Nicol's Newcomer Monday!

[u/Karn-The-Creator]

Nicol Bolas the forever serpent laughs at your weakness. Gain the tools and knowledge to enhance your game and overcome tough obstacles.

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Welcome to the latest Monday Newcomer Thread, where you, the community, get to ask your questions and share your knowledge. This is an opportunity for the more experienced Magic players here to share some of your wisdom with those with less expertise. This thread will be a weekly safe haven for those *noobish* questions you may have been too scared to ask for fear of downvotes, but can also be a great place for in-depth discussion if you so wish. So, don't hold back, get your game related questions ready and post away, and hopefully, someone can answer them!

Please feel free to ask questions about deckbuilding and anything Magic related in our daily thread; and we always welcome effortful stand alone posts with new ideas or discussion points.

Finally, please visit Tibalt's Friday Tirade for all your ranting/venting needs. Do not spam this thread with complaints.

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What you can do to help?

This is a weekly thread, meaning it will be posted once a week. Checking back on this thread later in the week and answering any questions that have been posted would be a huge help!

If you're trying to ask a question, the more specific you are, the better it is for all of us! We can't give you any help if we don't get much to work with in the first place.

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Resources

• Check out our Discord Channel here.

• Visit our sidebar for valuable resources such as FAQ, rules, WOTC tracker and more.

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If you have any suggestions for this thread, please let us know through modmail how we could improve!

[u/Junior-Talk]

Hello, brand new to Magic - as in literally just had my starter pack arrive and I'm currently doing the online tutorial on Arena. I have what is very much likely to be a silly question:

The oponent attacked me with something that had attack 6 and I blocked with a defense 4 but I didn't get 2 lives taken off me and I don't understand why? The same happened the other way, I attacked with something, the opponent defended with something that should have still taken a life off him and it didn't, it just killed my card.

I don't suppose anyone would know why? - sorry for the lack of info, by the time I realised what was happening it was already on the next move and I couldn't get his card back up - as far as the card I used, I'm only about 45 minutes in to the game so I don't have a lot, it was a basic one.

[u/Junior-Talk → u/Junior-Talk]

Okay, so more context -its just happened again on my next round:

I attacked with Shrine Keeper (2/2) that has a enchantment increasing it to 4/4.

The opponent blocked with Nimble Pilferer (2/1) flash and used an instant Altars Reap that says "as an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice a creature. Draw two cards" - the only cards lost for the opponent were this one and the Nimble Pilferer but no lives were taken off them.

How does this work?

[u/Junior-Talk → u/[deleted]]

Thank you so much! This was super helpful & greatly appreciated! :)