This article’s question comes from Sidratul Chowdhury, who writes:
I recently made a deck with Daghatar the Adamant as my commander. The deck uses tokens and counters to help its goal of synergy with counter lords like Bramblewood Paragon, or Abzan Battle Priest. I want to follow the theme of the Abzan clan but I’m having a difficult time getting my Krumar (tokens) their dragon scales (counters). Even though this is at heart a theme deck I still want it to be as strong as possible so I am hoping you might have some suggestions on some of the best counter lords, token generators, and counter producers. Any advice you have would be much appreciated.Counter lords, token generators, and counter producers? In short, we are looking to achieve one goal:
If you have ever seen something like this…
…then you know how big a job it can be to keep track of the power and toughness of all your creatures. Green, white, and black are absolutely FULL of ways to create an army of tokens and put +1/+1 counters on them. In fact, Sidratul’s question covers so much ground that I have decided to split this Dig Through Time article into two parts. The first part, which you are reading right now, will cover the “produce token creatures” part of the question, while the second part (to be posted soon) will cover the “put +1/+1 counters on all my creatures” part.
So…what are the best options for producing many token creatures in green, white, and black?
Now, the astute among you may have noticed that the above-pictured creature is not a Human Warrior of Tarkir’s long-ago Abzan clan. I am using a picture of Ghave instead of Daghatar the Adamant not only because our fungal friend can actually, y’know, produce tokens (the theme of this particular article) but also because he plays really well with the kind of Daghatar deck that Sidratul describes above. Even if he is not the commander, he should definitely be included as one of the 99 other cards.
It’s worth noting here that this article is not going to include all cards that make token creatures. That would be unreadably long, and a lot of token producers aren’t actually very good in Commander. A deck that wants to win with token creatures often wants to merely survive the early game, then start filling the board with creatures in the mid or late game. You don’t want to fill up your deck with cards that are good on turn two but weak later on: you want your pieces of cardboard to still be relevant if you draw them on an empty board on turn 10. As a result, this article is not going to feature cards like Fists of Ironwood, Raise the Alarm, or even Bitterblossom—the cards below have been evaluated based on 1) how “hard-hitting” they are and 2) how efficient they are. Merely getting a few creatures (or a single creature every turn) doesn’t hit very hard in Commander.
Category 1: Cheaper One-Shot Effects
Although I have already mentioned that the average Commander deck doesn’t need early-game cards like Midnight Haunting or Thraben Doomsayer, if you’re pursuing a strong token theme then you definitely want to get some tokens on the battlefield on turns four or five. The following cards can do that while also producing an acceptable amount of power in the late game.
Spectral Procession, Lingering Souls, Battle Screech, and Fertile Imagination. These are the token-producing spells that are hit the “sweet spot” intersection of efficiency and power—the fact that all of the white spells here produce flying tokens is really relevant, since that ability is quite valuable on the average Commander battlefield. Spectral Procession is obviously much easier to cast in mono-white or two-color decks rather than Abzan decks, but it’s still quite good if you have to pay 2WW for it. Lingering Souls has been a staple in multiple formats for a reason; five mana for four flying creatures is great (and even better when you can split up that cost). Battle Screech can be four flying creatures for four mana, so it’s well worth playing even if you’re worried about not having a third white creature to pay its flashback cost. Remember, summoning sickness doesn’t slow you down in paying that cost, so all you need is one more white creature (like Daghatar) to get full, immediate value from Battle Screech. Fertile Imagination is a slightly weird card, but you might be surprised by how good it can be: particularly if the people in your metagame like drawing a lot of cards, it’s not hard to get four, six, or even eight Saprolings for four mana by naming a common card type like “land”—or making a really insightful choice based on your knowledge of people’s decks. In addition to giving you Saprolings, Fertile Imagination has a hidden benefit: it reveals one of your opponents’ hands, which can show you what to play around…and give your opponents something to worry about other than your token creatures.
Also worth noting: if you want to lean really hard on these kinds of spells, you can consider Triplicate Spirits, but it’s a bit too expensive (even with convoke) to get a real recommendation from me.
Benevolent Offering, Hunting Triad, and Aura Mutation. As we saw above, Fertile Imagination provides a small benefit in addition to its tokens—but these three cards provide some really significant bonuses in addition to their attractive amounts of token production. In a deck that wants to make a lot of tokens, Benevolent Offering can gain you a lot of life at instant speed, and there is often a player or two whom you don’t mind giving some free creatures and/or life. Hunting Triad is not quite as good a token-producer, but in a deck based around Daghatar the Adamant or Ghave, Guru of Spores, the instant-speed three +1/+1 counters can really make a difference. Aura Mutation is much, much cheaper than its green-black sibling, Death Mutation. People play a lot of expensive enchantments in Commander, too, so destroying a Zendikar Resurgent or True Conviction (at instant speed!) and getting a pile of Saprolings for two mana is often a fantastic deal.
Cloudgoat Ranger; Thelonite Hermit; Deranged Hermit; Geist-Honored Monk; Captain of the Watch; Knight-Captain of Eos; Ishkanah, Grafwidow; and Noosegraf Mob. These creatures all produce token creatures when they enter the battlefield, and most of them produce a whole lot of power in the process. These are particularly awesome if you have any good ways to recur dead creatures. Cloudgoat Ranger starts off as six power spread over four bodies, and it can also become a medium-sized flier if necessary. Thelonite Hermit can flip on turn five to produce nine power spread over five bodies, and it improves any other Saprolings your other cards may produce. Deranged Hermit (the original hermit) also produces nine power spread over five bodies, and you don’t actually have to pay the echo the following turn if all you care about are the Squirrels rather than the total power. Geist-Honored Monk produces two fliers and—if your token deck is doing what it wants to—is also a HUGE creature with vigilance. Captain of the Watch produces nine power spread over four bodies, and (similar to Thelonite Hermit) it will happily pump up any Soldier tokens you gain from other sources. Speaking of Soldier tokens, Knight-Captain of Eos is often one of the best cards in any token deck he appears in: the ability to ignore a few attacks can absolutely win games, and any way to produce additional Soldier tokens (like Mobilization) can make you immune to combat damage completely. Although Ishkanah, Grafwidow is a bit harder to get working (you need Delirium) and provides a bit less defense than the Knight-Captain, it is still a really powerful defensive token-producer that is great with any way to bounce or recur creatures, since it buys you time by blocking so well. Noosegraf Mob is similarly great with recursion, since it triggers whenever any player casts a spell and will often therefore spit out five Zombies within a turn cycle.
Increasing Devotion, Conqueror's Pledge, and One Dozen Eyes. These cards can be used relatively early in the game, but they also scale up a bit as the game goes long. Increasing Devotion should be in every white Commander deck that wants to produce tokens—five mana for five creatures is already an attractive rate on the front end, but the ability to produce ten more tokens late in the game makes this an absolutely indispensable card. Conqueror’s Pledge often reminds people of Increasing Devotion since it can make either six or twelve tokens, but it isn’t nearly as good: with Increasing Devotion, you get both five and ten tokens…plus Conqueror’s Pledge costs ELEVEN mana to get the increased effect. Generally, you should just treat the Pledge as a five-mana spell that produces six creatures (which, come to think of it, is actually quite good). One Dozen Eyes is not nearly as strong as Increasing Devotion either, but it’s still quite good at producing five insects in the mid game or ten power worth of creatures if you draw it while you have nine mana available.
Category 2: More Expensive One-Shot Effects
Much like the flashed-back version of Increasing Devotion, these are the cards that can basically take you directly from an empty battlefield to a full, dangerous board presence. You definitely don’t want all of your token-producing cards to sit in this expensive range, but it is important to have a few of these.
Trostani’s Summoner, Myr Battlesphere, Hornet Queen, Abhorrent Overlord, and Avenger of Zendikar. Many of these cards look relatively similar, but they have significantly different power levels anyway. Trostani’s Summoner is one of the weaker options here, but the fact that it produces a 4/4 trampler among its four creatures can be relevant occasionally. Myr Battlesphere is quite powerful since it can essentially swing for twelve damage, and, by producing colorless creatures, it gives you a way to block creatures with fear, intimidate, or protection from colors. Hornet Queen is nearly unmatched as a defensive token producer, and decks focused on tokens often lack aerial defenses, so the Queen is usually worth a spot in just about any deck. Abhorrent Overlord, on the other hand, is only good in decks that are heavily black (ideally mono-black, of course). In those decks, though, it is fantastic: producing a large mass of flying creatures is amazing for both offense and defense. Finally, then, there is Avenger of Zendikar, the king of this class of cards. The Avenger is an absolute staple of Commander green decks for a very good reason, and it is even better in a deck that wants to use “+1/+1 counter lords” like Abzan Battle Priest.
Gideon’s Phalanx, Army of the Damned, and Storm Herd. Here are the large-scale spells to match the big token-producing creatures we just covered. Gideon’s Phalanx is a bit difficult to evaluate: it costs seven mana to provide only four creatures, but if you are casting a lot of spells like Spectral Procession, Aura Mutation, and One Dozen Eyes, then you can unlock the "spell mastery" version, which can keep all of your token creatures alive through the majority of sweeper effects. If your deck is spell-heavy and your local metagame features a lot of wrath effects, this may just be the card for you. And now, we get to the real heavy hitters. Army of the Damned produces twenty-six power spread over thirteen bodies, and then it can do it again for just a two-mana increase in cost. This card is amazing and should see much more play in Commander. Storm Herd, similarly, costs ten mana but is almost always thoroughly worth the investment. Most of the time, this one spell will produce at least twenty or thirty flying creatures, which is often enough to kill players even without putting any +1/+1 counters on your Pegasus tokens.
Category 3: Scalable Effects (“X-spells”)
Well, we have seen Army of the Damned and Storm Herd. It’s hard to produce bigger effects than those cards do, but if you’re playing the color green (or reading my comprehensive guides to colorless and non-green mana ramp), then you know that it’s possible for some open-ended spells to go very big indeed near the end of a game of Commander.
Secure the Wastes, White Sun’s Zenith, Decree of Justice, Snake Basket, and Verdeloth the Ancient. These are the most straightforward “x-spells.” Secure the Wastes and White Sun’s Zenith are fairly similar instants: Secure the Wastes is more efficient at producing a large number of bodies, but the Zenith will produce more overall power (if you’re not pumping up your creatures) once you have six or more mana. Decree of Justice may look very different from those cards, but anyone who has played with it enough knows that you very rarely use its normal mana cost: generally, you cycle the card to produce X 1/1 creatures at instant speed and then draw a card, making it an uncounterable, cantripping, less-mana-efficient Secure the Wastes. Snake Basket works at sorcery speed, but it is colorless and can therefore fit into any deck that wants tokens. It produces an interesting tension: you can basically use it as a sorcery with a casting cost of X4, or you can cast it but then wait until the following turn to untap and activate it for more Snakes (if you don’t think that anyone will destroy it before then). Verdeloth the Ancient is the least efficient of these cards since you have to spend six mana before you get to start paying X mana for X Saprolings, but in decks that want to generate a lot of mana the power of those 2/2 Saprolings can really start adding up.
Dread Summons, Martial Coup, and Entreat the Angels. These are the more interesting “x-spells” that are worth playing. Dread Summons is actually a really complex card: obviously, it would be at its best in a game with many players all playing creature-heavy decks, but that’s often not the case. Let’s assume a baseline: four players, each with a deck containing 25 creatures. In that situation, every mana paid into Dread Summons’ X cost would produce an average of one Zombie (since each card milled has a 25% chance of being a creature, and you mill four cards for each mana spent). That’s actually quite a good rate, since the Zombies are 2/2. If the game has fewer players (perhaps because some have lost the game) or less-creature-dense decks, then you can start expecting a rate less than one Zombie per mana spent; conversely, you can start getting some really impressive average gains if you are playing with more people or with decks stuffed with creatures. This card has to be evaluated based on the people you usually play with, but it’s probably a bit better than you think, as long as you cast it while everyone is still in the game. Martial Coup is less complex: it usually just kills everyone’s creatures and then gives you a bunch of Soldiers. This card is worth playing in just about all token-based decks, since sometimes you really need to sweep the board but don’t want to be lacking creatures afterward. In such a situation, you might also want to consider Hour of Reckoning. Entreat the Angels is a powerful card, and it’s mostly being included in this list because of the potential for using its miracle cost. Technically, even if you have to pay the full XXWWW cost, you’re still getting a relatively good rate on power—spending nine mana gets you twelve flying power—but in a deck that cares about total tokens, you don’t want to spend nine mana for three creatures. If you can use the miracle cost (perhaps aided by cards like Sensei’s Divining Top or Scroll Rack), though, this is simply the best token-generation card ever printed. The base spell’s XX cost is just too expensive, which is why I am not including Empty the Pits or Dark Salvation in the list of the best token-producing effects: they can both make quite a few Zombies (particularly if you exile your graveyard to cast Empty), but if you’re looking to make a large quantity of tokens, you will generally want to use the other spells outlined here.
Gelatinous Genesis and Hydra Broodmaster. Although I am not going to recommend Empty the Pits, I am judging token-generation effects by both efficiency AND power—and although these two cards are not particularly efficient if your goal is to produce a lot of token creatures, they can achieve ridiculous, game-winning levels of power if you have a lot of mana to spend. These are not for the decks that want to do interesting shenanigans with lots of creatures; these are for “normal” green Commander decks that just want to ramp really hard and then make eight 8/8 creatures.
Beacon of Creation, Howl of the Night Pack, and Wolfbriar Elemental. These are the scalable effects that functionally only care about green mana. Beacon of Creation and Howl of the Night Pack can be extremely good cards if your deck’s manabase features nothing (or nearly nothing) but Forests. As soon as you add another color, though, they become much worse, nearly to the point of being unplayable. Wolfbriar Elemental, particularly in a mono-green deck, is a good play at roughly any point in the game, since your tokens come along with an aggressively-priced 4/4. Wolfbriar Elemental is a bit more playable in two-color decks than the Beacon or Howl, too, because you can usually still get three or four wolves out of it even if you have some Plains or Swamps cluttering up the battlefield.
Plague of Vermin, Alliance of Arms, and Sylvan Offering. Here, we have the spells that give er’ybody tokens. In general, it’s worth noting that if you’re playing a dedicated “Token Deck” you should be able to use the tokens better than other people will, so these cards may actually be better for you than they might appear at first glance. Plague of Vermin can really change the landscape of a Commander game, and, because it reduces most players’ life totals, it really rewards flying creatures that can get past the Rats to hit people. If you can follow up a Plague of Vermin with a next-turn Abzan Ascendancy and an Abzan Falconer, you are going to do some serious damage. Alliance of Arms is essentially a “x-spell” that everyone can pay into, which sounds good because it can have higher potential upside for you, but it gives all players the same amount of Soldiers. This card is particularly dangerous, since even if you are the only one who pays, everyone else gets to freeload on your efforts, and even if you are better set up to use the tokens, other players can still gang up to kill you. Sylvan Offering, on the other hand, gives you much more control over who gets the tokens, and hooking somebody up with a bunch of creatures can help make that person an ally (who won’t attack you for a while with those tokens you just handed out). Often, though, you’re better off just using a spell like Secure the Wastes or Snake Basket so that you don’t have to hand out any tokens at all: you don’t actually get that many more tokens from Sylvan Offering.
Hooded Hydra and Hangarback Walker. These cards can convert +1/+1 counters into token creatures, which plays extremely well with Sidratul’s original goals as mentioned at the beginning of this article. Whether before or after these creatures die, any +1/+1 counters you can produce will find a good home. They are much better than Kinsbaile Borderguard in an average deck because they can enter the battlefield with a lot of counters on them. Hooded Hydra, in particular, can be not only a very large creature but also a huge pile of snakes, at nearly the same attractive rate that Secure the Wastes provides. Hangarback Walker suffers from the same XX cost that makes Gelatinous Genesis, Hydra Broodmaster, and Empty the Pits bad at producing raw numbers of tokens, but its ability to tick itself upward and general synergy with +1/+1 counters makes it a better option than those cards if you are looking for a large number of bodies. Both the Hydra and the Walker are obviously a lot better if you have a sacrifice outlet (like Spawning Pit or Martyr’s Cause) on the battlefield. Come to think of it, that’s true for a lot of cards, and a token-heavy deck really wants to have a sacrifice outlet on the battlefield anyway….
Screw it; I’m adding a new sub-category to list some of those cards.
(Category 3B: Token Producers That Are Good With Sacrifice Outlets)
Symbiotic Wurm; Symbiotic Beast; Mitotic Slime; Promise of Bunrei; Mongrel Pack; and Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder. All of these cards can turn into a lot of creatures if you have a sacrifice outlet. Imagine these cards alongside Perilous Forays or Phyrexian Plaguelord—you can get a lot of value from the token creatures that spill out when you break open these piñatas. Symbiotic Wurm, Symbiotic Beast, and Mitotic Slime are all extremely similar, with different numbers of creatures inside: the Wurm creates seven, the Beast creates four, and the Slime is slightly more complicated: it can be broken down to four 1/1s, but you can get two additional sacrifices in the process: a single Slime alongside an Attrition can represent seven dead creatures. Promise of Bunrei and Mongrel Pack do much the same thing, at highly efficient rates; the only real difference is that the Promise is an enchantment (and therefore harder to recur), while the Pack will only trigger if it is killed (or sacrificed) during a combat phase. Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder is the odd man out in this category. In a way, he serves as a segue into the next category (Repeatable Effects) since he can produce a constant stream of more tokens as you cast creatures…but as soon as you get up to seven Thrulls, they rise up and kill their creator. To manage your number of Thrulls, you will generally need a sacrifice outlet—and if you can do that, you can get an incredible amount of value from this classic Fallen Empires character.
Category 4: Repeatable Effects
With the mention of Endrek, we can now jump into cards that can produce tokens over and over. As I mentioned early on in this article, though, cards like Bitterblossom or From Beyond are not going to be included here. We are looking to produce a LOT of tokens, and drawing Master of the Wild Hunt on turn ten is not going to meet those needs.
Grave Titan; Elspeth, Sun’s Champion; Pollenbright Wings; Verdant Force; and Verdant Embrace. These are the repeatable effects that are relatively guaranteed to give you immediate value. Grave Titan is a fantastic creature overall, and (particularly if you can give it haste) it can produce a lot of Zombies quite quickly. A comparison with Hero of Bladehold, which I often find lacking in Commander, might be helpful here: unlike the Hero, Grave Titan is large enough and deathtouchy enough to often have a safe place to attack. Grave Titan is harder to kill (with, say, Doom Blade or Mizzium Mortars), and it also produces two creatures immediately rather than hoping to survive until your next turn’s combat step. Elspeth, Sun’s Champion is surprisingly good in Commander, considering how hostile the format usually is toward planeswalkers: her +1 ability makes a truly relevant amount of tokens, and her -3 ability can kill a lot of legitimate creatures while leaving nearly all of your deck’s tokens alive. Elspeth’s previous version (Elspeth Tirel) is actually quite good in decks like this, too, although she is not nearly as good a producer of token creatures. Pollenbright Wings is better than it looks—there will often be at least one player who doesn’t have good aerial defenses, and the Wings can allow your commander (or biggest creature, like Grave Titan) to immediately exploit that weakness and produce a big pile of Saprolings in the process. Verdant Force is the original card that makes a bunch of tokens: I remember being very excited when this card was printed way back in 1997, and it is still a good Commander card today. Because its ability triggers on all upkeeps rather than merely your own, you will almost always get at least a couple of Saprolings from this creature before it gets killed—and sometimes people will simply not be worried about its trickle of token creatures, thereby letting you pick up four or so Saprolings every turn cycle. The same is true for Verdant Embrace, although the enchantment makes it even more tempting for people to use removal. It can be very good on a turn-four Daghatar the Adamant, though, and if you’re building a Thrun, the Last Troll deck or playing Dreampod Druid, Verdant Embrace is great!
Mycoloth, Ghoulcaller Gisa, Thopter Assembly, and Orochi Hatchery. These are the more awkward versions of the above cards, but they have higher possible upsides to go with their vulnerability and general lack of immediacy. Mycoloth can easily be a ridiculously large creature that produces huge piles of Saprolings on your upkeep: even if you only sacrifice two creatures as you cast him, he’s a five-mana 8/8 that makes four bodies a turn. He also, come to think of it, plays very well with Sidratul’s original plan of distributing +1/+1 counters—but he is a real lightning-rod for removal spells, as people panic that you have such a great creature on the battlefield. Ghoulcaller Gisa can always just sacrifice 2/2 Zombies to essentially generate a single creature every turn, but that’s not a good reason to play her: she is at her best when you are constantly sacrificing Conclave Naturalists and recurring it with Meren of Clan Nel Toth. Thopter Assembly doesn’t require any sacrifices, but it does cost six mana every time you want to produce five 1/1 Thopters, it has to survive until your next upkeep (just like Mycoloth), and it will never get you past five token creatures. Still, though, it can be a fairly reliable card in very long games. Orochi Hatchery is less vulnerable than the three creatures in this category, but it is infinitely less efficient: if you want to produce five Snake tokens, you are going to have to spend ten mana to get five charge counters, then another five mana to actually get your Snakes. I really can’t recommend the Hatchery unless you are generating a huge amount of mana (with, perhaps, Earthcraft, Druids’ Repository, or Citanul Heirophants). If you can get nineteen mana, for example, you can cast the Hatchery with seven charge counters and then tap it to immediately get seven Snakes, with the VERY appealing option to get seven more on all following turns.
Spawnwrithe and Giant Adephage. These cards have exactly the same rules text, but the difference in casting cost and power/toughness makes them fill very different roles in decks. After playing with Spawnwrithe, some people get the impression that this card should be in every green Commander deck ever made: a turn-three Spawnwrithe can get completely out of control if even a single player doesn’t have a good blocker for a couple of turns. Once you’re swinging with eight 2/2 replicating Elementals, it can become very easy to eliminate some players over the coming turns as your creatures multiply. This early-game power can be misleading, though: in my experience, if you play Spawnwrithe any time after turn four, it can’t really get going, and it ends up being basically useless. It’s a good card in certain situations, but it’s definitely not for every deck. Giant Adephage, on the other hand, should probably see more play than it does. It is an imposing threat on any turn of the game, and if you ever get to start making copies (which is not that hard for a 7/7 trampler), you are getting a huge amount of board presence for free. It’s not really a good way to achieve our “get as many token creatures as possible” goal, but it’s a very good card nonetheless. (Also, if you want to use the Populate mechanic, it is hard to find a better token to copy!)
Sacred Mesa, Ant Queen, Sprout Swarm, Luminarch Ascension, and Necrogenesis. These are some of the best cards that let you spend mana to get token creatures. There are actually MANY such cards, but most of them cost three mana per token (like Nemata, Grove Guardian or Mobilization) or four mana (like Selesnya Guildmage, Heliod, or Centaur Glade). Our goal is to produce large numbers of tokens, so the lowest activation costs have been prioritized. Sacred Mesa is a very powerful option for later in the game, since it makes flying creatures for two mana each, no questions asked. Early on, its upkeep cost makes it more trouble than it’s worth, but it is definitely worth including in your token deck if you plan to get up to ten or fourteen mana. Ant Queen is very similar, except it is better early in the game and doesn’t make flying creatures. As a 5/5 creature, it is naturally more vulnerable to removal than an enchantment, of course, but while Ant Queen is around it’s actually the most straightforwardly efficient token-producer in Magic. Sprout Swarm is much less efficient, at five mana per creature, but it has two major advantages: you can tap any creatures to help pay for its cost (which is very meaningful in a token deck), and it is incredibly reliable. Other than countermagic or discard, there is basically no way for your opponents to “turn off” Sprout Swarm, which means that it is always an option for the rest of the game after you first draw it. Luminarch Ascension is the card with the most raw power out of all of these options—two mana for a 4/4 flyer is a patently absurd rate—and honestly it’s not even that difficult to get four quest counters on it, since one unharmed pass around a multiplayer table can account for most (or all) of those counters. That power level makes it attractive, but it can also be suicide in multiplayer games. Playing Luminarch Ascension is asking to get attacked—both literally (since opponents have to damage you to keep quest counters off) and politically (since many people see the Ascension as “too scary,” like Consecrated Sphinx or Deadeye Navigator). If you slap a Luminarch Ascension onto the battlefield, don’t be surprised when people gang up on you, and consider avoiding the card if your deck can’t handle that kind of attention. Finally, Necrogenesis is way better than it looks at first glance: Commander graveyards tend to get filled up with creatures pretty quickly, so this card can make a lot of tokens over the course of a game—and exiling cards from opponents’ graveyards is profoundly important in a format where Rise of the Dark Realms and Praetor’s Counsel see play. (Note, too, that Night Soil can serve as a good analogue to Necrogenesis, although it runs out of fodder more quickly and can be awkward: if a graveyard has only a single creature in it, you can't touch it.)
Twilight Drover and Custodi Soulbinders. These creatures work incredibly well with two of the themes we are working with—both of them can get very large if you have a lot of token creatures, and they both can make use of +1/+1 counters. Normally, Twilight Drover can be difficult to get going, since you need to have some tokens (not just yours, but anyone’s) leave play—but if you can put +1/+1 counters on the Drover, you get access to an incredibly efficient token-generation effect, producing two creatures for three mana. The token-generation ability of Custodi Soulbinders is far less efficient, but it’s not hard for the Soulbinders to be a four-mana 20/20 or bigger at a multiplayer table, particularly if you have successfully produced quite a few token creatures.
Tetravus, Thopter Squadron, Pentavus, and Triskelavus. I suspect I don’t have to point out the common thread between these artifact creatures. First, in 1994, we got Tetravus, which lets you freely swap its +1/+1 counters for Tetravites (and swap them back) during your upkeep. Then, in 1998, we got Thopter Squadron, and we had to pay one mana for each +1/+1 counter or Thopter token that we wanted to swap on or off the mothership at sorcery speed. Then, in 2003, we got Pentavus, which lets you pay one mana to swap its +1/+1 counters for Pentavites (or vice versa) at instant speed—which can provide incredibly good aerial defense and was a good enough finisher, in combination with Goblin Welder, to see significant play in Vintage at the time. Pentavus is still definitely the best of these four cards. Most recently, in 2006, we got Triskelavus, which only has one-way counter-swapping: you can pay a mana to turn a +1/+1 counter into a Triskelavite, each of which has the further ability to sacrifice itself to ping any target (as one would expect from the Triskelion DNA involved). These cards, overall, don’t produce a whole lot of tokens, but they play very well with +1/+1 counters and can be very flexible.
Category 5: Symbiotic Effects
The cards in this category are symbiotic in the sense that they don’t do very much on their own but become explosively powerful if you already have a lot of creatures on the battlefield. These cards should be used in moderation, but combining them with some of the powerful token producers pictured above can transform a significant board position into a terrifying one.
Rhys the Redeemed, Launch the Fleet, Saproling Symbiosis, Parallel Evolution, Nomads’ Assembly, and Devout Invocation. All of these cards let you directly multiply the creatures you have in play. Rhys the Redeemed, actually a good commander in his own right, serves as a bridge to the previous category of cards we talked about: he allows you to spend three mana to produce a token, which isn’t very good. That’s not why you play him. His six-mana activated ability is great in a token-based deck, and it is absurd if you get to use it multiple times. Launch the Fleet is probably the worst of all the cards mentioned here: you actually have to spend a mana for each token creature you produce, and your creatures have to attack. The only good thing about Launch the Fleet, in the context of these cards, is that the new token creatures essentially have haste since they are born in the red zone. Saproling Symbiosis, Parallel Evolution, and Nomads’ Assembly all look very similar indeed, although they have significant differences: Saproling Symbiosis can be cast at instant speed (which is really valuable), Parallel Evolution affects all players and can be flashed back for a very powerful effect, and Nomads’ Assembly basically has “free” flashback—for obvious reasons, then, the Assembly is the most powerful of these three options. Finally, there is Devout Invocation: this card is extremely powerful in token decks, since tapping all your creatures is not really a problem if you are getting seven or more 4/4 flying Angels in return. In a token deck, it is not that uncommon to have ten or more 1/1 creatures sitting around without any opponents’ freaking out… but once you add 40+ flying power to your battlefield, people have very good reason to panic a little.
Deploy to the Front, Ezuri’s Predation, and Necromancer’s Covenant. These cards can produce huge numbers of tokens, just like the previously-mentioned options, but they care about things other than just your own collection of token creatures. Deploy to the Front actually does care about your creatures, but it also counts everyone else’s creatures, which means that this spell is quite possibly the biggest token-generation card in Magic. Ezuri’s Predation similarly cares about everyone else’s creatures, in the sense that it will kill lots of them and give you a 4/4 Beast for each such creature with three power or less. It’s worth noting, too, that nobody gets to respond to the “fight” part of Ezuri’s Predation once the Beasts are on the battlefield: you can’t sacrifice or buff the Beasts before they fight (and either live or die). Necromancer’s Covenant is very good late in the game: it can give you a big pile of lifelinking Zombies while ruining any reanimation or recursion plans of the person with the best-stocked graveyard. It is particularly good with Dread Summons, since the Summons provides both graveyard fodder and Zombies that can gain lifelink.
Category 6: Assist Cards
These cards are clearly not capable of making any token creatures on an empty board, but they all mesh incredibly well with a focused token-production plan.
Parallel Lives, Doubling Season, and Primal Vigor. These cards all supercharge your token-production efforts. Parallel Lives is the cheapest, which really matters since taking turn four “off” without impacting the board is much less suicidal than doing nothing impactful on turn five. Doubling Season is the most powerful of these options, since it also doubles all your counters, but it costs quite a bit of money: if you can afford it, you should run it. Primal Vigor, on the other hand, is of debatable value: it affects all players, which can easily be very dangerous for you, and it only affects +1/+1 counters—but if your stated plan is to make a lot of tokens and spread around a lot of +1/+1 counters, it might just be perfect enough to outweigh that danger.
Champion of Lambholt, Nullmage Shepherd, Requiem Angel, and Hour of Reckoning. These four cards can really further a token-heavy strategy in different ways. Champion of Lambholt thrives on seeing other creatures enter the battlefield, and when you’re casting spells like Increasing Devotion or even just Grave Titan, she will get big enough to make all of your creatures unblockable quite quickly. Nullmage Shepherd is an incredibly powerful artifact- and enchantment-destruction card if your deck is set up to produce a lot of tokens: its abilities don’t care about summoning sickness, so it can be easy to drop the Shepherd and immediately blow up some of the most problematic permanents on the battlefield. Requiem Angel is a great insurance policy against removal spells—even if a Wrath of God kills the Angel along with your other creatures, you will still get a 1/1 flying creature for each non-Spirit creature you had. This makes it very hard to solve the mass of creatures that cards like Deploy to the Front produce, since killing those 1/1s actually improves them. Hour of Reckoning is a great sweeper effect that works specifically with token creatures: you can tap creatures to convoke the card instead of using mana, and it doesn’t kill tokens. A few other sweepers, most notably Austere Command and Retribution of the Meek (from which Elspeth, Sun’s Champion gets her -3 ability), are also good in token-centric decks, but none so much as Hour of Reckoning.
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Thanks for joining me as we examined all the best ways to put token creatures onto the battlefield! If you want to clutter up the board, you have more than enough options available to accomplish that goal in style. Please share this article with any of your friends who enjoy token-based decks… odds are good that at least one of these cards will surprise them and fit right in. Also, go ahead and check out the next installment of Dig Through Time (to be posted soon), which will tackle the other half of Sidratul’s question: how to distribute +1/+1 counters to your creatures!Now, please head to the comments and give me some requests for future Dig Through Time articles! We all know how hard and how satisfying deckbuilding in the Commander format can be, and there are often cards out there, lost in the mists of time, that are exactly what you’re looking for to make your deck run like clockwork.
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