#but aside from the trample example the opponent needs to double block in order to use this

[dravidious]

🐸👍

Did you know that in Magic, combat damage isn't dealt automatically? And I don't just mean choosing what order to damage blockers, I mean that according to section 510 of the comprehensive rules, you're technically supposed to choose how to divide your attacker's combat damage among its blockers. Manually. And you have to assign lethal damage to the first blocker in the order you chose before assigning damage to the one after it, and so on, so it doesn't really matter ever because you just kill as many blockers as possible in order.

But today on Arena was the first time I ever manually assigned combat damage. An opponent used this little jerk to steal one of my creatures

And then I attacked with a big creature. They blocked with the Rangers, my stolen creature, and a 1/1, and my attacker had enough power to kill all of them. But I thought "hey, if I kill ONLY the rangers and the 1/1, I'll just get my creature back, right? Can I do that? Is that how damage assignment works?" So I opened the options menu, switched off auto damage assignment, put my stolen creature last in the damage order, and went to the damage step...

And it worked! I was able to assign 0 damage to my stolen creature, and just put the excess on the 1/1! I killed both their creatures and got my creature back unharmed! I bet the opponent was SUPER confused at how they threw my stolen creature at my attacker in a suicide block and my attacker just said "no" and refused to hurt it lol.