Magic: The Gathering Foundations Update Bulletin
Hello, everyone!
Magic: The Gathering Foundations brings with it some housekeeping in the rules and card-text arena. There were some non-functional updates to card templates, as well as the removal of something called "damage assignment order" from the declare blockers step.
Let's dive into the changes!
Magic: The Gathering Foundations Comprehensive Rules Changes
This is a summary of the rule changes planned to come to Magic with the release of Magic: The Gathering Foundations. The official rules can be found on our rules page. If there should be a discrepancy between this summary and the official rules, the official rules take precedence.
New and Updated Rules
Damage Assignment Order
509.2–3, Various References Throughout
We've removed a complex concept known as "combat damage assignment order" from the game. This means that now, in the combat damage step, an attacking creature's controller can divide that creature's combat damage as they choose among all the creatures blocking it. For example, if an attacking 3/3 creature has two creatures blocking it, the 3/3 creature's controller can assign all 3 damage to either of the two blockers, or they can assign 2 damage to one blocker and 1 damage to the other. It doesn't matter what the toughness of either blocking creature is or whether that amount of damage is enough to kill either of them. (Note that this doesn't change how trample works. You still need to assign lethal damage to all blockers before trampling over them.) For many players, this matches their intuition about how combat damage should work, and it matches how most players already communicate about combat damage outside of some very specific situations.
How is this different?
Here, I'll talk about some nuts-and-bolts details of the change. If you're new to Magic or not concerned about rules that don't apply anymore, I suggest skipping down to the "Why did we change it?" section below.
Combat damage assignment used to be determined through a rather complicated multistep process. Previously, if one or more creatures were assigned to block an attacking creature, that creature's controller assigned an order to the creatures that blocked it. This happened during the declare blockers step, well before any combat damage was actually assigned. Then, during the combat damage step, the attacking creature had to assign its damage to the first creature in that order—damage couldn't be assigned to the second creature until lethal damage had been assigned to the first. Similarly, damage couldn't be assigned to a third creature in that order until lethal damage had been assigned to the second. And so on. In addition, in rare situations where a single creature blocked multiple attacking creatures, the defending player had to follow these same steps, assigning an order to the blocked creatures which would later govern how the blocking creature's damage was assigned. There were also some rules covering other weird cases, such as where in the damage assignment order you put a token created by
With the new rules, players don't make any decisions about assigning combat damage during the declare blockers step. Instead, once the combat damage step begins, each attacking creature assigns combat damage among all creatures blocking it, divided as its controller sees fit at that time. Lethal damage has no bearing on how players may assign combat damage (with the sole exception being that an attacking creature with trample still needs to assign lethal damage to all blockers before it can trample over).
Why did we change it?
Despite applying, technically, to all combats that involve blocking creatures, damage assignment order was relevant only in a small fraction of combat interactions. Even in those cases, it usually wasn't discussed by players unless the defending player needed to know the order to best use a potential combat trick. This means that players were unlikely to ever learn about damage assignment order until something occurred in game that made it relevant, and that was almost always when they were about to get blown out by their opponent knowing the rules they didn't. Even worse, the opponent asking makes it seem like there is a clear right answer that you might get wrong. While we want players to feel rewarded for understanding complex rules interactions, we don't want players to walk themselves into traps because they didn't know something obscure about the game's basic turn structure. We're, of course, aware that this shifts some amount of advantage from the blocker to the attacker in double-blocking situations, but we've been playtesting with these new rules for quite a while now, and we're confident that it's an overall better Magic experience which offers plenty of strategic choices for both players.
Other Rules Changes
508.4a–b
While vetting the combat rules for the above change, we noticed that rule 508.4a was slightly incomplete. This is the rule that tells you what happens if an effect attempts to put a creature onto the battlefield attacking a player or permanent that can't currently be attacked (such as a player who has left the game). It didn't explicitly cover the cases where an effect is trying to put a creature onto the battlefield attacking a planeswalker that is no longer controlled by a defending player or a battle that is no longer protected by a defending player. Now it covers them. Like the rest of these cases, that creature still enters the battlefield but isn't considered an attacking creature. Rule 508.4b is about an effect that causes a creature already on the battlefield to be attacking a certain player or permanent, and it received a similar update.
611.2b
This is the rule that tells you how to handle effects that have a duration of "for as long as …" Normally, these cases are pretty straightforward—if the duration never starts, or if it ends before the effect would be applied, the effect isn't applied. For example, if you cast
700.9
This is the rule that defines what "modified" means. When this mechanic was introduced, only creatures could be considered modified, and this rule reflected that. However, this didn't quite match the design intent for all cards; Modern Horizons 3's
Magic: The Gathering Foundations Oracle Changes
As you've likely already seen on many Magic: The Gathering Foundations cards, we're making a clarity-focused change to card templating: we're cutting down on the usage of card names within rules text, replacing them with phrases like "this creature," "this Equipment," "this card," and so on. There are a few exceptions, with legendary permanents being the most obvious one—it's important to keep the names of legendary permanents in their text boxes because they're just so much fun to read and say! That said, you won't see this change in the Oracle text of previously released cards quite yet; you can expect to see past cards updated this way starting with the release of Aetherdrift.
Let's move on to changes we did actually make in Oracle with this release!
Clarity Update: Top or Bottom
Effects that instruct players to put cards on the top or bottom of their library can create some confusion about which player makes the choice of top or bottom. We've updated the templates of several cards to make it much easier to understand who's picking between those options. This change is non-functional.
Old text:
Target creature's owner puts it on the top or bottom of their library.
New text:
Target creature's owner puts it on their choice of the top or bottom of their library.
Clarity Update: Sacrificing
In a similar vein, effects that instruct players to sacrifice permanents can cause confusion about who's choosing what will be sacrificed. We've updated the templates of several cards to eliminate this confusion. This change is non-functional. For example, let's go all the way back to Odyssey and look at one of my favorite cards,
Old text:
Each player sacrifices a creature.
New text:
Each player sacrifices a creature of their choice.
Minthara, Merciless Soul
Minthara's first ability needs a little clean-up. She has ward {X}, and X is defined by how many experience counters her controller has. However, since ward often provides an instruction to the opponent who caused the ability to trigger (such as with "Ward—Discard a card"), the word "you" is ambiguous here; it implies that perhaps X is based on how many experience counters the player paying the ward cost has. Merciless as she is, Minthara likely resents this implication, and with that in mind, we've made things a bit clearer about whose experience is relevant.
Old text:
Ward {X}, where X is the number of experience counters you have.
At the beginning of your end step, if a permanent you controlled left the battlefield this turn, you get an experience counter.
Creatures you control get +1/+0 for each experience counter you have.
New text:
Minthara has ward {X}, where X is the number of experience counters you have.
At the beginning of your end step, if a permanent you controlled left the battlefield this turn, you get an experience counter.
Creatures you control get +1/+0 for each experience counter you have.
Rock Jockey and Friends
What, you don't remember
Old text:
You can't cast this spell during your first, second, or third turns of the game.
Flying, vigilance
New text:
You can't cast Serra Avenger during your first, second, or third turns of the game.
Flying, vigilance
That's everything for today's update! You can preorder Magic: The Gathering Foundations Beginner Boxes, Starter Collections, Collector Boosters, and more from your local game store, online retailers like Amazon, and elsewhere Magic products are sold.
