Vigor + Trample
Asked by -MisterJ- 11 years ago
I'm sure this question has been asked before but I'm hoping someone can relate this to a recent situation and provide text rulings.
Player 1 has Vigor in play with Birds of Paradise
Player 2 Has Thromok the Insatiable at 10/10
Player 2 declares attack with Thromok and Player 1 declares block with Birds.
My understanding is that Birds is unaffected by the damage and then gets +10/+10 counters on it.
Scenario 2... Lets say that Players have the same set up except for Player 2 controlling Gruul War Plow and declares attack of Thromok at 10/10. Player 1 declares block of Birds at 0/1.
My understanding is that Birds can NOT absorb all the damage and 9 of it rolls over to the player?
We got into a pretty fashionable debate about this and would love a clear decisive quote from Ye Olde Rule Book!
Thanks in advance!
Well then it does work as I thought, which does actually help in some instances. I play this EDH and was curious if the attacking player had a choice in the matter since sometimes the enemy of mine enemy is my friend :)
April 2, 2014 1:42 a.m.
I'm sure someone else will provide the actual rule's quote, but the main point here is that when creature is blocking it's not 'absorbing damage'. It is assigned certain number of damage by the attacking creatures controller according to certain requirements such as that attacking creature must assign all of its damage, if it's blocked by multiple creatures it has to assign lethal damage to one before assigning damage to the next one and if it has tramble it can assign any remaining damage, once lethal damage is assigned to all blockers, to the defending player or to a planeswalker if it was designated as attacking a planeswalker instead of a player.
This means that in the first situation Thromok the Insatiable
has to assign all of its 10 points of damage to the sole blocker (since it doesn't have tramble) and this means that, because of Vigor
, 10 points of damage is prevented on Birds of Paradise
.
In the second situation however since there's tramble involved the attacking player needs to assign only lethal damage to Birds (lethal being 1 if Birds is not buffed in any way) and the rest to defending player. Attacking player may choose to assign more damage than lethal to Birds if they wish (maybe they want to use some removal on birds that requires certain amount of power or toughness), but lethal is the minimum they need to assign before they can assign tramble damage.
Notice that this situation doesn't differ in any way from if the Birds of Paradise
had protection from green or red.
April 2, 2014 1:44 a.m.
See I was unaware that the same scenario would occur if Birds had Pro R/G as I thought theoretically Birds could absorb/prevent all of the damage since it has protection from the color.
April 2, 2014 1:48 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #5
No. Trample damage assignment doesn't care about effects that modify the result of damage. Therefore, it doesn't account for prevention effects or replacement effects.
Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #1
Player 2 can assign any amount of damage to Birds of Paradise . Extra damage doesn't automatically roll over to the defending player or planeswalker.
However, the intelligent decision would be for P2 to assign 1 damage to Birds of Paradise and 9 to the defending player or planeswalker. Vigor 's replacement effect will prevent the 1 damage that would be dealt to Birds of Paradise and instead put a +1/+1 counter on Birds of Paradise .
April 2, 2014 1:36 a.m.