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I was wondering how Dance of Many and Parallel Lives interact.
Dance of Many's Oracle text says:

When Dance of Many enters the battlefield, put a token that's a copy of target nontoken creature onto the battlefield.

When Dance of Many leaves the battlefield, exile the token.

When the token leaves the battlefield, sacrifice Dance of Many.

At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice Dance of Many unless you pay {U}{U}.

Parallel Lives says:

If an effect would put one or more tokens onto the battlefield under your control, it puts twice that many of those tokens onto the battlefield instead.

Although the ruling on Parallel Lives states:

If the effect creating the tokens instructs you to do something with those tokens at a later time, like exiling them at the end of combat, you'll do that for all the tokens.

this applies only to delayed triggers like for example the one on Mimic Vat, as far as I know.
My question is: will the second triggered ability on Dance of Many remember that it put two tokens into play? And if it does (implying "the token" becoming "those tokens") , will the third triggered ability trigger on either token leaving the battlefield or on all tokens leaving the battlefield?

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Just like the delayed triggered ability and the activated ability of Mimic Vat, the first two abilities of Dance of Many are linked [CR 607.2c], and so are the first and third abilities. The ruling from Parallel Lives applies.

607.2c If an object has an activated or triggered ability printed on it that puts one or more objects onto the battlefield and an ability printed on it that refers to objects "put onto the battlefield with [this object]," those abilities are linked. The second can refer only to objects put onto the battlefield as a result of the first.

"The token" in the second and third ability is short for "the token put on the battlefield by Dance of Many", and refers to that which the first ability created [CR 607.1]. Since

put a token that's a copy of target nontoken creature onto the battlefield.

was replaced with

put two tokens that's a copy of target nontoken creature onto the battlefield.

that which was created was two tokens, so both tokens get exiled if Dance of the Many leaves the battlefield, and Dance of the Many gets sacrificed if either token leaves the battlefield.

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  • Tacked on the answer to the related question the OP asked.
    – user1873
    Sep 20, 2012 at 21:55
  • This may be academic as you are most probably right but what bugged me, is that, if "the token" is now "the tokens put on the battlefield by ~", the third ability becomes ambigious. Literaly it would state "When the tokens put on the battlefield by ~ leave the battlefield, ...". Since a triggered ability that needs, things to happen simultaneously is somewhat strange, you might claim that either event triggers it. But why doesn't the third ability now read "When the last token put onto the battlefield by ~, leaves the battlefield, ..."? (similar to the 'vanishing' mechanism)
    – Maxwell
    Sep 21, 2012 at 17:54
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    I agree there's some interpretation needed, but I'm highly confident in my answer. If you want more eyeballs, go here, but that noone posted a dissenting answer or comment is a good sign. Vanishing always only cares about the last, while Dance cares about any of its (normally one) tokens leaving.
    – ikegami
    Sep 21, 2012 at 18:07
  • @Maxwell: The short answer is that "When the last token put onto the battlefield by ~" would be an actual wording change that changed the effect, beyond that actually required by Parallel Lives. (It would better represent the theme and intent of Dance of Many to treat it as you suggest, but the rules don't care about either. Nothing in Parallel Lives text changes that third ability... so it doesn't change.)
    – Tynam
    Sep 23, 2012 at 9:33
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    @Tynam: The third ability needs to change as it only refers to "the token". But "a token" and "the last token" are both equally rightful extensions to the ability as both do exactly the same when there is just one token (and you only know for sure what happens in this case as it is printed). In my opinion this question is undecidable from the card text alone and AFAIK there is no rule deciding it either. This may be a hole in the rules but if they would fix it I'm pretty sure they would do it in the sense ikegami has proposed.
    – Maxwell
    Sep 24, 2012 at 17:47
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You should consider the effect of Dance of Many to be instructing you to give the token the properties "When Dance of Many leaves the battlefield, exile this token." and "When this token leaves the battlefield, sacrifice Dance of Many." The ruling on Parallel Lives then says that since you are instructed to do this for the original token, you should do it for both. Thus, you now have two tokens that both have "When Dance of Many leaves the battlefield, exile this token." and "When this token leaves the battlefield, sacrifice Dance of Many."

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