Afterlife is also nice. However, it’s finicky.
If I have a creature in play with Afterlife 1 and it dies, I get 1 token. If I have that same creature in play - but it’s reinforced 3 times - and something eats up 2 of those reinforcements, I get 2 tokens.
If something just kills that creature outright with it’s 3 reinforcements though? 1 token.
It should give me 4 tokens on death. One for it’s initial self, and 1 for each reinforcement.
I 100% agree with this assessment, and it’s a failing I’ve noticed with the mechanic.
Yep, this is a pretty obvious flaw with the mechanic.
Is that a flaw, though, or just a change you think would make the mechanic more useful? It feels to me like it currently mirrors Enrage.
It’s a flaw. In paper you’d have to kill each creature individually and you’d get a spirit token for each one. In PQ, the creatures all stack so a single kill spell kills them all. You should still get a spirit token for each one.
Unless you use a negative counter as it doesn’t come under destroy. I just used it on eldrazi tokens that give mana–no mana for you! neg. counters don’t work for destroty creature obj.
It seems to me that it’s the way they intended. I agree they should get Afterlife X per reinforcement, but… shrugs
Is it a flaw?
Is it a flaw with the way Dauntless Cathar, Nearheath Chaplain or Vessel of Ephemera works?
Is it a flaw with the way Doomed Dissenter, or Conclave Cavalier works?
Is it a flaw in the way Byway Courier, Dire Fleet Hoarder, Exquisite Archangel, Feral Prowler, Festering Mummy, or dozens of other creatures work?
What about in the way that Murder kills whole stacks and not individual reinforcements? Or how Exquisite Firecraft works?
Is Afterlife different because it’s a keyworded ability? What about Emerge?
One of the differences now between what people expected from afterlife and many of the cards you listed is that now the game regularly counts reinforcements for the way cards work. So it follows that people might expect that afterlife would count reinforcements. At the time of the Innistrad block, the game never even referenced reinforcements on the card.
You have a point in that it’s functioning like every other similar effect, but it’s also fair to see how given the way the game has changed in the two years since SOI came out that the mechanic would have similarly evolved.
The reinforcements code in XLN was, frankly, a kludge to make Ascend work.