Does Gloom Surgeon absorb trample damage?
Deck Help forum
Posted on Nov. 20, 2012, 2:36 p.m. by ardilly
I'm thinking of putting a deck together utilizing Gloom Surgeon , but I'm a little worried because all my creatures are going to be small and cheap, and I'm a little worried about some of my friends' decks with big fat tramplers in them.
Since Gloom Surgeon prevents combat damage that would be dealt to him, if I only block, say, a Worldspine Wurm with my Gloom Surgeon , will I be exiling 15 cards from the top of my library, or will it be 1 card exiled, and 14 points of damage taken by me?
Wonderful. I was pretty sure of that myself, but just wanted to double check. Cheers!
November 20, 2012 2:51 p.m.
Actually, that's not correct. The player only has to assign damage up to it's toughness and the rest can carry over. So yes, you exile 1 card and take 14 points of damage.
Source: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=270314
November 20, 2012 2:52 p.m.
I'm repeating the ruling I got from a level 2 judge at my LGS, so I apologize if it's wrong
November 20, 2012 2:56 p.m.
Well...crap. So much for that plan, then. Back to the drawing board I go!
November 20, 2012 2:56 p.m.
Naw that's ok, I thought you were right too, but I decided to check Gatherer on it.
November 20, 2012 3:04 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #8
It's really weird that an L2 would misinterpret trample so badly. The answer (plus the Gatherer ruling) that foxhull gave is the right one.
November 20, 2012 3:08 p.m.
It used to be that all damage would be assigned to creatures, and any damage dealt beyond the creatures toughness would be dealt to the creatures controller instead.
That has since changed (probably to account attacks on Planeswalkers), so that the attacking player must assign to each blocking creature "enough damage to destroy the creature", and any remaining damage can then be assigned to the player or Planeswalker that is bing attacked. This is why you would still take 14 damage, as 1 damage would be "enough to destroy the blocking creature"... it's just that the 1 damage will be prevented.
This change has allowed for a few interesting combinations, such as:Trample + Deathtouch = only need to assign damage to the defending creature, as Deathtouch says that any amount of damage it deals enough to destroy a creature.
November 20, 2012 4 p.m.
...Strange the 1 didn't show up due to formatting... or perhaps I typo'd.
It should say "...only need to assign 1 damage to the defending creature,..."
November 20, 2012 4:03 p.m.
So with Gloom Surgeon , you can only exile 1 card off your deck at a time? That kind of sucks. As for the deck idea, might i suggest Misthollow Griffin ?
Glen654 says... #2
The way trample reads is "if this creature would deal enough damage to it's blockers to destroy them", then it tramples over, but there is no amount of damage that would kill gloom surgeon. So no trample damage would go over, and you would exile all of those cards.
It's the same ruling with Fog Bank .
November 20, 2012 2:49 p.m.