Level Up Your Combat Phase

Rachel Weeks
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Liquid tear. Pour live more greetings, humans. You have entered the command zone, your destination for all aspects of elder dragon Highlander. Enjoy your stay. Hey, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Command Zone podcast.

I'm your host, Rachel Weeks. Hello. And it's me, Murph. We are here to talk about an excellent topic today, aren't we, Rachel? Yeah.

Fighting. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. War. Combats. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks
Specifically the combat phase. We're gonna break down the steps in the combat phase. We're gonna talk about how different keywords work together. We're gonna talk about some nitty gritty rule stuff that occurs when creatures go to combat or blocking and all the stuff that happens in that phase. We're even gonna talk about some cool tips and tricks to make sure that you are getting the full benefit out of your combat step.

We're hopefully gonna make you a better player, but mostly a better attacker or blocker, I suppose. Yep. You need to be doing both of those, probably in every single game of magic you're ever in. So this is unless you're good information. Unless you're.

Murph
Unless you're Josh, in which case you just sit there and he'll probably block draw cards. No, he's always just like, I like my cards. I'm going to take ten. All right, Josh, how do you. Maybe he doesn't know how to use the combat step.

Probably not. Maybe he should watch this episode. Josh, you should watch this episode. Along with all of our lovely listeners. Out there, we're going to talk about lots of cards and how they interact together.

Rachel Weeks
If you want to pick up any of the cards that we talk about, or if you're like, ah, I've been building all wrong, I need to get this card. Go to cardkingdom.com. Command Card Kingdom has a huge selection of magic singles and sealed product. If you're building, it's a great place to pick up a huge amount of cards all in one place because they have an enormous inventory, especially when it comes to new products. There's so many different versions of cards that if you're not cracking a ton of sealed product, which hopefully you're not.

You can get exactly the cards that you're looking for just by going online and clicking on the ones and buying them. And they all show up safely on your doorstep in one safe package. I love shopping at Card Kingdom because I know the cards that I order on the website are the ones that are gonna arrive on my doorstep in the condition that I ordered them in. I know they're gonna come safely in a little case with a little packing peanut and maybe even a little token or a sticker, a treat from card Kingdom. I like shopping there because I know exactly what I'm gonna get, and I don't like keeping track of it.

Envelopes moving through the mail so you can support the show and pick up some sweet magic cards over@cardkingdom.com. Command. And speaking of trying to keep your cards safe, ultrapro.com command is the best place to go to get everything you could ever want or need for playing games of magic, the gathering. You got sleeves, you got dice, you got deck boxes, you got play mats, you got wall scrolls, you got all kinds of things you didn't even know existed. But if you go to ultrapro.com command, you can go browse, scroll through the website.

Murph
They have flash deals on there all the time. And they even have stuff that's up to like 2030, 40% off sometimes. Just click around, see what you like. Or you can buy Ultra pro products at your local game store. Any way that you do it, you're supporting the command zone, you're supporting the show, and you're keeping your cards nice and protected.

Rachel Weeks
Yeah, check out their fancy new apex sleeves. They're really sweet, they shuffle really well, and they're releasing them for each set. So there's like new art coming out all the time on Apex sleeves. Check those out as well. Again, ultrapro.com command.

The final way to support us is directly over@patreon.com commandzone. Our patrons get access to a variety of benefits, including access to game nights and extra turns a day early without ads. Nice if you really want to skip. The ads, which are interrupted gameplay drama. But ads are so funny.

Murph
Every time I put the ads in for the final version, I'm like, man, patrons are missing out on this excellent quality stuff. But you do get it a day. Early without ads, plus exclusive content. At certain tiers, you get access to turn talks. Turn talk?

Rachel Weeks
One talk. We go back and forth. We'll call it turn talks. We'll call it turn talk. Yeah, it's a conversation that we have after every single episode of extra turns to talk about how the game went, what would have happened if we had one more turn, what was in our hand.

It's just sort of a frank discussion of how your deck performed and what, like, if you're gonna make any changes to the deck after this, it's a ton of fun. It's all the people that you just saw talking cards, which is my favorite thing again, patreon.com commandzone plus, we shout out one lucky patron every single podcast episode. And this one is dedicated to Hendrik de Leon. De Leon. Hendrik, you rock.

Murph
You rock. Thanks so much. Thanks for supporting the show. All right, here we are. Main topic, leveling up your combat phase.

So, like, we kind of touched on a little bit beforehand. Combat is probably the most important overall phase in magic. It's certainly the most complicated. It's definitely the most complicated. But this is also how a lot of games are won and or lost.

Combat is usually how you win games in games of commander. Not every single deck uses that as their primary win condition, but it's always gonna be something that you're gonna be running up against, whether you're an attacker or a blocker. So it is very, very important to know the little details and nuances of the attack phase. And honestly, like, we're gonna cover some pretty basic stuff today. We're also gonna cover some real nitty gritty rules that I learned as we were making this episode.

Rachel Weeks
So if you're a more experienced magic player, there's still little things that you can learn in the rules that will make certain scenarios will make you a better player, and we'll talk about how you can use those things to those rules to make yourself a better player and find cool lines in your next commander game. Something that we talked about going into this is the difference between steps and phases. Originally, this was called level up your combat step. And then we realized that combat itself is actually a phase. There's the beginning phase.

That's your untap upkeep draw, and then there's main phase one. There's through the combat phase, which is broken up into a series of steps. Yep. Just like your beginning phase is broken up into a series of steps, which is on tap up, keep draw. Yeah.

Murph
Similarly, combat has its own individual steps. Yeah. And we call it the combat step so often, but it makes sense. Steps are the little ones. You take little steps to go on a big one.

Rachel Weeks
Yeah. To go on a big walk or phase. Sure.

So we're talking generally about the combat phase, but right now we're gonna break down specifically the combat steps, and there are a lot of them. I think commander players have a habit of really rushing through the combat phase being like, I go to attacks, attack you with this and you with that and you with that, and then we go to damage. But there's so many little moments where you have to interact before one thing happens. You have to make blocks before this. You even get priority to do this.

And knowing when to break down really complicated combats can make resolving things easier, can make tricks work better, or interaction work better. Knowing when you can use it is really important. So if you're in like an alpha attack, I would recommend that commander players slow everything down. If you're making a little, like value attack or something, then maybe you can move through it quickly. But if you're going to try and kill the table, go through every single one of these steps to make sure everybody has the opportunity to interact and you're making the right choices at the right time.

Murph
Yeah. So what are all of these different steps? There's beginning of combats, attackers declare blockers, combat damage, and end of combat. So those are the five. We're gonna go through them one by one.

Now, keep in mind, just like basically every step or phase in the game, mana pools empty in between each of these. So whenever you do an action, you gotta tap your mana. You can't have floating mana, just exist in between any of these steps. Sorry. It'll disappear once we move on to the next one.

So just keep that in mind. It doesn't travel over phases, travels over steps, or empties over steps. All right, so the first step here is beginning of combat. So this is as soon as you get into, this is the very first thing that happens in the combat phase. At the beginning of combat, triggers go on the stack.

Exactly. And so you have things like the ozleth, or loyal apprentice, where they'll say, at the beginning of combat, do thing. X. Yeah, and it's that simple. There's nothing that goes on the stack before this.

Rachel Weeks
There's no moment to interact in combat before these things happen. Yes. If you make it to their combat, the ozilith trigger goes on the stack. So if you want to blow up the ozilith, do so in the mainphase before that. Yeah.

Murph
So that's one thing that I've seen a lot of people kind of be pretty unclear about. And I've seen comments on, like, game night's videos about this type of thing where what's the difference between beginning of combat and before that? Anything before that is your first main phase. So if you try to do something before the beginning of combat, you have not changed phases. And whoever has priority, whoever's turn it is, they're still in their first main phase and can do any first main phase actions like play a land cast, a sorcery cast a creature, whatever it might be.

Rachel Weeks
I think a common confusion for commander players is when, if they want to take an action that affects combat, when to do it. Yes. And it's something that's come up in our game before, when it's a lot of people will say, before you go to combat, I want to take an action. So before you go to combat, I'm going to remove your Italy or something like that. And technically, if you say before you go to combat, you're doing that in main phase one.

So if you remove the Italy, even if they've already said, all right, I'm going to combat, if you say before you go to combat, then they have the opportunity to get priority again in their main phase and cast other things. So cast a creature with haste, or cast an equipment or any other sorcery speed type stuff. So it's better to say at the beginning of combat, I remove your Atali. Yes, because Atali hasn't attacked yet. So attack triggers haven't gone on the stack, and they don't get the opportunity to unwind and go back to their main phase and start casting more sorcery speed stuff.

Murph
Yeah, I literally had this problem at prerelease for Thunder Junction. I was playing against Manson and he was playing something, and I said, all right, before combat, I'm gonna remove one of your things. And he said, oh, before combat. And I thought about it and I was like, well, he definitely has something. But I said, what?

I said, yep, before combat. And then he's like, all right, calamity, the one that has haste and can make token copies of things and just completely wrecked my day with it. So those very small distinctions very much do matter. Yeah, I think this is interesting, because if you say before you go to combat means something totally different than before you declare attackers or at the beginning of your combat. So if you want to do something before attackers are declared, but you don't want to give them priority again in their main phase, do it in the beginning of combat phase.

Rachel Weeks
Of course, if you need to remove a beginning of combat trigger, you have to do it in the main phase, like a loyal apprentice or the ocelot. Yeah. So that's beginning of combats. One more thing to note is that for basically all these individual steps, whenever you move to the next one, the first thing, the very first thing that's going to happen is always the thing that the step is based around. So beginning of combat, all of those beginning of combat triggers will go on the stack.

Murph
That's going to be the very first thing that happens before anybody can respond. Same thing once we move on to declare attackers, the very first thing that's going to happen before anybody can respond is attackers are declared all at once. Whoever is doing the attacking can choose, I'm gonna attack this at you, this at you, this at you. That happens all at once at the beginning of declare attackers step. One more thing you can do in the beginning of combat.

Rachel Weeks
You can also crew vehicles in this step if you wanna attack with them. You may not, however, saddle mounts, because that's only at sorcery speed. Only as a sorcery. So if there's some sort of reason why there's like mana floating in the main phase and you don't wanna make your vehicle a creature while there's mana floating. Yeah, in case your opponent has.

Yeah, your opponent has floating mana is what I mean. You can go to combat, crew it, and then the mana pool will have emptied for sure. All right, the next step of the combat phase, we have to be so. Very specific about it. Cause I wanna say phase every time.

Every single time, is declare attackers. So like Murph said, the very first thing that happens is the active player declares attackers, all of them where they're going, all at the same time.

And no one gets priority in this moment. Not the active player, not any of the other players. You immediately declare attackers. That has to happen before anybody gets priority in this step. Yeah.

Murph
This is where you'll also pay for things like ghostly prison type of effects. You'll do this when you are declaring the attacks. Yeah, it's sort of ghostly prison is so strange. So the first thing that happens is you declare attacks and then those creatures are attacking. They are attacking, which means that whenever creature attacks, triggers are now on the stack.

Rachel Weeks
So that's the Atali that we mentioned before. That's like a sort of the animist type of thing. All of those triggers go on the stack at the same time. That's the first time that players get priority in this step. Yep, once.

Murph
And anything has said, whenever thing blank attacks, now all the stuff is attacked, all those triggers are on the stack. Then you can pass priority around and do all that before moving on to. The next step, you mentioned ghostly prison, because I think that's really interesting. Ghostly prison isn't technically a trigger. Yeah, it says creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays to for each creature they control that's attacking you.

We broke this down a little bit, and we're like, that wording makes absolutely no freaking sense based on how the card actually works. It says creatures can't attack, so they can't attack unless they pay two for each. That's attacking you. But you just said that creatures can't attack you, so how are they attacking? So technically, it's broken up into a bunch of little sub steps.

Rachel Weeks
Yeah, and I'd rather talk about it because it's so relevant for commander players. So in the declare attacker step, if a player has a ghostly prison and you want to attack them, you declare the attackers at them. Yes. And then ghostly prison says, hey, now, you have to pay two to be doing this, and you either pay the two to do it, or you don't pay the two. And the game unwinds back to the beginning of the declare attacker step and says, you can't attack.

You're like, I just did, though. So there's really strange things that happen with ghostly prison where you could attack a player with a ghostly prison with a vigilant mana dork, with like, a. Neighbor elder or something like that. Yeah, you could attack them with a vigilant mana dork. And then when asked to pay the tax for ghostly prison, can tap that creature that's attacking to pay for its own tax.

Murph
Yep. But once again, this is all mana abilities and things in the middle. These are all substeps in the attacker phase, so no priority goes around to anybody. Really, really strange. And then, you know, you will be actually attacking the player with the ghostly prison.

Super funky. It is really strange. And I. I wanted to talk about this because there was a lot of questions online about it. Oh, yeah.

Rachel Weeks
With attack triggers, they're all going to go on the stack at the same time, and you can resolve them in any number, any order you'd like, as long as all the targets get named at the same time. So there's a lot of questions about the new Sentinel Sarah Lyons, which is the fallout card. It says, whenever Sentinel Sara Lions and at least two other creatures attack, Sentinel Sarah Lyons deals damage equal to the number of artifacts you control to target player. So if this goes on the stack, you name a target. Yes.

But if you have some sort of ability that makes artifacts at the same time, like an anempakal thousand moon, for. Example, which is also an attack trigger. It's an attack trigger. It says whenever you attack with one or more non gnome creatures, you put counters on anempakal and make that many gnome artifact creature tokens. Both of those go on the stack at the same time.

You can have the anem Pakal trigger resolve first, make a bunch of gnomes and then resolve the Sentinel Sarah lions trigger. You just have to name the target as they go on. That's the only thing that you have to do first. But yeah, it'll work. How you want it to is the Tldr.

They go on the stack at the same time. You can stack them, but you have to name all the targets that go on the stack at the same time. At the same time, yeah. One other thing to note about the attacking step is that if anything puts things into play tapped and attacking, this will oftentimes happen. In this step.

Murph
They will not get any attack triggers or anything like that. They are just in tapped and attacking. Because they weren't declared as attackers, they didn't do the action of attacking. They already are. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks
Like an ilharg the raze boar. When it attacks, you put a creature into play attacking. Yep. That creature didn't attack. Ilharg attacked.

So there's no moment for its attack trigger to go in the stack. This is often a question that happens with myriad. Yes. People ask if they get the attack trigger on the tokens made with myriad, and that is not the case. They enter attacking.

Murph
Yeah. One other thing about this before I move on to declare blockers, this is the point in time where you will flash in blockers if you ever want to block. This is the last point that you possibly can and probably strategically the best point for you to do it. Yeah. This is the moment where you flash in a blocker, where you crew a vehicle that's gonna block as soon as you go to the blocker step.

Rachel Weeks
We're declaring blockers right away, so you have to make the creature a legal blocker before going to the declare blockers step. And I know a lot of this sounds really, really finicky. I get it, because technically it is, but. It is. But it's in commander, things are like, they're so complicated.

And if you can slow down game actions to the point where everybody understands where we are and can think through what's happening, then it's really helpful in really critical points. I've had so many attacks like Alpha strikes that get muddled because one player goes to damage before another player goes to damage. And they're like, somebody will take the damage before blocks happen because they have no blockers and the blocking player is like, no, no, no. I have interaction before anybody takes any damage. And that changes the math on things.

Murph
And so you just kind of have backup rewind. So just try to be as clear as possible. Yeah. Okay. So those are all the things that you do in the attacker step.

Rachel Weeks
You resolve all those attack triggers. All of the creatures are now attacking, attacks are locked in and the blockers are ready. Yeah. So next you got to declare blockers again. This is the first thing that happens.

Murph
So all attacks are locked in. Attacks can no longer be changed. Well, they couldn't be changed beforehand. They were all declared, but they're completely locked in. So now all defending players assign blocks in active player, non active player order.

Now, this is something that we covered in some past episodes. Yeah, it was in specifically, there's two. There's one about priority and the power of the stack. Yep. And then there is, we referred to it again in 521, which is rules magic.

Rachel Weeks
Players keep getting wrong. So if you want to learn more about APNAP, which you really, really should, it's so important in multiplayer rules, go check out those episodes. But for the sake of this, it's just clockwise turn. Order is how you do blocks in a multiplayer game. So that's another thing I've seen people block out of order and that could change things.

Yeah, I think if you know how somebody else is blocking, you know how much damage they're taking, it changes what creatures you want to save. Oh, maybe they took more damage than you thought they were going to take. So actually I'm going to take the damage and try and kill them with my creatures rather than blocking to conserve my life total. So blocking in order does actually change decisions, which is interesting. The more information you have, the more likely you are to make a more informed decision.

Murph
So, yeah, you block, and then this is where whenever blocks, triggers happen. So something like smuggler's copter or elder Gargoroth, pretty much exactly the same as whenever a thing attacks. It's just that, but for blocks, pretty easy, pretty simple. This is the first time anybody gets priority in the declare blocks step. Yeah.

So if you want to do any form of interaction before combat damage is dealt, people will often say before damage. Technically they mean during the declare blockers step. Right here, right now, after blockers have been declared. Yeah, this is the tricksiest step, usually, because again, you're acting as late as you can you have the most information that you can. So now you can use your tricks as powerfully as possible.

Rachel Weeks
So this is where you would use, like a berserk, like a pump spell, or you'd use a removal spell to removing an attacking creature, or even a blocking creature. This is how you muddle things up before damage happens. This is also where creatures are considered unblocked for the sake of effects like ninjutsu. And there's even some cards that care about if this creature is attacking and is unblocked. But this is where Ninjutsu becomes active.

You can't, in the attacker's step, you can't activate ninjutsu even though the creature isn't blocked yet, because it hasn't gained the quality of Unblocked. Yeah, it's a little funky, but again, Ninja is very popular. Probably something you're gonna run into at some point in your commander journey. So good stuff to know about. Oh, right.

And finally, not finally. This is the second to last. This is the second second to last. Yeah, yeah. And, well, I was gonna say, like, and importantly.

Murph
Ah, yes. We move to damage. So this is the combat damage step is after that, everybody's attacked, everybody's blocked, everybody's cast their tricks. Yep. And then all of a sudden, damage all happens all at once.

The only exception is if somebody double blocks, in which case you then need to assign blockers. Not assign blockers. You need to assign how combat damage is dealt. Yeah, well, you need to order block. Order blockers.

Order damage. What's the exact term for that? It's, you know, I'm trying to think if you even order blockers here, dude. Dude. Yes.

You must do it before damage is dealt. Well, you know, you do it before damage is dealt, but do you do it in declare blockers? Do you order the blockers? The attacker, you do it for any damage. Okay, great.

Rachel Weeks
Yeah, that's why you're here.

So, yeah, this is before damage is actually calculated. Damage needs to be assigned. Yes. Is the big thing. So this is most relevant when a crime creature is double blocked or when a creature has trample, because it's the only time that you really have a lot of flexibility on how damage is assigned.

Otherwise, one creature does all its damage to the other creature, which does all its damage to this original creature. We'll get to trample a little bit later, but say you are attacking with a four four, and they double block with a three three and a two three. You can assign it so that the three three will take all the damage first, and then the two three will only take one of the damage from the four four, so that one won't die. But you probably want the three three dead. Probably.

And it's worth noting that when you assign damage, you have to assign lethal to the first creature. If you have it. Like if you have a four four and you have a three three and a two three, you couldn't deal two damage to the three three and two damage to the two three. Obviously that's not very good for you, but you have to assign lethal damage, if possible, to the first creature. Yeah, like say you had a pyrohemia or something in play.

Murph
That is something that you might want to do. Get them all down to essentially one toughness, but you can't actually do that, so. Sorry. Tough. Must assign lethal damage.

Rachel Weeks
I guess you could activate the pyrohemia first and then deal, assign two and two, but that would be lethal damage. So anyway, combat's confusing. You get it?

Yes. And then obviously all creatures deal damage equal to their power to each other at the same time. Yep. And then rinse and repeats. This is where all combat damage triggers will go on the stack.

Murph
And once they're on the stack, this is the point where everybody can respond. Tell me if you've heard this song and dance before. It's pretty similar from step to step, so there's not too many things that are different about attackers. Blockers, combat damage, basically all functions the same. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks
So this is whenever your deals, combat damage triggers happen. This is Toski, this is Grimm hireling. They're very common in commander. This is where they're going to happen. This all changes a little bit if there is.

Murph
I just read the notes. I'm like, yeah, I forgot about that. If there's a creature in combat with either first strike or double strike, not on the battlefield. If there is a creature that is either attacking or blocking, that has either. First strike or double strike, it literally creates an extra.

Not full combat damage step, but an extra. No, a full combat damage step, it creates it at the beginning of the combat damage step. So you go to the first. To the beginning of the combat damage step, it sees that there's a creature with first strike or double strike and creates an additional damage step. Yeah, and this is really important because there are certain creatures that are designed to.

Rachel Weeks
That have first strike, that are designed to work with combat in a different way because they have first strike or double strike, like a Drana liberator of Malachyr, which is flying and first strike. And it says whenever Drana deals combat damage to a player, put a one counter on each attacking creature you control. So Drana deals damage first, puts one counters on all of your attacking creatures, and then all of your creatures that don't have first or double strike will hit on the second combat damage, and. They'Ll hit harder because they're buffed now. Because they're buffed.

Murph
So cool design. Something very, very important to keep in mind. There's even really wacky situations like Siddhar Jabari of Zalfir. So this is a, this is the knight that has eminence. And also it's a flying first striker that when it deals combat damage to a player, return target night guard from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Rachel Weeks
So there's certain knights that are extremely relevant if you reanimate before damage is dealt. One of them, notably, is Moonshaker cavalry. Nuts card to reanimate and then just have the rest of your guys just hit, like, trucks. Ooh. But one that's really interesting is pride of femuriff.

So this is a knight that has double strike, and it says creatures you control with first strike have double strike. So if you reanimate a quendi on the first strike, it comes in, Siddharth has first strike, and now is like, I have double strike. That's crazy. Damn. Suddenly he's hitting on the second strike also, even though he didn't have double strike when this combat began.

Murph
So funky, it's so funny. So funky, it's so wild. But it's really, really important if you have a first striker that you do those things at the right time because it can change how you interact. If you have a first striker that draws a card, you're like, oh, I can draw a card and I can remove a creature. Yeah.

We actually got this wrong in the most recent game nights, the Thunder junction one, where we were resolving a bunch of Ashland's combat damage triggers. But one of them was a glissa, which had first strike and deathtouch. So that should have resolved first, right? But we didn't really think about it. Cause she had, like, four different triggers on the stack and we were just like, you can resolve them however you want, it's fine.

And so she's like, all right, I'm going to resolve them like this. And we're like, sounds great. All right, perfect. And then we didn't catch it until much later. Like, well, it kind of is what it is, but that's fine.

That is something that could potentially change the outcome of the game. Yeah. And then of course, state based actions are checked, and all the creatures that took lethal damage go to the graveyard, kaput.

Rachel Weeks
Well, yeah, unless they have other keywords, which we're gonna talk about. We'll get to those. We're just saying in general. In general. That's how I always explain magic to people, is you're like, all right, here's this.

Murph
Here's the state of things. There's something that breaks literally every single one of these rules. We'll get to that when we get to that. And it's for fun. It's for fun.

Rachel Weeks
So we've attacked, we've blocked, we've dealt damage. What else could there possibly be in the combat phase? End of combat's damage. Not end of combat damage. End of combat's step.

Yep. So this is where everything is done. Creatures have gone to the graveyard, and there are surprisingly few cards that deal with this step. Usually it's done for, like, not technically cleanup, but cleaning things up, like exile this at the end of combat or something like that. If they make, like, tapped on attacking tokens like Delina, Myriad will.

You'll lose your creatures here, Delina, exile them. Of course, at end of combat, it's mostly just to be like, combat is done. We're all good, right? Yeah. There is a few weird interactions, like with desert.

Yeah. Desert specifies that it says desert's a land that taps and says desert deals one damage to target attacking creature. Activate only during the end of combat. Step time, when you can activate this ability, which is bizarre, that they would put this on a card. You can deal one damage to a creature that's already dealt damage.

Murph
But this was from, I'm pretty sure, arabian nights, and they were just kind of trying things. Yeah, I know. So go for it. It is sort of interesting. It makes blocking really hard.

Rachel Weeks
It means that, like, basically, if a creature survives combat, desert's like, no, it didn't. Yeah. If you survive by one, then there's always that desert that's like, all right, I'm sitting here waiting for you. Yeah. You can get sniped by a desert.

There was the desert precon, so I think there's gonna be a lot more deserts floating around. Very true. Keep your eyes on those deserts. But this is an important step to know about and know how it works, because there are some cards that become even more flexible and even more powerful if you know that you can cast them before damage or even after damage in combat. So let's talk about this, because Desert says something weird.

It says it deals damage to target attacking creature things have attacked, they've dealt damage. Why are they still attacking? Yeah, technically, as far as magic rules are concerned, creatures are attacking all the way from the beginning of when they are declared as attackers, all the way until the very end of the end of combat step, the whole time, even if they've already dealt the damage. Still attacking? Yeah, still technically attacking, which is very.

Very strange when it comes to certain removal, spells become strange. Let's talk about aetherize. So, aetherize is an instant for three in a blue. It says, return all attacking creatures to their owner's hand. Normally, aethorize is cast when you're getting attacked, and you're like, oh, I'm being attacked for lethal.

I'm going to cast aethrise bounce all the creatures attacking to their owner's hand. Yeah, but it is a very common. It's reasonably common for you to say, all right, well, that person's getting alpha striked. I have no way to deal with their board, but I kind of do want that other person dead. So say opponent a attacks, opponent b swings out for lethal.

Murph
You want opponent b dead. Great. All right. Taken care of for you. But otherwise, you can't deal with opponent a's board, except you have this aetherize.

So what do you do? Well, if you deploy the aetherize during the end of combat step, you can still bounce their entire board back to their hand, even though opponent b has already died. Crazy. You're still in combat, and they're still considered attacking. It makes this more of a modal spell.

Rachel Weeks
Obviously, that's a very narrow situation, but if you know how to use aetherize, you're using it a whole turn in advance. Normally, you would have to, like, if you didn't know that, you would have to hold up the mana for aetherize for a full nother turn until they attack you and then you cast it there. Meanwhile, they are preparing to kill you in another big, splashy way. So knowing when you can use it makes this spell so much more efficient. And there's a lot of cards that are kind of like this.

Even condemn. It says, put target attacking creature on the bottom of its owner's library. Its controller gains life equal to its toughness. You just don't see this card mush anymore once the tuck rule went away. But it's still a one mana tuck spell that you can cast on a creature at instant speed.

Most of the time, it's gonna be a creature attacking you. That's gonna be how you're gonna use it. But sometimes you do want that blight steel colossus to kill your opponent before you tuck it. And then you just get rid of the blight steel. Perfect.

Murph
Gone. Love that. Unless you do that against me, in which case I'll be very sad. Another very common way to use this strange end of combat step is something like reconnaissance. If you're a fan of older game nights, you saw, I believe it was wedge.

A lot of reconnaissance, used reconnaissance where you would attack with everything. And then during the end of combat step you could activate reconnaissance to untap them. So it was like pseudo vigilance. But reconnaissance is even better because you just send whatever into combat. They'll block, however, and you can just be like, all right, fine, this one, I'll pull you out of combat.

I'll pull you out of combat. Everything else deals damage and then I'll finally, once they've dealt damage, pull them out of combat. And they basically have vigilance. Very powerful in any aggressive deck. Yeah, it's one white mana, two crazy.

Rachel Weeks
One I was thinking about recently is Galadrim ambush. This is a card from Lord of the Rings. So this is a fog type effect. It's three in a green for an instant that says create x eleven green elf warrior creature tokens where x is the number of attacking creatures prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn by non elf creatures. So the obvious thing for this card is put it in an elf deck.

Murph
Seems like a good idea. I would do that. Fog all the creatures that aren't elves and protect all of your elves in combat. Get some more elves. Cool like that.

Rachel Weeks
But I do like this card in token decks and not necessarily elf token decks because you can cast it post combat after you've attacked with 1015 one ones and you want them to deal damage, you can cast this post combat, make one one elves for all of the surviving tokens. That is neat. That's super neat. It's pretty cool. And it's the, obviously you can use it on your opponent's turn and there's lots of ways to use Galadrim ambush, but it becomes a lot more flexible if you know when is the right place to cast these kinds of spells to give yourself the most benefit for your four mana fogs.

Murph
Yeah. And that's also something that you can keep in mind with something, say, that has first strike or double strike, you can fog in between those individual combat damage steps. Say you want one of the things to go through and that's enough to kill one person that you want dead but if you let both of them go through, then you'll be dead. So just do it in between and problem solves. It just makes, once you have this information, it makes everything you do and all your combat tricks so much more versatile.

Rachel Weeks
It's very interesting. I guess something we didn't hit quite hard enough. But with the, when you create that second damage step between first strike and regular damage, there is a second moment of priority that goes around because there's two different steps. So it's like, okay, go to damage one, priority. Go to damage two, priority goes around.

So that's where you could cast a fog in between those steps. One more thing I want to talk about is a mandate of peace, because this is a bizarre card. If you know how combat works, it's one in a white for an instant, and it says cast a spell only during combat. Your opponents can't cast spells this turn. And then it says, end the combat phase.

Murph
Yeah. So this one is really funky because you can use it at any time during the combat phase, which makes it very, very flexible. Once again, you can do it basically whenever attacks happen, whenever blocks happen, whenever first strike happens. I've seen this card used to keep myriad tokens. Ooh, that's so cool.

Yeah. Because at the end of combat step, the trigger goes on the stack that it's like, okay, we're all done with combat. Are we ready to exile these myriad tokens? And you can end the turn there. And it's basically like a one turn sundial of the infinite.

Yeah, you keep like your geist of saint traft angel, same way. That's cool. You can counter all of those end of combat stuff. Or you could fog the turn and stop it and cut off your opponent's second main face. But it's really changes depending on when you use it and what you're trying to do with it.

Rachel Weeks
So this card looks very narrow, but if you understand how the steps work, it becomes even more powerful. Yeah, absolutely. One thing I wanted to mention before we move on is Mazavith. Cause Mazavith, I think, gets treated a lot like reconnaissance, where it removes the creature all the way out of combat. That's actually not the case.

Murph
It doesn't? Yeah. If you read the card, it says, untap target attacking creature, prevent all combat damage that would be dealt to and dealt by that creature. This turn. So it prevents things, but doesn't actually pull it out of combat like reconnaissance does.

Rachel Weeks
So you could sort of use Mazevith in a weird way with first strike, you could use maze. After a first strike, damage is dealt, you could use Mazevith to pull to prevent the crack back. So funky damage, it's very, very strange, and it doesn't do exactly what people say it does when they're like. So that's not attacking anymore? No, it just sort of untaps it and fogs the damage on it.

That's why you can use Mazavith with creatures that untap two lands, and you can make infinite mana in your combat steps. You could use it at any of those. If you have a creature that taps to untap two lands, you could use Mazebeth to untap it, and then tap the creature to untap your mesoth in one of your lands. And then you can tap it again and untap all of those lands. Make either infinite mana or do infinite activations on one of your other lands.

There's a lot of different ways that you can use this. Of course, you only have the mana in that step, but that's the reason why Mazavith works that way and reconnaissance doesn't. Because reconnaissance says it's no longer attacking, and Mazavith just says it's untapped and doesn't have any of the consequences of being an attacker. Yeah, and because it's preventing damage. If you ever have something that says damage can't be prevented this turn, then Mesovith doesn't really do anything.

Murph
It untaps it. But, yeah, that's very interesting. The idea of using a stomp or using a questing beast to get around a maze of it is very relevant to people. I've had that happen to me. Like, if you don't know that that's how maze of with works, then you miss that damage is still dealt.

Rachel Weeks
The other thing that. Just one more thing. Just one more thing. One more thing. Ninjutsu.

Murph
Yeah, ninjutsu is really, really cool because during the end of combat step, you can still ninjutsu things. Cause it's an unblocked attacker. Well, assuming it's unblocked, if it's still an unblocked attacker, then you can ninjutsu it right back to your hands. So after it's dealt damage, after it's dealt damage already, so you can get that trigger, and then you can get it right back to your hand. Like chain ninjas together so that you can keep the important ninjutsu thing in your hand so it doesn't die to removal, so that you can ninjutsu it again next turn.

And get whatever cool triggers you might want or need for the next turn after that. I've seen this most commonly with very powerful ninjas, like fallen shinobi and then evasive ninjas, like a thousand faced shadow or something, because it's not very easy to connect with a fallen shinobi, which is just a five four on the ground. But it is very. Yeah, but it is very easy to deal damage or to have an unblocked attacker with a thousand faced shadow, which has flying. So if you can keep kind of sneaking it in, that's a very good way to do it without spinning that mana multiple times.

Hot spicy tech for your ninja decks. Yeah. Ugh. Ninja decks are so hard to play. They're so many lines, but they're so fun, too.

They're so rewarding to play. I love it. So we've gone through what combat looks like, and we've broken it all down, and it's so much more complicated than just attack blocks damage. We're gonna get into a lot of the things that happen in combat. We're gonna talk about how keywords work together.

Rachel Weeks
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That's archidekt.com commandzone. Welcome back, everybody. We're talking about combat and we're gonna get into keywords. Yeah, they like keywords are interesting. I feel like I didn't realize until recently that almost every keyword is explicitly written to break a rule of combat in the positive way.

Rachel Weeks
Right. Vigilance says you don't have to tap. Trample says that damage goes over flying, says that you skip the blocking part. Almost every strike creates an extra combat. He recreates a whole other thing.

Why? But all of them are sort of designed to make combat go better for you. When things, some of them are very confusing, like first strike and double strike have a lot of really nitty gritty rules. Yeah, there's a lot of rules baggage. But things get really complicated when those things start combining.

Murph
Yes. So that's mostly what we're going to talk about today, but we're also going to break down some of the more popular ones, like Lifelink. Yeah. So Lifelink is a, it says when a card with Lifelink deals damage, the controller of that card also gains an amount of life equal to the amount of damage dealt. That happens simultaneously, that happens at the same time that damage is dealt.

It is not a trigger, which is the most important thing to know about Lifelink. So if, for example, you have a blocker that has Lifelink and then somebody is attacking you for lethal, but it wouldn't be lethal if you gain that life from the lifelink. Well, you're in luck because that's how lifelink works. It all happens at the same time. You will be alive because it is not a trigger.

If it was templated as a trigger, you would not be alive. Cause the trigger would go on the stack and then it would immediately just kind of dissolve state based actions are checked and the player is dead. Actually, fun fact, old magic rules said that you would not die until you got to the end of the next. I believe it was. I don't remember if it was steps or phases at the beginning.

Rachel Weeks
Oh, weird. Yeah, it doesn't check if you. So you could just keep playing through. The combat at zero life up until a certain point. Crazy.

Murph
I know. Anyway, so I know we said that. Lifelink isn't a trigger. It used to be. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks
So it sometimes is. Before they templated lifelink as a keyword, there would be some cards, like spirit link, that says, whenever this creature deals combat damage, or I believe it's damage. Whenever an enchanted creature deals damage, you gain that much life. Yeah. So that is a trigger.

Murph
That is how it used to be templated. It says whenever. So that's how you know it's a trigger. Yeah. So this can create a little bit of confusion with things like lock sit on Warhammer, where the original printing of lock sound.

Warhammer prints it as a trigger. Cause Lifelink hadn't been invented yet. Yeah. But more recent printings of Lockstadon Warhammer, say Lifelink. And the way magic works is you always go by whatever the most recent printing is.

And so it has been functionally eroded to Lifelink. It changes how the card works. Yeah. Makes it considerably better. It doesn't really do that much anymore.

They've kind of looked at things like Luxon Warhammer been like, oh, well, if it was a trigger before, we probably just want to keep it a trigger, even though it might be, it might function better with Lifelink. We're just going to try to keep it functionally the same. But it is very important for you to look at old cards. See, hey, what is the most up to date rules, text of this? And am I following that as exact as I can?

Because it might just save your life or lose your life, depending on, depending. On what side of the locks of the Warhammer you're on. We're going to talk more about Lifelink, but we'll get to that after we talk about double strike. Yeah, double strike. We've talked about first strike.

Rachel Weeks
Creatures with double strike hit twice. They hit once when first strike damage would be dealt, and again when regular damage is dealt and may seem straightforward. But combat damage triggers will trigger twice. You've dealt damage once, you'll deal damage again. That means it'll happen twice.

You'll draw two cards off. Tosky, you'll deal twice that much damage. Yeah. Anything from, like, Felix five boots decks or anything. If you give something double strike, then, wow, you can have a trigger that gets doubled up on the first strike damage, and then you can have another trigger that gets doubled up on the second strike damage, and you can get a total of four triggers on a single attack.

Murph
Pretty neat. I found this out recently. Yeah, this blew my mind. I'm like, why does this work? This is bananas.

Rachel Weeks
Because this was in the release notes for Thunder Junction, and I also found it in the rules text for Blade historian. So Blade historian says attacking creatures you control have double strike. So if Blade historian leaves the battlefield after first strike, combat damage has been dealt. But before regular combat damage, perhaps because it attacked and was destroyed on the first strike, combat damage or something like that, attacking creatures you control will lose. Double strike makes sense so far.

Murph
I'm with you, Rachel. A creature without double strike won't deal regular combat damage if it is already dealt. First strike damage this turn. What? What?

That's so crazy. You'd think that if it has double strike, it would deal the first strike damage. Yeah. And then it's like, I don't have double strike anymore. That's fine.

I'll just do my regular damage. My regular damage. So why, oh, why is it? That's when it just rolls it back. It's like, I've already done combat damage.

It's fine. It sees that it's already done combat damage already, and it's like, oh, well, I guess I'm done then. This is one of those very strange rules that exist for a reason. Yeah, I don't know exactly what the reason is, but there is some sort of interaction that somebody thought about that is like, it must work like this so that something doesn't break. Yep.

If anybody in the comment section knows what it is, let us know. Let us know, because we certainly don't. It was wild, and Bladehistorian is the most straightforward example. But a Bruce Charles roving rancher, which is the one that gives oxes oxen double strike. Yeah, it's in the release notes for Bruce Turrell.

Rachel Weeks
And I swear, Murph, I spent so long trying to think of a relevant example of why you would remove a blade historian after first strike had been done or something. It's true. This is such a niche scenario that why in the world would it ever come into play? But unfortunately, magic rules have to account for literally all possibilities. I found some, though.

Murph
Okay. There's one that they refer to already is like, if you block a blade historian with a creature that has first strike, and it just incidentally dies. So if you have a three two with first strike and it kills the blade historian, the second strike doesn't happen. Okay, great to know. If you're the attacker with the Blade historian, don't send it at that player.

Attack with everything else. It's fine. Leave the blade historian. Leave the blade historian. He's a little guy, so that's a relevant example.

Rachel Weeks
But I could think of one where you would purposefully wait, or incidentally, this would happen. Okay. And it's if you have a creature that has an enraged trigger that removes creatures. Ooh. So if you have an apex altosaur, for example, or maybe a wrathful red dragon that say when they're dealt damage, it says whenever a dragon you control is dealt damage, it deals that much damage to any target that isn't a dragon.

So if you have some damage dealt to the wrathful red dragon and you send it at the blade historian, that second combat damage doesn't happen. Yeah, that's neat. And if you didn't know that, that's how that worked. We don't blame you. We don't blame you.

Murph
We don't blame you one bit. But now that you do, now you know in that situation that you kill that thing and you're like, pff. I don't even take the second strike because I read the release notes for Thunder Junction. I guess they're in. The release notes, they're in.

Rachel Weeks
You listen to the command zone podcast is the answer. So be careful, I guess, with your static double strike granters. Definitely true. One more important note about double strike is if the regular strike creature or the defending player dies on the first strike, there is no second strike. So if you have a three three with double strike and it's blocked by a two two, the two two dies immediately.

There is no second strike. So that is relevant if you have a double striker with Lifelink. Yeah. So that is something that I've run into many times where I'm expecting to gain a certain amount of life. Cause I'm calculating it all up.

Murph
I'm like, all right, this does four, this does five. This does a 916. No. So 16 times two is 32. All right, so I'm gonna gain 32 life.

But then when damage is actually dealt, well, some things will die to the first strike damage, and then the second strike damage will not happen. And so you're not actually gaining that much life if, again, you have something with double strike and lifelink. Yeah. So that math becomes so, so, so much harder. Alpha strike combat damage math is just the most ridiculous thing.

Rachel Weeks
If you do have something with double strike, lifelink, and trample, now you do get boss strikes. Trample. Trample. We're gonna talk about trample later. That's so confusing.

So that's double strike and life link. Be careful with how much damage you gain or life you gain. There next one is first strike and Deathtouch. Yeah, this one is actually. This one's a classic.

Murph
This one's a classic. This one's kind of built into a couple cards like Glissa, which we already mentioned. Deathtouch just says that any amount of damage that needs to be dealt to something is enough to be lethal. Yeah, any amount of damage is lethal. Yeah, any amount of damage is lethal.

That's a good way to put it. And so if you have first strike and Deathtouch, well, then you can deal damage to it, and then it'll automatically die because it has death touch. And assuming the other creature, the blocking creature, also does not have first strike or double strike, it will never have that chance to be able to deal the damage back. Too slow. Much too slow.

Rachel Weeks
That's why creatures like Glissa are so difficult to block, because even if you block with a 1010 or attack into, for that matter, or attack into, even if you attack with a 1010, Glissa. Can just, boop, Glissa's still alive. And survive that combat. It's a very powerful combination of keywords. I wanted to talk about first strike and Infect, because I do think this is a really neat interaction, so they work very, very well together, especially in combat.

If you have a creature that has both first strike and infect, you'll deal the infect damage to a creature first, and that will be dealt in the form of minus one, minus one counters. Specifically, infect, not the poison mechanic. Yeah. So if you have, like, a two two with first strike and infect, and they block with a three three, that would normally kill a two two with first strike. But if you have two two first strike infect, you deal two damage to it, they go drop to a one one, and then deal one damage back.

Now, your first strike infector survives that combat, and the three three dies. Yeah. I love that. That's super neat. All right, one more.

Ninjutsu niche case. One more. Because this is wild. With First Strike and ninjutsu, you can have an Unblocked creature with first strike, deal the first strike damage, and then ninjutsu it out, sneak in a Ninja, and have the ninja there to deal regular damage. So this, if they're two separate entities, it works, and you can do the first strike and then the regular damage, because, like, oh, I haven't done damage yet, but if it has, he's a different creature.

Murph
He's a different creature. He just got here, Mark. He just got here, and he hasn't technically done damage. I get it. But intuitively, what the heck?

Rachel Weeks
I think that's so wild. So it effectively gives you both combat damage steps because you have two different creatures that may make ninja Dex look a little harder at first strike creatures. I don't know. I don't know how much first strike there is in blue and black. Yeah.

But it's cool for all you esper ninja decks. Yeah. All right, we're moving on to one of the more complicated keywords. Oh, trample. Trample.

Murph
It seems like it should be simple, right? You trample over damage. It makes sense. It makes sense intuitively, but when you get down to the rules, it makes a little bit less sense. So we're gonna break it down for you all out there.

So Trample specifically says, when attacking, trample allows the creature to assign the remaining damage not taken by creatures, blocking it to the defending player. So remaining damage, that refers to damage in excess of lethal damage. So we talked a little bit about lethal damage. That's just however much damage you need to do to the thing for it to die. So if it's Deathtouch, then it's one.

So trample and Deathtouch work very well together because you can assign one damage that's enough to be lethal, and the rest of it is going to trample all the way over. But most of the time, it's just you take the power and you subtract the blocker's toughness, and that much tramples over. Of course. Of course. Things are always well, so the attacker has to deal at least lethal damage to the creature.

Rachel Weeks
There may be some scenarios. We talked about assigning damage in the combat damage step of combat. If you have a trample creature, you get to assign as much damage as you would like to that creature, as long as it's at least lethal. So if you have a six six, you have a colossal dreadmaw and they block with a two. Two.

Normally, you would assign two damage to the two two, and four damage would trample over to the player. But if you have something that cares about excess damage, or if for some reason you don't want to deal that much to the player, you only want to deal three. I don't know if, like, they have pariah or something. You could assign three damage to the creature and have three trample over, or four damage to the creature and only have two trample over. Trample gives you a lot of control over how much damage is actually dealt to the creature.

And this is kind of relevant for, like, a stuffy doll. If they block your colossal dreadmaw with a stuffy doll, you could assign one damage to the stuffy doll and have the rest trample over, or you could assign all six damage to the stuffy doll and have that thrown at the other player. You have the power here. Yeah, you can make a deal. Hey, what if I just assign as much damage as possible to the stuffy doll?

Murph
You certainly can do that, as long as it's enough to be lethal. If a creature blocking a trample creature is removed, the creature is still considered to be blocked, of course, but all of the damage now tramples over because there's no amount of damage that is lethal damage. Yep. So he sword's a blocking creature, a creature that's blocking a creature with trample. All of a sudden, every single point of damage is now going to trample over.

So it's like it wasn't blocked in the first place. Yeah. Cause you assign damage after you have to take actions. Yep. Okay.

Rachel Weeks
The final confusing thing about trample, before we start combining it, this is kind of combining it is damage doublers. It's a case, kind of. So damage is assigned before it is doubled. So in that situation, I have a colossal dreadmaw. You have a two two.

But now I also have a gratuitous violence, which is just a damage doubler. Just dealing with damage would be dealt. It deals twice that much instead to replacement effects. Yada, yada. You would think that I would only have to assign one damage to your creature because I know it's gonna be doubled and that's lethal now.

But the game doesn't see the damage doubling until the damage is dealt. So you still have to assign two damage to the two two, which is lethal damage. So what you would do in that case is I would assign two lethal damage to the creature because I have to four. Four tramples over to Murph, and then when that damage is actually applied, that's when it's doubled. So four damage is dealt to the creature, it dies, and eight damage is dealt to Murph.

Murph
Okay, super fun. All right, so we already talked a little bit about trample and Deathtouch, but there's another thing that's kind of complicated and confusing about trample is what happens when you run into protection. Yeah. What happens if lethal damage isn't lethal? Yeah.

So protection. Quick refresher is this creature, if, say, if a creature has protection, it can't be dealt damage, enchanted, blocked, or targeted by any card it has protection from, regardless of who controls it. So that's your debt. D e b t. So it's kind of like shroud in that regard wise.

Rachel Weeks
But you gotta be careful with, like, your pump spells or something. I've seen people get got by their own sort of this in that because it has protection from half their deck. Protection is protection from all of those colors. Yeah, I've seen, like, colored equipments and stuff. The more that they do of that, the more I'm like, do I really want that with my sword of feast and famine?

Yeah. It makes black equipment much more complicated. So you can't put a sword of fire on ice and an ember cleave on the same creature. It just can't happen. Sorry.

So with trampole, when you oppose it. Yeah. So if I have a colossal dreadmaw and you have a tutu with protection from green, what happens? Do I have to assign all of my damage to it because none of it's lethal, or is none of it lethal? So all of it trample.

So for that would be cool. Yeah. So that's the funky thing about protection. So worth protection, you basically assign what would be lethal damage if it weren't protection, and then the rest tramples over, and then whatever damage would be applied to the thing with protection is then prevented. Yeah, it's sort of like the damage doublers.

When you're assigning damage, lethal damage doesn't really consider that ability. So you would assign two and for tramples. Yeah, it's just like, how much would it take for it to die? Oh, wait, actually, it doesn't die. Yeah.

Murph
Is more or less how it works. So that makes some sense when you start combining it with other keywords. It gets really confusing, though. So what if I have a six six creature with trample and Lifelink, and you have a tutu that has protection from that creature? Yeah.

So what ends up happening is you do still you assign the two, because that's what must be lethal, and then four damage tramples over. But because all the damage is prevented to the creature, the creature that has protection, you'll only end up gaining four life. It's really strange. So even though you're dealing six damage, two of it's prevented. So you deal four gain four.

That's not too bad. That's relatively intuitive compared to some other things on this. Okay, so what if it has trample and double strike? Okay, trample and double strike. So the first, I know this stuff sounds really, really niche, but this is just a six.

Rachel Weeks
Six creature with an ember cleave on it. The manner gets way more complicated. It happens all the time. So if I have a black six with trample and double strike, and you have a tutu that is protection from black, I would assign the two to the creature, like we talked about. Four would trample over.

But now the second strike happens. How much do I have to assign to the creature to be lethal? It's still there. Yeah. And it doesn't have any damage on it.

Murph
So what the game does is the game says, oh, well, this doesn't have any damage marked on it. So you must once again assign lethal damage before anything else will trample through. So if you have double strike and something with trample, you'll deal four and then you'll deal four again because. Yeah, because the creature just never takes damage. Yeah.

Rachel Weeks
So you have to just assign what would be lethal damage, and then that will be prevented once again. Okay, what if it has trample, double strike, and deathtouch? It's basically the same kind of principle where with Deathtouch, you only need to assign one damage for it to be considered lethal damage. So you do that, you can still do that to this. Two, two.

Murph
And then five will trample over. But then the same thing happens again like before where it says, oh, it's not dead, it doesn't have any damage marked on it. Let me assign lethal damage to it again. You'll deal another five. So ten tramples are ten tramples in total.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Now, all of that changes if that creature is instead indestructible. Correction.

Some of that changes. Well, all of it changes. One is incidentally the same. All of that changes, but some of the outcomes can be kind of similar. Anyway, so indestructible is completely different from protection.

Rachel Weeks
Indestructible creatures still take the damage, like the damage isn't prevented, but lethal damage isn't enough to destroy the creature. Yeah. So the damage is still marked on it. It just does not die due to damage being marked on it as a state based action. That's all indestructible does, aside from also can't be destroyed by things that say destroy and all that jazz.

So the same thing happens. You have a six. Six. You have a two. Two indestructible, I assign two, which would be lethal damage if it weren't indestructible.

Four tramples over. But now you add lifelink to that equation. Yeah. So then it changes. It's now saying, well, four damage tramples over, because once again, you must assign lethal damage, but you still gain six because you are dealing the damage.

Murph
It's just not dying as a result of you dealing that damage. Yeah. So you're still dealing six damage, so you're gaining six life this time instead of four, which was the protection one. So now if it has double strike and trample, this also changes. So if I have a six, six double strike trample, and you have a two, two indestructible, I assign two to the creature that would be lethal.

Rachel Weeks
Four tramples. As per the usual, when you go. To your second strike, you look, this creature has lethal damage already assigned to it, which means you don't have to assign any additional damage. This time, six tramples over. So ten damage tramples over, as opposed to the eight when that creature had protection.

Murph
So it works differently between indestructible and protection. So it is very important to know what one thing has versus the other when you're dealing with these keywords. Okay, one more, one more. Now it has trample, double strike, and deathtouch. This is very strange.

Rachel Weeks
It is as expected. You only have to assign one that would be lethal damage to trample over. So you five tramples over, and then on the second strike, it looks. It sees there's a creature there with one damage marked on it that's not lethal damage. So it has to assign a second point of damage this time.

So five tramples over it the second time. Yeah. This one's also kind of weird and bizarre and just kind of has to do with how Deathtouch works. Yeah, I mean, it's because it doesn't remember that it was Deathtouch damage that was assigned to it at this time, even though it was lethal at the time when you assigned one, when you look at the creature the second time, it was like, what? I only took one.

Murph
Exactly. So you have to reassign one even though you've technically already assigned lethal damage to that creature. Yeah. It's just a quirk of how Deathtouch ends up working with trample. Really strong and indestructible anyway, so that's a lot of super heavy stuff, but might save your life.

Rachel Weeks
Might save your life at some point. It might just help you resolve a combat a little bit better. This kind of stuff comes up so much more in commander than it does in any other things, because our format loves to pile keywords onto individual creatures. And when you start mixing and matching, it's really important to know how each keyword works individually, so that when they start glomming together, all of this stuff can sort of be pieced out. Yeah.

Murph
So next up, let's talk about a somewhat more recent mechanic. I guess not necessarily super recent, but more recent in its implementation. Yeah, I goad. Yes, goad. I forgot that goad was in conspiracy.

Rachel Weeks
Yeah, it's like pretty old. Goat, don't say conspiracy is old. It's pretty old. I think it was. It conspiracy two take the crown is.

When they started it, maybe. I'm not sure. I think it was conspiracy, too. That was 2016. That was eight years ago.

Murph
Don't make me feel old, Rachel. It's pretty old. That's pretty old. So it's been around for quite a long time. At the very least eight years.

Rachel Weeks
And that whole eight years, it has been a difficult to understand mechanic. And I think in part it's because it has two requirements. Yeah. The requirements are a go to creature attacks each combat if able, and attacks a player other than the controller of whatever it is if able. So that's two different requirements assigned to a single creature.

First, you must attack each combat if able. Second, not me or my. Not me or other stuff. It has to be a player other than me. So that means that you can't attack a planeswalker.

You can't attack a battle. You have to attack a player other than the goder. Yeah. So the way that goad functions is you must try to satisfy as many conditions as you possibly can with the goaded thing. So you try to attack each combat if able.

Murph
You must do that if you can. And if it's, say, down to one v. One, well, the creature must attack, but it can't satisfy that second condition. That's fine. It'll satisfy whatever condition it can, which is it must attack.

Rachel Weeks
Yeah. It's like if a modal spell, one of the target's fizzles, the rest will still try and do as much as it possibly can. Yeah. And that's why go decks oftentimes have a hard time closing games out, is because they're like, well, I can goad things. All it does is make them attack me.

Yeah. At the end of the game, it gets tricky. There are some interesting sort of corner cases about goad. Goaded creatures remain goaded until the goder's next turn. So it's every single combat that they attack for until their next turn.

So if the goder somehow skips their turn, like with a cronotog or something, that creature will remain goaded because their turn doesn't happen. Eater of days or whatever. Yeah. That creature is still angry and still can't attack the. How funny would that be?

Murph
To make a deck where you try to skip your turn, and that's the whole point of it. And so you just try to goad as much stuff as possible, cause as much chaos, and then do something where you phase out with Dafari's protection and then skip all the turns you possibly can. Ad has that deck. Are you serious? Yeah.

I must see this. It's mono blue. It's the siren. This is, like, simultaneously the coolest thing and also probably the most miserable thing ever. So funny.

Rachel Weeks
It's really powerful deck, but yeah. Is it? Actually, it's a lot of mana, but it's like, when it gets to that situation, there's not a whole lot you can do. You have no idea how to eliminate. The other two players before you can start attacking ad.

So it's wild. That's funny. But, yeah, you can use chronotag and stuff to skip your turn and just keep those things going. Obviously, you skip your turn. That's not great, but probably not the.

Murph
Best thing to do. People are dying in the meantime. It's pretty cool. One more thing. Once a creature is goaded by a player, them goading that same creature multiple times does not add any additional requirements.

Rachel Weeks
Goad doesn't. It doesn't add a time where it's like, you're goaded for this turn and the next turn and the next. That's not how it works. For one turn, it wears off on your untap. Okay, so that's all just the stuff about goad.

What happens when you start combining goad with combat restrictions, specifically stuff like ghostly prison? Yeah. This is one that we've both run into people saying, oh, well, if there's a ghostly prison on board, what you can do is if your creature is goaded, then you can attack into the ghostly prison player. But then the ghostly prison says, oh, actually not. You have.

Murph
You can't attack me because you have to pay, too. And so then you kind of satisfied. The goad stipulations, but you can't cause the ghostly prison set. Yeah, we're gonna settle this once and for all. That is not how it works.

You can't do that. That is not how it works. Stop trying to tell your playgroup that you can do that. Cause you can't. So you also can't force them to pay for a ghostly prisoner.

Rachel Weeks
So it says specifically in the goad rules, it says if there's a cost to attack with a goaded creature, its controller doesn't have to pay that cost. And if they don't, the creature doesn't have to attack. But if there's an option to attack that doesn't have a cost associated with it, it still has to attack. Yeah. So if there's any option, it still wants to satisfy at least one of those stipulations that goad put on it.

Murph
And it's gotta be the can attack because the other one is kind of necessitates that you attack. So let's say that is a three player game. Yeah. Okay. It's a three player game.

Rachel Weeks
There's the goder, there's the goaded, and then there's a player with a ghostly prison. Okay, so where the goaded players attack, they go to attack, and they attack the ghostly prison player. Now, ghostly prison says, hey, don't attack me unless you pay two. And they don't pay two. What happens there?

Murph
Well, you can't really do that. The game just rewinds to a point where it says, no, no, no, that's not good. You have to attack somebody. Back up there. Back up.

Rachel Weeks
You had to attack. It said. So then at that point, the only thing that you can do, unless you want to pay for the ghostly prison, obviously you can, but you have to attack because that's one of the conditions that it can satisfy. So then you just can't attack the person who ended up goading your creature. Because you cannot satisfy that second clause, the don't attack the goder.

You have to attack a player. It's fine. I can do that. At the very least, we'll get rid of that. You don't have to do that one, but you still have to attack.

So you can either attack the goder or you could attack a battle or a planeswalker, because all of that is not relevant anymore. But you still do have to attack if there's one without a cost. Yeah, that's another good point that I think we glanced by a little bit. You cannot say, oh, well, my creature is goaded. I don't want to attack into anybody.

Murph
I'll just attack this planeswalker instead. You cannot do that. Nope. It specifies that you have to attack a player other than the goaded goder player. Yep.

And planeswalkers are not players, if you're. Down to it, basically behaves as if that player isn't there. It looks at the ghostly prison and says that says, I can't attack them. And then. So that's that.

I can't. So I'm not gonna. I can't attack them. Yeah. So I'm gonna attack you because I can't do that.

Rachel Weeks
So it doesn't work that way. Sorry. If you're playing against goat, if you're playing goat and there's a ghostly prison on the table, they could come at you. They could come at planeswalkers, that kind of stuff, but you are still forcing them to attack. I often see ghostly prisons and propagandas in the same deck as goad decks, which is weird to me.

It sort of makes all your goad stuff worse and your prisons worse. Yeah. It just doesn't really do anything. So either dedicate all your slots to goading or dedicate your slots to prisons. They're not.

I don't think they work very well together. Yeah, good point. So what happens if there's multiple goders at the table? Yeah, that starts getting a little bit more complicated as well. And with the rise of more and more cards that are printed that have goad on them or can goad things, this is something that starts to become a little bit more common, where you're like, oh, what's the biggest thing on the board?

Murph
That thing. I'm gonna goad it. And then it goes to the next player, and they're like, I gotta go to two. I'm gonna go to two. I go to two.

Rachel Weeks
Great idea. Yep. So let's talk about this. Let's say the game is down to three players. Once again, it's Goder A, Goeder B, and the goaded, who has a creature that's been goaded by two players.

So now, that creature, the goaded creature, has four requirements of it. It must attack, and it must attack a player other than a, and it must attack, and it must attack a player other than b. So four requirements of it. Now, it has to try and satisfy as many of those requirements as it possibly can. The two must attacks are easy.

We can handle those. But that means it either has to attack player a or it has to attack player b. It can make that choice, but it doesn't get the option of attacking a battle or a planeswalker, because that doesn't meet three of the four qualifications. It only meets two. Yeah.

Murph
Very strange. Oh, goad. Oh, boy. It's so complicated. And it.

Rachel Weeks
We found so many strange use cases that I just wanted to keep talking about it because this is a new mechanic and people seem to really, really like it. New. It's a newly popularized mechanic. Yeah, it's gotten a lot more support recently. Now it's a lot more in the limelight.

I want to talk about goading static effects. Something like a mocking doppelganger. It's a clone that says other creatures with the same name as this creature are goaded. If a player plays that clone and clones like that creature, or say they name a token and they goad multiple tokens, if anybody else gains control of this mocking doppelganger copy, then it does shift the goat. It doesn't stay locked on that player because they created the initial effect for some reason.

Murph
Yeah, because that is a static effect, and so the static effect will just transfer to whatever the new controller is. The new controller is now the king. All of the tokens can come at the player who played the monster. Same with Baeloth. Baritol does exactly the same type of thing.

It's a static ability of just things are goaded. If bailoth changes controllers, then things that aren't baeloth's controller are goaded. This next one blew my mind. Yeah. So remember how we said, oh, ghostly prison, it can never force you to pay for it in order to attack?

Rachel Weeks
Well, unless there's some sort of rule. Turns out. So loyal Pegasus and many other creatures have a stipulation that says loyal Pegasus can't attack or block alone. So what if you goad that? If somebody goads a loyal Pegasus that says, but I can't attack or block alone, so I don't have to attack.

Right. Because if I just don't attack with anything else, then it can't attack. Yeah. And in magic, can't pretty much always trumps can. Well, goad asks it to be able to fulfill as many of these things as possible.

So if you have a creature that is able to attack and your loyal Pegasus is goaded, you have to attack with both. Yeah, because loyal Pegasus cannot attack alone. But technically it can attack. It just must fulfill another requirement in order to do so. Yeah.

So weird that loyal Pegasus is so mad it is bringing other creatures into battle with it. No, we're going. Yeah. Now, keep in mind that that other creature is not necessarily goaded. So you can send that wherever you want, but it must also attack.

Yep. So you can't use an attacking limitation that you can meet as an excuse to not attack. Yeah, unless that thing is a cost, and then that you can't make them pay costs. Yeah. And I think that's connected to the fact that you just can't force someone to produce mana.

Murph
Yeah, you can't. Like, the game doesn't allow you to force another player to tap their lens to add mana to their mana pool, which is probably an old rule actually associated with mana burn. There are effects that do that, that say target player taps all their mana or draws all mana from their mana pool and stuff like that. But, yeah, they don't really do that. It's.

I think it's hurting. And look, I know you look at loyal Pegasus and you're like, yeah, but who plays that card? I do. What do you play loyal Pegasus in, Rachel? It's in the pony deck.

It's in the pony deck. It's a one man, two one flyer. That's actually really good. Then you can attack with multiple ponies together. Friendship is magic or something.

Rachel Weeks
It is. I wanted to talk about a slightly more relevant situation. Like, a card that more people play and portrays is the best example of an attacking limitation that I could think of. There's a number of cards that do this, but portraiser is an orc pirate. Three red.

Red. It says whenever portrays deals combat damage to a player, untap each creature you control. After this combat phase, there is an additional combat phase, and then it says portrays can't attack a player. It has already attacked this turn. So if you goad a portraiser, there's four players in the game.

You have the portraiser, and I've goaded it. Now you have to attack with that portraiser, and you have to attack Josh or Jimmy. And then if that connects, you have to attack with it again, and you have to attack j whoever you didn't attack that time. Okay, tracking so far. And then if it hits that player, it still has to attack, and it can't attack those two players.

So now it's coming at me. Who goaded it? You just can't send it at me the first or second time because it can meet the qualifications for the first two. Once again, it is only. It is trying to fulfill as many requirements as it can, and if it can only fulfill one because all its other options are exhausted, so be it.

Murph
It'll take what it can get. Exactly. He's like, I'm doing what I can. And if you have a poor razor that survives that whole time, that's pretty sweet. Good job.

One specific card we did want to call out is Carter Doomskurd. Oh, yeah, he's different. He's different. Everyone says, oh, I'm gonna play Carter, and I'm gonna goad all your stuff. Okay, well, Carter is not technically goad.

It functions differently. So Carter says, until your next turn, when it enters the battlefield, creatures, your opponent's control, attack each combat if able, and attack a player other than you if able. So you're not goading things. You're not saying everything that's on the battlefield right now. I'm going to goad them.

You're just saying which. There are cards that do that. Yeah. Disrupts decorum. Disrupt decorum.

Rachel Weeks
Goads all creatures. Yeah. So that'll only see anything that's on the battlefield. These are now all goaded. If you play a new creature that has haste, first main phase, for example.

Not goaded. That's not goaded. Whereas with Carter, it just says that until your next turn, this is an effect that is in, that is happening, and that effect is creatures have to attack. So if you play a creature with haste in your first main phase, now it must attack according to Carter's rules. Yeah.

If an opponent has a board of creatures and you cast a disrupt decorum and they play a crater hoof, all of the creatures that were on the board before then can't attack you. But crater hoof can. Yeah. If you play a card, or none of those creatures can attack you. Even though the crater hoof wasn't there when he came down.

Murph
Yeah. So that's one of the reasons why carter is so powerful. And it also isn't a thing that can be removed. Like, once it happens, even if he leaves. Even if he leaves, he enters the battlefield, his trigger happens.

That says, this is the thing that is going to take effect all the way until my next turn. Deal with it. Yeah. Doom scourge indeed. Yeah.

Very powerful, very hard to get around that ability. So if people are blinking this, if people are somehow killing it and bringing it back. Reanimating it. Reanimating it. It's a very, very tricky card to get around.

Rachel Weeks
Yep. Is it time? It's time. We've been putting it off for so long, but now we're gonna talk about the one, the only bandaid banding. So banding, all right, is ability.

Murph
Let me take a deep breath and prepare myself mentally. Banding is a key word that I was just like, you know what? I don't need to know that. Yeah. I don't need to know it.

Rachel Weeks
And I never learned it. And then I played against Damon's werewolf deck and he had a one one wolf. With banding, you're like, I don't know. And that little jerk is really hard to attack into. Yeah.

And we're gonna explain why. So Bandine is famously just one of the most complicated mechanics in magic. The reminder text, quote unquote, is very, very long. So we're gonna break it down. Yeah.

Murph
So banding. Any creatures with banding and up to one without can attack in a band. Bands are blocked as a group. If any creatures with banding you control are blocking or being blocked by a creature, you divide that creature's combat damage, not its controller. Among any of the creatures it's been blocked by or is blocking.

Rachel Weeks
What? So, tldr, you're just taking, like, a couple creatures and you're banding them together. They're teaming up, usually little ones. Little ones most of the time, in order to do more damage, more or less. They're, like, combining their power.

Murph
They're combining their toughness in order to get through, baby. I want to split this up into. Let's just talk about what happens if you attack in a band first. Yeah. So, first of all, if you attack as a band, honestly, it's pretty bad.

It's pretty bad. It's not that great, because if one thing has evasion and you band it with something that doesn't have a vision. Well, as long as they can legally block one of them, they can legally block the whole band, which stinks. Yeah. It gets rid of one of White's best qualities, which is flying.

Rachel Weeks
Right. It's like if there's one. One soldier in a band, he brings down the whole group. Yeah. Now, granted, if you have a flying creature with banding and then another flying creature and you band those together, then the whole thing more or less has flying.

Yeah. But, yeah. I was like, why? Why is that good? Why would you attack in a band?

And it's mostly so you have, like, a more threatening creature in combat. So your opponent can't just pick off one of your little things. Like, if you have a one one with banding and a two two, and your opponent has a three three. Normally, if you have just a regular one one, it's not a very good attack. There are three threes holding back both your one one and your two two.

But because that one one has banding, you could band them together and attack functionally as a three three. But what really makes banding special is the fact that you can divvy up all the combat damage as you see fit. Yep. So back to our example. Of you attacking as a band with a one one creature and a two two creature.

Murph
Say your opponent blocks with a three three. Normally, all of these creatures would trade regardless of how you've ordered the blockers. However, because of banding, you can choose to have the three three deal all of its damage to only the one one. Yeah, or the tutu, if you want. Whatever is most advantageous to you.

So suddenly, it is now no longer a. You are trading that two for one. It is a one for one, and they have the bigger creature, and they. Kill your worst creature rather than your better creature rather than they kill whatever. Creature you want them to or you would rather have them do.

Rachel Weeks
Yeah. Now, that being said, I don't know if banding is all that useful in commander. When it comes to attacking, it'll help you get a little bit of chip damage in here and there, but I don't know if I'd really dedicate a whole slot in trying to make something a better attacker with banding, I just use unblockable or flying or something like that. So I don't see banding as an aggressive keyword coming into play that often. Yeah.

Murph
Now, the funky thing about banding, like we said, is that it functions a little bit different from attacking and blocking because. Much better. Because when it comes to blocking, well, you can already double block, triple block, quadruple block, however many things you want. They don't have to be in a band. They don't have to be in a band.

So what is the benefit that you get of blocking with something that has banding? Well, remember how we said earlier that the attacker assigns the order of blockers for combat? If you block with the creature with banding, suddenly you, the defender, gets to assign order of blockers for combat. Plus you get that previous benefit of being able to split up the damage however you want. So let's say this situation is flipped.

Rachel Weeks
Your opponent has a three three u of a one one and a one one with banding and a two two. Yeah. Now it's a little bit awkward to attack and two with their three three, because you attack with a three three, they block with the one one with banding and the two two in a band, and your two creatures deal damage to theirs. And then you can choose to take all three damage dealt by that three three and deal it to the one one with banding. Or if you have a two two creature with banding and a three three, for example, they can attack into you.

You can assign one damage to your two two with banding. And two, damage to your three three. Now, neither of your creatures die, and. The three three does tough stuff for your opponent, so it makes you very, very difficult to attack into. Even if it's, like you said, just a little one one with banding.

Yeah, I mean, this is the situation that was so frustrating about this one. One banding creature is, you know, that, like, even if you're gonna make a trade, you're trading for this one one with banding. Banding. That's so bad. Terrible.

It might as well have had death touch so bad to attack into that. We were like, we can't get past this wolf. Why? And it's very interesting because that banding ability applies even if the creature isn't in a band.

If you get attacked with a four four with trample, and you block with a one one with banding, you can assign all four damage to that banding creature and none of it will trample over. Yeah, they could attack with a blight. Steel colossus, and that banding creature is going under the bus for all that infect damage. You take no infect damage and you lose a banding creature. You could even band with another creature, have all the infect damage dealt to the other creature, and keep your banding creature for next attack.

Murph
Yeah, that's why I like cards. Like helm of Chatsuk, I think it is. It's a one man artifact. One. And tap it and target creature.

You control gains banding until end of turn. So you can just throw that on whatever creature you want, whatever you think is going to benefit you the most. Give that token banding, it can soak up a lot of damage. And really all you have to do is keep that one mana open, because all you have to do is threaten it. And then people are like, assuming they know how banding works, which you definitely will after watching this episode, they'll look at that and think, oh, well, I don't think I can make very profitable attacks into you if you activate that helm, so I'm not going to do so.

And so then you're not actually spending any mana. You're not even technically giving your creatures banding, you're just doing the threat of it. It's really bizarre. I mean, you can turn this one one with banding into such a defensive threat. Like, if you're in just mono white, or let's say you're in, like, white and blue, and your creatures are very small, you don't have a lot of ways to threaten to have a rattlesnake.

Rachel Weeks
You don't have deathtouch. You don't really have very big creatures. Most of the time you're just in chump block mode. Yeah. In those kinds of decks, banding means you are a super chump, basically.

Murph
Banding super chump is gonna be the name of my next fantasy football team name.

Rachel Weeks
And you know what's funny is I was thinking about this. I was like, yeah, but who's ever gonna need this? Yeah, I'm playing Mesa Pegasus in my. Pony deck, which has banding. I need to know how this works.

I need to know how the loyal Pegasus works just in case, so I can play my pony deck optimally. So now, hopefully, if you ever run into Rachel and you say, hey, Rachel, I really want to play your pony deck. I think it's super neat, it's super cool. There's a lot of weird roll stuff. You will be prepared, at least for mesa pegs.

Well, yeah, I think the conclusion on banding is maybe look at some banding creatures as blockers. Try to leave it more on defense. It's really cool with death touchers because you can have your one one banding and a one one deathtouch snake or something, and you can deal the deathtouch damage and kill the thing and keep your deathtoucher. Just trade it for the banding creature. So annoying.

Nobody wants to attack into those two one ones. I guess they probably don't block attack into you if you have a one one death test. Anyway, again, it's just the threat of it that really keeps people away. Very. And again, how banding works.

Murph
People are going to be like, I don't want to attack into this. I don't know. Something bad is going to happen. There's a reason that has banding. All right, those are the rules that we're going to cover in this episode.

Rachel Weeks
We've talked a lot about combat and all of the intricacies of combat to the listeners. What is the most complicated combat that you've ever had to resolve in a commander game, and how did you solve it? Did you walk through all the steps piece by piece, or did you. Was it all just a mess and everybody scooped to it? I think the most recent one that we did required, like, I had to spend an overrun to buff Eric's board because only his board had trample to kill Jimmy because Jimmy was the problem.

But Jimmy had pump effects on board. Oh, wow. And it was because we knew all of the steps and all the ways to walk through it, but it made everything a whole lot more simple. As opposed to when things needed to get activated to give everybody the optimal shot at winning that combat. You can literally go through things literally step by step, not phase by phase, not phase by phase, and that will just clean up your combat steps.

Murph
Combat phases. So good at this, Rachel. We are professionals. So much better. If you want to pick up any creatures with banding, go over to cardkingdom.com dot slash command.

Rachel Weeks
They've got a huge selection of magic cards, even some of the weird old ones. If you need to pick up a mesa Pegasus or even a loyal Pegasus, to build the most confusing pony deck that you've ever built. Card Kingdom has a huge selection of ponies and other cards, I guess for when you're building your next deck or when you're building a cube or you're bolstering your collection or even just picking up some of the cool new cards. Over at Thunder Junction, you can always trust card Kingdom to have a ton of those cards in one location. They're gonna put it in one safe package and it'll be shipped right to your doorstep.

No need to chase a bunch of envelopes through the mail and check your history and be like, did I order that or did I not? I always hate forgetting to add my commander. And then I'm like, I got my whole deck. I forgot my commander. No, it's so much easier when you can just get a ton of the cards in one place and then as soon as it arrives, you can sleeve up your deck and start playing.

Plus you can support the show without spending any extra over on carterkingdom.com command. Yep, and you can use ultra pro products. I don't think they have anything with art on it that has banding creatures on it because those are all very old and they haven't used banding since fifth edition. But if you want to get some. Maybe a goad commander.

Murph
Yeah, a goad commander. Something with trample, maybe tons of cool art. They got the license way wizards, they've done it for like the past like 1520 years, something like that. To be able to produce the coolest playmats, coolest sleeves, whatever it is that has all that awesome art on it. Ultrapro.com command is the best place to go to find those things on sale.

You can go to your LG's whenever you're buying from there or from ultrapro.com command, you are supporting the show and protecting your cards at the same time and making everything in your play area look awesome. Yeah. Ultapro.com command we usually do something cool outside the world of magic, but I think we're gonna take a moment to do something cool inside the world of magic. Yeah, we're cheating a little bit. We just like magic.

What's a magic podcast? Let's talk about magic a little bit longer. Look, we've been playing a game at the office. It's brand new on the commander's Herald website, and it's a game called Spelify. Spelify is basically like Hangman if it was like a million blanks and the blanks were a magic card.

Yeah, it's like Hangman. Wordle ish. Yeah, not exactly. So you get a card and it's got a ton of blanks. It tells you what the card type is.

Rachel Weeks
It usually tells you what color it is. Yeah. It'll have, like, the correct color of the border and everything. Yeah. And then it'll give you, like, a certain number of blanks in where the name is and the power and toughness and all of that.

And then you just guess letters until you know what card it is. And it's a ton of fun. If you have a deep knowledge of magic cards, then it's like a real brain teaser. If you don't, they're more accessible cards. There's certainly commander cards.

There's stuff that you're. If you play commander regularly, you have a shot of knowing. So it's not like, you know, you have to guess Mesa Pegasus and know that it has flying. But if there ever is mesa Pegasus. You'Ll know then what you're gonna know.

You're gonna know. Yeah. There was one yesterday that I got stumped on. Today's I did real good at. I got it six.

Pretty good. Yeah, I'm pretty proud of that one. If you're crazy like me, you can stare at the blanks until you know what card it is and just guess words and count blanks. I don't care enough about my score. To zeros every day, baby.

Just like, great at spellify. R puts it in, thinks about it for a half second. E puts it in, thinks about it for. It's like once I start getting, like, halfway through, then I'll start, like, being like, all right, I should have enough information that I can start to piece together some of the words and figure this all out. I'm counting the number of blanks in whenever.

Murph
So you're like, that's definitely whenever. I haven't. That's whenever I haven't put in any single one of the enters the battlefield. No. Whenever a creature.

Rachel Weeks
No. A permanent? Permanent? Yeah, it's a ton of fun we've been playing over at the office. Check it out.

If you're as into magic cards as we are, before we go, we got to say a big thank you to our amazing team here at the command zone. Thank you to Damon Lentz, Eric Lump, Megan Yip, Girav Galadi, Jordan Pritchen, Jamie Block, Arthur Medicroft, Manson Lung, Jake boss, Sam Waldo, Evan Lindbergh, Katie Coleman Trafford, Josh Lee Kwa, Jimmy Wong, and of course, to our resident rules expert, Josh Murphy for talking about banding with me. And lots of other complicated rules interactions. I always love these rules episodes. They're tons of fun.

Murph
Let us know if you enjoyed it down in the comments below or if you hated it and you're like, why is magic rules the way that it is? I don't know. I didn't make them. We're just trying to figure them out. We're doing our best.

We're doing our best. We're doing our best. We had a funny interaction in this episode where we were talking about all the different keywords and how complicated they were, and Murph goes, you know, we should include banding. And I was like, well, you'll notice I've done a lot of research on banding. Yep, we hope you enjoyed it.

Rachel Weeks
We'll see you next time. Bye.

Murph
Thank you for your attention. For further inquiries, send an email to commandcastocketjump.com or ask us on on Twitter and Joshle kwai. See you later, alligator. Greetings, Hugh Max.

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Level Up Your Combat Phase | 607

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction to Combat

2: Keywords and Combat

3: Combat Phase Steps

4: Common Misconceptions

Actionable Advice

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Transcript