Did I miss something about how deathtouch works or did Wizards make a mistake somewhere?
This is from MTGRULES-L automatic digest system, one of the "perks" of being a rules advisor:
So with deathtouch, you can assign the damage any way you want among blocking creatures, but 1 damage isn't lethal damage for the purposes of trample. I could have sworn that Wizards has said differently in the past, particularly in the post on www.wizards.com/magic which explained all the changes for m2010.Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:20:52 -0600
From: Gavin Duggan <genomancer@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Questions about Comprehensive Rules
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Matthew Tang<matthew.c.tang@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> 1) Trample + Deathtouch
> I was told that a creature would only need to be assigned one
> damage and the rest could trample over.
Nope. (I got this one wrong myself at a PTQ this weekend :/). Lethal
damage is always defined as damage equal to the toughness of the
blocking creature, minus previous damage from the same turn. [CR
118.6]
So: A 4/4 beast with deathtouch and trample must assign 2 damage to a
2/2 blocker, and may assign up to 2 damage to the player behind it.
704.5g If a creature has toughness greater than 0, and the total damage marked on it is greater than or equal to its toughness, that creature has been dealt lethal damage and is destroyed. Regeneration can replace this event.
704.5h If a creature has been dealt damage by a source with deathtouch since the last time state-based actions were checked, that creature is destroyed. Regeneration can replace this event.
702.2b A player assigning combat damage from a creature with deathtouch can divide that damage as he or she chooses among any number of creatures blocking or blocked by it. This is an exception to the procedures described in rules 510.1c-d.
So, deathtouch just provides an exception to standard damage assignment rules, but it doesn't fall under the term "lethal damage" which is reserved for damage exceeding toughness.
The Rules-L post is correct, and as far as I know no one ever said anything different. People just "feel" like deathtouch should get around having to deal lethal damage.
“It's possible. But it involves... {checks archives} Nature's Revolt, Opalescence, two Unstable Shapeshifters (one of which started as a Doppelganger), a Tide, an animated land, a creature with Fading, a Silver Wyvern, some way to get a creature into play in response to stuff, some way to get a land into play in response to stuff (a different land from the animated land), and one heck of a Rube Goldberg timing diagram.”
-David DeLaney
Yeah, it's sort of like protection. Even though a blocker may have protection from a creature, a creature with trample can still get damage through as long as it assigns at least as much damage as that creature has toughness. It is kind of strange, but it just comes from that definition of lethal damage being "Damage = toughness".
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