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I am not a hardcore Magic card player by any means, but I do like to play with my friends occasionally. My friend uses a seemingly overpowered phantom deck, and I am skeptical to believe that the abuse of phantoms is this powerful ( because they would have been banned by now). The most significant problem with his deck is not the phantoms alone, but the enchant creature cards he equips them with.

For example, my friend will put out a Phantom Tiger (a 1/0) that comes into play with two +1/+1 counters on it (Making it a 3/2). I understand that for all damage dealt to a phantom, the damage is prevented and a counter is taken off and this process is repeated until their defense number goes to 0.

However, what my friend will do is put Enchant creature cards like Elephant Guide (giving a creature +3/+3) which would make Phantom Tiger a 6/5. My friend tells me to treat the enchant creature effects as an additional +1/+1 counters. So, in other words, phantom tiger needs to take damage 5 times until it is sent to the graveyard. He also puts cards like Armadillo Cloak on the phantoms to make matters even worse, now giving him easy life and trample. Ultimately, this does not seem fair or logical to me whatsoever. My question is basically this: Are we misunderstanding the concept of phantoms or can the cards actually get to such a powerful state?

What I believe is this: the enchant creatures don’t count as additional +1/+1 counters for the phantom. So, in the case of a Phantom Tiger equipped with Elephant Guide, after his 2 counters are removed, he goes down to 4/3 and is treated as a normal creature that can take damege. I am not sure about this, though.

Here are some links of the creatures he would use:

http://www.coolstuffinc.com/images/Products/mtg%20art/Judgment/Phantom%20Tiger.jpg

http://mi.wizards.com/global/images/magic/general/phantom_centaur.jpg

As well as commonly used Enchant Creature Cards:

http://www.cardkingdom.com/images/Judgment/ElephantGuide.jpg

http://wowbox.tw/mtg/images/largejpg/23xxx/23164.jpg

I apologize for the lengthy question. I just like to be as specefic as possible so people understand what exactly it is that I am talking about.

Thanks in advance.
Yeah, thanks guys. I had a feeling that my belief was right. Please note that my friend was the one that told me that the enchant creature effects serve as additional +1/+1 counters. I tried to convince him that they did not, but he didn’t believe me, so we just played by his criteria.

Thanks to everybody who took time to answer my question. It is much appreciated and I will have an easier time taking down phantoms in the future lol.