How does Double Strike work against multiple blockers?
Asked by BolasFucks 6 years ago
I came across this situation last night playing EDH. My friend was playing Cats precon and had out an equipped Raksha Golden Cub meaning all his cats got +2/+2 and double strike. My other friend had out a bunch of 2/2 zombie tokens.
For simplification of my question I will leave the rest out. So if Raksha was just a 5/6 with double strike, how many tokens would my friend have had to block with to take no damage?
*My Cat playing friend thought 2 since one would take the first strike damage and die and the second one would take the regular combat damage. HOWEVER, I believe both the tokens would have died to the first strike damage and the regular combat damage from Raksha would have gone unblocked.
Can you also just explain how double strike interacts with multiple blockers in general? Combat is not my forte.
BolasFucks says... #2
Thanks Rhadamanthus. That is much simpler than we were making it out to be.
Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #1
Blocking with just one token will be enough.
Once an attacking creature is blocked, it stays blocked all the way through combat, even if something happens to get rid of the blocking creatures. The only ways a blocked attacker is allowed to assign combat damage to the defending player is if it has trample or an ability like Thorn Elemental etc. In your example the 5/6 double-striking Raksha would assign 5 damage to the 2/2 Zombie in the first strike combat damage step, and then 0 damage in the regular combat damage step, since it's still blocked but there aren't any blocking creatures to assign damage to.
In terms of how the damage would actually be assigned between two tokens: you were correct, unless the attacker wanted to assign combat damage in an unusual way. The attacking creature assigns damage equal to its power split up among all the blockers assigned to it. This means if the Raksha was blocked by 2 Zombies, Raksha would end up assigning 2 damage to one of them and 3 damage to the other in the first strike damage step, and then assign 0 damage in the regular combat damage step.
April 6, 2018 2:37 p.m.