Situation: perfect score in RtO and playing my last green node available at that moment. Before the final turn, I had killed 3 enemy creatures. I have two dinos on the board with trample and berserker (Ghalta and Gishath) and it’s my turn. My opponent has two creatures out and is at 12 life. Ghalta attacks and kills the first creature and does some damage to my opponent, but the opponent still lives. Gishath attacks and kills the second creature AND my opponent in the same swing. The game ends and shows that I’ve only killed 3 creatures instead of 5. That doesn’t seem right to me. Why are these kills not counted? At least kill #4 should be counted, as my opponent was still alive after taking the trample damage at that time. I placed just out of top 5 and the two missed points would have placed me in top 5. I already sent a ticket in, but I hope this gets fixed. I hope there will be some more perfect scores to ease the pain, because customer support is pretty bad when handling issues like these. It’s pretty Obvious that this coding error has cost me top rewards. Anyone also encountered this?
Yeah, that’s a known issue /design flaw, I think most of us stumbled on that one at least once
I wrote several tickets and a bug report here about this a while back. But that was in Hibernums days so might be worth to bring it up with Octagon.
It’s how the game resolves actions that’s the culprit. Damage to PW is always resolved first it seems. The only workaround is to know about it and plan accordingly atm.
This is a very old interaction. It happens because creatures die at the end of combat, but the match ends immediately when lethal damage is dealt to a planeswalker.
Here’s the thing, It is not a bug.
This is being done correctly and intentionally to avoid funky end of game interactions and possible ties. You just have to plan around it. It is not a bug.
While it may not be a bug it is definitely non-intuitive and will (and has) consistently cause problems and bug reports.
There’s stuff that works incorrectly for far worse reasons than reducing confusion!
Actually I’m pretty certain that this is consistent with how paper magic works as well (although I’m not really a rules guy so I can be wrong). And there really is no way to change it that won’t cause a ton of much more serious problems.
I’m wondering why this would be ‘expected behavior’. Trample is specifically for dealing damage above a creature’s toughness, to the player. Meaning the creature must die for any damage to get to the player.
I’m saying it is “expected behavior” because of how the game functions. Creatures killed in combat don’t “die” until combat is over (easy enough to see if you kill multiple attackers with a defender, especially easy to see if you have an Elenda out and see that she won’t reinforce until after combat is over), and the game instantly ends when lethal damage is dealt, even if there are other effects that are supposed to happen (you don’t gain life from a lifelink creature dealing lethal damage, Grave Mist won’t hit your opponent’s creatures…ect)
Therefore it would be expected that a creature killed by a berzerker trample where the opposing planeswalker was dealt lethal damage the same turn (doesn’t even have to be from the trample damage) would end the game before the creatures “die”. It isn’t totally obvious at first glance (unless you really pay attention to trigger orders in niche cases regularly), but once it happens it makes total sense logically.
Actually, this will occur in paper magic as well. Trample gets to burn through and hit the player when enough damage is assigned to kill the blocker. This leads to hilarity when the trampler has deathtouch, and only has to assign one point to be lethal, but that’s getting off topic. Player death is state-based, in that once you are at zero life, you are dead and you cannot respond with any sort of spell or ability.
The current method of combat damage and creature death timing prevents things from getting boosted after taking lethal damage, i.e. bloodbond vampire when you have another lifelink creature.
Tl;Dr: This is normal.
The one difference… Paper magic does not have external requirements based on game state at the end.
It’s only these external requirements that this behaviour affects weirdly that people get confused about.
All i’m saying is this is going to keep being reported as a bug over and over and over until things are made clear in-game somehow about the way this functions.
Oh I get that it’s normal, I’ve run across it before and knew it worked this way. I just find it odd how in a game built around states and interrupts and instant actions that mtg as a whole doesn’t do it attack>damage>death(creature)>trample damage instead of attack>damage>trample damage>death(creature)
Because that would be wrong, and could cause all sorts of funky interactions (say an Elenda reinforces before dealing damage instead of after, or the death of the creature triggers something that gives a buff or deals damage to you so you die or heals your opponent so they don’t die when they should have, or some other funky interaction involving assorted triggers that will only exist in one specific instance in one specific battle that cannot be foreseen)
Its much easier to just do it the way it is more or less done in paper with
Pre-combat step (declare attackers and blockers)
Combat
Damage step (all damage is dealt simultaneously)
End-combat step (stuff dies)
This is also why technically cards that have “when attacking” triggers should trigger at the start of combat before any creature attacks instead of when that specific creature has the attacking animation. It was originally done that way and then changed some time in Kaladesh/Amonkhet (I can’t remember) and made a lot of cards useless.
Back on subject, if damage dealt in the Damage step is enough to kill a player (again, not necessarily from trample damage, having a second un-blocked creature would work the same way), the game immediately ends. There are no extra triggers or interactions, the game just ends.
In paper magic, you die immediately after taking lethal damage, just like your creatures, both as a state-based action. This means that in multiplayer magic, a dies ability would go on the stack, then be exiled because the controller of said ability no longer exists.
It works this way to prevent shenanigans such as sacrificing your creature after it absorbing damage.
Related to the discussion of whether anything can happen after you deal lethal damage to your opponent, casting Thud on Darigaaz to deal lethal damage will still spawn his token, with the pop-ups going on behind the ‘you win’ screen. I suspect if you killed your opponent with Molten Vortex, a cascade could continue afterwards as well.
That actually sounds hilarious. But that’s definitely a bug.