Hello, and welcome to Test of Faith week, where I’ll be focusing on Test of Faith, an intriguing common recently brought back by Modern Masters. It looks fairly innocent at first, but it can be deceptively confusing.

What does Test of Faith do? In short, it sets up a small damage prevention shield around a creature. It prevents up to three points of damage that would be dealt to the creature, and for each damage that’s prevented this way, you put a +1/+1 counter on the creature.

What if the creature isn’t dealt three damage at the same time? What if it’s dealt damage over the course of the turn? The damage prevention shield that the Faith makes lasts until one of two things happens: the shield has been used up (as in, three damage has been prevented), or the turn ends. If the creature is only dealt two damage, then part of that shield is still there, waiting for one more damage to be dealt to it or for the turn to end.

Let’s look at example. Let’s say I have an innocent Bear Cub on the battlefield, and you have a Murderous Redcap with no counters on it. You attack with your Redcap, and I block with my innocent Bear Cub and cast Test of Faith on my Bear Cub. We move on to damage, and the two damage the Redcap would deal to my Cub is prevented, and my Cub gets two +1/+1 counters put on it. The Redcap dies and it returns.

The Redcap could target the Bear Cub with its enter the battlefield ability, but the Bear Cub still has part of that damage prevention shield it got from the Test of Faith protecting it. If you tried to deal one more damage to the Cub with the trigger, the one damage will be prevented and the Cub will get another +1/+1 counter.

So remember, the damage prevention shield will be there, protecting the creature until three damage has been prevented, even if that three damage is being dealt at different points in the turn.

Today’s Rules Tip written by Nathan Long