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3 months ago  ::  Mar 02, 2013 - 8:01AM #1
War_Pigeon
Date Joined: Feb 17, 2013
Posts: 2
I was playing a Gruul Aggro deck last night at FNM, and I had an odd situation pop up.

I attacked in with a Burning Tree Emissary enchanted with Rancor . My opponent double blocked with a Huntmaster of the Fells and his wolf token. I decided to bloodrush using a Ghor-Clan Rampager to ensure my creature would survive and that I would get more damage through to him. I chose the order of blockers: damage to the Huntmaster first, then the wolf. I had assumed with trample, or even just with the way damage is dealt to lethal on creatures, that both of his would die, and I woud get the 4 additional damage (8 power- 4 toughness combined from blockers) through to him. He told me that he would take four, and that both of his creatures would take 2 damage each, but only one would die. He said I would need double strike in order to kill both of his creatures.

I guess I'm just confused at how that makes sense. If I do damage to both creatures, why would one survive? We even called a judge over, and he gave the same answer. Later that night, I attacked into someone with a similar attack: Burning Tree with a Rancor and Volcanic Strength and he blocked with two unevolved Experiment One . When he took his damage, he took the 4 from trample and said that both of his creatures would die.

So really my question is this: When double blocking, if enough damage is present to deal lethal to all blocking creatures, do I only get to pick one to kill, or do they all die?
 
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3 months ago  ::  Mar 02, 2013 - 8:03AM #2
Enigma256
Date Joined: Jul 28, 2010
Posts: 13,874
he is wrong and you are exactly right
proud member of the 2011 community team
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3 months ago  ::  Mar 02, 2013 - 8:13AM #3
rezzahan
Date Joined: Mar 12, 2011
Posts: 4,792
Your opponent is wrong. All creatures that have been dealt lethal damage (in combat or otherwise) are destroyed by SBAs. It doesn't matter how the damage was marked on them.

Even if it had merrit (which it has not), his argument has a very big flaw: marked damage stays on the creatures until the cleanup step of the turn, and SBAs are frequently checked throughout the turn. If they ever find a creature with lethal damage marked they will destroy it. The only way for a creature to repeatedly survive SBAs seeing lethal damage marked on it is by being indestructible.
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3 months ago  ::  Mar 02, 2013 - 8:32AM #4
War_Pigeon
Date Joined: Feb 17, 2013
Posts: 2
Thank you both for the quick response.

I'm still pretty new to Magic, but my next question is this: Can you do anything if a judge makes a ruling you don't agree with? For example, when he said that I needed the double strike to kill it? It kind of boggled me when the judge agreed, but you can't really question the only person there to make the calls can you?
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3 months ago  ::  Mar 02, 2013 - 8:45AM #5
2goth4U
Date Joined: Oct 29, 2007
Posts: 9,306

Mar 2, 2013 -- 8:32AM, War_Pigeon wrote:

Can you do anything if a judge makes a ruling you don't agree with?


you can appeal the ruling to the judge, if he's unmoved, you can appeal to the head judge (assuming there's one separate from the first judge), the head judge's ruling is final.

You can protest the ruling and the TO is supposed to submit the incident with the results in the reporting software to Wizards/DCI and they may choose to follow up on the ruling in some fashion though the ruling still stands even if its wrong/misguided/mistaken.

Other than that there's not really anything you can do about it.

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