Can tokens be used for a ritual summon?

Question

So this question occurred to me while I was playing a bit of YGOPRO, my opponent had summoned four Ojama tokens to my side of the field which are Light(Level 2, ATK 0, DEF 1000) and states that they cannot be used in a tribute summon.

I drew my trusty chaos form which summons blue eyes chaos max which is level 8, which could be all for of the Ojama tokens which were on my side of the field as the resolution cost of chaos form, however I was not allowed to do this, (I won the game anyway).

Because I have never heard of the rulings between tokens and ritual summons I thought I would check the wiki pages on this as it could be a good strategy to use in some ritual decks.

I check the token monster wiki which highlighted that tokens can be used for tributes unless stated otherwise and that the can be used for fusions, synchro and link summons but not xyz summons (because material doesn't count as being on the field and tokens only exist on the field). This page had no explanation of ritual summons.

So I check the card rulings page for tokens which again didn't highlight to use of ritual summons, I then the wiki page for ritual summons which doesn't highlight the use of tokens for the summon.

Is this a grey area that not many people are sure of or have I missed something?

Answer 1

There is no reason you cannot use a token as a tribute for a Ritual Summon. Ritual Summons typically require you to tribute monsters whose combined levels are equal to or higher than that of the Ritual Monster's, so Tokens, being monsters with levels, should count.

Answer 2

So reading the text i don't think i need to add this, but to be on the completly safe site: If you want to use a ritual Spell to Ritual Summon a Monster you need to have that Ritual Monster in your Hand.

If that was the case and no other card in play banned you from summoning the Dragon or activating the spell, it is perfectly fine to use the tokens to ritual summon.

The reason you couldn't in my opinin lies in the programm of ygropro. Since you said you controlled 4 Ojama Tokens, i would guess these were summoned with 2 "Ojama Dou" instead of 2 of "Ojama Trio" and 2 other tokens get destroyed on the way? While in the most pro-clients ojama Dou is still in the beta, errors are to expected. If you don't want other players to have the same problems later, you could post the situation to the forum of the corresponding client.

Answer 3

Seems that those tokes you say came from a Ojama Trio, reading that card ruling we have that:

...They cannot be Tributed for a Tribute Summon...

Also, reading the description from Chaos Form and your Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon there seems to be no restriction or condition to the type of monsters required for this Ritual Summon.

So, to answer your question:

Is this a grey area that not many people are sure of or have I missed something?

I think you are correct; you should be able to use those tokens for a Ritual Summon, as it is not a Tribute Summon (for example, I once managed to overcome those pesky tokens by making a Synchro Summon to a BRD to wipe the field).

What you may have experienced is an inconsistency or soft bug on the YGOPro, that or some missing feature. Anyways, it is understandable this is confusing and a good thing you researched, but you should not take YGOPro as what should be the rulings, as it may fail in some cases.

Answer 4

As already mentioned TOKENs can normally not be used for a tribute summon. The reason for this is that you cannot sent them to they graveyard, because they disappear when leaving the monster zone. So they cannot be used for Special Summons where they have to be sent to the graveyard like Ritual Summon.