“If I make an Angel token with Geist of Saint Traft, and I have a Parallel Lives out, why does the token made by Parallel Lives get exiled too?”

Easy! Because Parallel Lives doesn’t make any tokens at all. What it does is create a replacement effect. Replacement effects do exactly what it sounds like they do: They take one thing, and replace it with another thing. For Parallel Lives, it replaces “Make NUMBER of tokens” with “Make NUMBERx2 tokens”. So, the Geist of Saint Traft or the Seance or the Mimic Vat or what-have-you is still the thing making the tokens, and all limitations or self-imposed short lifespans and ‘sac me/exile me’ triggers on those tokens remain. The only thing that Lives changes is how many of them you get.

So you attack with your Geist of Saint Traft. It triggers, and when the trigger resolves, it tells you to put a 4/4 flying white Angel creature token out there, tapped and swinging for the fences, and that she’s gotta head to exile at the end of that combat. Lives doesn’t make a new Angel token itself, all it does is replace the Geist’s ability with one that says “Put TWO 4/4 flying white Angel creature tokens onto the field, tapped and attacking, and also exile them at the end of combat”. Since the tokens are created at the same time by the same ability, the game can’t tell them apart… so when the trigger comes around and says “Exile that token,” the game can’t decide which one to exile, so it exiles them both to be safe.

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Trevor Nuñez, Level 1 judge from Roswell, NM