Card design challenge: a land that animates.

While flavorful there are gameplay issues. Most creatures die during combat, so this will mostly animted after that's least useful.

Is "nontoken" necessary? What's the idea behind that?

I figured triggering off token death could get out of hand. Don't most death triggers avoid that? I also recognize that it will usually grow after combat, but I want you to build around it a little if you want to take advantage of it in combat. Black is good at sac outlets.

Many do, many don't. The big one to avoid is "I create tokens and trigger on tokens and oh dear". For this card, it just seems a bit limiting, and unless it turns out to be needed for power reasons I'd suggest dropping it. (The power level is a risk. With normal creatures this is basically the size of the number of turns you have played it; with token creatures it could get very big.)

Anyway; this is pretty nifty. Slightly hoop-jumping to use, but quite rewarding when you do.

Hmm, given the hoops to jump through to animate before combat, it probably doesn't need the restriction then.

ETA: Actually, hold on. SBEs are checked after this triggers, at which point the token isn't in your graveyard anymore. So you can't exile it, and you wouldn't get the counter anyway. So it says nontoken to prevent the confusion. If I got rid of the exile clause, then it could trigger off tokens, but I'm not sure if I want to do that

How about?

> : Exile target creature card from your graveyard. If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on ~.

> : ~ becomes a 0/0 black Spirit creature with flying until end of turn. It's still a land.

or just extract the manland activation so that

> Whenever a nontoken creature you control dies, you may exile it. If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on ~.

is a separate ability.