For the longest time, I never bothered with token cards. I was happy to use little glass beads as all purpose things- counters of every sort, be they plus, minus or charge, or as creature representatives, from elves to birds, it didn't matter.
Why scut up my collection or my deck with token cards? The cards are there to remind me what the token does.
But in the past few months, as I've been playing with my friend Rebecca, who's re-learning the game she knew from the Mirage era of Magic, one thing has become very clear to me.
Magic is fucking hard.
I already knew it was a complicated game and long time players sometimes have fun with the notion that Magic is the world's most complicated game. I certainly do.
However teaching someone in 2024 a game that I picked up in 1995 is a very different task. It has demonstrated that if anything, Wizards has decided to lean into the complexity and make more cards that do more things. I don't know if there is a textless card that has been printed since Yargle and Multani, and the stat line on that card shows how far things have come. If you pay six mana then getting six power minimum is expected now. Those cards all come with a significant amount of text!
I've realized that I cannot just insist that new players "just remember" what a glass bead on a card or out in the field of play is. The game is just too damn complex to ask people to remember these things, when Wizards has been producing tokens to actually represent what they are, as a way to help new players.
It's unfair of me to have that expectation and I do not want to be an unfair person. It's a game. Let's have fun!
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