I have an Eldrazi deck that has creatures with the ingest ability:
Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, that player exiles the top card of their library
Would trample damage activate this ability since the trample damage is done to the player?
Per the rules on Trample:
702.19a Trample is a static ability that modifies the rules for assigning an attacking creature’s combat damage.
As the wording says, trample lets you assign excess combat damage to the blocking player (or planeswalker or battle). As such, it is considered combat damage, and so it will trigger ingest.
Yes, damage done to a player by a blocked trampling creature is still combat damage.
120.2a Damage may be dealt as a result of combat. Each attacking and blocking creature deals combat damage equal to its power during the combat damage step.
Both the defending player and the creature(s) blocking the trampling creature receive combat damage, no matter how it's distributed due to Trample. All that matters for Ingest is that the defending player receives at least 1 damage from combat.
