A slow, inevitable death. That’s pretty much what Assemble the Legion brings to the table. Every turn, the Legion gets another counter, and you get another batch of tokens. If you leave the Legion unchecked, it’s going to overwhelm you. Sure, there’s always enchantment removal, but sometimes that’s not an option. Are there any outside the box ideas we could look at?

Thrull Parasite has some promise. The Legion tells you to put a muster counter on it, then put tokens on the battlefield equal to the number of muster counters on the Legion. So, we can use the Parasite to remove that counter and they won’t get any tokens, right?

Not quite. Players don’t get priority while a spell or ability is resolving. So, when the Legion’s triggered ability resolves, we follow the instructions in the order they’re printed. First, they put a counter on the Legion, and then they put that many tokens on the battlefield. That’s all one ability. No one gets priority between the muster counter getting added and the tokens being put on the battlefield. So you’re not going to be able to use the Parasite to get rid of that counter before the tokens appear.

But it’s not a completely lost cause. While you can’t prevent them from getting a token, you can at least limit them to one token a turn. Every turn, you can activate the Parasite’s ability and remove a muster counter from the Legion. So instead of an exponentially growing army of tokens, they’re only getting one token a turn. Sure, having to pay two life every turn to activate the Parasite’s ability is pretty harsh, but it has that extort ability to help gain that life back. Besides, would you rather get overrun by a pile of tokens, or have the Parasite help keep them under control?

Today’s Rules Tip written by Nathan Long