Token

Kithkin Soldier token

Magic Player Reward 2001

Magic Player Reward 2003

Magic 2015 token

A token is a permanent that is not represented by a regular card with a casting cost.

Description

Richard Garfield created tokens for Alpha, as opposed to counters, to make The Hive possible. Usually, but not always, tokens are creatures.

Normally tokens can exist only on the battlefield, due to state-based effects. If a token leaves the battlefield and goes to another game zone, it can't change zones again, and it will be there only briefly before the state-based effect removes it.

Tokens are made of different cardstock than regular cards. They don't have the opaque layer in the middle.

History

Non-card tokens

There were so many cards in Fallen Empires that produced tokens and/or required counters that Wizards of the Coast issued a cardboard sheet of them in Duelist #4.

Citadel Gaming released a series "Magic Tokens" starting in 1995 made of a plastic material.

The first token cards

Special token cards were first printed for Unglued. Mark Rosewater has written that these cards were inspired by unofficial accessory cards used by Japanese players. Unglued's tokens proved so popular they spawned the new tokens given away in the Magic Player Rewards program.

Eighth Edition

Like for regular cards, the card frame for tokens was updated with Eighth Edition. "Token" now appeared in the type line, though it never became an official subtype.

Tenth Edition

Since Tenth Edition tokens appear as marketing cards in booster packs. Unlike earlier tokens, they don't have a regular card back, but feature advertisements instead. They also stopped printing "token" on the type line.

Magic 2015

Starting with Magic 2015 "Token" is now printed as a supertype on the type line.

Battle for Zendikar

For Battle for Zendikar, the ratio between token cards and other marketing cards was shifted heavily in favor of tokens. The new ratio is approximately 9:10 for tokens. Tokens’ rarity is based upon the rarity of the cards that make them.

Double-faced tokens

The first double-faced token was released as a special FNM card during the Innistrad block on April 6, 2012 (which featured a full moon). It fittingly represented a 1/1 human on one side, and a 2/2 wolf on the other. The Avacyn Restored prerelease Helvault kit followed up with double-sided Angel/Demon tokens.

The next chance for double-faced tokens came when the developers of Commander 2014 didn't have to share the tokens in that set with the brand team, and the production constraints that mandated Magic backs on the Duel Decks' tokens didn't apply. They created double-faced tokens which featured a different, unrelated, token on each side of the card.

Double-faced tokens made another appearance in pre-release packs for Eldritch Moon. These tokens are a 2/2 Zombie on either face, and are foil. From 2017 on, double-faced tokens were made available as prizes for the Magic League.

The Bundle for Amonkhet contained a pack of double-faced tokens that comprise a complete set of every token in the expansion.

Token miniatures

WizKids Creature Forge tokens

In September 2018, WizKids releases a miniature line focusing on token creature card favorites.

Relic tokens

Also in 2018, Ultra Pro produced a series of Magic: the Gathering tokens in durable hard plastic. These can double as life counters.

Token generation

All colors can make creature tokens. White and green, as the two primary creature colors, do it most often. White tends to make smaller creature tokens, usually 1/1s, while green tends to make larger ones, from 3/3 and up. White often will make multiple tokens at once since they're smaller. Black most often makes 2/2 Zombies. Red most often makes 1/1 Goblins. Sometimes red's token creatures are a little bigger and get exiled at end of turn.

Increasing the number of tokens

The effect to increase the number of tokens as they're being made, or making more after they've already been made, is also primary in blue and green (e.g.Doubling Season. White is secondary.

Magic Online

Because Magic Online needs to represent all the tokens in the game, art needs to be created for even the most insignificant tokens. And for some of that art, Magic Online is the only place it appears.

Rules

From the glossary of the Comprehensive Rules (April 12, 2024—Outlaws of Thunder Junction)

Token

A marker used to represent any permanent that isn’t represented by a card. See rule 111, “Tokens.”

From the Comprehensive Rules (April 12, 2024—Outlaws of Thunder Junction)

• 108.2b Tokens aren’t considered cards—even a card-sized game supplement that represents a token isn’t considered a card for rules purposes.

From the Comprehensive Rules (April 12, 2024—Outlaws of Thunder Junction)

• 110.5. A permanent’s status is its physical state. There are four status categories, each of which has two possible values: tapped/untapped, flipped/unflipped, face up/face down, and phased in/phased out. Each permanent always has one of these values for each of these categories.
  • 110.5a Status is not a characteristic, though it may affect a permanent’s characteristics.
  • 110.5b Permanents enter the battlefield untapped, unflipped, face up, and phased in unless a spell or ability says otherwise.
  • 110.5c A permanent retains its status until a spell, ability, or turn-based action changes it, even if that status is not relevant to it.

    Example: Dimir Doppelganger says “{1}{U}{B}: Exile target creature card from a graveyard. Dimir Doppelganger becomes a copy of that card and gains this ability.” It becomes a copy of Jushi Apprentice, a flip card. Through use of Jushi Apprentice’s ability, this creature flips, making it a copy of Tomoya the Revealer with the Dimir Doppelganger ability. If this permanent then becomes a copy of Runeclaw Bear, it will retain its flipped status even though that has no relevance to Runeclaw Bear. If its copy ability is activated again, this time targeting a Nezumi Shortfang card (another flip card), this permanent’s flipped status means it will have the characteristics of Stabwhisker the Odious (the flipped version of Nezumi Shortfang) with the Dimir Doppelganger ability.

  • 110.5d Only permanents have status. Cards not on the battlefield do not. Although an exiled card may be face down, this has no correlation to the face-down status of a permanent. Similarly, cards not on the battlefield are neither tapped nor untapped, regardless of their physical state.

Examples

Example 1

Teysa, Orzhov Scion has the ability: "Whenever another black creature you control dies, put a 1/1 white Spirit creature token with flying onto the battlefield." "Dies" means precisely "is put into a graveyard from the battlefield" (rule 700.4). If you have a black creature token that gets destroyed, it will go to the graveyard, trigger Teysa's ability, then disappear, and finally the ability will be put on the stack. However, the token cannot be the target of spells or abilities whilst in the graveyard.

Example 2

Momentary Blink reads in part: "Exile target creature you control, then return it to the battlefield under its owner's control." If this spell is used on a creature token, it will be exiled, but it cannot come back to the battlefield and so stays in the exile zone. It will cease to exist when state-based effects are next checked.

Token specific types

Some creatures and artifacts named in the legal subtype-list only appear on tokens. Template:Token specific types

Silver-bordered

Token Name	Color	Type Line	P/T	Text Box	Source	Printings
Giant Teddy Bear	Pink	Creature — Giant Teddy Bear	5/5		Water Gun Balloon Game
Teddy Bear	Pink	Creature — Teddy Bear	2/2		Dart Throw Gift Shop Push Your Luck

Full list

• Comprehensive Token Table - A comprehensive sortable table that lists every possible token that can be generated in Magic: the Gathering, the properties of those tokens, and the cards responsible for their creation (does not include tokens that copy other cards).

Trivia

• The first non-creature token was the enchantment token copies of Imperial Mask that can be given to your teammates.
• The second non-creature token was the Gold artifact token produced by Gild from Born of the Gods and King Macar, the Gold-Cursed from Journey into Nyx.
• The third non-creature token are the Land Mine artifact tokens produced by Goblin Kaboomist from Magic 2015 Core Set.
• Intangible Virtue is a Lord-type enchantment that gives +1/+1 and vigilance to creature tokens.
• Tokens were featured as rules card 4 of 9 in the Magic 2011 set.
• Saprolings are the token creature type most easily created, 63 unique cards are capable of specifically creating them.
• The first non-copy token with non-keyword rules text was the Tetravite token produced by Tetravus from Antiquities.
• The first non-copy token with an activated ability was the Skeleton token produced by Drudge Spell from Homelands.
• The first non-copy token that could produce another token was the Ooze token produced by Mitotic Slime from Magic 2011 Core Set.
• Prototype Portal from Scars of Mirrodin and Mirrorworks from Mirrodin Besieged both make artifact tokens that do not have to be creatures, and were the first cards to do so. Technically the older Soul Foundry from Mirrodin could have done this, but as it copies a creature card, the first cards it could use to create noncreature tokens were the God cards from Theros block.

External links

• List of tokens on Scryfall
• Jared Yost. (February 2, 2015.) "The Strange World of Collectible Tokens", Blog.MTGPrice.com