Scarab God and Undead Alchemist Interaction
Asked by TangoWithTojo 4 years ago
So I'm in the process of building a The Scarab God EDH deck and because I don't intend to exclusively use zombie tribal, I'll be using Arcane Adaptation to turn all of my creatures into zombies. But my question comes from Undead Alchemist 's ability. So lets say I have Arcane Adaptation down with The Scarab God out and hes a zombie now. Whenever he pings all of my opponents for damage during my upkeep, does that trigger Undead Alchemist 's ability milling all of them and creating more zombies? Because The Scarab God doesn't specifically say hes dealing the damage but it should be implied that he is doing it, unless I'm just understanding this wrong. Thanks in advance.
TangoWithTojo says... #2
Thats unfortunate. That'd be a really cool interaction if it worked. Do you know of any cards that would synergize with the Arcane Adaptation and The Scarab God combo since that doesn't work?
December 14, 2019 10:21 a.m.
Gidgetimer says... #3
Just a clarification on what "combat damage" is, because while I am sure multimedia was trying to convey the correct information, their wording is a little off. First the definition from the comprehensive rules. Combat damage is damage dealt during the combat damage step as a result of the turn based action causing attacking and blocking creatures to deal damage equal to their power. What that means in simple English is that it is damage because of being an attacking or blocking creature, not due to any abilities.
December 14, 2019 10:44 a.m.
TangoWithTojo says... #4
Gidgetimer Gotcha. That makes a bit more sense.
multimedia says... Accepted answer #1
Unfortunately, this doesn't work. The Scarab God does become a Zombie with Arcane Adaptation in your control, but Scarab is not doing damage with it's upkeep trigger. It's making your opponents lose life which is not damage.
Undead Alchemist "if a Zombie you control" ability says combat damage to a player. The only time you do combat damage to a player is after combat therefore the only time that Alchemist can trigger this ability is after combat, if you do damage to a player with a Zombie. If Adaptation is in your control and Scarab does combat damage to a player then this will trigger Alchemist.
December 14, 2019 10:09 a.m. Edited.