People have been asking for more explanation on the new combat shortcut. There’s not as much there as people think; for all the words, it’s not doing too much. But, it is different from before, so people want to make sure that they understand those implications. Let’s run through it!

There’s two mental models you can adopt that I find help to think about the new shortcut. They’re technically different but lead you to the same place when you evaluate situations (yes, you can find corners where they’re not quite the same.) Choose the one that makes more intuitive sense to you.

1) The active player passing in their main phase doesn’t leave the main phase, but they lose the ability to play anything at sorcery speed. Play proceeds from there.

2) The active player passing means the next person to take an action will be doing so in the beginning of combat, and beginning-of-combat triggers happen when the active player next gets priority with an empty stack.

Then, all you need to remember is that when the non-active player does something to prevent a beginning of combat trigger from hurting them, don’t apply the shortcut. That part of the shortcut is narrow in application, and the more I look at it, the more I think we’ll probably remove the “how it affects” clause soon. We put that in as a safeguard in case we missed a conditional trigger that wasn’t an intervening-if. None of those have emerged yet, and it’s causing a bit of confusion. It’s almost always correct for the non-active player to wait for the choice of target before acting. If you can find “how it affects” examples, I’d love to hear them.

For these examples, unless noted otherwise, the active player has two Grizzly Bears. The non-active player has a bunch of land and sometimes a way to tap things.

The Simplest One

A: "Combat"

N: "OK"

A: "Attack with Grizzly Bears"

This works great. In fact, it’s going to be the most common situation. But, there’s a second shortcut being applied here. If you apply the models above, it’s clear that there’s an implicit priority pass by both players after the non-active player says “OK”. That means there’s a window there…

A Little More Complicated

A: "Combat"

N: "OK"

A: "Attack with Grizzly Bears"

N: "Wait, before you declare attacks, I want to Doom Blade one of them"

The active player shortcut to attacking, but the non-active player isn’t ready to go that far, so interrupts the shortcut. We do expect the non-active player to interrupt relatively quickly once the active player makes it clear that they’re going into combat. No waiting to see what’s declared as attackers, pausing to think for a bit, then attempting to interrupt the shortcut.

If the active player is worried about this, they can protect themselves with…

The Technically Accurate Approach

A: "Combat"

N: "OK"

A: "Declare attackers?"

N: "OK"

A: "Attack with Grizzly Bears"



Yes, this is annoying. Unfortunately, there’s no way to preserve the active player’s ability to take actions such as Crewing or activating creature-lands after they’ve passed into combat while also streamlining this interaction. The structure of the rules is not our friend here.

Note that the above interaction is the correct number of priority passes according to the game rules. The old shortcut merged them together so that there was usually only one priority pass there. The new one preserves the priority passes, but defers one of them a little bit (depending on which mental model you prefer). So…

Response Time

A: "Combat"

N: "Doom Blade a Grizzly Bear"

A: "Attack with the other one"

In this case, it doesn’t matter where the Doom Blade was played, and this is a level of communication it is beneficial to preserve. There’s still two hidden priority passes in here, though. One before the Doom Blade resolves, and one before we go to declare attackers.

What the shortcut does preclude is:

A: "Combat"

N: "Doom Blade a Grizzly Bear"

A: "Play a Ball Lightning. Attack with it and the Bear"

The non-active player clearly didn’t intend for this to happen and was caught out by the ambiguity of “Combat.” Or, if you feel that the meaning there is obvious, replace it with whatever the most ambiguous or confusing thing the active player can figure out.

This is the primary case in which the shortcut intervenes. Whichever mental model you like, the active player can’t play that Ball Lightning here – passing priority gave up that ability. In some ways, if people just think of this shortcut as “you can’t do that” and a bunch of words to make it work with the rules, you’re not far off at all!

Triggers Make It a Little More Complicated

Let’s give the active player a Goblin Rabblemaster and run through a few of those again:

A: "Combat"

N: "OK"

A: "Make a token. Attack with everything"

This works exactly as it did before. However, change the Rabblemaster to a Battle-Rattle Shaman and you get:

A: "Combat"

N: "OK"

A: "Give this Grizzly Bear +2/+0. Attack with everything"



This is a change from the previous shortcut. The previous shortcut moved to the active player passing priority in Beginning of Combat, which was past the point by which you were expected to declare a target.

Of course, there are still various implicit priorities in that exchange, and the non-active player may need to interrupt:

A: "Combat"

N: "OK"

A: "Give this Grizzly Bear +2/+0. Attack with everything"

N: "Hang on. Tap down your pumped Bear."



Or, without implicit priority passes:

A: "Combat"

N: "OK"

A: "Give this Grizzly Bear +2/+0. Attacks?"

N: "Tap your bear"

A: "OK. Attacks"

N: "Go for it"

A: "Attack with everything"

Interacting with Triggers

Back to the Rabblemaster:

A: "Combat"

N: "Kill your Rabblemaster"

Can the active player play Ball Lightning? Yes! This is the exception to the non-active player acting in Beginning of Combat because we assume that, by default, they’re trying to stop the trigger. If, in fact, they’re worried about that Ball Lightning, this is still possible:

A: "Combat"

N: "In Beginning of Combat, kill your Rabblemaster"

A: OK, Rabblemaster trigger resolves. I have a token.

or, more likely:

A: "Combat"

N: "OK"

A: "Make a token"

N: "Kill your Rabblemaster"

Triggers can still be missed, of course, but it will often take until the active player actually tries to declare attackers to determine that. Of course, you can then interrupt that declaration with the knowledge that the trigger was forgotten.

The Cryptic Command Problem

It’s not a problem with the shortcut, per se, but it’s a protection for the non-active player that’s been removed. There are various permutations of the “Phantom Priority Pass”, but here’s a simple one:

The active player has a two Bears and a Mutavault. The non-active player is at 5 life, but active player is worried about a Cryptic Command.

The active player wants to try to get a read on if the coast is clear. So, they say “Combat” in an attempt to imply that they’re ready to declare attackers. If the non-active plays the Cryptic, you activate the Mutavault and get in for 2. If they don’t, unless they’re a very precise player, it’s a strong sign that they may not have it and you should activate the Mutavault and go for it. The old shortcut precluded that baiting.

Of course, the correct time to play the Command if you have it is after the second priority pass (or interrupting the declaration). But now you need to be more careful if you’re the non-active player to not accidentally tip your hand.

AP Acting First in Combat

The new structure makes it look like the active player can’t be the first person to act in the beginning of combat step. That’s not true, but it does reflect the fact that the active player needing to act first is unlikely. The only scenario I’m aware of is holding a split second spell while your opponent is floating mana, which is not something that’s going to come up every day! In that situation, the protocol is the same as ever – you ask your opponent if they want to do something with that mana in the main phase. If they do, you’re still in main phase, since they used mana they couldn’t use in beginning of combat, nullifying the default.

Otherwise, there is a way to do it, but it does give the opponent some information. While in your main phase, simply say “I do this thing in Beginning of Combat”. Done! Of course, the non-active player has the ability to interrupt and do something in your main phase. That’s not really any different than it was under the previous shortcut.

Wrapping Up

I think this covers all of the likely scenarios. One of the mental models should serve you well, and if you just remember that there now has to be a priority pass in Beginning of Combat (one that’s often implicit), you’re most of the way to handling all the scenarios.