{"id":2454,"date":"2012-10-05T10:00:07","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T15:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/?p=2454"},"modified":"2015-02-05T16:03:29","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T00:03:29","slug":"you-can-cast-a-spell-with-populate-even-if-you-control-no-tokens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/2012\/10\/you-can-cast-a-spell-with-populate-even-if-you-control-no-tokens\/","title":{"rendered":"You can cast a spell with Populate even if you control no tokens."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Selesnya guild had their mechanic of Populate stapled onto quite a few of their cards that already did other things. <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Druid%26%238217%3Bs+Deliverance&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Druid&#8217;s Deliverance<\/a> fogs and populates, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Rootborn+Defenses&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Rootborn Defenses<\/a> makes your guys indestructible and populates, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Sundering+Growth&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Sundering Growth<\/a> is a <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Naturalize&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Naturalize<\/a> with Populate thrown on, etc.<\/p>\n<p>What I&#8217;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&#8217;t cast these spells unless they had a token to populate. Populate doesn&#8217;t target, and it&#8217;s not a &#8216;you have to be able to do this&#8217; 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&#8217;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 <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-content\/plugins\/lems-mtg-helper\/lems-mtg-helper-cardfinder.php?find=Supreme+Verdict&width=223&height=310\" class=\"jTip\" name=\"\">Supreme Verdict<\/a>, even if you have no tokens. The addition of Populate on those spells is just a perk; it doesn&#8217;t mean you can&#8217;t cast the spell without having tokens to double up on.<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s Rules Tip written by<br \/>\nTrevor Nu\u00f1ez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Selesnya guild had their mechanic of Populate stapled onto quite a few of their cards that already did other things. fogs and populates, makes your guys indestructible and populates, is a with Populate thrown on, etc. What I&#8217;ve heard happened a fair number of times at a prerelease where a good friend of mine [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[29,20,15],"tags":[796,797,798,799],"language":[1196],"class_list":["post-2454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-casting-playing-a-spell-ability","category-keywords","category-resolving-spells-and-abilities","tag-druids-deliverance","tag-rootborn-defenses","tag-sundering-growth","tag-supreme-verdict","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2454"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3450,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454\/revisions\/3450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/rulestips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=2454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}