Trample damage is optional?
Asked by SorcerersBone 9 years ago
I was reading Terra Stomper 's rules text about trample, and it occured to me that it says "you may have it assign" implying that its optional, as opposed to something mandatory like Lifelink.
So, is it possible for me to attack an opponent with 1 life with a Terra Stomper , have it blocked by 7 */1's, and be a dick by not assigning the lethal 1 damage?
TheAmazingSalsa says... #2
Yes, whenever it says you "MAY", It's your choice.
August 5, 2014 11:41 p.m.
Absinthman says... #3
I'll expand on this thread with an example of a situation where assigning "extra" damage to creatures can be useful, despite the fact that you're able to trample over them (basically, a situation where if trample wasn't optional, it would have been bad for you):
The process where you determine what amount of damage is actually lethal to a creature (and subsequently, how much damage you will be able to trample over with), you don't take into account any damage prevention effects. What this means is that even if the defending player has Hedron-Field Purists
with level 1-4 for example, each 1/1 still only needs to be assigned 1 point of damage in order for you to be able to proceed to the next creature (or player) in the damage assignment order. Now, if the rules didn't allow you to assign more damage than is lethal to a creature, you would have been forced to assign only 1 damage to each 1/1 and the remaining 1 damage to the defending player (which gets prevented by Hedron-Field Purists
anyway). If the rules worked like this, that 1 damage assigned to each 1/1 would have been prevented and none of them would have died, rendering your attack basically worthless. However, the actual rules allow you to assign more, and this is a kind of situation where you might want to. So you decide to assign 2 points of damage to each of the first four 1/1s, 1 of which is prevented and the remaining 1 actually kills.
I hope my explanation is not too confusing.
August 6, 2014 5:34 a.m.
One other nitpick: Terra Stomper has reminder text about trample. Note that italicized text in a card's text box (reminder text, flavor text, designer credit, and ability words) is not rules text and, in terms of the game, has no actual meaning. Terra Stomper summarizes how trample works, but it is not "rules text about trample", which can be found here.
To answer your question, Epochalyptik is correct. You don't have to deal excess damage to the defending player.
Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #1
You aren't forced to assign damage to other creatures or players. You can assign all 8 damage to the first 1/1 if you want. The rules for trample merely state that you may assign extra damage to the defending creature or planeswalker if you've already assigned lethal damage to all creatures blocking the trampler.
August 5, 2014 11:40 p.m.