Rith, Liberated Primeval (Excess Damage) + Trample

Asked by lil_cheez 3 months ago

Good evening everyone!

I'm working on a Rith, Liberated Primeval commander deck for a friend and this question popped in playtests.

Trample is a very common and useful tool in Naya/Green's arsenal, so I'd like to now how it works with Rith before commiting to it.

I mean: Rith wants me to do EXCESS damage to a creature.
But when I control a creature with trample, the EXCESS damage is not dealt to a blocking creature.

Do I have a way around that to make Rith work? Can I mark one more damage than letal to a blocking creature, if my attacker has trample?

I hope I made myself clear.

Thanks in advance and have a good one!!

Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #1

The rules work in your favor here. Trample allows you to assign the excess damage as you choose between the blocking creatures and the defending player/planeswalker/battle. You aren't forced to put it all on the defending player/planeswalker/battle if you don't want to.

702.19b The controller of an attacking creature with trample first assigns damage to the creature(s) blocking it. Once all those blocking creatures are assigned lethal damage, any excess damage is assigned as its controller chooses among those blocking creatures and the player, planeswalker, or battle the creature is attacking. When checking for assigned lethal damage, take into account damage already marked on the creature and damage from other creatures that’s being assigned during the same combat damage step, but not any abilities or effects that might change the amount of damage that’s actually dealt. The attacking creature’s controller need not assign lethal damage to all those blocking creatures but in that case can’t assign any damage to the player or planeswalker it’s attacking.

February 5, 2024 2:48 p.m.