So I am just confused what would happen if I had a 1/1 with first strike, deathtouch and Declare Dominance? Would it kill the first defender and then die to and kill the second? Or would it clear the entire board of available defenders? I have Death Baron and was thinking of making an aggressive green/black deck. Being able to clear the whole board does not seem balanced at all to me but from what I read on deathtouch it would work?
So I am just confused what would happen if I had a 1/1 with first strike, deathtouch and Declare Dominance? Would it kill the first defender and then die to and kill the second? Or would it clear the entire board of available defenders?
How many "available defenders" are there? In that case, its power would be 4, it will deal a total of 4 damage in combat, it won't be able to damage more than 4 blockers, so deathtouch won't kill more than 4 blockers. If surviving blockers are able to deal 4 or more damage to it (to match its current toughness), it won't survive to the end of combat.
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So I clear a defender per power of the attacker? Then it dies if the surviving defenders have the damage to kill it? So if it has 4 attack it kills 4 defenders without taking damage and then dying if there is a fifth defender with higher power than the toughness of the attacker?
Would a Tattered Mummy with a Jousting Lance and a Death Baron on board be able to kill 7 defenders regardless of their stats if I cast Declare Dominance? Just wanna make very sure I understand how deathtouch interacts with first strike.
Deathtouch makes any nonzero amount of combat damage assigned to a creature lethal damage for the purposes of combat damage assignment rules (C.R. 702.2c) — assigning zero damage doesn't make it lethal this way. Therefore, deathtouch doesn't necessarily mean that all creatures blocking a creature with deathtouch are destroyed. Having first strike doesn't change any of this.
Thus, in general, a creature with deathtouch can't assign more combat damage than its power (and so can't assign combat damage to more blocking creatures than its power), regardless of whether it has first strike (C.R. 510.1a, 510.1c, 702.2c). Remember that all first strike does is give a combat phase two combat damage steps rather than one, and restrict which creatures can assign combat damage in those steps (C.R. 702.7b).
EDIT: Deleted a sentence for correctness, after comment 5 was posted.
Correct. Mummy has 7 power and deathtouch, so it can kill up to 7 blockers, regardless of how big they are.
If more than 7 blockers are assigned (due to Dominance), YOU choose which 7 get killed.
Would a Tattered Mummy with a Jousting Lance and a Death Baron on board be able to kill 7 defenders regardless of their stats if I cast Declare Dominance? Just wanna make very sure I understand how deathtouch interacts with first strike.
Thus, in general, a creature with deathtouch can't assign more combat damage than its power (and so can't assign combat damage to more blocking creatures than its power), regardless of whether it has first strike (C.R. 510.1a, 510.1c, 702.2c). Remember that all first strike does is give a combat phase two combat damage steps rather than one, and restrict which creatures can assign combat damage in those steps (C.R. 702.7b).
EDIT: Deleted a sentence for correctness, after comment 5 was posted.
If more than 7 blockers are assigned (due to Dominance), YOU choose which 7 get killed.
RULES OF MAGIC :
http://magic.wizards.com/en/game-info/gameplay/rules-and-formats/rules