How extended combo of Prismatic Omen, Scapeshift and Valakut works.

One combo that you may see at Extended PTQs this season revolves around the Zendikar land Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and getting multiple Mountains into play at one time. A common method to do this is with Scapeshift, a sorcery which allows you to sacrifice any number of lands and then search your library for that many lands and put them into play.

Valakut’s ability triggers when 1) Valakut is in play, 2) any Mountain just came into play and 3) you control five or more other Mountains. This is true even if Valakut itself came into the battlefield at the same time as these others lands. Lets assume that you control just seven lands, play Scapeshift and you sacrifice all seven lands. When Scapeshift resolves and search for a single Valakut and six Mountains. This will cause the ability of Valakut to trigger six times, once for each of these Mountains that came into play at the same time as it. Assuming that none of these lands leave the battlefield you’ll be able to deal a total of 18 points of damage, in three point increments.

If you throw in the enchantment Prismatic Omen you can deal even more damage. This is because Prismatic Omen will make the Valakut itself into a Mountain. In the example above the Valakut itself will trigger it’s own ability allowing you to deal a total of 21 points of damage.

Finally, using the above example again, if with Prismatic Omen in play instead of searching for one Valakut and six Mountains you search for four Valakut and any three other lands the ability of each Valakut will trigger seven times. This will allow you to deal a total of 84 points of damage (4 Valakuts x 7 triggers each x 3 damage per trigger). The number of triggers and amount of damage will obviously vary depending on the number of Mountains that enter the battlefield and Valakuts in play.

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