Summary of Attack & Combat Abilities

Vigilance, Reach, Battle Cry, Exalted, First & Double Strike

Mortal Combat!

Now that you’ve finished humming along to the Mortal Kombat theme in your head, let’s talk about abilities that are relevant to creatures in Combat. In particular, let’s look at ones that come up often in standard and modern formats.

Vigilance – How does that work?

• As Daniel Hall explained, vigilance is a keyword ability that modifies the rules for the declare attackers step, specifically making it so that the action of Attacking doesn’t cause a creature with Vigilance to tap.
• Remember, the turn based action of declaring attackers requires a process of choosing creatures to attack, and then tapping those creatures as a result of them Attacking.

How about Reach? What part of combat is this keyword affecting?

• From Josh Ohlendorf, reach means that the creature can block a flying creature. This focuses on what can legally be declared as a blocker, as Flying has a rule stating that it cannot be blocked except by creatures with flying or reach. Blocking Restrictions!

OK, that’s attacking and blocking handled.

How does First Strike and Double Strike work?

• First Strike and Double Strike are static abilities that modify the rules for the combat damage step.
• When you begin the Combat Damage step and have a creature with First Strike or Double Strike on the battlefield, only those creatures will be allowed to assign combat damage.
• After they’ve had their turn, instead of moving to the end of combat step, we then begin another Combat Damage Step.

What if I give a creature First Strike in the second combat damage step? Can that creature not deal damage in this combat? What if I remove the First Strike ability from that creature after the first combat damage step? Can it now have pseudo double strike because it no longer has First Strike?

• During the second combat damage step, any creature that didn’t assign combat damage in the first combat damage step, along with any creatures who currently have double strike will assign damage. Gaining or Losing first strike won’t change whether you can assign damage in the second combat damage step.

How about Exalted? I hear that a lot in Modern, because everyone plays that pesky Noble Hierarch.

• As Michael Miles put it, Exalted is a triggered ability which has a trigger condition of a creature you control attacking alone. Specifically meaning that it’s the only creature being declared as an attacker during combat on your turn.

So in a game of 2HG, does that mean each head can attack with 1 creature, and each gets a bonus?

• No sir! Exalted only triggers from a creature you control attacking alone. Attacking alone means if it’s the only creature declared as an attacker.

What about Battle Cry? Affinity decks seem to love that ability.

• Battle Cry is a triggered ability that says “Whenever this creature attacks, each other attacking creature gets +1/+0 until end of turn”
• Battle Cry has a trigger condition of the creature with Battle Cry being declared as an attacker.

So, what if I control a Noble Hierarch and a Hero of Bladehold, and attack with my Hero of Bladehold? How many bonuses will I get? Does Exalted even trigger?

• In this case, if you declare Hero of Bladehold as the only attacker for your team, that declaration is enough to trigger Exalted on Noble Hierarch. That declaration also triggers Hero of Bladehold’s Battle Cry trigger, AND its trigger to put 2 1/1 soldiers into play. Depending on how you resolve them will change the outcome, however you can strategically resolve the create Soldier tokens first, then the Battle Cry trigger to give each soldier +1/+0 until end of turn, and finally give Hero of Bladehold +1/+1 from the exalted trigger.

Further reading: CR 702 Keyworded abilities

Related article: Evergreen keyworded abilities