How do Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients's tokens interact with ETB damage triggers?

Asked by LunchBox1211 3 years ago

I'm building a Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients deck, and I'm running Warstorm Surge, Dragon Tempest and Scourge of Valkas. Each of them cause the Dragon Token to deal damage on ETB, and then the tokens get sacrificed, but if I have all 3 out, will damage triggers from all 3 resolve, or just one of them?

Polaris says... Accepted answer #1

All three triggers will resolve. When a Dragon token enters the battlefield, all three abilities will trigger (they go on the stack in the order of your choice). Once one resolves, the Dragon's sacrifice trigger will go on the stack and then resolve. However, the other triggers can still resolve.

Warstorm Surge will use the last known information about the Dragon and see that its power was 5, so the trigger will still deal 5 damage and the Dragon will be considered to be the source of the damage, even though it has left the battlefield.

Dragon Tempest and Scourge of Valkas both check the number of Dragons on resolution, so after the Dragon is sacrificed their damage will be lowered by 1 because the token is no longer there to be counted.

For maximum damage, you should lead with Dragon Tempest or Scourge of Valkas so that damage is dealt while your token is still in play to add to the dragon count for the first trigger.

I will also note that because all three triggers resolve even though the token is sacrificed after the first trigger deals damage, if you give Vrondiss indestructible (perhaps via Heroic Intervention or similar) you can create an infinite loop where you keep pointing triggers at Vrondiss to create an exponentially expanding number of Dragons until you have enough to one-shot the table.

November 23, 2021 3:54 p.m.