Understanding the change in combat with the release of MTG Foundations

Hello, everyone!

This past weekend was really busy in the World of MtG, be it with the announcing of 2025 new sets, or with the world championship brilliantly won for the second time by Javier Dominguez.

Amidst all those news, there was also the announcement of a Rules Change, which will happen upon the release of the new set, Foundations.

Let's understand what exactly is this change?

Whoa, hey, calm down! The sky is definitely not falling on our heads, and this change, in addition to simplifying some things, removes something that honestly happened once every 100+ games!

I will first explain it in “technical” terms, and then go into detail and give some examples to make it clear!

Understanding the change within combat rules

So: the rules change is the REMOVAL of damage assignment order of blockers/attackers. It is a procedure that occurs within the combat phase, only when an attacking creature is blocked by more than one creature (or, in very rare scenarios, when a blocker manages to block multiple attackers).

When this occurs, the attacking player, before receiving priority, needed to determine the order in which the blocking creatures would receive damage - that is, before the damage was even dealt, the attacker already needed to “pre-determine” how they wanted to deal damage to blocking creatures.

It was a step that, as noted by the Rules Manager himself, Matt Tabak, brought unnecessary complexity to combat, and immensely privileged the defending player.

How the new rule works

Now, there is no longer the need to “pre-order” blockers. If the attacking creature is blocked by more than one creature, when the game advances to the combat damage step, the attacking player will freely distribute the damage between the blockers.

That's it! Very simple, isn't it?

Let's give some examples to better understand the implications of this change:

Examples

Scenario 1

You attack with a 3/3 creature with no abilities. Your opponent blocks with one 2/2 creature with no abilities. NOTHING HAS CHANGED HERE. Your creature deals 3 damage and takes 2 damage from the blocker. The 2/2 dies, your 3/3 stays alive with 2 damage.

Scenario 2

You attack with a 4/4 with no abilities. Your opponent blocks with TWO 2/2 creatures with no abilities (let's call them A and B).

Under the current rules, you (the attacker) would place creatures A and B in your desired order to receive damage once the game advances to the combat damage step. However, since there is a step before the damage, your opponent could use a Giant Growth, giving +3/+3 to creature A, which would therefore become a 5/5. Once we get to combat damage, the 5/5 would receive 4 damage from your creature, therefore living, and no damage would be caused to B (since your creature did not have enough damage to “overcome” A's toughness).

Final result: your 4/4 dies, and both of your opponent's 2/2s live.

Under the new rule, the whole part of pre-determining an order ceases to exist. There is still a blockers step, before the combat damage step, for your opponent to cast Giant Growth and turn “A” into a 5/5, but when it comes to damage you can simply deal damage and kill “B” (which is still a 2/2).

Final result: your 4/4 dies, but you can kill one of the opponent's 2/2.

Scenario 3

You attack with a 4/4 with no abilities. Your opponent blocks with a 2/2 with no abilities and a 2/2 with the ability “when ~this dies, draw a card”.

When it comes to damage, let's say you absolutely don't want your opponent to draw an extra card. You can assign all 4 damage to the 2/2 without abilities.

Final result: your 4/4 dies, your opponent's 2/2 with no abilities dies, but the other 2/2 stays alive and your opponent doesn't draw a card.

Scenario 4

You attack with a 4/4 with no abilities. Your opponent blocks with two 2/4 creatures with no abilities.

When combat damage is dealt, instead of assigning your creature's 4 damage to just one of the blockers, you choose to divide 2 damage to each one. After combat, in your second main phase, you cast Pyroclasm, and then kill both the opponent's creatures (since both were 2/4 with 2 damage received in combat). *Final result: your 4/4 dies in combat, but thanks to the 2 damage divided between blockers, your Pyroclasm kills the 2/4s post-combat.”

Conclusion

Let's first address the obvious: YES, the new rule certainly favours the attacking player.

As explained by the Rules Manager, “(...)the ability to 'double block' or sometimes 'entire team block' gives the defending player a lot of strength in many combat scenarios, and this change shifts some of that power back to the attacker.”.

Also, as mentioned, the previous rule of determining a “damage order” is not very intuitive and creates unnecessary complexity in combat rules.

In constructed formats, this change should not make huge differences, as scenarios involving multiple blockers and combat tricks are not frequent.

However, in Limited Formats (Sealed and Draft), this change will certainly affect gameplay, as situations often occur where both sides have several creatures and, under current rules, no one has an incentive to attack, as "multi-blocking" provides quite an edge to the defending player.

In short: the change applied by Wizards aims to make the game more dynamic, removing a non-intuitive part of the rules that greatly incentivized “non-attacking”, in favor of a more intuitive rule that strengthens the attacker, which makes players look to be more active in their games.

And you, what did you think of the change? Do you still have any questions about the rule? Do you also think that Banding might now have a chance to be competitive?

Leave your comment and share with us!