Trample

Keywords · beginner

If a creature with trample would deal more combat damage to its blockers than is needed to destroy them, the attacking player may have it deal the excess damage to the player or planeswalker it's attacking.

How it works

• The attacker decides how much damage to assign to each blocker.
• You must assign at least lethal damage to each blocker before any damage tramples over.
• "Lethal damage" accounts for damage already marked, deathtouch, indestructibility, and toughness. Deathtouch makes any nonzero damage lethal, so a 5/5 deathtouch trample attacker only needs to assign 1 to a blocker before trampling 4.
• Damage prevention and protection effects are not counted when calculating lethal damage for trample purposes.

Common interactions

• Trample + deathtouch is brutal: every blocker only needs 1 damage assigned before trample takes over.
• Multi-blocker math: Order blockers from front to back. Once each has received lethal damage, the rest tramples through.
• Planeswalker trample: A trampling creature attacking a planeswalker can trample excess damage onto the planeswalker (since 2021's "trample over planeswalkers" rule).

Rule reference

[702.19]