What happens with multiple Parallel lives in play?

Asked by Ilovespiders 12 years ago

If I were to cast Gather the Townsfolk and I had two Parallel Lives in play, How many 1/1's would I get? Some people have told me that I would get eight, because one Parallel Lives would double it to four and the other would double it to eight. Other people have told me that one Parallel Lives would double it to four and the other one would double the original amount, giving an additional two, ending up with six. Can anyone give the answer and explain which one is right?

Epochalyptik says... Accepted answer #1

You would get 8. The Oracle ruling for Parallel Lives covers this:

9/22/2011: If you control two Parallel Lives, then the number of tokens created is four times the original number. If you control three, then the number of tokens created is eight times the original number, and so on.

The basic idea here is the replacement effect, which is something that replaces one event with another. In this case, Parallel Lives creates a replacement effect that replaces the event "create X token(s) of properties Y" with "create 2X tokens of properties Y."Since you have two Parallel Lives in play, each one will generate a replacement effect that will apply to the event of token creation. The first applied replacement effect will double the number of tokens produced by Gather the Townsfolk from 2 to 4, then the second replacement effect will double that result (NOT the original; remember, that original event was replaced with a different event that the effect still applies to) from 4 to 8.

August 14, 2012 8:54 p.m.

Ilovespiders says... #2

Thanks, that clears it up a lot. I figured it would work that way, I had just been told otherwise a lot.

August 14, 2012 9:28 p.m.