Are creature tokens getting "too powerful?"

venomAA

HomeRn wrote:

venomAA wrote:

If you are having problems with this cards please stick to silver. Even from beyond is not a nuisance unless paired with drowner of hope. And they are rare. Rare and mythics are to be efficient and hard to deal with. Not poo that you can easily deal with.
Add removal to your decks and learn to play instead of asking for nerfs for every card that is a staple.

That combo you mentioned only works with Kiora currently (since she's the only green/blue PW), and even then - it is indeed rare. Rarity however, is NOT the point - it's the efficiency and speed of tokens, especially now.

Devils' Playground is arguably the most efficient token spawning card in the game without any drawbacks. 4 mana = a 4/4 creature that also acts as a bomb. At lower PW levels, this card can literally win games by itself since mana gains are so much lower. At higher levels, it can facilitate massive beatsticks before you know it (especially with Harness the Storm and other cards that can bring back spells).

From Beyond is the very definition of annoying. You cannot truly clear your opponent's board of creatures with From Beyond out. The scions will also provide a nice little secondary mana generator once your creatures start constantly banging their heads on them (bad for you since your creatures will eventually die, which can be offset by trample or first-strike), while more than likely other Eldrazi or other problematic threats show up sooner.

Oath of Gideon - and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar for that matter - can cause headaches even after clearing the tokens initially. Oath of Gideon is a support, which means it can be brought right back into the battlefield by other cards... which will spawn the tokens AGAIN. Not to mention that it also forces you to avoid giving Gideon too many white gems on the board - as a white landfall equates to even MORE ally tokens. Also, the tokens trigger rally effects, which can cause even more headaches (first-strike to all creatures, lifelink to all creatures, disabling your creatures, and worse).

Sorry but rarity is all this about. Most OP cards in paper magic are rares or mythic, and are the ones that create a special build around them using other less rare and cheaper cards to create sinergy.
Not so long in standard there was a competitive white token deck. Also I can remember a couple of times in history of MTG where tokes where revelant, so its not that unusual to have great token generators.
Also going from worst to great on the cards you called as problematic.
Gideon. Only build that will run successfully this card is allies, and allies are not even tier build. Allies is a fun deck, that's all. And if Gideon or supports are giving you problems you might want to add support removal. In fact almost every half decent deck should run at least one to deal with supports that are really problematic like ramp support or nyx. The problem lies in your build not Gideon.
Devils playground. Red staple. Efficient and balanced. There I said it. Its balanced. Why's that, cause its good removal. On its own is not broken, reason is cause it only deals damage to creatures, not players. You say combination with harness is problematic, well I run harness and I run the goblin token generator too, to add consistency to making tokens. So the problem is not devils playground but harness. And I'll say it. Harness can deal insane bat **** of damage but is not consistent enough. RNG will screw you and fizzle sometimes the combo. The combo is not reliable enough to win most of the times in one hit, also its slow.
And if you have problem with harness I'll say it again. Use support removal.
From below. Now this I'll admit is the best token generator at this point of the game. Destroying the tokens will let you on a very bad position if the rest of the deck is build properly. That's when using strategy comes in. You will either need to outrun them, kiora can do that most of the times, or disable them. Discarding their hand also mitigates the problem. There are ways but none its easy to do for dealing with below aside from a fast removal of the support.
Yet that's is what a rare/mythic card should be. Hard to deal with and give you the win. Then asides from below there a bunch of rare and mythics that win you games.

The only problem with tokens that I see at this moment is the bounce part, since bouncing should not destroy them. In fact, if they implemented that right all of the above cards would loose a little bit of power.

venomAA

Proof that in MTG having great token decks should be a viable strategy.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/cove ... 2016-04-24
Token deck reaching quarterfinals in the pro tour