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I just debuted playing magic 2 weeks ago, and I have a question. Let's say a creature has 4 +1/+1 token on it and has base stats of 2/2. If I play Breya, Etherium Shaper's ability to inflict -4/-4 to that creature, does it affect the creature with all his power (6/6 bringing it down to 2/2) or does it affect the printed value of 2/2, killing it since it goes to 0 toughness?

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    There is no such thing as a "+1/+1 token"; those are called counters, not tokens. Counters are featureless markers placed on things. A token is a permanent (planeswalker, land, artifact, creature, and/or enchantment) that is represented by something other than a Magic card.
    – jwodder
    Jun 5, 2017 at 4:27

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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It becomes 2/2.

The ability in question is

Target creature gets -4/-4 until end of turn.

To determine a creature's power and toughness:

  1. Start with the printed value (or the value with which a token was created).
  2. Apply power- and toughness-setting effects (e.g Turn to Frog) in the order they were created.
  3. Apply power- and toughness-modifying effects (e.g the ability and the counters mentioned above).

The result is the power and toughness of the creature.

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  • Important to note: State Based Actions (such as "should this creature die") are NOT checked in between these steps, so theoretically a creature could have negative toughness somewhere in the process of calculating it's stats, but as long as it ends up with positive toughness at the end it's okay.
    – Lucas Broadwing
    Jun 17, 2017 at 20:36
  • More precisely, only the final values are the creature's power and toughness. Nothing sees the intermediary values. Not SBAs, not triggers, nothing.
    – ikegami
    Jun 17, 2017 at 21:15

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