Pattern Recognition #323 - Tokens For Ever!

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

16 May 2024

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Hello Everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Also the only one. I am a well deserved Old Fogey having started the game back in 1996. My experience in both Magic and Gaming is quite extensive, and I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. I dabble in deck construction, mechanics design, Magic's story and characters, as well as more abstract concepts. Or whatever happens to catch my fancy that week. Please, feel free to talk about each week's subject in the comments section at the bottom of the page, from corrections to suggested improvements or your own anecdotes. I won't bite. :) Now, on with the show!

And welcome back! Sorry about last week, I was feeling a bit under the weather with a combination of allergies, a seasonal flu then some local wildfires turning the air to smoke. It was a bad confluence of events, but I'm mostly better now!

Today's subject came up while I was in the process of rebuilding and re-sorting my collection of cards, specifically the overstock. I found things that I needed to double check if they were in my primary collection or not, and one of them was Doubling Season. Which was odd because I was pretty sure that it was either with my brother for one of his Selesnya decks or in my regular stock. And I've had it since I cracked it in a pack of Ravnica: City of Guilds so it's not like this was just a new card in my pile. I know this card.

And I haven't really been using it.

Yeah, I know, half of you are wondering why not. But you have to remember that at the time, I was a huge Boros fanboy - still am, really. And the net result was that I didn't really see the use in a card that could double the amount of token creatures I would be making. I mean, yes, I did see the obvious, but I was still locked into thinking about Standard at the time, so much like my copy of Tarmogoyf(FUT), I put it away and let it collect dust for a long time.

This isn't to say I ignored it. It's just that I never really leaned into the idea of exploiting this card for all of its worth. I recognized its value, and prioritized its destruction in the hands of my opponents, but never really saw a need to play it myself.

That changed when I was introduced to the Commander format and I decided to dip my toes into it. So I build a very early 2010's deck with Verdeloth the Ancient as my Commander. The actual deck list has been lost to time, but I do remember that this was the first time I actually put my Doubling Season into a deck with a dedicated plan. Make lots of Saprolings, and Overrun the enemy.

Simple. Effective. Very meh, and certainly not something I would want to run today.

But I put this card away from my thoughts for a while. And yet it came back to me in another form. I cracked an Anointed Procession from Amonkhet, and I added it to my Embalm/Eternalize deck from around that time.

And here is where I had to step back for a moment. Another card that doubled tokens made. Sure, it didn't double counters, but there had to be something here, right? So at the time I went looking. And I found cards that I had missed and never really considered. I found Parallel Lives and Primal Vigor and Parallel Evolution.

So I built myself a Rhys the Redeemed deck, and.... yeah, that didn't do so well.

But this is where I stop with me and my Reminisceing about the past and look at what I'm actually talking about in terms of subject matter for this week. I've talked a bit about counters and token creatures in the past, and this tie I want to focus on their multipliers.

Now that is going to be a fairly narrow subject, so I can easily include Token Additives to the mix, and I may yet do so, but for now, it's a focus on the few that multiply what a player has. Thankfully, Scryfall and its user-based tag system comes to me rescue and gives me this list of cards that would be Token multipliers. It's a short list and doesn't include things like Academy Manufactor which adds additional tokens. No, I want the full multipliers. And I think the best way to look at them is to look at them in context. In terms of the set and block they came out in first and try to figure them out from there.

Parallel Evolution is from Torment, and is the capstone to a horizontal and vertical cycle of sorceries across sets and blocks that all make a creature token and all have Flashback. Chatter of the Squirrel, Roar of the Wurm and Crush of Wurms to move up in rarity as you go through the sets in chronological order. This card didn't have a special purpose beyond that, as while it certainly has use now, in context, it was just a fun little nod to the cycles of cards that was all throughout the block, nothing more and nothing less.

Still, this card doesn't see as much play as it should as it is a Global effect. All players equally. And it specifies Creature Tokens, so it won't go duplicating everyone's Food and Treasures.

Moving on, the one and the only! Doubling Season. Printed in Ravnica, in context of when and where it was printed, the two halves of this card - doubling tokens and doubling counters - were actually because of the Guild flavor at the time. The Selesnya and Simic guilds each had different foci. In this case, the Selesnya guild leaned into token creation to help fuel its Convoke mechanic and definitely saw Doubling Season as a way to get more bang for their buck. On the Simic side of things, they and their Graft mechanic, which involved creatures entering with +1/+1 counters on them, and moving them around to grant activated abilities, saw this card as a way to go from a single counter to two on the destination creature, which was a very good option.

Of course, Doubling Season is also one of the warning cards about future proofing your wording. The way that card is written, it interacts with cards that enter the battlefield under your control. To whit, Planewalkers. In fact, for the longest time, every Planeswalker in the game could fire off their ultimate ability - something that should take 2-3 turns unaffected on the Battlefield - the turn they come into play if you had a Doubling Season. Well, not all of them, but in quite a few cases, from the simple expedience of Garruk Wildspeaker throwing down an Overrun on his turn to even more vile options. No, I'm not going to list them all. I can leave that to you.

Reys the Redeemed is a repeatable Parallel Evolution, except this time with the addition of in the activation cost, and it only targets you. Look, Rhys is an amazingly powerful creature, and this second ability is the primary reason. That this ability stacks with all the other doublers and additives is just the icing on the cake so to speak. He's good. Really good. Very Good. I really should build it.

Parallel Lives is just the first half of the all-powerful Doubling Season. Now with even a single reduction to the casting cost, this card benefited more than just two colours. The Innistrad block held a decent array of token makers with cards like Etreat the Angels, Endless Ranks of the Dead, and Kessig Cagebreakers. Though to be fair, most of these are either 1/1 Humans, 1/1 Spirits with Flying, 2/2 Zombies and a couple sources of 4/4 Angels with Flying. It was a good utility spell, which is what they were intended to be.

I'll skip Selesnya Loft Gardens because I don't have experience with it.

Commander 2013 brought up Primal Vigor, found not in the Naya deck fronted by Marath, Will of the Wild but rather in the deck headlined by [[Prossh, Skyraider of Kher]. An interesting choice, but one I can see making sense in that the Jund colours supported the Devour mechanic pretty well even if it wasn't a big thing in the precon deck. Oh well, wouldn't be the first nor last time a card that only had partial utility in a deck was put into a precon. "Seeding" they sometimes call it.

Moving on, Second Harvest from Shadows over Innistrad occupies much the same design space as the previous Parallel Lives did. However, this is a one-shot effect, doubling all your tokens meant that it was no longer a static effect, you couldn't build up over time. However, because it's a spell, not a permanent, you don't have to worry as much about removal. Just counterspells. This block also helped introduce the 3/2 Eldrazi Horror into the mix of tokens you could have, as well as Insect, Spiders, and others of little not. Of interest, this card does follow up on an Emrakul's Evangel meaning if you wanted to, you could sac everything to the Evangel, then double your counters all on Turn 4. Maybe not the best, but hey, it's there.

Amonkhet brings us the first purely card here, Anointed Procession. This simple card is Parallel Lives, but instead. And in a set where this colour was getting a lot of access to the Eternalize and Embalm mechanics to turn creatures in your graveyard into creature tokens on the battlefield. I ran this card in my Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun deck as well as dipping into 's token making machine. But even as I said that, this second colour token multiplier lit a fire under Token decks as you no longer were required to run /. Sure, it was still the best, but already made plenty of tokens and with cards in the works like Divine Visitation, what was good for the goose was good for the gander as people say.

Do other people still say that? Or am I just old?

Adrix and Nev, Twincasters from Commander 21 is a Commander designed to do just this. I bought the precon and never really ran it as intended as I was more interested in getting my hands on Ruxa, Patient Professor instead. However, as that deck was designed around creating Fractals with power and toughness that was , I can see why you would want to have a ready available source of extra tokens. I may have to try that as well. jots down a note for later

Moving on we get the real odd Doubler out in this particular sequence. Kaya, Geist Hunter can for -2, double your tokes for the rest of the turn. A very ability, and one that I can see being used to support the Procession and future sources of doubling in a Kambal, Profiteering Mayor Commander deck. Yet another deck I want to build. But back to Kaya. She's a Planeswalker, and yet her initial Loyalty and her costs mean that this is something of a setup effect. And if you're going for it, than it should be obvious to your opponent what you're doing and to be prepared for it.

Next up, Mondrak, Glory Dominus from All Will Be One. It's a Phyrexian, therefore it sucks. Best used as a fire stater for all the other Phyrexians out there.

Oh, fine. As a creature, Mondrak is open to more removal and doesn't have the basic Ward protection that the Twincasters do. On the other hand, this creature's other ability addresses that issue by letting you put an indestructible counter on it when you sacrifice a couple of creatures or artifacts. Given that this creature was in a set that also included Mirrex and it's 1/1 Phyrexian Mites as well as the For Mirrodin! mechanic that makes a token that the equipment can then attach to, this creature had no shortage of viable sources of tokens to double and make it work. Still Phrexian. Still needs to die in a fire. But it is still the second Multiplier in , so that has to mean something, right?

And lastly, from the Lost Caverns of Ixalan, Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation  ^Flip. This is another source, but unlike everything before it, this God TRIPLES the tokens being made. This is a huge set up in potency, and it is only matched by being the most expensive card to cast. It was also surrounded by a plethora of tokens, from Maps to various Dinosaurs, to Skeleton Pirates or Fungi that can't block. But I think that the one it was best intended to work with was the 1/1 Gnome under the auspices of Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon or the / Gnome Soldier. Making many of the cute little guys is just the best thing!

And there you have the listings.

Token Doublers started in and have moved into , but they have't left their original color yet. Doubling Season, Parallel Lives and Primal Vigor were all reprinted in the Wilds of Eldraine: Enchanting Tales bonus sheet to keep them in circulation. They are viable, powerful and wanted cards, so it's no wonder to me that Wizards would reproduce them.

Now, these cards are not without their flaws. The first and foremost is the bane of all spells. Removal and Counterspells. None of these, with the exception of the Twincasters, comes with any sort of inherent defense, and so the best response to seeing any of these cards is to kill it as soon as possible. Targeted removal of Enchantments is difficult for some colours, but not impossible thanks to cards like Introduction to Annihilation or Unstable Obelisk. Creatures and the solitary Planeswalker have more options available to remove them, but they too can be circumvented.

The counter to this flaw is the sheer redundancy involved. If your opponent rolls up with a Selesnya Tokens deck, you can be pretty much assured that they will have all of these cards that they have available to them, save for Kaya - unless it's one of those decks that splashes because they're not playing Commander. And because even if you take one out, they will have another to play. Or two more. Can your removal keep up? The Token deck is based around their opponents running out of answers and board wipes sooner or later.

The other problem is that none of these cards do anything by themselves. They are multipliers to other effects, and their power scales to the base of what they are modifying. Getting a single use of [{Resolute Reinforcements]] and getting a second token is far less effective than dropping Storm Herd with a large life total. And you need to be able to cast and resolve these effects. It is quite possible for your opponents to see you drop your Doubling Season and then save their responses for what comes next, rather than interact with the card that isn't a threat by itself.

And of course, you're making yourself an exponentially bigger threat with each card. There is no way around that. I hope you're prepared!

Token multipliers are here to stay. There's no way around that. And I wouldn't want there to be either. Each of these cards take a potentially limited resource and give more life to them. Which is good! It doesn't diminish the value of the initial set of tokens, but odes provide extra value in resonance.

There's nothing wrong with them at all, and I look forward to the next one.

I was tempted to build a TokenDoubler Deck and paste it here to show how it works, but in the end, nothing about it really was interesting or unique. There are plenty of options here on TappedOut for you to see, so I suggest you do so and see what I see.

Thank you all for reading. I'll see you next week with something else. What? I'm not sure yet. But I'm always willing to lend an ear to suggestions and requests.

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job (now), but more income is always better, and I can use it to buy cards! I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!