The term “damage prevention” as defined in the most dictionary, is the avoidance of harm, injury, and destruction. It is also referred to as preventing the worst-case scenario to happen. There are things that this term is applied in the settings of the safety of pipelines and hazardous materials in factories for example. The is a set of rules and regulations called the Pipeline Inspection, Protection, Enforcement, and Safety (PIPES) Act of 2006 that the company follows in order to practice safety and damage prevention while they operate. The government’s assigned agencies are tasked to develop effective excavation damage prevention law enforcement programs to protect the public from the risk of pipeline ruptures caused by excavation damage.

This is also applicable in terms of disaster risk reduction and management. In this setup, damage prevention is to reduce the impact of a disaster in human and property losses, resources, and environmental destruction. Based on history, it is being developed as a response from the effects of relevant & major disasters that happened. That is how we learned of the possible lapses in the preparedness of the community.

In the setting of the current pandemic, I can say that it is really hard to attest to the severity that the Covid19 virus would affect the health and economy of the country. If the people in authority, be meaning in the government, could have at least analyzed the virus’s history and origin, then they could have come up with a “damage prevention” plan of the sort.

We now go how damage prevention also similarly applies to Magic. What is our main goal? That is to bring down opponents’ life total to zero while preventing our own. What happens here is how the deck’s strategy and card components achieve to survive the game until we win. There are various ways to do it such as having more blockers, gaining life, and damage prevention effects.

Take this scenario, for example, you are facing a Mono-Red Aggro deck and he starts with the Fervent Champion, into Run-away Steam Kin. You are playing Esper midrange and you know your list to have a variance of spot removals to stop his creatures. That would depend though if your starting hand would have those spells and a few bunches of dual lands as well.

You played your first dual land, a Temple of Deceit. You have in your hand a copy of Heartless Act and it is the start of your second turn. Which creature will you kill first? This is quite obvious since the Steam Kin is the bigger threat as it can get counters and later on produce mana to ramp your opponent into their big spells. You played your second land, a Plains, and cast the spot removal on the Steam Kin.

Your opponent follows up will probably a three-drop Anax or a hasty Robber of the Rich for two with extra mana for a pump spell. It will still deal damage to you but the point is that you’d prefer those than him having the Steam Kin live and gets pumped with those Red spells cast. You can then later on cast your Shatter the Sky to wipe their board. You must optimize the damage prevention per turn as much as possible in this matchup.

In conclusion, damage prevention in Magic works as how your deck build strategy is setup. Whether having main deck spot removals in an aggro, having cheap lifegain cantrip spells in control, and overwhelming opponents’ aggressive start with small casting cost large toughness creatures, it is how you sequence your play at a maximum value each turn to be able to achieve that objective.