Food

Food is a predefined token and artifact type introduced in Throne of Eldraine.

Description

Although it does appear in the type line of some cards, the type mostly appears on tokens. Food tokens have “, , Sacrifice this artifact: You gain 3 life.”

Nontoken Cards

Cards with the Food type are:

Since the Food type does not inherently grant the ability possessed by the predefined Food token, it is possible for cards with the Food type to not have that ability. However, for thematic reasons, all of these artifacts also have some form of ", , Sacrifice this artifact: You gain 3 life." Notable deviations from the standard ability include the following:

• Candy Trail's ability also draws a card, as it is meant to represent a combination of the standard Food and Clue abilities.
• Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender's ability gains life equal to her power, which is 3 by default but may change.
• Three Bowls of Porridge has a modal ability where the standard Food ability is one option among three. As a consequence of the templating, the sacrificing occurs during the resolution of the ability when this mode is chosen, not as a cost of activation like with the standard Food ability.
• Vegetation Abomination makes one roll a six-sided die to determine how much life they will gain.

History

R&D made food tokens because they realized fairy tales were overrun with food references and it would allow them to design a lot of fun cards.

Food tokens returned as a one-off in Commander 2021 (Gyome, Master Chef), and got six new producers in Modern Horizons 2. Food was not considered deciduous, until Streets of New Capenna.

In The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth and Wilds of Eldraine, Food tokens are a larger mechanical draft theme. R&D noted the problematic gameplay issue in original Throne that the payoffs for making Food tended toward shrinking the board and bogging down the game. Hence, the secondary uses of Food in these newer sets tended towards more proactive play.

Bloomburrow introduced Forage, a mechanical cost that includes the sacrifice of a food. Food also served as the backbone of the Squirrels archetype.

Rules

Rulings

• Food is an artifact type. Even though it appears on some creatures (such as Gingerbrute), it is never a creature type.
• If an effect refers to a Food, it means any Food artifact, not just a Food artifact token. For example, you can sacrifice Gingerbrute to activate the last ability of Tempting Witch.
• You can't sacrifice a Food token to pay multiple costs. For example, you can't sacrifice a Food token to activate its own ability and also to activate the ability of Tempting Witch.
• Some spells that instruct you to create a Food token have targets. You can't cast these spells without choosing all required targets, and if all of those targets become illegal targets, the spell won't resolve and you won't create any Food. If some but not all of those targets become illegal, you'll do as much as possible, including creating Food.
• Whatever you do, don't eat the delicious cards.

Food tokens

Tokens marked with are created by Acorn cards.

Trivia

• Unlike Clues (Investigate), Food creation was designed without an associated keyword. If R&D had decided that Food would have needed a keyword, they would have wanted it to be generic to allow as many flavor interpretations as possible, so something like “prepare Food" - though Rosewater wishes to avoid "cook".
• Icing Manipulator makes +1/+1 counters into Food tokens.
• Candy Trail is the first card printed with multiple predefined token subtypes.
• For Ygra, Eater of All, all other creatures are Food.
• Vegetable was a planned creature type for Unglued 2: The Obligatory Sequel.

References

External links

• Mechanic Spotlight: Food (Video). YouTube.