Does deathtouch count as lethal damage when determining trample results??
Asked by Kalani 14 years ago
example scenario: an attacking Abyssal Persecutor is equipped with a Basilisk Collar . he is blocked by some big flyer, let's say deck:thopter-assembly... does the persecutor deal 1 trample to the opponent or a full 5 after the 1 deathtouch to the assembly??
oops i meant deal damage equal to the creature's toughness haha sorry
March 29, 2011 12:56 a.m.
MagnorCriol says... Accepted answer #3
Actually, sanixon94, at first I agreed with you, but I've found a counter-argument.
702.2b Any nonzero amount of combat damage assigned to a creature by a source with deathtouch is considered to be lethal damage, regardless of that creature's toughness.So, actually, what deathtouch basically does is say "even 1 point of damage from me counts as lethal, no matter what." Which means it works great with trample, since all trample cares about is "Have I assigned lethal damage to this chump?" And with deathtouch, it gets to answer "yes" to that right away.
March 29, 2011 1:05 a.m.
Magnor has it, deathtouch changes the rules of combat such that the amount of damage a deathtouch-ing creature needs to deal to be lethal is 1. Read Acidic Slime 's reminder text for a more technical explanation.
March 29, 2011 1:13 a.m.
SupremeAlliesCommander says... #5
The answer was 'No' prior to M11. However, the M11 rules changes makes it so that creatures with both trample and deathtouch may deal as little as one point of damage to each blocker and assign the rest to the defending player.
For reference:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/97
Scroll down past the image of Grave Titan .
March 29, 2011 1:04 p.m.
O dang i'm sorry haha. I honestly though that was how it worked. My bad. Sorry if i confused anyone
March 29, 2011 1:28 p.m.
MagnorCriol says... #7
'Sall good man. Your interpretation made sense logically, especially the way the rules work sometimes; that seems like the sort of thing they'd do. =p That's why this is a Q&A forum and not just one person, so we can all catch each other when we need to.
March 29, 2011 3:53 p.m.
As far as mix ups of this caliber go, it seems as though the direction this game is heading from, "Mega fun and easy to understand card game" to, "Hey, let's make as many confusing rules as we can so nerds (MUCH like myself) actually have to put a hold on their game to go online to check if a move was legal or not."
Sorry, had to get that off my chest. :)
March 30, 2011 4:54 a.m.
You think this is bad, check out the OTHER Q&A of this same question here. Pretty sure they set a record for biggest M:tG rules argument on the net.
March 30, 2011 4:58 a.m.
MagnorCriol says... #10
Possible, but 90% of that was just misinterpreted statements, ruffled feathers, and bruised egos, I think, and all the bad mojo that goes with those. =p
March 30, 2011 5:02 a.m.
I'm just sayin, I don't know how long you guys have been playing, but I've been playing since about 4th or 5th grade, soooo roughly 12 years, and I remember back when it was, "throw the biggest baddest things you have and hope you get em" as a strategy. Though, maybe it was just because I was too young to actually get strategy. ;)
March 30, 2011 5:06 a.m.
I had the same thing as you man when I was playing in year 5. I think it is a case of growing up and understanding strategy a little more, and learning to enjoy different things about the game. And of course there are those who want to go pro...
March 30, 2011 5:09 a.m.
I never tried to actually go pro, but I did play in local tournaments and did pretty well. Then I faced my first Elf deck, right around the time of 7th edition when Wizards had a massive hard on (sorry if that's considered bad language or whatever) for Elves. I immediately sold all of my Magic cards and quit playing forever. Until about 7 months ago. Ha ha
sanixon94 says... #1
No. Lethal Damage is defined as damage equal to the creatures toughness. Even though 1 damage would be lethal the creature because of deathtouch, it wouldn't work because trample ignores other abilites. Trample wouldn't take into account the deathtouch, therfore you would still have to deal damage equal to the creature's power to trample over.
March 29, 2011 12:53 a.m.