War of the Spark Tokens

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

For the very latest in MTG news and more, pop on over to MTG Realm on Tumblr :: http://mtg-realm.tumblr.com/
 
Posted over at the Mothersite : https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-preview/tokens-war-spark-2019-04-18 
 
The sixteenth card in the boosters is a token creature card or an emblem, with ads for Wizards of the Coast Magic: the Gathering products on the back side. There are a total of nineteen tokens and emblems:

• Colorless
2/2 Spirit creature for Ugin, the Ineffable
1/1 Servo artifact creature for Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
White
• 4/4 Angel creature with flying and vigilance for Finale of Glory and Parhelion II
• 2/2 Soldier creature with vigilance for Finale of Glory
• 0/3 Wall creature with defender for Teyo, the Shieldmage
Blue
• 2/2 Wizard creature for Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor
Black
• 1/1 Assassin creature with deathtouch and “Whenever this creature deals damage to a planeswalker, destroy that planeswalker” for Vraska, Swarm’s Eminence
• 2/2 Zombie creature for Liliana, Dreadhorde General
• 0/0 Zombie Army creature (1 of 3) for each spell with amass
• 0/0 Zombie Army creature (2 of 3)
• 0/0 Zombie Army creature (3 of 3)
• 4/4 Zombie Warrior creature with vigilance for God-Eternal Oketra
Red
• 1/1 Devil creature with “When this creature dies, it deals 1 damage to any target” for Tibalt, Rakish Instigator
•  4/4 Dragon creature with flying for Sarkhan the Masterless
• 1/1 Goblin creature for Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin
Green
•  2/2 Wolf creature for Arlinn, Voice of the Pack
Multicolour
• 2/2 Citizen creature for Planar Celebration
• 3/3 legendary Wolf creature named Voja, Friend to Elves for Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves
Emblem
• Emblem for Nissa, Who Shakes the World

Dominaria Tokens

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Happy Saturday MTG peeps,

As the full Dominaria preview has now been loaded (linked over here), Magic: the Gathering fans are contemplating new and amended builds.  Of note, Wizards of the Coast has also posted all the lovely Dominaria Tokens (ya know we luv tokens right?), right over here.  As you may be aware, Hidden Stockpile and Anointed Procession are still in standard format, so we should, at the very least have a looky-loo at what may be made from the new critter generators.  Here's the summary -


Dominaria features fourteen tokens and two emblems.

There may be a chance for some casual fun Knight tribal

WHITE
•  2/2 Knight with vigilance, for Aryel, Knight of Windgrace, Call the Cavalry and History of Benalia.
•  2/2 Knight with vigilance (alternate art)
•  1/1 Soldier, for Sergeant-at-Arms and Memorial to Glory

BLACK
•  0/1 Cleric, for Rite of Belzenlok
•  2/2 Zombie Knight with menace, for Josu Vess, Lich Knight
•  */* Nightmare Horror, for Chainer's Torment.
•  6/6 Demon with flying, trample, and "At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice another creature, if you don't, this creature deals 6 damage to you." for Rite of Belzenlok

RED
•  3/1 Elemental with trample and haste, for Valduk, Keeper of the Flame.
•  1/1 Goblin, for Siege-Gang Commander.
•  4/4 Legendary Dragon with flying named Karox Bladewing, for Verix Bladewing.

Fungus version #2 looks to be one of the fellas Slimefoot, the Stoway may have popped aboard the Weatherlight.

GREEN
•  1/1 Saproling, for Deathbloom Thallid, Fungal Infection, Fungal Plots, Saproling Migration, Spore Swarm, Verdant Force, Slimefoot, the Stowaway and Yavimaya Sapherd.
•  1/1 Saproling (alternate art)
•  1/1 Saproling (alternate art)

COLOURLESS
•  0/0 Construct with "This creature gets +1/+1 for each artifact you control," for Karn, Scion of Urza.

EMBLEMS
•  Emblem for Jaya Ballard.
•  Emblem for Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. 

 

Karn, Scion of Urza promises to bring some very cool artifact fun.

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Rivals of Ixalan Tokens

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

In this post, we wanted to cover off what Magic: the Gathering players may expect in the way of new Rivals of Ixalan Tokens and Markers.  In today's article on the mothersite linked here, Blake posted a total of four Tokens and two Markers.  Here is the summary -

• Red 1/1 Elemental creature token, generated by Tilonalli's Summoner

• Red 0/1 Elemental creature token with "At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice this creature and return target card named Rekindling Phoenix from your graveyard to the battlefield. It gains haste until end of turn.", generated by Rekindling Phoenix

• Green 1/1 Saproling creature token, generated by Tendershoot Dryad

• Colourless 4/4 Golem artifact creature token, generated by Gold-Forge Garrison

• Emblem - Hautli - Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may draw a card, generated by Huatli, Radiant Champion '-6' ability

• Marker - City's Blessing indicated on numerous cards.

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Returning Tokens and Markers carried over from the previous Ixalan set identified so far to date -

• Colourless Treasure artifact token with "t, Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.", generated by a number of cards.  The Ixalan set contained four different treasure tokens, all based upon a tribal theme. 

• White 1/1 Vampire with Lifelink, generated by Elenda, the Dusk Rose

• Blue 1/1 Merfolk with Hexproof, generated by Aquatic Incursion


• Green 3/3 Dinosaur with Trample, generated by Baffling End

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Big Change to FNM

Friday Night Magic WUT?
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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

Congratulaiotns to Magic: the Gathering player Michael Hamilton who took first place this weekend at the StarCityGames.com Standard Open in Cincinnati.  This was the first large tournament taking place after the release of the newest set Hour of Devastation.  The metagame breakdown of Day 2 was incredibly varied with 36 different archetypes represented, which is a strong indication of healthy standard format.  

Here are the Top 8 decklist archetypes :
1st Four-Color Control
2nd W/U Monument
3rd Four-Color Emerge
4th B/G Energy
5th W/U Monument
6th Mono-Red Aggro
7th Mono-Black Zombies
8th Temur Energy

Obviously not an accurate prognostication for this new 'season', but certainly very promising right out of the gates.  There will be a good measure of evolution going forward and it may be of interest to read the article today posted on the Wizards of the Coast site from Luis Scott-Vargas as to the direction of standards existing decklists with the new options presented in Hour of Devastation.
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Next - Almost every Magic: the Gathering player is talking about the news posted to the mothersite on upcoming changes to Friday Night Magic, linked right here.  There is a number of items of interest, but for sake of brevity for today's post, we will just address the item on FNM promos.  A short clip from Wizards - 

"FNM has been and continues to be the foundation our weekly in-store play. It is one of our longest-running and most successful play programs in our 25 years, so we're not looking to mess with the formula too much.
We are making two changes that are related—FNM "seasons" now align with set releases, and promos, which have previously been foil cards, will now be foil double-sided tokens."

The TL/DR summary of the Friday Night Magic essentially is -

• Wizards is shifting from FNM promo cards to double-sided foil tokens

• Less FNM promos per week for Core and Advanced level stores.

Double-sided tokens are cool !  But certainly not at the expense of the traditional FNM promos.  The more recent promos have certainly been improving - Aether Hub, Fatal Push - oh heck yes.  Wizards was tracking in the correct direction with these more 'playable' cards.  They would have been better served by having these promo tokens as an adjunct for other stand-alone products to entice purchase.

Other than this incredible loss of inventive to attend Friday Night Magic, we want to mention the change to Game Day.  This event has now been replaced with a 'Store Championship' event which is to take place later than the typical 4 weeks after a set's release.  It is now planned to be a "climax of the season's competitive Magic narrative"

With this event's inaugural run planned for December 30–31, to coincide with Rivals of Ixalan, the prize support here appears great - store champion playmat, exclusive deck boxes for the top 8, and foil full-art promo cards  from Rivals.  The issue really is, just how many players will be available to attend at the most packed week in most people's calendars - year end holidays have a multitude of social engagements which provides little to no time to take even a day out of their schedule. 

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Amonkhet Monumental Tokens

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

Today we want to get to another rogue decklist suggestion as we don’t really want to play Mardu Vehicles or other Top 8 Magic: the Gathering list.  If you’ve been reading MTG Realm for any length of time, you may know we love us some token decks, so let’s look over a looked-over card from Amonkhet - Oketra's Monument.

Oketra's Monument is an artifact that costs 3 mana, with two rather nice abilities -
• White creature spells you cast cost 1 (colourless) less to cast.

and

• Whenever you cast a creature spell, create a 1/1 white Warrior creature token with vigilance.

The downside here is that Wizards of the Coast has put this uncommon-rarity artifact as ‘Legendary’.  For those who have just started playing, this will mean that a player cannot have more than one of these on the battlefield at any time.  This forces the player to give consideration as to how many copies is ‘safe’ to play in the deck.  Obviously you would be doing yourself a disservice if you included the maximum of 4 copies in your list, as it would be a ‘dead’ card in your hand.  This may be fine for other (typically creature or Planeswalker) cards as you would expect to have this a painted as a big target for removal.  As Oketra's Monument is a non-creature artifact, blowing it up is just a little more difficult.  As we want this to be a key component of the deck, we really do not want to drop below 3 copies in our mix of 60 cards.

To fill out our list we would like to play to the potential synergies available with Oketra's Monument - that is dropping white creature spells a full turn earlier and perhaps something to buff up all those 1/1 white Warrior creature tokens we want to produce.  Remember - there is no decklist offered here, just some suggestions for you to brew with.  Here is some choices moving forward -

• Sacred Cat - this 1/1 for one can take a dirt nap and come back with embalm.

• Servo Exhibition - which creates 2 creature tokens, and one more with the monument.

• Annointer Priest - gains you a life with each new token you create.

• Sram’s Expertise - comes down turn 3 and pukes 4 creature tokens with the monument

• Anointed Procession - What’s better than making a bunch of tokens ?  Making more tokens with this white-coloured Parallel Lives.

• Regal Caracal - Nice cat lord which for 5 mana delivers 7 power across three creatures.

• Angel of Invention - Use the Fabricate tech to create two additional tokens or just buff the angel.  The big benefit here is that though we are unable to use Always Watching as it buffs non-tokens, the angel will bull your entire team, no questions asked.

Other considerations -
 

• Westvale Abbey - as you will be making a lot of tokens, why not sacrifice them to transform this Land into a huge threat.  A 9/7 Flying, lifelink, indestructible, haste demon sounds nice.

• Dusk // Dawn may be questionable in this list - it may clear the board of larger creatures (power 3 or greater), but the Dawn side might not pull that many power 2 or less critters from our graveyard.

• Captain’s Claws - a 2-drop equipment which does not buff much, but which does generate a token every time the equipped creatures attacks.

• Even Wind Guide - splash blue in the list to give wings to all your creature tokens.

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Amonkhet Previews 4-13

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

We are heading into the last and final week of official Magic: the Gathering Amonkhet previews.  We are also heading into a nice long Easter weekend, where we will be going off-line and getting analog with some Commander and Casual games.  We want to remind you to tune in tonight for the Amonkhet Preview Show on Twitch linked here.  The show, hosted by Marshall Sutcliffe, starts at 6 PM Eastern, and is expected to have Magic R&D members Mark Rosewater, David Humpherys, and Mark Winters.  

We should get caught up with all the Amonkhet spoilers and previews out today, so let's have at it, as there is a lot to cover off.

Beast Token art by Kieran Yanner

Want to know what Tokens / Emblems Amonkhet will have ?  There are 25 tokens for Amonkhet. Every creature spell with Embalm has a unique matching token.

1. Angel of Sanctions
2. Anointer Priest
3. Aven Initiate
4. Aven Wind Guide
5. Glyph Keeper
6. Labrinth Guardian
7. Honored Hydra
8. Heart Piercer Manticore
9. Oketra's Attendant
10. Sacred Cat

11. Tah-Crop Skirmisher
12. Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun
13. Trueheart Duelist
14. Unwavering Initiate
15. Vizier of Many Faces
16. {W} 1/1 Cat with Lifelink
17. {W} 1/1 Warrior with Vigilance
18. {U} 2/2 Drake with Flying

19. {B} 1/1 Insect
20. {B} 2/2 Zombie
21. {B} 4/2 Beast
22. {G} 3/3 Hippo
23. {G} 1/1 Snake
24. {G} 5/5 Wurm
25. Emblem for Gideon of the Trials

Here is the list of new Amonkhet previews out for today -

• Bloodfury Militant
• Cascading Cataracts
• Commit // Memory
• Cradle of the Accursed
• Dispossess
• Gideon's Intervention
• Glorious End
• Grasping Dunes
• Harvest Season
• Heart-Piercer Manticore
• Hieroglyphic Illumination
• Oketra's Attendant
• Sandwurm Convergence
• Shadow of the Grave
• Spring // Mind
• Start // Finish
• Vizier of Deferment

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Eldritch Moon Tokens

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

As you are very much likely aware, all the new Eldritch Moon cards were previewed on Friday.  This meant that Magic: the Gathering fans on the most part are talking about how this set may fare across a number of formats.  Not here at MTG Realm today.  We now have the full list of previewed Eldrtich Moon cards so we want to talk about the creature tokens (and emblems) that spell from the new set generate.  

Why?  As it happens, there is always (and we do we mean always) one person from the MTG Realm playgroup rocking a token-themed decklist.  In standard constructed, Second Harvest is still available to help fill the game table with tokens.  For modern, there are a number of other helpful cards such as Intangible Virtue.  You get the idea.

Anywhoos, here is the summary of all new tokens and the Eldritch Moon cards which create them - 

The Eldritch Moon set features 8 tokens and 2 emblems and contains 5 additional Shadows over Innistrad tokens named on Eldritch Moon cards.  There are a total of 29 cards in Eldritch Moon which create tokens or emblems.

• Colourless 3/2 Eldrazi Horror creature token for Desperate Sentry, Extricator of Flesh, Extricator of Sin, Enlightened Maniac, Emrakul's Evangel, Foul Emissary, Hanweir, the Writhing Township, Howling Chorus, Otherworldly Outburst and Wharf Infiltrator

• Blue 1/1 Human Wizard creature token for Docent of Perfection and Final Iteration

• Three different card illustratiosn for a Black 2/2 Zombie creature token for Cryptbreaker, Dark Salvation, Graf Harvest, Liliana, the Last Hope, Noosegraf Mob, and Oath of Liliana

• Black */* Zombie creature token for Soul Separator

•  Red 1/1 Human creature token  for Hanweir Garrison

• Green 1/2 Spider creature token with reach for Ishkanah, Grafwidow

• Emblem for Liliana, the Last Hope
• Emblem for Tamiyo, Field Researcher


Tokens from the previous Shadows over Innistrad set, generated by Eldritch Moon cards:

• White 1/1 Human Soldier creature token for Thraben Standard Bearer

• White 1/1 Spirit creature token with flying for Sanctifier of Souls and Spectral Reserves

• Red 1/1 Devil creature token with “When this creature dies, it deals 1 damage to target creature or player.” for Make Mischief

• Green 1/1 Insect creature token for It of the Horrid Swarm


• Green 2/2 Wolf creature token for Wolfkin Bond

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GP Costa Rica

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

This past weekend was the release of the greatly anticipated Eternal Masters set.  If your local gaming store is anything like OMG! Games, our local gaming store here in Barrie, Ontario, then chances are is that there was a LOT of players drafting Eternal Masters.  We had a bunch of family drop over for the weekend and the only Magic: the Gathering we had was a few quick games of Commander.  This, of course, did not preclude us from keeping an eye on the standard format event coverage for Grand Prix Costa Rica 2016.  Pop on over to the mothersite to get the news.

Perhaps no suprise at all to you that W/G Tokens was the top deck to beat.  The general idea of this decklist is to hit token generating Planeswalkers like Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and Nissa, Voice of Zendikar and then being able to pump those tokens with either Gideon's emblem or pile on +1/+1 counters with Nissa.  At this sort of high level event, the finesse pretty much boils down to your choice of flexible options (see Craig Wescoe's great article over at TCG Player), as well as what decisions you made with your sideboard. 

Here is the Top eight players as well as the decklist of Seth Manfield (winner) and Branddon Fischer (2nd place).

1st  Green-White Tokens Seth Manfield
2nd  Green-White Tokens Brandon Fischer
3rd  Bant Humans Oliver Tiu
4th  Green-White Tokens Erick Manuel Lopez Basulto
5th  Bant Company Brian Braun-duin
6th  Green-White Tokens Michael Derczo
7th  Green-White Tokens Javier Dominguez

8th  W/B Control Saul Alvarado

By not restricting himself to just green and white, Brandon nearly clinched the top spot with the very spicy addition of Arlinn Kord, which in out opinion is just an amazing card providing a total of five Planeswalke abilities on both sides.
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Eternal Masters Tokens

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

We kicked off the weekend on Friday evening with some games at our favourite gaming store, OMG! Games, here in Barrie, Ontario where we went with our take on Blue / White Humans decklist.  It was a bit too grindy, so we are now working on fine tuning the mana-base as well as the sideboard.  We can say that when this thing did fire, it was pretty damn impressive.  Moving on to Saturday and Sunday, we had a series of Commander games at the MTG Realm Lair with R-Tech taking the lead (she was rather happy about this) and R-Stomp going back to the drawing board with his mono-black list.

Anywhoos, we want to highlight the Token Cards for Eternal Masters for today's post.  There are a total of 16 tokens to be had in this set with 5 having never seen print before (indicated with bold and '*' symbol below).  As we do indulge in collecting tokens, we are definitely excited to get our paws on tokens such as the Spirit token generated by Honden of Life's Web and certainly the Serf token generated by Sengir Autocrat.  Here's the full list for you now as posted to the WotC mothersite - 

Colourless 1/1 Spirit
for Honden of Life’s Web *




White 1/1 Soldier
for Raise the Alarm

White 1/1 Spirit with Flying 
for Field of Souls

Blue 5/5 Wall with Defender
for Tidal Wave *

Black 0/1 Serf 
for Sengir Autocrat *

Black 2/2 Zombie 
for Wakedancer

Red 3/1 Beast named Carnivore 
for Tooth and Claw *

Red 2/2 Dragon with Flying and "{R}: This creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn" 
for Dragon Egg

Red 1/1 Elemental 
for Young Pyromancer

Red 1/1 Goblin 
for Beetleback Chief, Mogg War Marshal and Siege-Gang Commander


Green 3/3 Elephant 
for Elephant Guide

Green 1/1 Elf Warrior 
for Imperious Perfect and Lys Alana Huntmaster

Green 9/9 Wurm 
for Roar of the Wurm

Blue / REd 5/5 Elemental with Flying 
for Call the Skybreaker

Red / White 1/1 Goblin Soldier 
for Goblin Trenches *


Emblem for Dack Fayden
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Oath of the Gatewatch Tokens

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

Ever since we started playing when Lorwyn was released (October 2007), we had a special thing for tokens.  Way back then, we thought Bitterblossom was just the bee's knees.  Which is odd actually, since we still do not own a single copy of this impressive and powerful card.  We have evolved our appreciation of what a good token-themed decklist may accomplish, and since Innistrad's Intangible virtue, we have sought to develop a token theme in just about every Magic: the Gathering game format.

Anywhoos, today we want to give you a summary of the Oath of the Gatewatch creature Tokens and the lovely cards which create these.

◊ Eldrazi Scion for Abstruse Interference, Birthing Hulk, Scion Summoner, Sifter of Skulls, Vile Redeemer, and Warping Wail
◊ 1/1 Eldrazi Scion
◊ 1/1 Eldrazi Scion
◊ 1/1 Eldrazi Scion reprint from Battle for Zendikar
◊ 1/1 Eldrazi Scion reprint from Battle for Zendikar
◊ 1/1 Eldrazi Scion reprint from Battle for Zendikar
◊ - colourless mana symbol

White 3/3 Angel with Flying for Linvala, the Preserver

Black 2/2 Zombie for Drana's Chosen, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet and Null Caller

Red 3/1 Elemental with Haste for Chandra, Flamecaller (Please note that the token card has no Haste keyword.)

Green X/X Elemental for Seed Guardian

Green 0/1 Plant for Nissa, Voice of Zendikar

The following named tokens were released with Battle for Zendikar - they are to have the same card art and updated with the Oath of the Gatewatch expansion symbol:

White 2/2 Knight Ally for Allied Reinforcements

White 1/1 Kor Ally for Captain's Claws and Oath of Gideon

Blue 8/8 Octopus for Crush of Tentacles
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