0021: Entering the battlefield tapped or attacking

Status: Accepted. Extends decision 0017 (item 1).

Context

Decision 0017 let lands enter tapped, but tokens could not: effects that give an opponent a tapped Powerstone token, or create a token "tapped and attacking" (Geist of Saint Traft), had no encoding. Creatures put onto the battlefield attacking (tokens, ninjutsu) could only be written with attack, which wrongly says they were declared as attackers.

Decision

1. new token and moves to the battlefield take the same entering clauses: [face NAME] [tapped] [attacking PLAYER|OBJREF].
2. A creature put onto the battlefield attacking has no attack line.

Rules basis

Checked against the Comprehensive Rules effective 2026-09-25.

• 110.5b: "Permanents enter the battlefield untapped, unflipped, face up, and phased in unless a spell or ability says otherwise."
• 508.4: "If a creature is put onto the battlefield attacking, its controller chooses which defending player, planeswalker a defending player controls, or battle a defending player protects it's attacking ... Such creatures are 'attacking' but, for the purposes of trigger events and effects, they never 'attacked.'"
• 702.49a: ninjutsu puts the card "onto the battlefield from your hand tapped and attacking".

Alternatives rejected

• new token followed by tap and attack lines. Rejected: the token never becomes tapped and never attacked, so "whenever a creature attacks" and "becomes tapped" abilities would appear to trigger.

Consequences

• See examples/more-situations.md (Geist of Saint Traft, ninjutsu).