Relevant CR 510.1c "This may allow the blocked creature to divide its combat damage" It doesn't specify each blocking creature MUST be assigned damage, just each creature preceding each blocker must have at least lethal assigned before it can be assigned damage. Directly support my content on Patreon! www.patreon.com/keepingitcasual Join the Discord! discord.com/invite/RmNJnr8TNR Support me on my other channels! Tiktok- www.tiktok.com/@keepingitcasualtiktok Instagram- instagram.com/keepingitcasualmtg Twitter- twitter.com/chookiemon Contact Me! Email- therealchookiemon@gmail.com #mtg #edh #mtgcommander
So if I swing with a 6/6 with trample, and my opponent blocks with three 2/2 monsters, I could assign 2 damage to the first monster, then do 4 trample damage without damaging the other blockers?!
"702.19b The controller of an attacking creature with trample first assigns damage to the creature(s) blocking it. Once all those blocking creatures are assigned lethal damage," Doesnt work
@@mcbescheiden725 duh, but he doesn’t have that option. The defender can either take 6 with no blocks, take 5 and lose a devil, or take 4 and lose two devils. Taking no damage and losing 2 devils is better than all of these-depending on how much life he has left.
@@bradensorensen966 I think that you're missing that he's able to kill the dreadmaw with the pings, that's what he's going for. Now he's still got his 6/6, and the opponent is down two tokens. If he only blocked with some of them, he'd have just done the trample, but it still works, and this way lets us see the interesting rule interaction.
The mental image of a trex attacking and three little imps charging at it to kill it and they all get some good stabbing in, but then the trex accidentally kills one but then focuses down one l vehemently. Just brutally stomping it out and forgetting the last one somehow to let it live and it awkwardly slips away.
I love imagining scenarios like this. When I first started playing in 2012 I had a mono white angels/lifegain deck and used cathedral sanctifier which is just a 1/1 that ETBs to gain 3 life. My friends had much stronger decks so I'd chump block something like a sundering titan and we'd joke about this little nun running up to this metal behemoth and bonking it with her staff just for the titan to look down at her and just obliterate her out of existence 😂
Was a relevant interaction when grixis death shadow was the best deck in modern, assign 5 damage to the 2/2 death shadow so it doesn't live when you trample to their face
IMO they need to add a keyword for ETB, like "Hail" or "Summon" or something. EG: Loran of the Third Path When Loran of the Third Path is Hailed, destroy up to one target artifact or enchantment.
@@keepingitcasualmtg also relevant if your opponent controls a blocking [Shaman en-Kor] if they activate the shaman to only prevent death your opponent can over assign damage to still kill it. Assuming they have the power to do so.
If you want a spicy modern example. Primeval Titan from amulet attacking into a deaths shadow, trample making shadow survive at certain life totals while state based actions are checked allowing a lethal crackback. The amulet deck has option to over kill the deaths shadow to trade (if op at 7 and assuming slayers stronghold pump). Then even spicier, op at 11, assign 4 to shadow and 2 to op for optimal post state based check lethal on shadow
In a commander game i once swung into my opponents Brash Taunter with a massive trampler assigning all the damage to it so that they could redirect all the damage onto a third player who was playing at being archenemy, for lethal. Forgot why i couldn't just swing into them but had to explain to the table at least twice that this was a valid play XD
@@tamo3329 don't recall; AE was either pillow-forting or had a big spooky lifelink body or something having made this the the most viable play. Game was a good ~2ish years ago at this point so don't really remember the specifics beyond the interesting bit
False according to wotc rule 702.19b. You have assigned Lethal damage to all blocking creatures because the creature has trample. If a creature doesn’t have trample then you can assign damage to two of blocking creatures and sign no damage to the third creature.
702.19b The controller of an attacking creature with trample first assigns damage to the creature(s) blocking it. Once all those blocking creatures are assigned lethal damage, any excess damage is assigned as its controller chooses among those blocking creatures and the player, planeswalker, or battle the creature is attacking. When checking for assigned lethal damage, take into account damage already marked on the creature and damage from other creatures that’s being assigned during the same combat damage step, but not any abilities or effects that might change the amount of damage that’s actually dealt. The attacking creature’s controller need not assign lethal damage to all those blocking creatures but in that case can’t assign any damage to the player or planeswalker it’s attacking. This is talking about that when you're assigning damage if there is excess damage it's dealt to the player, but it never says you MUST assign lethal to each creature, just that each creature MUST have lethal assigned in order to deal the trample damage. You can choose not to trample if you want to over assign damage to a creature. In fact the very last line of that ruling is exactly what this video is talking about.
@@keepingitcasualmtg does this rule say that if you have a damage increaser, like Torbran, you have to effectively waste combat damage on each creature to trample damage to the opponent? Say I swing with a red trample 6/6 and have Torbran out and a 3/3 blocks it, I have to assign 3 of my creatures original combat damage BEFORE accounting for Torbran’s +2 to damage to trample over? That then only leaves me with 3 + 2 damage to face! I have to waste 2 damage?!? Please tell me there’s another relevant rule for this…
@@jemm113 Sorry mate, rule 510.1c ruins what you are trying to do here. You have to assign lethal damage before any replacement effects can happen. You will always deal "overdamage" and can't account for the additional damage when assigning lethal damage to blockers. However, a neat trick happens with trample+deathtouch where you only need to assign 1 damage to each blocker to fulfill the "lethal damage" clause, resulting in X-Y trample damage where X is the power of the creature, and Y is the number of blockers. So a 10/10 with trample and deathtouch blocked by two 5/5s can deal 1 damage to each and 8 to the face.
I also people get deathtouch and trample wrong, not knowing that you only need to assign 1 then can trample the rest over if you want. You don't have to assign enough to hit the toughness of the creature if you don't want to since 1 is enough to kill when they have deathtouch.
I can relate, early in my EDH experience, I ran a Golgari deck with Glissa, The Traitor at the helm. There were SOOOO many salty tears that fell upon the battlefield when they learned putting a big Fatty blocker only needed 1 damage before the commander damage was on its way. Especially when she was all equipped up with Swords/enchantments to pump her up.
Wow, this is actually a really cool interaction that I've never thought about and I'm a person who loves reading into the minutiae of MTG rules to squeeze out small advantages. I wonder how many times I have misplayed due to being unaware. Not anymore. Thanks dude!
Learned this trick with trample and deathtouch interactions. Trample just says you have to assigned at least lethal damage. With deathtouch, lethal damage is considered 1. So regardless of toughness of the blocking creature, if your attacking creature has trample and deathtouch it only has to deal 1 damage to each blocker and the rest can go through to the opponent.
Incorrect, you would need first strike for death touch take effect first. If you have a 3/3 blocking a 6/6 with trample all damage has to be resolved before death touch damage is resolved. First strike is the only way to do this
This was actually relevant in modern a while back, with Temur Battle Rage vs Vengeful Pharoah. If your dredge opponent had a Vengeful Pharoah in their graveyard, you'd sometimes need to overassign the first strike damage to avoid the Pharoah trigger, then fully trample the normal damage.
I never knew I could do this! I'ma whip this out the next time I play EDH with the boys, they won't believe this is a thing and they'll be tilted when I show them this lmaooo
I used this to avoid some sort of repercussions a few years ago during a prerelease, opponent called a judge, and I had up find the ruling myself because the judge didn't know I could assign more damage than the defending creatures' toughness.
I mean if your opponent has 3 life left and you are in lethal range as well, you can really only do this as it prevents your opponent from assigning trample dmg to you, giving you one more turn to deal with this
You could also have over damaged the first one to online kill one devil thus you would be left with two life making it just a bit harder for you to be killed. For example if the devil tokens all read when it dies it deals one damage to any targets that would mean that you are only a shock or chain lightning or any number of two or three damage one mana spells. However if the devils or at least one read damage equal to their power then what might be best if possible is to boost the power of the important devil as high as possible to result in a kill if possible.
I'm pretty sure there's an unwritten rule in magic (non tournament) where if something like this happens due to a rule a player didn't know about you get at least one free rewind meaning you can simply have a redue as long as nothing from the hand was revealed
Don’t forget that creature can only deal damage while blocking if the creature ahead of it, so if the first devil took all 6 damage the dinosaur would only take 2 combat damage and 1 effect damage as the last devil can’t assign block damage
All the devils would deal their combat damage back to the dreadmaw regardless of whether they were dealt damage or not, but only the ones that died would trigger
You'd be amazed at how many people get caught out by small thing like this. I always find it hilarious when someone dies to Trample+Deathtouch. They sit there doing the math of how much toughness they need to put in front of it to absorb damage and stay alive, only to be shocked when only 1 damage has to be assigned to their 2/5 and they die anyway lol.
Hilariously those little devils become small nukes in my Ghyrson starn, kelermorph deck . In short he turns 1’s into lightning bolts(3), those devils are now basically 6/1 with their ability
Funny thing is with trample and one blocking creature, that you manually can deal excess damage to that creature if you want to for certain effects and do less or no trample damage at all
Devils like to be followed by some instants, so be careful with this. The real weird part here is that the green player is only swinging with one big guy.
Okay, I've been reading the comments and the video didn't make clear what happened in this scenario for most viewers. The 3 devils are 1/1 creatures and they an ability that deals 1 additional damage when they die. The Dreadmaw is 6/6 Trample which is a 'You May' ability. So what happened here is this. If you split the Dreadmaws' damage to each Devil and they all die, each Devil will deal 3 damage for their 1 Power plus 1 additional damage each for their ability for a total of 6 damage which will kill the Dreadmaw because it has 6 Toughness. By over assigning the second Devil and not kill the third Devil, each of the 3 Devils did their 1 Power damage for 3 damage and the 2 Devils that died dealt their 1 additional damage for an overall total of 5 damage. The 3rd Devils' ability does not activate because it did not die. The Dreadmaw lives because it has 1 toughness left. And because the 3rd Devil did not receive lethal damage, Trample does not activate, because you have to do lethal damage to ALL blocking as the requirement to trigger Tramples' effect. Hence why Banding is awesome. Hope this helps.
I still think triple blocking was the correct play (assuming we are blocking no matter what) blocking with 3 means you lose 2 tokens and take 0 damage. Blocking with 2 means you still lose two tokens but now you take 4 damage. Blocking with 1 means losing only 1 token and taking 5 damage. You also still get to use those pings elsewhere in this scenario I'm guessing it goes to the opponents face. I think saccing an extra token for an extra ping and preventing 5 damage to your face is worth it.
“Yeey i killed 2 1/1 tokens and received 2 damage to face, by the cost of tapping my 5-6 mana creature which now cannot block until next turn against red player”
@@keepingitcasualmtg oh don't worry. I play commander as the the ur dragon, one of the ppl I play, plays as miirym, another likes playing as angels, and another as vampires, then there's a fifth person who has the strongest things. In all the games I played with them. I only won 7 times.
Only if there is excess. Excess is after each creature is assigned damage the rest is considered excess and can be assigned to the player/planeswalker/battle. Since we OVER assigned damage to the 2nd devil that damage all has a place to go and wouldn't be considered excess damage. Hope that makes sense.
In that scenario, all 3 blockers deal damage (3 combat + 2 from dying triggered effect) back to attacker, right? Or do only 2 of them deal damage (the two, that attacker dealt combat damage to). Thanks
Where in the rule book can I find that it specifically says you can over assign damage? I can't find it, why couldn't you just over assign damage to one target and still get trample?
Relevant CR 510.1c "This may allow the blocked creature to divide its combat damage" It doesn't specify each blocking creature MUST be assigned damage, just each creature preceding each blocker must have at least lethal assigned before it can be assigned damage.
