Reassign damage?
Asked by unruhly 7 years ago
Does a trample creature reassign damage if the first few blockers it assigned damage to leave combat?Breaker of Armies assigns his damage to Beastcaller Savant, Cliffhaven Vampire, The Gitrog Monster, and 4 other creatures. I cast Grasp of Darkness and remove Beastcaller and Cliffhaven from combat before combat damage via ability of Ayli Eternal Pilgrim. What happens?
Gidgetimer says... #2
One small correction:
The damage assignment order is announced on the declare blockers step before anyone gets priority. Damage isn't assigned until the declare blockers step and once it is assigned it is dealt before anything else can happen, but you get to know the damage assignment order before the round of priority in the declare blockers step. You can use this to save both creatures if say you block a 5/5 with two 1/3s and you have a Giant Growth.
Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #1
Link all cards in your question.
Breaker of Armies
Beastcaller Savant
Cliffhaven Vampire
The Gitrog Monster
Grasp of Darkness
Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim
First, combat damage is assigned and them immediately dealt as a turn-based action during the combat damage step. There's no point after assigning damage and before dealing damage where you even have priority to cast any spells or activate any abilities.
Note also that Grasp of Darkness is a "target creature" spell and not an "all creatures" spell. You can only affect a single creature with Grasp of Darkness (unless you cast multiple copies targeting different creatures).
So let's say it's the end of the declare blockers step, and you want to remove some of these blockers before combat damage. You do so by casting Grasp of Darkness on, say, Cliffhaven Vampire. When Grasp of Darkness resolves, Cliffhaven Vampire dies. If there are no further actions and players pass priority, you'll move to the combat damage step.
Now, you declare a damage assignment order for the blocking creatures. This is the order in which you'll assign combat damage to multiple blockers that are blocking the same attacker.
In order to assign damage to a given blocker, all blockers that come before it in the DAO must be assigned lethal damage (damage equal to their toughness, taking into account deathtouch and any existing damage marked on those creatures but NOT taking into account damage prevention or other damage modification effects).
If Breaker of Armies is blocked by Beastcaller Savant, The Gitrog Monster, and four 1/1 tokens (for example), you could declare the DAO to be The Gitrog Monster, Beastcaller Savant, and then the 1/1 tokens in any specific order. You then assign a minimum of 6 damage to The Gitrog Monster (assuming it has no damage marked on it yet). After that, you may assign 1 damage to each of up to four remaining blockers. You won't be able to assign damage to the last blocker because Breaker of Armies is only a 10/8 and can therefore assign a maximum of 10 damage per combat damage step.
Trample only matters if you can assign lethal damage to all blockers and still have some damage left over.
May 29, 2016 2:32 p.m.