Hi again, and welcome to part two of Test of Faith week. Today, let’s take a look at how Test of Faith works in combat.

You don’t get the counters added to the creature right away. The counters are added as the damage is being prevented. And unless first or double strike is involved, all creatures assign and deal their damage at the same time. This means that in combat, the creature that’s having their Faith being Tested will not get the counters in time to deal extra damage to the creature that blocked it.

Let’s look at an example. I am once again attacking with my innocent Bear Cub. You decide to block with your Deadbridge Goliath. I once again cast Test of Faith on my Bear Cub. So let’s assign and deal damage. The Bear Cub‘s power is 2, so it will assign and deal 2 damage to the Goliath. The Goliath, in return, assigns and deals 5 damage to the Cub. However, due to the damage prevention shield from the , three of the damage that would be dealt to the Cub is prevented, and the Cub gets three +1/+1 counters (although the remaining 2 damage is dealt like normal). So the net result after combat is that we have a 5/5 [card]Bear Cub with two damage marked on it, and we have the 5/5 Goliath also with two damage marked on it.

So what have we learned? We should probably stop fighting Bear Cubs, because someday, that Bear Cub is going to grow up.