Return to Ravnica new mechanics Explained (Part 1 of 5)

Populate

The populate mechanic puts a copy of one of your creature tokens onto the battlefield.

 Populate itself doesn't seem that powerful as you can only put a copy of one of your creature TOKENS only and not creatures but when you keep in mind that you may have tokens of Acidic Slime and other interesting creatures in play using cards like Cackling Counterpart or Mimic Vat it shows that there is room to abuse and build around this mechanic.





Its also worth saying that Populate trigger doesn't target (making it better than Cackling Counterpart), that way the opponent cannot destroy a token creature you wish to copy as response to avoid populating (unless you just have that one token on battlefield).
If you have two 1/1 tokens on the battlefield and your opponent has only one Doom Blade there is no way he can stop you from getting a new 1/1 Token.

Its also worth saying that if you cast Titanic growth on one 1/1 token before Populating, the new created token will still be a 1/1 and not a 5/5.

In my next post I will  talk to you about the mechanic Overload.