I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive-to-work,

coronavirus edition. Okay, so today I'm talking about the history of tokens. So this is a tool that

magic uses all the time, but it was something that, I mean, as you'll see, it goes all the way back

to alpha. But it's something that we slowly sort of found over time.

Okay, so if we go back to Alpha, there's only one card in Alpha that actually makes tokens,

and that is a card called The Hive.

So let me read you the original text for the Hive, then I'll read you the Oracle text.

So the original text for the hive, it was an artifact that cost five. It was a mono artifact,

which meant it had a tap. Back in Alpha, there were different kinds of artifacts, and

a minor artifact meant you had to tap it. So it said five, and it didn't say tap because it was a

minor artifact, but five and tap.

Creates one giant wasp, a one-one flying creature, represent wasp with tokens, making sure to indicate when each wasp is tapped. Wafs can't attack during the term created, treat wasps like

artifact creatures in every way, except they are removed from the game entirely if they ever leave play.

If the hive is destroyed, the wasp must still be killed individually.

Now, in modern, in Oracle, it's five-tap,

create a one-one colorless insect artifact creature token with flying named Wasp.

So one of the interesting things about this from a history standpoint is Richard wanted to do

something cool, right? He wanted to make this thing that made creatures, but how do you represent

that? So Richard's like, oh, okay,

well, just, you know, the set also had counters. So obviously there are other, you know, the idea

of, oh, you might have to use glass beads or something or coins or something to represent something

was already going on the set. And it's a neat idea to make, oh, it makes these little wasp creatures.

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