Old Gnawbone triggering on life loss from Mirkwood Bats during combat
- Have both Old Gnawbone and Mirkwood Bats on the battlefield.
- Attack with a creature and have damage dealt to defending player.
- That damage triggers Old Gnawbone to create a token.
- That token causes Mirkwood Bats to cause the defending player to lose 1 life.
- That loss of life, though while in the combat phase, is not combat damage, but still triggers Old Gnawbone to create a token.
- Go to step 4 and repeat.
That loss of life, not being combat damage, should not trigger Old Gnawbone.
In the example I have, Goldspun Dragon created a treasure token before combat damage was dealt, which caused both Mirkwood Bats and Chatterfang to trigger. That caused Gnawbone to trigger incorrectly, and ended up in an infinite loss of life loop.
But it all hinges on Gnawbone triggering so can be done with just that and Mirkwood Bats.
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Rezzahan#77802 commented
And it didn't. You couldn't block any of the attacking creatures, and no player could do anything during the declare blockers step, so Arena moved straight to combat damage. With Parallel Lives and Skitterfang on the field, the 9 damage you took resulted in a lot of tokens being created (half of those treasures, the other half squirrels), which triggered the Bats that many times. The Goldspan Dragon attacking caused a prelude to that with 4 tokens getting created during the declare attackers step.
If the life loss would have been responsible, you would not have that many triggers on the stack from only the Bats.