’s shortcomings, you have the upper hand in your current game against Wendy. You brought an early Bogbrew Witch into play along with your Bubbling Cauldron, and it was a simple matter of fetching up some Festering Newts to devastate your opponent’s creatures and life total. That said, you’re eager to move on and finish this game so that you can see what’s next on your playtesting schedule.

After Wendy plays a Village Survivors on her turn and attacks with her now-vigilant creatures, you cast Skeletal Scrying for the rest of the cards in your graveyard. It’s only then that you realize your mistake: One of the cards you draw is the last Festering Newt in your deck, and it’s something that you could simply have searched up with the Bogbrew Witch. You just shake your head and keep playing.

“Any other responses?” Wendy asks.

You think for a while. Wendy’s not going to be building a bridge out of you anytime soon, but you’d rather not draw out this game any longer than you need it to be. Besides, it appears you have the opportunity for a great play here. Now if you could only figure out what it is . . .

Wendy has just declared the end of her turn; you may still cast spells or activate abilities in response. Defeat Wendy before the start of her next turn.

You are at 14 life with the following cards in play:

• Cackling Witch
• Plague Witch
• Bogbrew Witch
• Bubbling Cauldron
• 7 Swamps (two tapped)
• Polluted Mire (tapped)
• Haunted Fengraf

You have the following cards in your hand:

• Festering Newt
• Undying Evil
• Wretched Banquet
• Crown of Suspicion
• Dead Drop

You have only one card in your graveyard:

• Skeletal Scrying

You do not know the identity of the top card of your library. You do, however, have a hastily-scribbled decklist that outlines the cards remaining inside:

• More witches: Copies of Bitterheart Witch, Bog Witch, Cuombajj Witches, Divining Witch, Thoughtpicker Witch, and an additional copy of each witch you control;
• Copies of Witch's Mist, Black Cat, Witch's Familiar, Witch Engine, and a Witches' Eye;
• Copies of Curse of Death's Hold, Curse of Misfortunes, Curse of Thirst, Hex, and Tomb Hex;
• A couple more copies of Crown of Suspicion (which, as the deck’s designer points out, looks a little like a witch’s pointy hat);
• A lot of Swamps.

Wendy is at 5 life and has no cards in her hand. She has the following cards in play:

• Folk of An-Havva
• Loyal Sentry
• Norwood Archers
• Foot Soldiers
• Village Survivors
• 5 Forests (three tapped)
• 4 Plains (two tapped)

If you think you have a great solution in mind, don’t put it in the comments! Instead, send it to puzzles at gatheringmagic dot com with the subject line “Puzzle — This is My Broomstick”. We’ll include the best ones in next week’s article along with the next puzzle!

Last Week’s Puzzle

Correct solutions were received from Russell Jones, Aaron Golas, Carlo Picar, Sanjay Saith, Sebastien Clement, Quadrangolo Tetra, Eric Williams, Andrew Muravskyi, Greg Swain, Hyman Rosen, Joe Hurt, James Parmenter, Vik Patel, Lane Engelberg, and Martin Bobovsky.

This puzzle threw a lot of people for a loop, and the tricky part was figuring out where to begin. “We have no mana restrictions,” Andrew Muravskyi writes. “We are able to cast all of our spells, but we are somewhat thin on other resources. War Flare not only makes our creatures bigger, but helps us activate Sparksmith twice, but we can't hit for more than 5 damage combined or we'll die. We are gifted with efficient removal (Temporal Isolation) and evasion (Gods Willing), but it isn't going to be enough.”

In order to figure out a plan of attack, Quadrangolo’s Tetra did some detailed reasoning:

The most common submitted solution, in fact, involved sacrificing Mogg Fanatic for 1 damage to Stybs himself. Sanjay Saith writes:

Timing is key for some of these steps. “We need to be very careful when we cast Temporal Isolation,” Martin Bobovsky writes, “so that it does not prevent any damage from the Hissing Iguanar trigger; otherwise, our whole effort is shot.”

Martin also notes that if you’re not inclined to make a bunch of priority stops during combat, you can do the bulk of the work during your main phase:

From here, the solution goes as expected. You sacrifice Mogg Fanatic after removing the Temporal Isolation, of course.

Alternatively, you could also sacrifice Mogg Fanatic to control your Goblin population enough so that Sparksmith’s activation doesn’t kill you. Russell Jones’s solution provides another variant:

A fourth possibility involves removing the Lotus Path Djinn first, although the bulk of the work needs to be done during the combat step in this case. Andrew Muravskyi demonstrates:

“All in all,” Eric Williams remarks, “this puzzle takes careful manipulation of the stack. I would hate to have to do it on Magic Online.”