“Tap Gaea's Cradle for 65 mana, use Kamahl, Fist of Krosa to Overrun thirteen times, attack you with all sixty Elf tokens for . . . 2,400 damage.”

Tokens is a popular and diverse archetype in Commander. From Teysa, Orzhov Scion to Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, there are dozens of commanders and strategies that can help you squeeze value out of every 0/1 white Goat token.

What makes tokens a useful theme to build around? In short, tokens can represent multiple creatures at the cost of a single card. There are a number of ways to build decks in order to maximize this advantage.

Tokens as Army

Actually, on its own, I like this strategy best as a Plan B for decks with other primary themes. Toss a couple of mass-token producers in your Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer Equipment deck or a couple of Overrun effects into your Nath of the Gilt-Leaf discard deck, and you have a good way to pick up some wins when your other plans aren’t working out.

When using tokens as an army, you want big effects that put a bunch of tokens into play at once. Cards such as Siege-Gang Commander and Mobilization can do in a pinch, but you really want cards that make huge armies in one shot. Avenger of Zendikar is basically the perfect army in a can, but Storm Herd, Army of the Damned, and more versatile spells such as Martial Coup can all be very useful. Green and white provide the vast majority of options, but there are even colorless fallbacks such as Snake Basket if you need them.

Green and white offer the majority of mass-pump effects, but any deck can run Eldrazi Monument, and multicolored decks all have access to the Shadowmoor/Eventide Lieges (Thistledown Liege, Creakwood Liege, etc.).

Tokens as Resource

Of course, maybe you don’t care about attacking with tokens. Maybe you just want to use them for card-draw, mana acceleration, and removal while you build up for something else.

There are a number of ways to use tokens as removal or other forms of defense. Black offers a suite of creature removal with Grave Pact, Butcher of Malakir, and Attrition. White offers the similar and political Martyr's Bond as well as more purely defensive cards such as Martyr's Bond and Glare of Subdual. Blue offers the powerful Opposition and Coastal Piracy, while red contributes the unique Shivan Harvest.

Artifacts provide plenty of colorless ways to turn tokens into cards and mana—Skullclamp, Carnage Altar, Ashnod's Altar, and Phyrexian Altar are among the most popular. Even a mono-red deck can use a token-sacrifice subtheme to supplement its relative lack of card advantage.

When using tokens as a resource, you tend to want resilient, repeatable sources of tokens. Enchantments that generate creatures every turn are good (Bitterblossom, Awakening Zone, Goblin Assault) as are lands that can produce tokens when you have extra mana and time (Springjack Pasture, Kher Keep). Artifacts are fine but a bit more vulnerable, and creatures tend to die way too often to be reliable. Sprout Swarm is particularly difficult for your opponents to interact with. In black, easily recurred creatures such as Bloodghast and Reassembling Skeleton can fill a similar role. If you’ve never seen a Bloodghast paired with Skullclamp or Perilous Forays, I can assure you it’s a thing of beauty.

Tokens as Theme

Finally, there are the decks totally built around the tokens. These combine the previous two strategies, using the overlap to build resources in the early and midgame, and they eventually kill the table with massive token armies. While not traditional combo decks, these decks can often virtually go off, generating massive amounts of mana and cards before killing the entire table in one big turn.

When devoting the entire deck to a token theme, you almost always want both green and white. While blue, black, and red all have valuable effects to offer, most decks end up being defined by one of the popular token-producing commanders: Rhys the Redeemed, Ghave, Guru of Spores, Rith, the Awakener, and my personal favorite, Hazezon Tamar.

"Hazezon Commander"

• Commander (0)

• Token Generators (8)
• 1 Sprout Swarm
• 1 Elspeth Tirel
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Storm Herd
• 1 Knight-Captain of Eos
• 1 Awakening Zone
• 1 Rhys the Redeemed
• 1 Dragon Broodmother

• Sac Outlets (5)
• 1 Goblin Bombardment
• 1 Martyr's Cause
• 1 Spawning Pit
• 1 Helm of Possession
• 1 Perilous Forays

• Buffs and Finishers (16)
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Doubling Season
• 1 Titanic Ultimatum
• 1 Marshal's Anthem
• 1 Beastmaster Ascension
• 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 1 Ajani Goldmane
• 1 Eldrazi Monument
• 1 Akroma's Memorial
• 1 Sarkhan Vol
• 1 Fires of Yavimaya
• 1 Anger
• 1 Genesis Wave
• 1 Tooth and Nail
• 1 Vicious Shadows
• 1 Warp World

• Removal (14)
• 1 Shields of Velis Vel
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Aura Shards
• 1 Aura of Silence
• 1 Prison Term
• 1 Faith's Fetters
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Martyr's Bond
• 1 Nullmage Shepherd
• 1 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
• 1 Silklash Spider
• 1 Hour of Reckoning
• 1 Martial Coup

• Card-Draw (5)
• 1 Fecundity
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Slate of Ancestry
• 1 Regal Force

• Mana Advantage (14)
• 1 Mirari's Wake
• 1 Earthcraft
• 1 Garruk Wildspeaker
• 1 Seedborn Muse
• 1 Primeval Titan
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Fertilid
• 1 Yavimaya Elder
• 1 Farhaven Elf
• 1 Sylvan Ranger
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Expedition Map

• Lands (37)
• 1 Gaea's Cradle
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Gruul Turf
• 1 Selesnya Sanctuary
• 1 Boros Garrison
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 3 Forest
• 2 Mountain
• 2 Plains
• 1 Clifftop Retreat
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Sunpetal Grove
• 1 Thawing Glaciers
• 1 Krosan Verge
• 1 Arid Mesa
• 1 Wooded Foothills
• 1 Windswept Heath
• 1 Jungle Shrine
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Horizon Canopy
• 1 Fire-Lit Thicket
• 1 Rugged Prairie
• 1 Wooded Bastion
• 1 Khalni Garden
• 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1 Gavony Township
• 1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
• 1 Kher Keep
• 1 Springjack Pasture
• 1 High Market

Buy This Deck

Since Hazezon is a consistent token army producer, most of my other token generators are of the repeatable, resilient variety. A large number of sac outlets allow us to get the most out of our spare tokens and ensure that Hazezon is gone before his friends show up.

The deck really embraces the token strategy of building resources and defending yourself with early token producers, and it then eventually takes one big turn that wins the game. There are a lot of slots devoted to building up your mana, defending yourself, and spitting out a few tokens on turns three to five that you can use as a resource. Later, you can use your huge armies, massive card-draw, and 8- to 10-mana spells to win or massively change the game.

It’s important to me that the deck’s themes allow it to make different card choices that separate it from the others I play. Genesis Wave and Warp World give me an excuse to heavily favor permanent-based removal such as Aura of Silence and Faith's Fetters. I attach every effect that I can to a body, from Sylvan Ranger and Acidic Slime to Arashi, the Sky Asunder. They all come in from Warps and Waves, and they can all be sacrificed for value to our many outlets.

I hope this has been helpful to anyone with a token deck, and I hope it has convinced a few people to try to start one from scratch! They’re a ton of fun to play, and every metagame should have at least one.