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  1. Player A plays Roar of the Wurm
  2. Player B plays Astral Slide
  3. Player B recycles a card and returns the Wurm token

What happens then?

Roar of the Wurm image Astral Side image

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2  
Your example doesn't match your title. "Returning a creature to its owner's hand" is not what Astral Slide does. There are special rules for a zone now called "Exile", older cards called this "Removed from game". When you exile something, its not on the battlefield so it can't be affected by things like Wrath of God, but it also isn't in your hand to be played. Where I play we usually just set them off to the side. David's answer is correct either way, for a player's hand or exile. – WillfulWizard Oct 13 '11 at 22:35
In many ways the title is still wrong - since an exiled token creature never gets "returned under its owner's control", not really! – thesunneversets Oct 14 '11 at 9:25
Go ahead and edit it then... – pinouchon Oct 14 '11 at 11:54
Venser, the Sojourner is a perfect example of what I think the question is asking. – OrigamiRobot Oct 14 '11 at 16:01

1 Answer

up vote 14 down vote accepted

Tokens disappear whenever they leave the battlefield. The relevant rules are:

110.5f A token that's phased out, or that's in a zone other than the battlefield, ceases to exist. This is a state-based action; see rule 704. (Note that if a token changes zones, applicable triggered abilities will trigger before the token ceases to exist.)

110.5g A token that has left the battlefield can't move to another zone or come back onto the battlefield. If such a token would change zones, it remains in its current zone instead. It ceases to exist the next time state-based actions are checked; see rule 704.

So the Wurm token would be gone for good in this example.

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Please note, the token does actually change zones first before disappearing, so if something would trigger "Whenever a creature leaves the battlefield", the token will cause this just like a creature card. – WillfulWizard Oct 13 '11 at 22:29
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@WillfulWizard I thought 110.5f was pretty clear on that point. – ghoppe Oct 13 '11 at 22:42
@ghoppe In my experience, the rules are scary; all of my friends ignore anything that looks like a quote from the rules, so that's how I read answers here: skip the rules, see if the added text includes the correct answer. The question about triggers comes up all the time, so I felt it was worth restating "in English" so people might read it. If you feel strongly that redundancy is bad, I'll be happy to remove these comments. This could be worth talking about on meta: do we teach just the rules or how to read the rules? – WillfulWizard Oct 13 '11 at 22:57
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@WillfulWizard (2 comments up): that seems like a bad habit to get into, namely skipping over pieces of an answer and expecting to get the point of it anyway. Especially the comprehensive rules, which in my experience are pretty clearly written, considering how precisely they define the game. (That being said, I do believe that a good answer should explain the relevance of any quote (or link) it includes to the question at hand.) – David Zaslavsky Oct 13 '11 at 23:10
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@David Zaslavsky - Your rule must be from an older version of the comp rules. 110.5g currently reads "A token that has left the battlefield can’t come back onto the battlefield. If such a token would return to the battlefield, it remains in its current zone instead." It ceases to exist the next time state-based actions are checked. Tokens DO trigger "leaves the battlefield" abilities. – OrigamiRobot Oct 14 '11 at 15:44
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