The Selesnya guild had their mechanic of Populate stapled onto quite a few of their cards that already did other things. Druid’s Deliverance fogs and populates, Rootborn Defenses makes your guys indestructible and populates, Sundering Growth is a Naturalize with Populate thrown on, etc.

What I’ve heard happened a fair number of times at a prerelease where a good friend of mine was working is that players seemed to think they couldn’t cast these spells unless they had a token to populate. Populate doesn’t target, and it’s not a ‘you have to be able to do this’ sort of thing. If your opponent is swinging into your empty board for a whole lot of hurt, you can use the Deliverance to stop the damage, even though you don’t have tokens. You can blow up their enchantments, you can exile their creatures, you can make your entirely non-token board indestructible in response to their Supreme Verdict, even if you have no tokens. The addition of Populate on those spells is just a perk; it doesn’t mean you can’t cast the spell without having tokens to double up on.

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Trevor Nuñez