With Secrets of Strixhaven preview season nearing its end, it’s safe to say the set is looking sweet. There are a ton of intriguing new cards here, and it’s great to get back into Magic’s overarching narrative, too. That said, no MTG set is without its issues, and in this case it’s an unusual one that has the community talking. Secrets of Strixhaven introduces a brand-new Pest token to MTG, which, appropriately enough, is already getting under many players’ skin.
Pest Control
The Pest token made its MTG debut back in original Strixhaven, as a 1/1 that gained you 1 life on death. It was the mascot token for the Witherbloom College, with many green/black cards in the set producing it. It reprises that role in Secrets of Strixhaven, only with a small difference: rather than gaining life on death, it now gains life on attack.
While this seems like a minor change, many players are up in arms about it. Over the last few days, Mark Rosewater’s Blogatog has received a bunch of questions on the topic, with players criticizing the shift for a number of reasons. A common complaint was that having two tokens so close together in terms of functionality is confusing, especially in decks that can produce both. Both Pests look similar in terms of art and their stats are identical, so mistakes in gameplay are very possible here.
Even before you get into actual games, these new Pests also introduce problems at the deckbuilding stage. As several players pointed out, each new token added to the game is a new token you’ll need to have on-hand when running those cards in Commander. Token management is a cumbersome part of Magic, both in terms of acquisition and use. This remains true today, even with the removal of art cards from Play Boosters technically helping things.
1/1 Red Devil’s Advocate
Naturally, Rosewater was keen to address the concerns around the new MTG Pest token change in his replies. The biggest reason for these changes, according to Rosewater, was the intention to “create a better play pattern” for the token type. Original Strixhaven Pests were unreliable as lifegain sources, which wouldn’t have played well with Witherbloom’s new Infusion mechanic. For Limited in particular, this change makes a lot of sense mechanically.
Some players countered this suggestion by noting that Wizards could’ve differentiated the tokens in another way, perhaps by changing their type to Insect. While Rosewater acknowledged this possibility, he also pointed out some flaws with it. Changing the type line would upset those who loved Pests in original Strixhaven, while also cutting the new tokens off from existing Pest Typal synergies. Considering the new Witherbloom Infusion Commander precon features a bunch of Pest support, this is a reasonable stance.
The discussion on Pests also led to a broader one on the design of MTG tokens in general. While many criticizing the new Pests argued that the originals should’ve returned instead, Rosewater pushed back against that idea as restrictive. If Pests, or tokens in general, were ‘locked in’ to a single form, there would be little room for Wizards to constantly update and improve gameplay experiences. The upshot of this, as he notes, is that we’d end up with far fewer cards that produce tokens at all.
Creative Solutions
Sadly, while Rosewater certainly has some valid points, token creep is still very real in MTG. The similarity between the new and old Pests is rough, but we’ve arguably seen worse before. 2/2 Zombies with Decayed, and 4/4 Angels with Vigilance, both create confusion with their vanilla counterparts, for example.
With this in mind, and based on Rosewater’s recent responses, we can probably expect to see even more of this in the future. The problems players have raised, then, will only get worse over time. For this reason, it’s worth considering ways to address these problems beyond what Wizards themselves offer.
Since tokens aren’t bound by the typical no-proxies rule, even in sanctioned events, creating your own versions of tokens is a great option here. If you wanted to use both kinds of Pests in your deck, for example, you could print two visually distinct versions to clearly differentiate them in play. For less full-on solutions, you could also alter official tokens with brightly-colored sharpie, or sleeve them up in different-colored sleeves.
It’s not ideal that methods like this are necessary at all, but, ultimately, it’s probably for the best. While some may trip over the new Strixhaven Pests, Wizards can try out a lot more concepts when it isn’t limited to keeping tokens static.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage. Be sure to check out our deckbuilder for your next big brew!