Questions about Trample come up a lot, and I know firsthand that it’s not always terribly intuitive. When my friends and I were first learning Magic, Trample was one of the things that constantly made us shrug and guess. However, those of you who shrug don’t HAVE to guess, because you can just come to this helpful column.

So, with all the flickering effects in Avacyn Restored, it’s pretty likely that some of you have come across the odd scenario where you attack, your opponent blocks, and they Cloudshift their blocker to safety, while your attacker does no damage. This is because when a creature leaves the battlefield, even for a moment, it becomes a new object when it returns. That means it’s no longer part of combat, and not blocking anything… but the attacker was already blocked, so it doesn’t get to hit the player.

Thing is, that doesn’t work ENTIRELY like that once you add trample to the mix. See, with Trample, once you’ve assigned lethal damage to all blockers, any remaining can trample over to the defending player or planeswalker. So, if there ISN’T a blocker by the time you get to damage [like if it’s been killed, removed from combat, or say, Cloudshifted], all of the damage is going straight to the defending player.

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Trevor Nuñez, Level 1 judge from Roswell, NM