Say I have a 1/1 flying creature attacking, and the opponent...

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Answer by MillMaster
Submitted on 5/11/2004
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Combat is divided into 5 steps. Each step ends when no player wants to cast any spells or abilities. 1. Begin Attack Step- Nothing particular happens here, except that sometimes cards will have abilities that trigger "At the beginning of combat". This step would also be the last time you could cast something to try to prevent a creature from attacking. (like use icy manipulator to tap a creature. 2. Declare Attackers- At the beginning of this step, the active player taps and declares all creatures as one action. Then players can cast spells or abilities. Once you hit this step, you cant stop them from declaring an attack. 3. Declare Blockers- Just like step 2 this step starts by the defending player able to declare all blockers as one action. Once this is done, each player can player instant speed spells or abilities like in the other steps. Once you hit this step, you cant stop a defender from blocking something. Even if you lightning bolt a blocking 1/1, the creature is still blocked. 4. Combat Damage- Each player announces how their creatures will deal their damage and this damage division goes on the stack just like a spell or ability. Then each player can play spells and abilities like normal. This means that you can do things like block with a 1/1 mogg fanatic, have it deal its 1 damage to a grizzly bear, then sacrifice itself to deal 1 more damage to the grizzly bear, thereby killing it. 5. End of combat- Nothing particular happens here either, except for abilities that trigger "at end of combat". This is also the last step that a creature is considered "attacking. After this step is over, the whole combat phase ends, and you go back to your main phase, and can cast sorcerys, creatures etc etc as normal. So if you followed me this far, you can see that in the "declaration of blockers" step, your opponent must first declare all their blockers. After that is done, you both get a chance to cast instants that pump up your guys, or some other kind of spells or abilities to deal up more damage etc etc.

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Question by Gumboriginal
Submitted on 4/27/2004
Related FAQ: Magic: The Gathering Rules FAQ, v4.02 (part 1)
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Say I have a 1/1 flying creature attacking, and the opponent chooses not to block it. Once he has declared that he won't block it, can I then play, lets say Giant Growth making it deal 4 damage? From what I've been told, you can't do that....is this true?

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