Keyword · 800.4
Bloodletting
This rule is part of the Comprehensive Rules, where every cross-reference resolves in one page.
In game
Before activation, the listed vitality is paid by the first unit on the caster's side of the battlefield in board order (left to right, then top to bottom). Can be lethal.
Action
- 800.4aBloodletting is a cost paid before the activation's damage is computed.
- 800.4bThe payer is the first eligible unit on the caster's side of the battlefield in board reading order — left to right across each row, then top to bottom. That is often not the caster.
- 800.4cDead units, Entrapped units, the boss, and units on the other half of the battlefield are skipped. A boss casting a Bloodletting ability pays its own cost.
- 800.4dTools and Hubs are not skipped. They sit in the candidate list like any other unit — but they discard every combat interaction, so they cannot pay, and a payment that moves no Vitality fails the ability outright. Putting a Tool or a Hub first in reading order therefore switches your Bloodletting cards off rather than making them free.
- 800.4eThe full cost is paid by one unit; it is never split.
- 800.4fThe payment is a Vitality cost, not a damage instance. Armor, Insurance, Shield, and damage-ignore charges never meet it and none of them are spent by it, so a payer holding a single point of Shield still pays the listed Vitality in full. See 500.8.
- 800.4gThe cost is clamped to the Vitality the payer actually has. A payer with less than the printed cost pays everything it has and dies, and the cards that read the cost paid see that smaller amount rather than the printed price.
- 800.4hA defy-death rune still answers a lethal payment, and the payer spends its once-per-life charge either way.
- 800.4iThe payment does not fire on-damage-taken, on-Shield-damaged, or on-Shield-broken triggers. It fires only the Bloodletting-paid channel, and only when the payer actually lost Vitality.
- 800.4jThe payment can be lethal. If it kills the payer, the death resolves normally — including Macabre — and the activation continues.
- 800.4kIf no eligible payer exists, the activation is aborted before damage, though its immediate rune effects still resolve.
- 800.4lA Bloodletting reduction rune lowers the cost before a payer is chosen. Cards that read the cost paid see that reduced amount, and can cap it.
- 800.4mA reduction that takes the cost to 0 skips the whole step: nobody pays, and the Bloodletting-paid channel does not fire.