Had this encounter at my LGS and I just want to clarify that I came to the correct conclusion (it ultimately had little effect on the overall outcome of the match).

AP had an 8/8 creature with trample and he attacked, NP blocks with a Favoured Hoplite who was a 4/5 and then proceeded to cast “Hold at Bay” targeting the Favoured Hoplite. So the Heroic trigger makes Favoured Hoplite a 5/6 and prevents all damage that it would receive and the spell also gives him a “prevent the next 7 damage spell”. The requirements of Trample are that lethal damage be assigned to the creature before anything else can carry over, does the creature attacking “see” the 7 damage prevention shield, so lethal damage in theory is 7+6=13 or is it able to still Trample over the remaining 2 damage?

I ruled that the prevention effect is essentially irrelevant when it comes to the assigning of combat damage, the Trample damage only cares about the number in the Toughness column.

Just want to see if I was correct.

With trample, you need to assign what would be lethal damage to all creatures blocking it before you can start assigning damage to the defending player. You don't take effects that would reduce or prevent the damage into account. In this case, the 7/7 trampler only has to assign 6 damage to the 5/6 Hoplite (since six damage would be lethal to the Hoplite), and can assign the remaining 1 damage to the defending player. The damage prevention shield from Hold at Bay and from the Hoplite's trigger don't matter.

Thanks,
Nathan Long
Wizards. Com Boards NetRep