Scourge of the Skyclaves small detail.
Asked by ghostmode 3 years ago
I was at 16 life, the opponent at 13. I had a 4/4 Scourge of the Skyclaves and the opponent had a Bonecrusher Giant , 1/1 Human token, Lovestruck Beast , and a Brushfire Elemental which is currently 3/3. He swings board and I block Bonecrusher Giant with Scourge.
Embercleave , attaches it to the Giant. Giant dies, Scourge lives as 7/7. Makes sense. I went down to 3 life though. I assume it was a 5/4 double strike trample but I don't remember looking at it's P/T. I literally only can't figure out one point of damage. I'd have thought I'd go to 2 life.
Wouldn't it be: first strike 5/4 Giant vs.4/4 tramples over 1, Scourge becomes a 5/5 with 4 damage, then normal combat 5/4 Giant vs. 5/5 with 4 damage marked on it, tramples 4? Scourge becomes a 7/7 with 5 damage marked? Why did it seemingly trample 3 instead of 4, or did I calculate something else wrong.
Interesting. It was MTGA, I'm surprised if the opponent went through the steps to assign trample damage manually tbh but it's apparently a completely necessary thing to do here. Thanks.
March 7, 2021 12:38 a.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #3
ghostmode: Since it's clear you got a satisfactory answer to your question and there don't seem to be any follow-ups or corrections to be made, I marked it as the "Accepted answer" so this topic can move out of the list of unanswered questions. In the future you can take care of this yourself using the "Mark as Answer" button on the response that you feel best answers your question.
Gidgetimer says... Accepted answer #1
By you saying "it" I assume you were playing on a program of some sort. Since I don't know what program you were using, I have no clue why it did what it did.
By the sounds of what is going on, I would hazard that your opponent messed up damage assignment twice. You are allowed to assign extra damage to creatures if you want, the only rule is that each creature must be assigned at least lethal damage before you assign damage to the next creature in the damage assignment order or to the defending player in the case of trample.
The most advantageous way for this to have played out for your opponent would be to assign 5 damage to your 4/4 Scourge of the Skyclaves during the first strike damage step. Then Scourge of the Skyclaves would have died as a 4/4 with 5 damage marked. Trample 5 on regular damage step plus the other 9 taking you to 2 and their entire team surviving.
It seems that what they did was trample 1 in the first strike damage step. Get confused by your Scourge of the Skyclaves surviving as a 5/5 with 4 damage marked. Assign 2 points to the Scourge of the Skyclaves not thinking about the fact that it will go to 7/7, not 6/6. Their best bet after the initial mistake IMO would have been to assign 3 damage to the Scourge in the normal combat damage step. Depending on cards in hand I could also see only assigning 1. But 2 seems to be a mistake.
March 6, 2021 6:47 p.m.