a question about priority during the attack steps
Asked by Tomahawk-Bang 8 years ago
This one came up during our last Conspiracy draft:
My opponent has an Air Servant on the battlefield with enough mana open to tap one flying creature.
I have a Custodi Soulbinders with enough mana open to make one token.
My opponent declares that he wants to attack. He declares the Air Servant to be his attacking creature and taps it.
Now, before blockers are declared I pay the mana to make a token from Custodi Soulbinders. My opponent now pays the mana to tap it so that I cannot declare it as a blocker for the Air Servant.
For me the above seems to be all correct, but some guys at our table said that my opponent can only respond to my action (make a token) and thus will not be able to tap it with Air Servant's ability before I have declared it as a blocker.
Is this really true? How exactly is the priority passed in between the players when looking at this example?
Boza says... Accepted answer #1
tl;dr: Your opponent can tap your blocker and it is perfectly legal.
The question is a bit convoluted but here is the gist of it:
The combat has several steps and phases (listed in turn order here): Beginning of Combat, Declare attackers, declare blockers are the important ones here.
In order to progress to the next step or phase, all players must pass priority over an empty stack (basically do nothing). This is true for every step or phase of the game, not just in combat.
In your case, you have to make a blocker during the declare attackers step at the latest in order for it to be able to block. So, you activate the ability after attackers have been declared, which is perfectly good.
After that has resolved, priority is in the hands of the active player (the attacker) and he can do something again. Again, the phase or step is not over until both players decline to add anything to the stack.
September 1, 2015 5:46 a.m. Edited.