Discussion Forum

[QUOTE=Howlinger]I'll start of by explaining what happened.

My friend has three (Awakening Zone's) in play, as well As two (Parallel Lives). Seven turns passed and she now has a army of Eldrazi Tokens in play as well as one (Kessig Cagebreakers). She then turned all of the tokens into mana... and then swings with Kessig Cagereaker... which by her rulings at the time that I agreed to due to a lack of understand how token worked in the grave and how long they stuck around gave her the same amount of wolf tokens back for each token that was placed in the grave and more due to Parallel Lives... the abuse doesn't stop there, she then plays 2 (Fresh Meat instants )using her lands soon after the attack is over and places Beast Tokens equal to the amount of Eldrazi tokens in the grave, and again... even more due to Parallel Lives.

Needles to say I'm beaten BAD next turn, but... something confuses me. Was what she did even possible, if so, explain to me.[/QUOTE]

OK, let's break this down and see what's legal:

:mana1:Awakening Zone + Parallel Lives: This combo DOES work, including the fact that multiple parallel lives stack. 3 zones + 2 lives = 3*(2*2) = 12 tokens/turn * 7 turns = 84 tokens. (1 lives = 2x; 2 lives = 4x; 3 lives = 8x; 4 lives = 16x)

:mana2: Kessig Cagebreakers + tokens in graveyard: This does NOT work. The text on breakers is
[QUOTE]...for each creature card in your graveyard.[/QUOTE]
Tokens are 1) not cards, 2) Cease to exist the moment they touch the graveyard via a state-based action, and therefore are not in the graveyard (If you can respond to an action, state-based triggers have been already been checked a couple thousand times). No free wolves for your friend.

:mana3:Fresh Meat + eldrazi tokens: This DOES work. In fact, wizards of the coast has published deck lists based solely on abusing this combo (here). Also, each Parallel Lives doubles these tokens as well.


I hope I helped clear up what's going on.

Paralell Lives + Fresh Meat is utter abuse.

Everything SilverTabby said is right. Kessig Cage Breakers can pump out an amazing amount of tokens, but not in an Eldrazi Spawn deck.

She's half correct. Tokens hit the graveyard for a infinitely small period of time, and then are removed as a state-based action. This means they do go to the graveyard, but they don't stay there. Fresh Meat would produce the beast tokens because it counts how many things WENT to the graveyard, but no wolf tokens would be produced unless actual creatures were in there.

*Nods* Well, atleast she can't abuse the crap out of the Cagebreaker anymore, but the other combo is still a issue in my book. However, I can see where she got confused when it came to the speed of how the cards worked. Never the less, thank you all for the breakdown and your over all help.