A couple of months ago, I was asked to teach a group of kids how to play Magic: The Gathering. While many of them were slightly younger than the ideal age to be introduced to Magic, they all seemed to have a fun time, and they hopefully left the session with a greater understanding and appreciation of some concepts of the game. Since the 30-card mono-colored intro-style decks that I built for the occasion were made entirely from the just-released Dominaria expansion, some of these concepts were perhaps too advanced for the situation, such as +1/+1 counters and token creation. But the latter of these was a surprisingly big hit with the group, with many players paying as much attention to the tokens I brought as to the actual cards in their decks.
This makes sense when you consider that to these kids, Magic cards are first and foremost pretty pieces of cardboard and only secondarily components to a strategy tabletop game. And the full-frame artistic renditions on the tokens can be more compelling to look at, as they lack distractions such as rules text and converted mana cost. The only concern stemmed from the availability of these tokens, as I was asked multiple times what to do if you didn't have a copy of the particular token created by a card in your deck. When I explained that you could just as easily use a piece of paper or a spare six-sided die to represent the creature in question, I was met with a quizzical look and the question, "So you can't play Magic unless you carry a bunch of dice with you?" My response was something along the lines of, "Maybe not, but since you can't play Magic unless you have at least 60 very specific pieces of cardboard, what's adding a bag of dice to the mix?"
Snappy retorts aside, the affinity for tokens showed by these new Magic players got me thinking about the history of tokens in the game of Magic. It turns out that tokens have been a part of Magic since the beginning, with exactly one token-making card appearing in the very first Magic set: an artifact called The Hive. Here's the somewhat convoluted rules text that appears on the 1993 Limited Edition printing of the card:
5: Creates one Giant Wasp, a 1/1 flying creature. Represent Wasps with tokens, making sure to indicate when each Wasp is tapped. Wasps can't attack during the turn created. Treat Wasps like artifact creatures in every way, except that they are removed from the game entirely if they ever leave play. If the Hive is destroyed, the Wasps must still be killed individually.
Given that this card was the first to create tokens, it makes sense that it would include a lengthy explanation of what tokens are and how they interact with the rest of the cards in play. In today's game, many of these explicitly stated rules governing tokens are assumed, which is clear when you compare the above paragraph with the errata'd line from the card's entry in the official Gatherer database: "5, [T]: Create a 1/1 colorless Insect artifact creature token with flying named Wasp." Ironically, while they both share the use of the verb "create," Magic's rulemakers actually took quite a roundabout path to get back to the original wording.
For example, on the next two cards that make tokens - Rukh Egg and Bottle of Suleiman, both from the Arabian Nights expansion - the text says that "a [creature] comes into play on your side... Use a counter to represent [creature]." Obviously "counters" and "tokens" became very different things, although that wording does harken back to how I suggested using dice as tokens in my above-mentioned teachings session. Those two concepts get slightly muddled in the Antiquities card Tetravus, which "gets three +1/+1 counters when cast. During your upkeep, you may move each of these counters on or off Tetravus. Counters moved off of Tetravus become independent 1/1 flying artifact creatures. If such a creature dies, the counter is removed from play." This mechanic would later become a two-part process of first removing counters and then creating tokens, but I think it's more evocative to imagine these counters "animating" into creatures of their own.
The language for token creation got a little more streamlined in the 1994 Legends expansion, which has five such cards. As an example, let's take the legendary Boris Devilboon, whose rules text reads: "2BR[T]: Put a minor demon token into play. Treat this token as a 1/1 red and black creature." Notable changes from previous token makers include the shift from passive (where a creature "comes into play") to active (prompting the player to "put" a creature into play), and also the two-sentence format, where the first refers to making the token, and the second describes the token in question. The "treat this token as" format would persist for nearly five years, finally getting an update with the massive Sixth Edition rules change in 1999. And what better card to use as an example than our old friend The Hive, which now reads: "5, [T]: Put a 1/1 Wasp artifact creature token into play. That creature has flying."
With this phrasing, Magic had basically found its rhythm when it came to cards that make tokens. There were a couple of minor changes, such as eliminating the second sentence and moving the special properties of the token between "token" and "into play," which happened in the very next expansion (Urza's Destiny). And then, more than a decade later, there was the more overarching change from "into play" to "onto the battlefield," which went into effect for the Magic 2010 expansion. But it wasn't until the artifact-themed set Kaladesh in 2016 where the shorthand "create" was officially substituted for "put ... onto the battlefield." It's fitting that a set based heavily on Thopters - 1/1 flying artifact creatures that are functionally identical to the Wasps created by The Hive - should be the one to bring token making full circle.
Over the years, tokens became more than just a strategy within the game, evolving into a collectible accessory accompanying certain products. To bring this topic full circle, the first expansion set to feature dedicated tokens that correspond to cards in that set was Tenth Edition in 2007. One of the six tokens released with that set was a 1/1 Wasp artifact creature created by, what else, The Hive. In order to more fully explore this aspect of tokens, I put together a database of all of Magic's printed tokens, what set they belong to, and the the artists responsible for each one. I'll explore some of the findings from this database in future posts, such as which tokens appear in the most sets, which tokens are created by the most cards, and of course the different unique art printings of each. Until then, I hope you have a slightly greater sense of appreciation the next time you open a random token in a Magic booster pack.
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