Tokens and Devotion
Asked by UnknownPhate 11 years ago
I am crafting a Selesnya token deck and it revolves around tokens. My question is:
How do tokens affect devotion?
Is it the cost to play the token?Is it equal to power/toughness for the color defined?Do they affect it at all?Can a token who was populated count for the original token devotion?
Tokens do not count towards devotion because they don't have a casting cost. The guy I play the most often often plays his selesnya deck and is gutted when I wipe out Gaze of Granite where X=1 because all his tokens die because their cost is 0.
Therefore they cannot count towards devotion.
October 16, 2013 1:41 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #3
@Sizzlr694: Tokens can sometimes have mana costs. Tokens that are copies of permanents with mana costs will copy the mana costs of the original permanents. Tokens created by other effects will not have mana costs, though.
October 16, 2013 1:50 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #5
Of what? Token copies?
Progenitor Mimic creates a token copy that will inherit the mana cost of whatever permanent Progenitor Mimic is copying (or of Progenitor Mimic if Progenitor Mimic isn't copying anything).
Spitting Image , Rite of Replication , and Cackling Counterpart also create tokens that are copies of other permanents.
Tokens created by cards like Call of the Conclave and Lingering Souls are not copies of anything. Therefore, they have only the values ascribed to them by the effects that created them. Because no such effects specify a mana cost for the tokens, these kinds of tokens have no mana costs and will not count toward devotion.
October 16, 2013 1:57 a.m.
@Sizzlr694 FYI, you can use Gaze of Granite
with x=0 and destroy the tokens. If x=0 the card reads, "destroy each nonland permanent with converted mana cost 0 or less" and since the tokens have a converted mana cost of 0, they would die.
October 16, 2013 1:23 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #7
@abenz419: Again, assuming the tokens do not have mana costs.
October 16, 2013 1:25 p.m.
right, I was just referring to his original post about how using Gaze of Granite with x=1 gets rid of the tokens because they have a 0 casting cost. So I was pointing out that if they have a 0 casting cost x can equal 0
October 16, 2013 1:37 p.m.
@Epochalyptik: thanks for that, you ninja'd 'me with my far more basic answer.
October 16, 2013 2:53 p.m.
One token that sees play with devotion is the token created from Pack Rat . Just giving another Standard-legal example.
October 16, 2013 5:26 p.m.
Grimgrinner says... #11
Don't mean to necro a thread, but will cards that copy things (say, Clone , or The Mimeoplasm ) have their original cost, or would it have the cost of the thing it copied (let's use Khalni Hydra as an example) I.e if i Clone a khalni hydra, would that clone display a mana cost of 3U or would it be GGGGGGGG?
March 25, 2014 3:28 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #12
@Grimgrinner: You should just post a new question instead of replying to an old one. The only reason I knew you asked something is that I am still subscribed to this thread.
When you copy an object, the copy gains all the values written on the copied object. Clone's mana cost will be replaced by the mana cost of whatever it copied.
Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #1
Devotion counts only the number of colored mana symbols among permanents you control. It doesn't count anything else.
Normally, tokens have no mana costs. Therefore, they cannot contribute to devotion for a color. However, tokens that are copies of other permanents inherit the mana costs of those permanents. Therefore, token copies of permanents can have mana costs (if the copied object had a mana cost) and can therefore contribute to devotion.
Power and toughness are completely irrelevant to devotion.
October 16, 2013 1:40 a.m.