Pointed Discussion

this has the potential to end games, also doubles as some really strange removal, hope this sees play in something

3/5 Stars

No, actually your burn spell killed your own dude.

It saves one of your guys, then either kills your opponent's guy or punches their face. Not overly powerful, but nice and versatile.

As someone who has lost draft matches due to Divine Deflection, this card will surely vex me in much the same way. I've always liked this slice of white's color pie.

In a white weenie deck, roughly 3~5 damage redirected, and likely used to protect those creatures.

Is that Iroas? I thought he was Mogis's brother. Genetics is weird for non-corporeal beings.

So ah... what part of white allows this to deal direct damage exactly? Yeah, this is simply a better Boros Fury-Shield for no reason at all.

There were certainly a few other damage reflection spells in white before Boros Fury Shield or Divine Reflection; Refraction Trap from Worldwake and Honorable Passage from Visions come to mind.

It does seem like this is a better more general version of that concept, and it's unclear why they wanted to make this better. But I'm all for them coming out with removal in white that makes you think and plan, rather than the cheap exile cards that they sometimes get.

Hi guys, I would like to find out about the damage dealing priority connected to Acolyte's Reward.

Imagine that two creatures are attacking on you. You block one of them with your blocker creature. After declaring blockers you instantly play Acolytes's Reward on your creature to prevent the damage and to deal the damage on the second attacker (which is not blocked). The question is : Would the second (not blocked) deal the damage to the player if the damage dealt by AR would be enought to kill the second attacking creature ???

Is all the damage (combat and from AR) is dealt in the same time ???

Thanks for help.

@rastik The unblocked creature will still get to do its damage. (excluding some scenarios involving first strike damage)

Acolytes Reward creates a prevention effect with an additional delayed effect when it resolves. When the combat damage happens, all damage and applicable prevention happen at the same time(Assuming no first strike). The unblocked creature hits you, your blocker hits the blocked attacker, and the blocked attacker hits your blocker and the prevention effect on your blocker instantly prevents the appropriate amount of damage. Now the second effect sees that the first has prevented damage, and it creates the targeted damage effect, which will resolve immediately after combat damage is resolved.

If the creature you blocked had first strike however, The effect could kill a creature between the first strike and regular damage steps.


What struck me is that unlike Divine Deflection this does not have to target a creature you control, so this can function as a sort of trample/unblockable to get your bestowed beater through a chump blocker by targeting the opponents blocker.

this may just be me being stupid - but does "that much" refer to the amount of damage prevented or your devotion to white?

So say your devotion to white is 5 and they swing in with 2/2 - you cast this and deal "that much damage" to your opponent. Do I deal 5 or 2?

Also - Akroas in the background? This feels red white to me.

This is a very intriguing card for me. I haven't played it yet, but it seems to double as removal and combat trick at the same time for the simple cheap cost of 2 mana (there's a condition on it to be effective of course). So I'm looking forward on using it, but I can say that this is a good card because of the possibilities that you can do with it for cheap.

@cloudchaser.kestrel I think this exert from the release notes will help

You don't choose a source of damage. The prevention shield will apply to the next X damage that would be dealt to the first target, no matter where that damage comes from. It also doesn't matter whether the damage is dealt at the same time. For example, if the shield prevents the next 5 damage to the first target, and that creature would be dealt 3 damage by Lightning Strike, that 3 damage is prevented and Acolyte's Reward deals 3 damage to the second target. The prevention effect will still apply to the next 2 damage the first target would be dealt that turn.

Hi, Temple of Triumph! How are you doing?

@rastik
The combat damage from the two attacking creatures happens at the same time, and then Acolyte's Reward's damage happens. You would still take the damage from the unblocked creature.

Divine Retribution
Coordinated Barrage
This ability can be found in Mono-White if you look for it, and it's kind of old, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to most people. Basically, now that we have LOTS more Gold Cards since first Ravnica Block was introduced, the Orzhov and Boros Guilds do more aesthetically what Mono Black and Mono White used to in their spare time with Drain Life and Eye for an Eye. From Mirage to Mirrodin though, the game had to have as many interesting mechanics as it could invent and had to divide them as best as it could between FIVE color identities.

Ravnica, Time Spiral, and Lorwyn-Shadowmoor really opened the floodgates on making the Color Wheel much more Color-Pair focused, so anything that looks like it should be Guild-flavored, we don't expect to see on a Mono-Colored card. But there IS precedence, if you were wondering, for Black to just straight up gain life and for white to just straight up deal damage. It's not something that is new even if you consider "New" to be defined as "Post 8th Edition" and the Post-M10 MAGIC can easily do this because it needs to occasionally make surprisingly good mono-colored cards to help Mono Color still even exist.



I am trying to research "Damage Prevention" in Gatherer, and I'm getting weird results:

When I try to say "Format does NOT contain Modern" it gives me Modern cards. Same thing for Standard. Weird. Anywho, there are approximately 400 cards that reference "Damage" at all in mono-White, and Most or All of them now contain Gaining Life somehow, whether by Lifelink, gaining the damage prevention, or what.

The card that first started this archetype of cards, Healing Salve, was almost pure Damage Prevention and Life Gain. This simply wasn't good enough. First of all, to make even Life Gain much good, they had to invent Lifelink. That shows a more Aggressive, Proactive mechanic than just gaining life-- it wants you to attack and deal damage, too.

The search "DOES contain Damage, Does NOT contain Lifelink, Does NOT contain Gain, DOES contain White and NO OTHER COLOR, Type DOES contain Instant" yields approximately 82 cards, a much smaller number that basically gives us (not exactly) all the "Combat Tricks" (exempting activated abilities on Creatures and Enchantments) shows us that even as old as first Mirrodin Block, Armed Response existed.

Mono-White has basically, in order to keep damage-related mechanics competitive, had to make them more and more Martial and Proactive, even withOUT the color Red. The Flavor Justification is a little bit difficult POST Ravnica-Block, because Boros makes PERFECT sense for "The Colors of War", but Justice sort of derives from Peace and Civilization fairly easily, and Vengeance just HAPPENS to have been in White's slice of the Color Pie ever since Wrath of God.

The only thing about arguing the case for a card like Acolyte's Reward being Mono-White, is that to do it you pretty much have to come to realize-- "wait, most of Boros could be Mono-White too." It's OK though-- The Color Pie shifts and changes really slowly, like Tectonic Plates, and sometimes to make things fair you pretty much just HAVE to let one color steal more mechanics out of the other colors, but when people get really used to needing TWO colors or the new color to do something, they forget it used to be that you could do it another way and nobody batted an eye.

Mono-White and Boros, and Mono-Black and Orzhov, are probably the two places on the Color Pie where this is most blatantly obvious.

What people arent taking into consideration is this card lets you do lethal damage to your opponent on their turn. Have just a few damage that your creatures can't get through on your turn, let them swing and block one guy with all yours, protect their creature and deal the damage to them. You can force a draw since there is no state based action check between their combat damage and the redirected damage, and if you can get the block damage from a first striker you can win. Also a beautiful thing to let them swing with 15 elemental tokens, block one with a first strike and kill master of waves before normal combat damage.

does anyone know if the prevention effect replicates if damage is applied in multiple phases or not instantaneously? Card stipulates "this turn"

For example, say opponents main phase, they cast a damage sorcery/instant, i cast acolyte's reward in response to save my creature. for arguments sake. say. was 2 pts of damage and i have 2 white devotion. next, combat happens, and 2nd main, they cast an instant for another 2 pts targeting the creature with acolyte's reward. does the check against the card (acolyte's reward) occur again?

Or similarly if it was a trigger chain, say... you prevented 2 damage, but somehow life was gained, or something that then triggered, that deals a 2nd dose of damage at the target creature with acolyte's reward on it... would the card then run the check again for "the next X damage, prevented by devotion" etc

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ur/293

Yep, it's Iroas. As for Mogis- Iroas takes the form of a centaur, assumable so too the other Gods take their forms. Don't see why Atheros wouldn't want to take a different form, though, he's ugly as sin.

Nice utility for white decks