changing all blockers after an illegal block?

Asked by SlippinJimmy 7 years ago

At prerelease last night I went to turns against a particularly slow player, on turn 5 I swung and he assigned his creatures to block left to right.

The final declared blocker on the right was against a creature with flying, so it was an illegal block, does that player then get to go to the beginning of the declare blockers step and reassign everything so a reach creature blocks the flier, or are all legal blockers already locked in?

(either way i'll admit to being a bit salty over this, 17 life and 4 creatures vs 1 life and an empty board after blockers were reassigned and damage resolved.)

Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #1

The game does back up all the way and your opponent now has to re-declare a legal set of blockers. The section in the Comprehensive Rules that explains the Declare Blockers Step opens up with this:

509.1. First, the defending player declares blockers. This turn-based action doesn't use the stack. To declare blockers, the defending player follows the steps below, in order. If at any point during the declaration of blockers, the defending player is unable to comply with any of the steps listed below, the declaration is illegal; the game returns to the moment before the declaration

In your situation, your opponent ran into a problem when checking to see whether the declared set of blockers violated any restrictions (described in 509.1b). Yes, it can be annoying sometimes, but that's how the rules work.

Also: if you feel your opponent is taking an unreasonably long time to make in-game decisions and doesn't respond to any prompting from you, go ahead and call a Judge. Even if you're at a Regular REL event like FNM or a Prerelease, the time limit for each round is real. Everyone needs to do their part to make sure the event moves along at a reasonable pace and that as many matches as possible are able to come to a natural conclusion instead of being stopped by the clock.

April 22, 2017 9:14 p.m.