Goldnight Castigator looks really good on the first glance – a 4/9 with flying and haste for four mana. At that cost, you know there has to be a drawback, and it’s pretty big one – damage that would be dealt to you or to the Castigator is doubled. Yikes. Luckily, there are ways we can weaken that drawback, by using effects that can prevent damage.
Let’s take a look at Orbs of Warding. One of its abilities is if a creature would deal damage to you, prevent 1 of that damage. So let’s say your opponent attacks you with a 3/3, and you have no blockers (c’mon, there’s no way the Castigator is staying back to block any time soon), and you have Orbs of Warding on the battlefield. When the 3/3 would deal damage to you, we have two replacement effects that want to apply: the Castigator’s ability that wants to double the damage, and the Orb’s ability that wants to prevent 1 of the damage. Since you’re the ‘affected player’ (because you would be dealt the damage), you get to choose the order the replacement effects are applied.
The worse of the two plays is to apply the Castigator’s effect first. That doubles the damage to 6, then we apply the Orbs to reduce the damage by 1, so you end up taking 5 damage from the 3/3.
The better play is to apply the Orb’s effect first. That reduces the damage from 3 to 2, then we double that 2 damage to 4 damage. This way, the 3/3 is only going to deal 4 damage to you.
More than likely, you’re going to want to apply the Orb’s effect first, to decrease the overall damage that would be dealt. And you definitely want to apply the Orbs first if a 1/1 would deal damage to you – the 1 damage is reduced to 0, and then the Castigator’s effect no longer applies since you’re no longer being dealt any damage!
What if you are crazy enough to control TWO Castigators? Well, any damage has to be doubled TWICE, so 1 damage is doubled to 2 and then to 4! So be careful with that. But Each Castigator only doubles damage to itself (not any other creature with the same name), so two of them won’t quadruple damage done to each other… only the damage to your face.
I think we’ve dealt enough damage for today. We’ll see you all again tomorrow.
Today’s Rules Tip written by Nathan Long