Is there significance to the 'Creature Card' phrasing for Raphael, Fiendish Savior?
Asked by Dark_Globe 2 years ago
I'm considering at building a Raphael, Fiendish Savior commander deck and noticed this slightly odd rules text for the second ability (the 'creature card' phrasing). I don't think I've seen this phrasing used much in the past - is there significance to using this phrase rather than just saying 'creature'?
In particular, I want to know whether this ability triggers off tokens or not. So for example, if I have Ashnod's Altar and Raphael, Fiendish Savior out, can I just keep sacrificing the token in each opponents turn and get a new one back at end of turn - or do I need to have a non-token creature die?
Either way it seems like a really unintuitive rules text.
Dark_Globe says... #2
Thanks - that's what I'd guessed, but just wanted to check before I got too far with decklist.
Yesterday says... Accepted answer #1
It does seem unintuitive at first, but tokens are not cards according to the rules of the game, despite the fact that Wizards print out literal cards of them for representation. So you can't just continually sacrifice the token Devils to spawn new ones.
It could just say "whenever a nontoken creature you own dies", but then it wouldn't trigger off self-milling effects that put creature cards into your graveyard. There are other more niche differences, such as the fact that it doesn't trigger if an animated Vehicle you control dies, but it does trigger if you sacrifice a noncreature Erebos, God of the Dead.
May 29, 2022 1:44 p.m.