Blink + damage calculations

[Mrflawed]

First off, hello! I'm new here and also new to mtg. I have a basic rule question.
From what I understand from an example battle calculation:
Attacker declared 2/1
Defender declared to defend attacking creature 3/4
Attacker declares "destroy target defending creature" before damage calculations are done.
Defender dies and attacker swings at place where defender was and hits nothing. No damage is dealt to creature (which is already dead) and no damage to defending player.
Similar to me saying I'm going to swing a bat at you, someone else steps up in your defense to take the blow, right as I am about to hit your defender someone shoots them in the head and kills them, and then my swing hits nothing.
Given that this is true, when I'm attacked, can I declare a defender and before damage calculations are done I blink my creature away, your creature swings and hits nothing (dealin no damage) and my creature comes back unharmed.

Furthering that, if said attacker has trample or lifelink for that matter, since no actual damage was done, the secondary effects would not go thru. Now say my creature had death touch and I defend with it. Can I place damage counters (to give death touch effect) and then blink it away before damage counters are resolved to remove lethal damage and save creature?

[scarsabrex]

boy this is long, yes blinking will save your defender. trample will still go through, lifelink won't matter. if lethal damage is placed on the defender it'll be dead before it can be blinked.

[Mrflawed]

How does trample go thru if no damage was done?
And yes, it was a long post lol =\

[scarsabrex]

because tramplr says you may deal excess damage of lethal to the opponent. if the creature is blocked but no defending creature then lethal damage=0 so all damage goes through.

[Mrflawed]

Got cha. Thanks for the response btw
And just clarifying, you can't blink after damage calculations but before death

[scarsabrex]

correct if lethal damage was dealt you won't be given priority till your creature has alreay died.

[Kaleo42]

Think of trample like a machine gun with a bullet for each point of damage, once you pump enough bullets into the blocker and it falls the rest will travel to the player. If the blocker is removed from the line of fire all the bullets will hit the player.
This brings me to the next point, its important to understamd that when blinking a creature from combat it actually returns before damage is dealt, but unless the card says otherwise a creature can not enter the field in attacking or blocking position. So basicly you blink the creature from infront of you return it to your side and it no longer protects you from damage.

[BlackJester]

One way around this, though, is to declare a blocker and remove it from combat prior to damaging, á la {Hollowhenge Spirit} or in this case Flickering. That should work, yes?

Flickering your blocker will work except for trample, as previously stated.

[BlackJester]

Trample says "deal enough damage to kill the blocker, the rest goes to the player." if the blocker is gone, you don't need to assign any damage to it and all of it goes to the player.

[Cindjor]

The timing on blink effects, wouldn't that just meant it left and now comes back to trigger ETB effects? If someone {doom blade}s a creature and I {cloudshift}, wouldn't the creature blink out so I have priority, but it's back for the {doom blade} to kill?

[Druknal]

When the creature returns from cloudshift, it's treated as a brand new creature. Forgetting everything happening to it before it left. New timestamp and all that jazz. Only thing that can still effect it is global effects still on the stack needing to be resolved.

[Cindjor]

Global effects like {earthquake} and {wrath of god} right?

[BlackJester]

Global effects like {earthquake} and {wrath of god} right?

Yes, because they don't target.

[Cindjor]

Yes, because they don't target.

That makes sense. Thank you sir