Once you as the attacker gets to assign damage to multiple blockers is where things can get as simple or as complicated as can be.
Say I block with a generic creature 1/1 and a 0/2 Defender type creature with an ability that triggers as it is dealt damage. Your creature is a 3/3 and then you must decide either choose the 1/1 and 0/2 or vise versa or even all on one creature…but the twist is:
my 0/2 creature while it cannot attack back as it’s power is 0…the affect may make you think twice about assigning any damage to it. for the card Hornet’s Nest, if it take damage, I can spawn creatures (well creature tokens to be exact) for each damage it takes. knowing that, in the scenario, you may want to avoid dealing any damage to it and focus all damage onto my 1/1…assuming it doesn’t have it’s own ability if it dies…
ahh all of this makes me happy to return to the game. Problem is buying cards again.
When dealing damage to multiple creatures, it basically rolls over. So let’s say you have a 4/3 and the opponent blocks with with a 2/4 and a 1/1. You deal 4 damage to the 2/4 but none to the 1/1 since you already dealt 4 damage. You would lose the 4/3 creature and the opponent would lose the 2/4.
Another thing to know is hat you select a where your damage goes if multiple creatures are chosen to block. And remember first strike means you deal damage before taking any so that can mess with things too.
You have it kind of wrong. Assuming I’m the attacking person with the 4/3, I declare an attack. Then opponent assigns blockers(where he chose two blockers). It then goes back to me to assign damage how I want to. I could technically assign 2 damage to the 4/3 and 1 damage to the 1/1. Then end the ‘damage step’ and the 1/1 dies and the 2/4has two ‘damage’ on it until the end of the turn(for practical purposes, think of it like damage counters that go away on EOT). I could then finish off the 2/4 with a one damage effect/spell.
Yes. What you’re describing is the Attacking step. You choose all creatures you wish to attack with during this step. Targeting isn’t necessary. Just pick who you’re attacking with, turn them sideways, and you’re done.
No. When a creature is blocked, it deals all its combat damage to creatures blocking it and no damage to the opponent.
Not quite. When a creature is dealt damage, its toughness is not reduced. Rather, it’s assigned that many damage counters which last until end of turn, and if it has damage counters greater than or equal to its toughness it dies. A 4/4 creature that is dealt two damage would be a 4/4 creature with two damage counters on it until end of turn. A 2/2 creature that is dealt 4 damage is a 2/2 creature with 4 damage counters on it that immediately dies. It’s important to make that distinction now because there are cards that care about creature toughness and damage counters exclusively.
Indeed. The defending player can choose any amount of creatures to block each attacking creatures. Now, resolving all this is done by assigning damage order, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s one of the toughest concepts to grasp for beginners. When an attacking creatures is blocked by multiple creatures, the attacking player chooses the order in which it will deal combat damage to those creatures. Then during combat damage step, it deals damage to the blocking creatures in the order that was assigned. You don’t choose how much damage you deal to those creatures. The attacking creature merely deals as much damage as it can to the defending creatures until it deals lethal damage or it can’t deal more damage. However, instead of all these muddly fuddly rules, you’ll get a better concept of this through some examples.
An attacking 4/4 is blocked by a 3/4 and a 1/1. The attacker assigns damage order to the 3/4 first and the 1/1 second. During combat damage step, the attacking creature deals 4 damage to the 3/4 and no damage to the 1/1, the blockers deal 4 damage total to the attacker, and the attacking creature and the 3/4 blocker die.
An attacking 4/4 is blocked by a 1/2, another 1/2, and a 2/3. The attacker assigns damage order to a 1/2 first, the other 1/2 second, and the 2/3 last. During combat damage step, the attacker deals 2 damage to the first 1/2, 2 damage to the second 1/2, and no damage to the 2/3, the blockers deal 4 damage to the attacker, then the attacking creature and both 1/2 blockers die.
An attacking 4/4 is blocked by a 3/1 and a 1/5. The attacker assigns damage order to the 1/5 first and the 3/1 second. The attacker deals 4 damage to the 1/5, no damage to the 3/1, the blockers deal 4 damage total to the attacker, and the attacker dies alone while the attacking player bashes their head on the desk for failing at basic math.
Note, that Magic, just like most other card games, is a game of exceptions. For instance, normally a blocked creature deals no damage to the defending player, but then there are creatures with the “Trample” keyword that say otherwise.
FatalSeabass if you have rules questions just go to chat.magicjudges.org/mtgrules/ and they will answer 24/7. Honesty I have found it to be faster than googling when playing online most of the time.
It could see play in Modern easily with Deaths Shadow and Elves already a thing. In Legacy I am not sold but has upside and I don’t see any chance in Vintage.
You misunderstand my point, to steal a deck a deck has to exist,for a deck to exist someone needs to have built it.
If the competitive cards are known instantly Ramunap Red (fuck I hate that name, it’s just fucking rdw) shouldn’t have taken so long to rear it’s head, energy shouldn’t have taken so long to be a thing worth considering over Snake and Vehicles, U/B Pirates shouldn’t have had to wait for so long whilst everyone was going “Urgh no new decks from Ixalan” (Incidently besides the Scarab God finisher I’ve had the full pirate package ready to go for a while now).
And I’m going to call it right now, people ain’t fucking with it yet because they haven’t been told to but before the end of this standard Naya dinosaurs will be a top deck, it has too much support not to, I look forward seeing how much money people will have to spend to build the deck I bought for comparatively nothing over the pre-release season.
As long as new cards continue to come out there will always be room for deck building, just because you have to be good at it for it to be relevant doesn’t mean it isn’t relevant.
There’s always room for deck building but arguing boosters are viable because you might pull something that ends up good is just wrong.
This was all originally an analogy for loot boxes yeah?
I build lots of decks and play tier 2 decks at best competitively with my own spin on them but the fact of the matter is all cards of a certain power level are known. People know the best removal, advantage, beaters etc. The only thing that’s missing is combo synergy. That’s also generally known though, it’s just janky and it takes someone like Zach Elsic to take it to the next level. If you think that’s you, go for it.
No that’s not what I was arguing about boosters at all, like not even close.
My entire argument was as a way for new players to quickly get a varied collection of cards so they can experiment with deck building ideas and gain the experience needed to get good at it for themselves.
On the other point, yes good removal beaters ect. are known, but new ones are still coming, I mean look at Fatal Push for instance, premium removal coming out of nowhere to hang with Bolt and Path, look at Unclaimed Territory strapping a rocket to 5 colour humans, look at Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher coming out and making an entire archetype with multiple offshoots.
The reason Modern has become more interesting right now is entirely because new cards keep coming and either creating new space for exploration or picking up the deck ideas that couldn’t quite make it before and giving them a fresh lease of life, although there are established good decks around it really is a great time to be building and tweaking.
And depending on the format, you got to pick and choose what all going into a deck. All the good cards are identified, but as Frosty said not all the synergy is apparent.
And how you go about synergizing your deck varies with the mechanics in play, not all syngergy combos are obvious, especially in formats such as Legacy, Vintage and Commander.