WorldWake Preview Part 5
Matt Wang | 04:22AM on Fri Jan 22 2010BDM, Flores and Will discuss the Top8Magic.com WorldWake Preview Card: Spell Contortion
BDM, Flores and Will discuss the Top8Magic.com WorldWake Preview Card: Spell Contortion
BDM, Flores and Will discuss the Top8Magic.com WorldWake Preview Card: Spell Contortion
BDM, Flores and Will discuss the Top8Magic.com WorldWake Preview Card: Spell Contortion
BDM, Flores and Will discuss the Top8Magic.com WorldWake Preview Card: Spell Contortion
BDM, Flores and Will discuss the Top8Magic.com WorldWake Preview Card: Spell Contortion
Let’s not beat around the bush here and get right into the preview card at hand…
…I will admit that when I first saw the Baloth Woodcrasher I was rather underwhelmed but as I have been living with him for the past few days he has gotten more and more exciting to me. I was immediately certain that he is first-pick material in Zendikar draft but I am actually thinking this fattie could see Constructed play in both Block and even Standard. Read the rest of this entry »
Mike and I often joke about a “bloodbath waiting to happen” when referring to certain cards before a new set is released. There is no joking when it comes to the exclusive Top8Magic preview card. We are going to need a towel to talk about Glory of Warfare because the bloodbath is about to begin.

Somebody get me a towel!
This is no ordinary Crusade we are talking about here. Speaking strictly from an offensive persepctive it represents two Crusades when you have more creatures than your opponent and are doing the math for a alpha strike. I guess it also represents two Crusades when you are on your heels as well. Imagine a board full of token creatures — maybe you happen to playing Spectral Procession and Siege-Gang Commander in a deck that can support the Glory of Warfare for some reason — and your opponent attacking with a Woolly Thoctar. Obviously your opponent would never actually do that but imagine for a moment that they did. You could put four tokens in the way and your opponent could only kill one them since you have a +2 on defense from the enchantment.
This card is ideally suited to Windbrisk Heights powered decks. Green-white tokens has become a popular deck based on its success at the recent 5K results. I had been wary about the inclusion of Overrun in that deck simply because there were scenarios where it was going to be a dead card in your hand. The counterargument that was made for the inclusion of Overrun in that deck over Garruck Wildspeaker was that you could tuck the Overrun under the Heights.
Brian Kowal, the brewmeister of the very popular red-white tokens deck that has been ubiquitous in Standard commented on Overrun in the green-white tokens deck saying, “You don’t know fear until there is a possiblity that Overrun is under a Windbrisk Heights.” Tucking Glory of Warfare under the Heights may be 33% — or more when you factor out trample — less scary, it does allow you to upgrade from green to red and all the fiery goodness that implies. The deck already has a handful of creature based card advantage engines that can play well with Glory of Warfare:
Other token generating cards that may get a boost from Glory of Warfare include:
Tribally I cannot imagine any group being more excited about the Glory of Warfare than the Kobolds — and any 0/1 tokens that are kicking around out there.
One of the more interesting ramifications of this card comes on the defensive side of the table. Assuming that weenie players can use Mark of Asylum to shut down Volcanic Fallout this card will close off Infest as an option. It also shuts down Pyroclasm or any sorcery speed sweeper that does two damage. I have been talking about tokens mostly but if you take 2/2 creatures into account it also shuts down Firespout. All in all this is a pretty exciting card that should justify the bloodbath pronouncements at the beginning of the column!
