See Lava Ascended.

Ascend effectively places the token on top of this card as long as the card is on the battlefield, in the graveyard, or in exile. The tokeoken does not disappear until the card goes to the library or hand. I have no idea if this works.

So if it goes to the graveyard or exile, it ceases to exist? Weird. Why not use "leave the battlefield" instead.

One of the most annoying things about Hearthstone are cards like Heistbaron Togwaggle. I don't see why anyone would want to add something like that to Magic. If not even the reminder text tells you what an effect does, maybe you don't want the effect.

I don't see why this turns the card into a token rather than just a copy of the token. Why do you want the ascended permanent to actually no longer be a card?

You could actually exchange the card for a card you own outside the game and the rules would handle that fine.

I don't play Hearthstone- I actively avoid the game, so I'm lost on the reference.

The rules would probably need to be reworked for what I had envisioned- the token not ceasing to exist upon hitting graveyard and exile (phys. rep is supposed to be supplanting the token on top of the creature to show it's not going anywhere). If the card is in the graveyard or exile, it should still be in its ascended form. The ascended forms are limited, so multiple creatures could become the same ascended creature. I never thought of just having the creature just become a copy of the token and include that it remains a copy in exile and graveyard. Perhaps it's flawed in keeping the ascended in the graveyard and in exile for memory issues, the very reason I excluded the creature being ascended in library and hand (well that and lack of casting cost once the creature has ascened).

Looking up the card; in M:tG terms it is something like "When ~ ETBs, put a 'Fantastic Treasure' into play from outside the game."

With absolutely NO explanation of what the heck the fantastic treasures are. Or even the physical requirement that you'd have to have one in the vicinity that you could look at. How good is that card? Unknowable. Should you draft it? Who the hell knows. When should you play it? It'll do a thing when you play it. Is that thing a useful thing to do right now? Who the hell knows.

The only way to learn the card is to play it. And why would you ever risk that?

Of course, Magic actually DID do this terrible thing. Urza, Academy Headmaster. Which is a fine thing for a silly format. But would you ever want to make a card like that in a normal set?

So, in other words - the problem that this card has is... what the heck are those things it can turn into? Now, if those tokens are certain to show up in the same booster (and m:tg does now have that technology) this could be done. But it would still be three cards to learn in order to evaluate one.

Think about the small P/T box that dfc cards added so that you can see at least something about what is on the other side. Something like that would help.

For comparison a card equally silly as Urza, Academy Headmaster but entirely containing its information within the card is Dungeon Master. It creates the term "adventuring party", but also gives you the information to evaluate it.

In the past there have been cards like Urborg Panther that refer to multiple(!) different cards. Crazy! But here is the thing: The ability only works if you actually physically have those cards in your deck and you have to only consider the ability if you have seen at least some of them. The ability itself tells you to disregard it otherwise, so it is like a bonus you can think about later or maybe a deck-building challenge if you can collect them.

That's the requirement I would put on this kind of design: Either put all required information on this card, or make certain the ability only accesseses the cards a player actually has available, so those cards can serve as the necessary info.

I'd never put a token (even new Food/Treasure wording) onto an uncommon without reminder text. At the very farthest if I'd be really interested into making this card, I'd require:

• each of the tokens to be high as-fan in the same set
• full reminder text for each token for any card not mythic rare
• only put multiple tokens at rare and above (and per the previews rules nonmythic rares would still have to provide full reminder text for all tokens)

Anything less leads to the Hearthstone problem Vitenka sufficiently explained: Cards that do stuff you don't know just by looking at cards. Even if I find this card in a booster guaranteed to have one of these tokens, there would be two tokens I'm unaware of.

And now imagine playing this card with the Lava token available, but you are aware of the Windstorm token from a game you played last week and decide that one is better in the current game state, but you don't know the exact stats anymore. The card tells you Windstorm is a legal choice, but actually it is logistically impossible, because not even you yourself know for certain.

Here is how I'd actually fix this though:

• Drop the term token. Tokens want to work a very specific way and one of those ways is being volatile: They stop existing outside the game and that's actually a handy thing to be a general rule about tokens.
• You need a new term now, but that's no issue. Lava Ascended already provides a term: Ascended. Just make Ascended a supertype and now you even have room for proper creature types on the overlay card.
• Now require possession of the overlay card for the ability to work.

How would you do that last point? Simple: Now that the "ascended card" is no longer a token it becomes draftable. Create a rule similar to conspiracy/Contraption/hero cards that a player starts with some of them outside the game. For playtesting I'd put no restriction on the amount unless you really want to, but now the text becomes:

> "At the beginning of your endstep if you cast two instants and two sorceries this turn Storm Prophet ascends into either Lava Ascended, Windstorm Ascended, or Geyser Ascended. (Place the ascended card on top of this from outside the game.)"

Maybe instead "outside the game" we use "the command zone" that's details I'd enjoy discussing, but are not fundamental.

If you insist on having the ascended form persist in public zones, you can add "until this enters a hand or library", but remember that there are other ways than hand and library to become nonpublic e. g. exiled face-down card-piles (compare rare manifest cards), so I'd actually advise against this unless you physically exchange the cards... which is an option:

> "At the beginning of your endstep if you cast two instants and two sorceries this turn Storm Prophet ascends into either Lava Ascended, Windstorm Ascended, or Geyser Ascended. (Exchange this permanent with the ascended card from outside the game indefinitely.)"

With this later wording you actually just can forget about any tracking. Sure, it might be sad to get an ascended creature bounced, but maybe they can have some "reversion" mechanic that allows them to swap back, or you just add some higher density of looting/rummaging. That's once again details.

Yeah, I hate how Hearthstone (or digital games in general) do it. I was playing with the new set just this morning, and got a card that said "ETB unleash a devastation." I knew from preview season that you got to pick which one, and I figured there would be a board wipe as one of the options, but I had to gamble that I was setting it up. Turns out I was wrong with what kind of board wipe it was and lost that game

I like SI's overlay technology, although if the ascended form is a card, it would count against your deck limit. They tried something similar with quests in Eldraine, which didn't end up panning out

Thank you everyone. You have all given me a lot more feedback than I was expecting for this experiment.

Inspired by the comments, particularly SecretInfiltrator's, and the use previous appearances of double-faced cards in Magic, I hypothesized a semi solution: An ascended checkbox (in this case, we wouldn ot want to permanently mark the checkbox) and the rules text, power, and toughness of the creature's possible ascensions on the back of the creature card. Tokens of the Ascended would exist to help players of course, but this way, the player could tell what each Ascended option is.

I did not consider the deck limit factor. Dude1818, do you have a link to the quest mechanic? I only found that it competed with Adventure before getting cut.

You can find an example of one in the vision hand-off document, but the mythic rare legendary artifact cycle (e.g. The Circle of Loyalty) were originally tokens produced as quest rewards