At what point is a creature considered destroyed?

Asked by nhhale 2 months ago

If I control 14 creatures including Ninth Bridge Patrol and then cast Blasphemous Act, is he destroyed? I believe the answer is yes, but I also realize he still has his ability trigger 13 times. I’m a bit confused about the order of events.

Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #1

Ninth Bridge Patrol will be destroyed and won't get counters.

A creature getting destroyed for lethal damage is one of the game's "state based actions" (SBAs). Right before each time a player would get priority to take another action, the game checks for any necessary SBAs and processes them all simultaneously (it checks again to see if that caused any more SBAs to come up and only moves on once there's nothing left to do). In your example this means all the creatures lethally damaged by Blasphemous Act die simultaneously, including Ninth Bridge Patrol. Technically the Patrol does trigger all those times since a "leaves the battlefield" ability can see other things that leave the battlefield the same time as its source, but when those triggers resolve nothing will happen because the object they would have put the counters on is gone.

March 26, 2024 4:47 p.m.