Can You Attack Yourself in Magic: The Gathering?
Magic: The Gathering has all kinds of rules, but one question that comes up is whether you can attack yourself. The short answer is no, not under normal circumstances. In a typical two-player game, when the combat phase arrives, the defending player is always your opponent (or one of your opponents in a multiplayer setting), and you can’t declare yourself as a target of your own creatures.
That might seem obvious, but it’s still worth discussing the ways you can cause yourself harm. MTG has many situations where you end up losing life, sacrificing your creatures, or even dealing yourself damage. Sometimes it’s intentional, because those self-inflicted wounds can fuel powerful strategies.
Understanding the Combat Phase
In a standard turn, you move through steps: beginning, precombat main, combat, postcombat main, and the end step. Combat itself has multiple steps, like declare attackers, declare blockers, and so on. The rules specify that you must attack someone else or their planeswalkers. You might be able to attack different players in a multiplayer game, but you’re never allowed to say, “My creatures attack me this turn.”
If that feels too restrictive, remember that Magic is a game built around the idea of dueling wizards. The rules assume you’re directing assaults at your enemies, not at yourself. But you can still find ways to hurt yourself. Instead of attacking yourself, you’ll see specific card effects that force you to pay life, lose life, or let your opponents temporarily gain control of your creatures (which sometimes means your former creatures can swing at you).
When You Might Damage Yourself
Even though you can’t formally declare attacks on yourself, there are a lot of other ways you can end up with a smaller life total. Some decks do this deliberately. Why would you want to lose life on purpose? Because it can be a fast path to powerful advantages, like extra cards in hand or cheaper spells on the battlefield.
Paying Life for Effects
Cards that say “Pay X life” or “Lose X life” in exchange for something can shift the momentum in your favor. A classic example is Necropotence. You skip your draw step and you can pay 1 life for each card you want to draw, which is a big upside if you can handle the life loss. Phyrexian Arena is another staple that draws you an extra card each turn at the cost of 1 life. It might sound risky, but in a format like Commander, where you start with 40 life, losing a few points here and there can be a small price to pay for a consistent flow of resources.
Phyrexian Mana Costs
Some spells and abilities use the Phyrexian mana symbol, which lets you pay life rather than colored mana. This can speed up your plays, letting you keep mana free for something else. Cards like Gitaxian Probe can be cast for two life instead of a blue mana. Dismember, Mutagenic Growth, and Mental Misstep work in a similar way. That might sting if your life total is already low, but sometimes it’s worth it to maintain a strong tempo.
Random Damage to Yourself
Certain artifacts or lands will occasionally smack you. Mana Crypt is a popular example, because it’s a zero-mana artifact that gives you two colorless mana each turn. The downside is that on your upkeep, you flip a coin and take 3 damage if you lose. Ancient Tomb is a land that taps for two colorless mana but deals 2 damage to you each time you tap it. These are prime examples of self-harm for the sake of ramp.
Why Sacrifice Your Own Creatures?
Sacrificing your own creatures might sound odd, but sometimes it can be the very thing that unlocks your deck’s combos. If you’re playing a strategy known as Aristocrats, you want your creatures to die because they trigger effects like Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat, draining opponents’ life and maybe gaining you some life in return. In fact, you might look forward to sacrificing your own board if the payoff is big enough.
Aristocrats and Death Triggers
Cards such as Viscera Seer, Carrion Feeder, or Yawgmoth, Thran Physician let you sacrifice creatures at will. In doing so, you can scry, create large threats, or draw cards. Combined with Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat, each death chips away at your opponents’ life totals. Teysa Karlov can double up death triggers, making every sacrifice feel twice as rewarding. If you run Grave Pact or Dictate of Erebos, every time you sacrifice one of your creatures, each opponent must sacrifice one too. That can be devastating for them, but incredibly useful for you.
Sacrifice Outlets and Combo Pieces
Beyond fueling death triggers, sacrifice outlets can be part of infinite combos. Phyrexian Altar and Ashnod’s Altar turn creatures into mana. If you have something that returns them from the graveyard repeatedly, you can generate infinite mana. Skullclamp is another classic sacrifice piece, but indirectly: equip it to a 1/1 creature, and it dies immediately, letting you draw two cards. If you have a steady supply of tokens, you can churn through your deck.
Self-Mill and Discard
Dealing damage to yourself is one thing, but sometimes you want to discard your own cards or mill yourself. Why? It might load your graveyard with creatures you can reanimate. Or you could be setting up a particular synergy that triggers from the graveyard. Faithless Looting, Frantic Search, or Survival of the Fittest all involve discarding in exchange for new cards or tutoring. If you’re playing a deck full of reanimation spells, discarding a big creature so you can bring it back cheap is a strong play.
Self-mill is another way to do it. Hermit Druid can mill your library if you build your deck with few or no basic lands. Golgari Grave-Troll and other dredge cards replace your draw with milling, letting you dump tons of cards into your graveyard. This is especially fun if your strategy involves flashback spells or creatures that come back from the graveyard on their own. It might seem like you’re hurting your own resources, but in reality, you’re placing them exactly where you want them.
Sometimes You’re Your Own Enemy
In multiplayer scenarios, your opponents might gain control of your creatures and use them against you. Certain cards let them temporarily steal a creature, like Act of Treason or Zealous Conscripts. If you’re not careful, your own monster might come swinging at you. It’s not the same as you choosing to attack yourself, but it’s pretty close to the same effect: you end up taking the hit.
You could also Donate a permanent to an opponent that hurts them over time, but if they flicker it or if the effect somehow returns the card to you, you might end up stuck with the negative effect again. That’s not direct self-harm, but you can get yourself into a weird loop if your plan doesn’t go smoothly.
Popular Cards and Combos That Use Self-Harm
Ad Nauseam Decks
Ad Nauseam is an instant that lets you reveal the top card of your library, add it to your hand, and lose life equal to its mana value. You can keep doing this until you decide to stop or you run out of life. In a well-built deck with many low-cost cards, you can draw most of your library at once. Then you might cast a combo piece like Thassa’s Oracle to win. It might look risky, but if you do it right, you’ll survive and your opponents won’t.
Death’s Shadow Strategies
Death’s Shadow is a creature whose power and toughness are based on how much life you have left. The lower your life, the bigger it gets. This approach has you damage yourself with cards like Street Wraith (cycling for 2 life) to accelerate your draws, or shock lands that deal 2 damage when they enter. Before you know it, you have a giant Death’s Shadow and the opponent’s life total starts dropping fast. It’s a risky game, but it can pay off.
Reanimator Tactics
Reanimator decks often rely on discarding or milling big creatures into the graveyard. Then they use spells like Reanimate, Animate Dead, or Necromancy to bring them back. Reanimate itself makes you lose life equal to the creature’s mana value, so it’s another form of self-inflicted harm. But if it brings back a massive threat like Griselbrand on turn two or three, that tradeoff can be game-changing (and yes, Griselbrand also lets you pay life for cards).
Aristocrats Decks
As mentioned, Aristocrats decks revolve around sacrificing creatures. You run payoff cards that trigger whenever a creature dies, or whenever you sacrifice something. Blood Artist drains all your opponents for one life and gains you one life each time a creature dies (including opponents’ creatures). Combine that with a steady flow of tokens from Bitterblossom or other token-generators, and you can create a loop of sacrifice and life drain. This can wear down your opponents quickly and is often surprising in how strong it is.
Does Hurting Yourself Win Games?
It might sound counterintuitive to waste your own life total or your own creatures. After all, life is one of your main resources for staying in the game. But Magic isn’t always about playing it safe. Sometimes that sacrifice is exactly how you race ahead of your opponents. In high-level play, life is treated as another tool. If it helps you win, it’s worth spending.
Is there a risk you’ll burn through your life too quickly? Definitely. You might face an opponent who’s already applying pressure, so voluntarily dropping below five or six life can lead to a swift defeat if you’re not careful. But that’s part of the balance. You need to assess your situation and figure out if the payoff is bigger than the danger. Many players find that having more card draw or a combo ready to fire off is worth the gamble.
Conclusion
While you can’t swing your creatures at yourself during combat, there are still plenty of ways to hurt yourself in Magic: The Gathering. Whether it’s paying life for effects, sacrificing creatures for value, discarding or milling your own deck, or letting your opponents temporarily run off with your creatures, self-inflicted wounds can offer surprising advantages. It all depends on what your deck wants to accomplish. Some strategies need that extra push, and sometimes that push is your own life total. If you’re up for a bit of risk, you might find that hurting yourself is just another path to victory. After all, MTG is about creativity and resource management, and your own life total is just one more piece of that grand puzzle.