MTG Populate: All 26 Cards, the Copy Rule Everyone Gets Wrong, and the Best Populate Deck (2026)

Populate is one of the shortest keyword actions in Magic: create a token that is a copy of a creature token you control. Two lines of reminder text, no targeting, no cost. It has also been printed on exactly 26 cards in fourteen years, and almost every guide to it repeats the same piece of advice — build around +1/+1 counters and Equipment — that the official rulings flatly contradict.

This is the complete list, verified against the Scryfall API on 6 September 2026: every card, every set, every format, what the mechanic actually copies, and a 100-card Commander deck that uses 22 of the 26.

What populate does, in one sentence

To populate, you create a token that is a copy of a creature token you control. That is the whole mechanic. It appears as a standalone instruction (Wake the Reflections is one white mana and the word “populate”), bolted onto another effect (Sundering Growth destroys an artifact or enchantment, then populates), or as a repeating trigger (Growing Ranks populates every upkeep, forever).

The five rules that decide every populate game

1. Populate copies the token as printed — not the creature standing on the battlefield

This is the rule that breaks most populate decks, and it is stated plainly in the official rulings: the new token “doesn’t copy whether the original token is tapped or untapped, whether it has any counters on it or Auras and Equipment attached to it, or any noncopy effects that have changed its power, toughness, color, and so on.”

So a 1/1 Soldier token carrying four +1/+1 counters and a piece of Equipment populates into a plain, naked 1/1 Soldier. Every guide that tells you to pair populate with Cathars’ Crusade or a voltron package has the interaction backwards: those cards make your original token bigger and the copy arrives with none of it. Populate is anti-synergy with counters, the exact opposite of what the card pool suggests.

2. The one exception is the whole combo

There is a single carve-out, and it is where populate goes from filler to a real engine: “If you choose to copy a creature token that’s a copy of another creature, the new creature token will copy the characteristics of whatever the original token is copying.”

Make a token copy of something enormous — with Helm of the Host, a clone effect, or a card like Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation multiplying what you already have — and populate now hands you another one of those, at instant speed, for two mana. The copy-of-a-copy chain is the correct way to build the deck. Counters are not.

3. Populate never targets

You choose the token as you take the action, on resolution. Hexproof, shroud and protection are all irrelevant, and an opponent cannot make you miss by removing the token you were “aiming at” — you simply pick another one. If they kill the only one you had, populate does nothing, which brings us to the floor.

4. With no creature token, populate does nothing at all

“If you control no creature tokens when you populate, nothing will happen.” Wake the Reflections for one mana can be a blank card. That zero floor is why 22 of the 26 populate cards either make a token themselves first or sit on a permanent that waits for one.

5. Populate cannot see a single artifact token

Treasure, Clue, Food, Blood, Map, Powerstone, Junk: modern Magic is drowning in artifact tokens and populate ignores every one of them. It copies creature tokens only. In a format where half the decks make Treasure by accident, a mechanic that cannot touch any of it is a real constraint on where populate can be built.

The quick reference:

All 26 populate cards

Every card in Magic with the populate keyword, ordered by release. Prices are the cheapest paper printing at the time of writing.

All 26 cost $52.89 together, and 19 of them are under a dollar — those 19 total $4.84. The two outliers, Nesting Dovehawk at $22.80 and Life Finds a Way at $13.82, are 69% of the entire cost of the mechanic between them. Neither is essential.

Where populate came from, and why it stopped

Eleven of the 26 arrived on a single day — 5 October 2012, the release of Return to Ravnica — and two more followed in Dragon’s Maze seven months later. Half the mechanic was printed inside one block, and it took another six years and four months for the next populate card to exist at all, in Commander 2019.

Since then it has appeared in ones and twos, always in supplemental Commander products or crossover sets: New Capenna Commander, March of the Machine Commander, Tales of Middle-earth Commander, The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander, Modern Horizons 3, and — genuinely — the Jurassic World Collection. The newest populate cards are Cayth, Famed Mechanist and Muster the Departed, both from 14 June 2024. Nothing with populate has been printed in 27 months.

Populate also interacts with devotion in a way ordinary token decks do not. A token that is not a copy of anything has no mana cost, so it adds nothing to your devotion — but a populated token is a copy, and a copy copies the original’s mana cost, coloured pips included. A board of populated Angel tokens raises your devotion to white; a board of ordinary 1/1 Soldiers does not.

Populate is not a Selesnya mechanic any more

Populate was built as Selesnya flavour, and the numbers still lean that way: 20 of the 26 fit inside a green-white colour identity. But six do not, and two of them are mono-red.

That matters for deckbuilding in a way the flavour text hides. A straight Selesnya pair gets 20 of the 26. Naya — red, green and white — gets 23, the most any colour identity can hold, which is the real argument for Ghired over Trostani. And if you want populate without white at all, Xavier Sal, Infested Captain in Sultai is the only card that offers it.

Format legality: 26, 14, 13, 8, and zero

Two of those rows are the same fact seen twice. Every Pioneer-legal populate card is from the Return to Ravnica block, because Pioneer’s card pool starts at Return to Ravnica — the mechanic’s debut set is the format’s first legal set. Everything printed since has been in a Commander product or a crossover set, none of which are Pioneer-legal. The overlap is structural, not luck.

And the Standard row is worth sitting with: fourteen years after its debut, and after five separate printings in the last four years, not one populate card is Standard-legal.

The expensive cards in a populate deck are not populate cards

This is the most useful thing to know before you buy anything. The entire populate keyword costs $52.89 for a complete set. The deck below costs $375.72 for its 82 non-basic cards — and the five token doublers alone are $191.44 of that, a little over half, while the 22 populate cards plus the commander come to $50.93, or about 14%.

Every one of those is a “if an effect would create one or more tokens” replacement effect, so it applies to populate exactly as it applies to any other token maker. Doubling Season is the instructive one: it doubles your tokens and doubles counters, but since populate never copies counters, only half of that card is doing anything for you here. Parallel Lives and Anointed Procession do the same job for the populate half at a fraction of the text.

If your budget is tight, buy the populate cards first — they are almost free — and add doublers one at a time. The deck functions without them; it just does not explode.

The four populate commanders

Ghired is the pick for most tables, and one ruling explains why the deck feels strange in practice: the token he makes “was never declared as an attacking creature,” so triggers that fire when a creature attacks do not fire for it. In exchange, effects that say a creature can’t attack — defender, for instance — cannot stop it from arriving in combat either.

A complete Ghired, Conclave Exile populate deck

Ninety-nine cards plus the commander, every one checked against Scryfall for Naya colour identity, Commander legality and singleton. It runs 22 of the 26 populate cards — every one that fits in red, green and white — alongside seventeen token engines and doublers, ten ramp spells, eight pieces of interaction, five draw spells and 37 lands. Cheapest paper printings total $375.72 across the 82 non-basic cards, and 50 of those 82 are under a dollar.

The engine to look for in play is not a wide board — it is one very good token. Resolve Helm of the Host on something, or land Avenger of Zendikar and populate the biggest Plant, and the copy-of-a-copy ruling turns a two-mana instant into a second bomb. If you want to test builds before buying cards, the public deck browser and the AI deck builder will generate and price a list for you in a couple of minutes, and the card pricing tool will tell you which printing to actually buy.

A $2.02 populate starter

If you only want to try the mechanic, these twelve cards are the whole idea for the price of a coffee.

Populate versus the other token mechanics

Populate’s peers are worth knowing because they fail in different places. Amass puts counters on one Army and never makes a second body, which is exactly what populate cannot copy. Proliferate is populate’s opposite number — it adds counters to what you have rather than duplicating it — which is why Cayth, Famed Mechanist and Xavier Sal, Infested Captain both offer the two side by side. For raw token volume rather than copies, the best token generators in Magic will out-produce any populate shell; populate’s job is to take the single best token on your board and have it twice.

Frequently asked questions

What does populate mean in MTG?

To populate, you create a token that is a copy of a creature token you control. If you control no creature tokens, nothing happens.

Does populate copy +1/+1 counters?

No. The rulings are explicit that the new token does not copy counters, Auras, Equipment, or any non-copy effect changing the original’s power, toughness or colour. You get the token as printed.

Can populate copy a Treasure or a Clue token?

No. Populate copies creature tokens only. Treasure, Clue, Food, Blood, Map and Powerstone tokens are all invisible to it.

Does populate target?

No. You choose which of your creature tokens to copy as you take the action. Hexproof and shroud do not interfere, and an opponent cannot make the effect fizzle by removing a token in response.

How many populate cards are there in Magic?

Twenty-six, as of September 2026. Eleven debuted in Return to Ravnica in 2012 and two more in Dragon’s Maze; the other thirteen have been printed across eleven years, almost all in supplemental Commander products.

Is populate a Selesnya-only mechanic?

Not any more. Twenty of the 26 fit in green-white, but two are mono-red, one is mono-black, and three more sit in Naya, Jeskai and Sultai.

What is the best populate commander?

Ghired, Conclave Exile. Naya can legally run 23 of the 26 populate cards — more than any other colour identity — and Ghired populates every combat with the copy entering tapped and attacking.

Do token doublers double populate?

Yes. Populate creates a token, so Parallel Lives, Anointed Procession, Doubling Season and Mondrak, Glory Dominus all apply, and Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation triples instead.

Can you populate a token that is a copy of another creature?

Yes, and this is the strongest line in the mechanic. The new token copies whatever the original token was copying, so a token copy of a large creature can be duplicated for two mana.

What happens if you populate a legendary creature token?

You get a second copy and then the legend rule applies immediately: you choose one to keep and the other goes to the graveyard. Sacrifice payoffs can turn that into value, but you do not get to keep both.

Is any populate card legal in Standard?

No. Zero of the 26 are Standard-legal, and none has been since Return to Ravnica rotated in 2014.

Why are all the Pioneer-legal populate cards from one block?

Because Pioneer’s card pool begins at Return to Ravnica, which is also populate’s debut set, and every populate card printed since has been in a Commander deck or a crossover product — none of which are Pioneer-legal.

What is the cheapest way to try populate?

Twelve populate cards, including the commander Ghired, Conclave Exile, cost $2.02 together at their cheapest printings. The expensive part of a populate deck is the token doublers, not the mechanic.