If you’ve never faced an Elderscale Wurm while you control a 28/28 fatty, let me tell you: it’s frustrating! Some effects, such as the Circles of Protection, prevent damage from ever occuring. Effects such as these use the word ʺpreventʺ in their rules text, making them easy to identify. Other effects, such as those you find on Worship and Elderscale Wurm, use the word ʺinsteadʺ and replace the end result of damage being dealt (e.g., if the player with the Wurm is at 9 life and is attacked by a 4/4 creature, that player will take a full 4 damage, but will end up at 7 life regardless).

While both types of effect are very helpful to keep you (or your opponent) alive, those in the latter category–like Elderscale Wurm–are particularly interesting for a number of reasons:

• First, because the damage is not prevented, you can still use the planeswalker rules to allow direct damage spells to kill planeswalkers. Go ahead and use Chandra’s Fury to kill Jace, Memory Adept; it works!
• Second, abilities that trigger when damage is dealt (such as the +1/+1 ability on Heirs of Stromkirk or any of the Swords) will still trigger. The damage is not prevented and it’s not reduced to zero, so the damage is still considered dealt and the effect will happen. This is also true for things like infect or lifelink, which have other results from the damage but aren’t triggered abilities.
• Third, because these effects are not preventing damage, you can’t overide them by using effects or abilities (like the one on Malignus) that say some particular damage can’t be prevented.

The good news? Elderscale Wurm doesn’t protect itself. Go ahead and burn it out of the way with your Magmaquake or Volcanic Geyser. Then you can get down to the real business at hand: defeating your opponent!

Today’s Rules Tip written by
David Hibbs, Level 3 judge from League City, TX