Take the Niv-Mizzet Challenge!

The fine folks at Gatherers' Tavern have once again partnered with Wizards of the Coast to create official Magic accessories. And they have partnered with Cardmarket so we can give some of them away for free to our users!

Their new Niv-Mizzet ARTY Box fits more than 100 double-sleeved cards and keeps them safely guarded by the fierce dragon. You can carry the whole thing as a bag with the adjustable and removable strap, and you can even use little Niv-Mizzet here as an accessory separately. It's quite a smart design, just as you'd expect from Ravnica's foremost mastermind.

What You Can Win

• Eight winners each receive one Niv-Mizzet ARTY Box (see above).
• Four winners are randomly selected from among all submissions.
• Four winners are picked based on who submits the best solution to our challenge (details below). Ties shall be broken, if necessary via another randomized draw.

How You Can Win

See the following game state and try to reduce your opponent's life total as much as possible this turn! Note that this is an open-ended puzzle, so don't worry if you only manage to deal some damage. Good luck and have fun!

• It's your first main phase, you're at 20 life, and the only card in your hand is one .

• There are no cards in any graveyard or exile and no cards in your opponent's hand or library. However, there are a total of three mystery cards in your library. The good news: You get to decide which three cards are in your library, although all must be Vintage-legal Magic cards that go to your hand via Niv-Mizzet's ability. Here's a handy list of all available options.

• The bad news: You don't have a lot of mana to work with. The only permanents on the battlefield are three , two , two , three , and two under your control. And you still need to tap five of your twelve lands to cast Niv-Mizzet.

• Additional gameplay rules: Your opponent can take any damage and lose any amount of life, but their actual life total remains undefined. (This means the effects of cards like , , , et cetera do not count as anything here.) Cards that require your opponent to make a choice or that make something happen at random simply do not work, at least if outcomes can vary meaningfully. (Discarding everything to is fine, but you cannot use , for example.) Other than that, everything works as in a regular game of Magic.

Update: Time Is Up, Participation No Longer Possible!

The Best Solutions

As far as I can tell, all of the best solutions anyone found require a minimum of either seven mana or three cards to go infinite. This part went as planned. However, while I had picked the number of lands in play and cards in library to allow for this possibility, I never expected there to be so many options. Congratulations to everyone who contributed to our group project for coming up with such a wealth of alternatives! Here's a long list of lines that may well still be incomplete.

Minimalists' Approaches to Infinity

Something + + : Redcap shoots itself to come back as a 2/2, shoots itself to come back as a 3/3, shoots itself to come back as a 4/4, and so on … Eventually it shoots the opponent for any amount of damage. (This appears to be the only possible two-card solution.)

+ + : Enchant Redshift with Clout and generate three green mana. Use two of them and Witch to untap Redshift. Generate white mana and untap Redshift again. Repeat while alternating between green and white mana, grow Redshift to any size, and eventually leave it untapped to attack. (This combo only requires six mana to start.)

+ + //: Use the green card to get both creatures into play and attack. Resolve first Shaun's, then Aurelia's ability, leaving you with an untapped Aurelia copy that was not yet declared as an attacker this turn and thus triggers on the next attack. (Magic rules are weird this way.) Repeat for endless attacks. (With Squandered Resources one only needs nine of the twelve lands.)

+ + : Rhythm lets Bartolomé enter with haste and lets Elite enter with a +1/+1 counter every time we sacrifice it to Bartolomé. Bartolomé becomes arbitrarily large and attacks.

+ + : Turn your lands into creatures, untap them with Hussar, and cast the Man. Make a copy of Hussar, which untaps the Man and all lands again. Repeat any number of times and attack with all the hasty Hussars.

+ + : Use the Man to make a hasty copy of Elder that taps for five mana thanks to Niv-Mizzet. Cast Hussar to untap both Elder and Man. Tap both again to make a copy of Hussar. Repeat any number of times and attack with all the hasty Hussars.

+ + : Academic discards Moritte. With the help of Rakdos Joins Up, Moritte enters the battlefield as a copy of the legendary enchantment and triggers. Moritte immediately goes back to the graveyard but also returns itself again. Academic grows with each loop and eventually attacks.

+ or + or : First give Stella haste. Then cast and copy your pump spell targeting Stella. Let the copy resolve, untap Stella, and make a new copy. Repeat for truly stellar growth and attack.

Overachievers' Approaches to Infinity

The rules of the challenge didn't forbid introducing cards from outside the game, frankly because I never considered this as a viable option. However, allowing players to think and go outside the box is one of the great features of Magic, and it's amazing what some of you cooked up. Several of you even took hilariously complicated detours, which I'm skipping below. The full backroom of possibilities is also literally endless, whereas I can only summarize a few lines in broad strokes here.

All of the following solutions require at least one card to generate extra mana. The most efficient resource in this regard tends to be , but works for some combinations as well. One can, for example, combine either with and to assemble a cheap life-drain loop: with a chain of targeting oneself over and over.

Your initial three cards can also be , , and a draw spell like //. Then you can wish for , use Research to shuffle two to four outside cards into your library, and draw all of them. If you really want to deal infinite damage via plus or plus , now you can.

Though why stop at something so simple? Begin your resourceful, wishful Research the same way but use to draw into , , and . Cast Storm and then make a Sunrise with three copies, each of which gets you a fresh 24 mana thanks to . The Storm-copied then gets back all of , , and , and you can go anywhere from here. The next time you cast and copy Research, put another 21 cards from outside the game into your library. The next then gets copied six times to draw all of them. If anyone objects and says, nooo, you should only have twelve cards outside the game left at this point, don't worry. Tell them, fine, one of them is , which allows you to get rid of the excess Lessons on the stack that would otherwise kill you. Include two copies of and any damage-dealing instant, and you can also loop those along with Sunrise in response.

Either way, going infinite becomes trivial whether you can access everything or just anything. One particularly funny line like this starts with , , and (… walk into a bar). Beledros leaves us with twelve mana, and the Avatar leaves us with . With the enchantment we can cast our Master for free, taking over the Avatar to get . This one can then return our Master Avatar and itself to hand, via Harpy's triggered and activated ability, respectively. The Master Avatar can then fetch , and now we have set up a way to get everything: infinite life (using Harpy's free triggered ability to return itself) as well as infinite mana (with Master taking over Beledros) as well as infinite cards. The joke is, we need neither more life, nor mana, nor additional cards, as we already cause infinite life loss through Ayara.

Winner Announcement

The following four participants were selected at random among all participants:

• AoIx74
• Hunter2005
• MWaelstromTCG
• Rudolfscrime5H

The following four participants were selected at random among all participants who submitted a solution for limitless life total reduction:

• BarryPalerma
• nullwyrm
• QueenMonsterMia
• Setirb

Congratulations! I've also sent all of you an email. You can probably find it in your spam folder, where "Congrats, you won …" emails tend to end up.

Click here to read the full legal terms and conditions governing this giveaway. If you have any questions, please don't submit a ticket with our support but leave a comment below!