activating abilities during blocking phase
Asked by Animazriel 8 years ago
ok so i was playing a guy at FNM and i attacked with Breaker of Armies and he triggered an activated ability on a creature that required tapping the creature even though this creature was forced to block, it saved his ass basicly, he's an older player who hasn't played recently so i assumed he was playing by an older rule but now i'm not 100% sure myself about weather or not he could do this, could someone clarify please.
breakdown: i attacked, blockers were declared, before damage step he activated ability, tapped creature and removed it from combat.
Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #2
First, you don't trigger an activated ability. Activated abilities are activated; triggered abilities are triggered.
To clarify what BlueScope is saying:
Breaker of Armies has a static ability that forces all creatures able to block it to do so. This ability only works, as stated, on creatures able to block. If a creature is unable to block Breaker of Armies (because that creature is tapped, for example), then the creature is not forced to do so. You can't require an illegal block.
However, this "out" only works if the creature is unable to block Breaker of Armies at the time at which blockers are declared. If the block later becomes illegal for any reason, it doesn't change the fact that the creature is now blocking Breaker of Armies. Further, tapping a creature doesn't invalidate a block or remove a creature from combat. Only effects that explicitly remove a creature from combat will do that.
BlueScope says... #1
That depends on how exactly it went down... from what you say on the top, it sounds like he uses an ability on their creature to prevent it from having to block in the first place. That is entirely legal.
On the bottom, you say it happened after blockers. In that case, whether the creature is being tapped after declaring it as a blocker doesn't matter, and it especially doesn't remove it from combat.
October 30, 2015 9:31 p.m.