Judge's Den: The Seventh Layer

 

Welcome to the final edition of our series on layers here at Wizardden.com. The seventh and final layer deals with power and toughness. There are a lot of different things that can affect a creature's power and toughness, because of this the seventh layer is broken into five sublayers. If you have not read the previous articles in this series, you can find a link to each of them below.

There are seven layers in total, each with it's own article link here:

Copy Layer

Control Layer

Text Layer

Type Layer

Color Layer

Ability Layer

Power/ Toughness Layer

Kicking off the seventh layer are the printed stats on the card and/or CDAs, or characteristic defining abilities. These are effects like Tarmogoyf's variable power and toughness or the specified stats on a effect that creates a token. This layer basically looks at the baseline stats for a creature before any other modifications. This gives you a starting place before applying any of the following layers.

Our second sublayer looks for power and toughness setting effects. Things like Humility or Turn to Frog are good examples of this. Take notice that this is the second sublayer, meaning it will not override anything we are about to cover.

The third sublayer is for power and toughness changing effects that do not set to a specific number. Giant Growth is a great example of this. These effects are used a lot in recent years of Magic the Gathering.

The fourth sublayer looks at counters. This will take into account any and all +1/+1 counters or -1/-1 counters. If both are present at the same time and the creature is still alive then the counters will cancel and remove each other until there are only +1/+1 counters or -1/-1 counters. In some rare instances there are other types of counters that affect P/T but those wont cancel the normal counters.

 

The last things we look are power and toughness switches. That means after applying all the other stuff you switch them. This also means that any further power and toughness boosts or drains will apply to the to the opposite stat. Titan's Strength for example will give +1/+3 to a creature with a switch effect on it.

With that we bring out series on layers to an end. Next up we will be looking at odd rules interactions and how we can abuse them in various formats. This has been Ariel with Wizardden.com and Rogue T3ch, thank you for reading.