Tokens in Play

An instruction to play a token creates it on the Chain and uses the normal play process for its type, with the changes specified by the effect. An instruction to create it directly does not automatically play it. Follow the stated destination first. If none is stated or implied, a permanent (a unit or gear, rather than a rune, legend or battlefield) is created at a board location where it could be played; a spell is created on the Chain, a rune at Base, a legend in the Legend Zone and a battlefield in the Battlefield Zone.

Compare two abstract instructions. “Play a Recruit token” begins with a pending token on the Chain, waiting for its required choices, cost and legality checks. After the surrounding effect finishes and those play steps are completed (finalization), it enters as a unit. “Create a Recruit token at your Base” puts it directly at that location. The first can satisfy an ability that checks playing a token; the second has not played one merely by creating it.

A unit token normally enters Exhausted, has Might, takes damage and can use Standard Move like another unit. The creating effect can make it enter Ready, restrict its destination or grant an ability. A token is still not a card: an instruction that requires a card does not automatically accept a token. Tokens normally have no domains and no cost, treated as zero when a cost is checked; an applied effect can add those characteristics.

Named tokens have specific characteristics. A Recruit has 1 Might and the Recruit tag (a label identifying its group). A Sprite has 3 Might, the Fae tag and Temporary. A Bird has 1 Might, the Bird tag and Deflect. Use the characteristics belonging to the specified token, then apply the producing effect. Do not copy abilities from an unrelated token just because the same physical marker represents both.

Named abilities also matter: Gold has a Reaction ability that produces resources by paying its listed costs. Brush gives +1 Might to its listed unit tags and can offer a swap-back when its controller scores there. These are abilities belonging to those named tokens, not general abilities of every token.

The player who controlled the creating effect owns the token. That player normally controls it as well, unless the effect or the token’s type determines control differently. A newly created battlefield, for example, is uncontrolled. Later taking control of a token does not change its owner.

Suppose you produce a Recruit and an opponent later takes control of it. The Recruit is now their unit for choices that require a unit they control, while you remain its owner. If it is killed, it goes toward your Trash and then immediately stops existing. Tokens cannot wait in a hand, deck, Trash or Banishment to be retrieved later. The Chain is the exception: a token can wait there, but cannot remain in a game area outside the board such as a hand or Trash.

Replace creates a token in another object’s place without playing that token. It inherits the replaced object’s effects and statuses, and effects targeting or referring to that object treat the replacement as the same object. The original enters Banishment with Replaced status; this action is not Banish.

For a battlefield example, a conquer ability is waiting on the Chain and refers to units “here.” Another effect replaces that battlefield with Brush. The replacement does not by itself erase the original ability’s location reference: Brush inherited the relevant identity and statuses. This differs from simply removing a card to a non-board zone and later playing it as a new object.

When an effect permits swapping back, the replacing token stops existing and an eligible original card returns to the space it occupied, inheriting the token’s current effects and statuses. It does not restore the card’s earlier state from before replacement.

Trace the sequence: card A is replaced by token B → B gains an applicable temporary effect → an instruction swaps back → A returns with B’s current applicable effect. If B replaced another token, the chain of replacements can still lead back to an eligible original card in Banishment. But if no card remains there to return, swapping back is impossible. Replacing a token does not keep that old token alive in Banishment; its disappearance does not undo the new replacement.