Card in Review - Nacatl War-Pride

Top-down designs are often the most fun, but likewise it's a treacherous terrain to navigate. When a card is designed with a concept in mind first, sometimes the implications of that concept can have loose ends once it's put to print. I'm not talking about such lofty concepts as giving a bird flying or a giant better stats than a human. I mean textbox-filling nonsense that communicates a cool idea - and if that idea is easy to take advantage of or build around, so much so the better.

Thank Future Sight for opening the door on this much wackiness - today we're looking at Nacatl War-Pride.

The War-Pride is interesting in its unorthodox nature; again, something to credit to the permissive nature of the Time Spiral block. But it's not just a unique effect, it's unorthodox in terms of its goal. If you're paying six mana for a green creature, especially with three coloured mana symbols, you'd normally expect something truly enormous. As a meager 3/3 - something green's long been able to get for a single mana - well, that textbox had better have some true insanity in there. The thing about the War-Pride is that it isn't just a 3/3, though: it's a whole army of them in one card!

Rather than trying to punch through enemy defenses by virtue of being an enormous trampler, the War-Pride creates an entire army to ambush your enemy's creatures one-on-one. Note that you'll always be attacking with one more creature than your opponents have, since you have a token for each creature he has in addition to the original, and that while they all must be blocked if able, you'll still get tokens for your opponent's tapped or otherwise unable-to-block critters.

The abilities of the War-Pride have many applications. No amount of 2/2s or smaller can hold off a War-Pride, as they'll all be forced into single combat, and since the Pride tokens force your opponent to block them, your other creatures can all charge through unopposed. Think of it a slightly trickier Bellowing Tanglewurm that can also chop up your opponent's army.

So conceptually, it's interesting and it gets the point across. You're employing an entire squadron of Cat Warriors who descend upon your opponent's army. The thing is, like I said earlier, putting this concept in motion can have some exploitable implications. Here's an example: the ability becomes much less concrete in a multiplayer game. You can attack the player with the most creatures, then have the ensuing tokens pointed at whichever other players you want. Depending on just how many creatures the first player has, you can lay waste to multiple players at once!

The delicate balance of Nacatl War-Pride's arena-like ability is even easily knocked off-kilter, and it combos effectively with a staggering number of cards: kind of a waste, seeing as it's six mana and very unfriendly to multicoloured decks, but the temptation concerning what you can pull off with this seemingly unassuming card is too fun to ignore.


Sundial of the Infinite - The biggest and the baddest, so let's get it out of the way first. The War-Pride is enough fun giving you tokens to match your opponent's army each turn, but what if those tokens didn't go away? Sundial is infamous for exiling triggers and abusing cards in unexpected ways; it's no exception here. Attack with the Pride and get your tokens, then at the start of your end step, with the trigger to remove them all from the game on the stack, end the turn. You get to keep the tokens permanently. The best part of this? They aren't just 3/3s, they're exact copies of the original War-Pride - meaning they get to make tokens as well! Your attack phases should get out of hand very quickly, even if the original is killed... that, or the game will be over. One of the two.

Doubling Season, Parallel Lives, Anointed Procession - Simple and straightforward. Getting a token for each of your opponent's creatures means one of the attacking cats gets through. But twice that number? That's a whole lot of creatures who will inevitably go unblocked. Humorously, the more blockers your opponent has, the less defended he is!

Rootborn Defenses, Trostani, Selesnya's Voice - A replacement effect that increases the tokens you get, like in the examples above, won't treat them any differently than any other tokens made by the War-Pride. However, the delayed exile trigger from the token is not a copiable value, so if you were to Populate a copy of a War-Pride token, it will stick around permanently. Sure, you could just Clone the War-Pride if you wanted another, but it's a lot less mana to use something like Wake the Reflections or Druid's Deliverance, no? Rootborn Defenses will protect your army at the same time, including that invaluable original, whereas Trostani will earn you buttloads of life and another permanent copy each turn. If you have enough surviving tokens, Parallel Evolution can be as good as the Sundial in giving you an entire exponentially-growing army.

Reconnaissance, Dolmen Gate - The War-Pride can be great fun, but generally you'll only get one attack off in light of your opponent blocking and killing the original. Find a way to protect the Cat In Charge while still making those attacks and you should wear your foe down in short order.

Benefactor's Draught - This is a creative one. Two mana to draw a card, plus one more card for each creature your opponent controls, is pretty amazing. It even forces your opponent's tapped creatures to tangle with the impending War-Pride(s). If a single burst of card-drawing isn't good enough for you, Garruk's Packleader or Elemental Bond will give you a wad of cards every time you attack.

Pandemonium, Warstorm Surge - The more tokens you get, the more lightning bolts you can throw around. You can either pick off all of your opponent's blockers and have your army march through unopposed, or if the opposition is too bulky, aim all of the damage directly at your opponent's face and win before a single point of combat damage is dealt! Purphoros lets you shock your opponent's dome and can also pump your entire army with any spare mana.

Primal Forcemage - 3/3s a little small for your six mana? What if the War-Pride pumped out an army of 6/6s? The Forcemage is not only in-colour but in-block, too, letting you take advantage of its likewise-niche ability to good effect even in block constructed. Still, leaving the original War-Pride out of the fun is undesirable, so you can be more inclusive with Obelisk of Urd, Echoing Courage or even plain old Coat of Arms.

Goblin Bombardment, Evolutionary Leap, Perilous Forays - If you know those tokens are all going to disappear at the end of the turn anyway, why not put them to work? Throw them at your opponent's face, or turn them into lands or other creatures. Even the mighty Greater Good might not earn you any card advantage, but you can cycle through a huge chunk of your deck and fill your graveyard to boot.

Might of the Masses - This should hardly count as a "combo," in the same way that two islands and a Counterspell might be, but it's interesting to keep in mind that you can go a couple ways with this. You can make the original War-Pride enormous to ensure he survives combat to attack again, you can play it on whichever copy is blocked by the most troublesome creature as a sort of spot-removal, or you can play it on whichever one goes unblocked to flatten your opponent. Of course, someone with a taste for overkill can cover all the bases at once with a Vitalizing Wind.

Champion of Lambholt - Evasion can be achieved even in a monogreen deck. The Champion will grow for each token that shows up, and if there are enough of them, there's a good chance they'll all be unblockable. Since the Champion and the War-Pride are both warriors, you can even finagle some interesting tribal fun with cards like Bramblewood Paragon or Lovisa Coldeyes.

Cytoshape - here's a weird one. Target your War-Pride after it attacks and the trigger goes on the stack, but before the ability resolves. The War-Pride will turn into whatever you want, then each token it produces will be a copy of whatever you Cytoshaped it into. It's kind of like a cross between Mirrorweave and Clone Legion. See what happens when you Cytoshape the War-Pride into an Avalanche Riders, Thragtusk or Craterhoof Behemoth.

Raksha Golden Cub - This might be one of the most ham-fisted combos out there, but getting an army of 5/5s with double strike is no joke. Make the equipment on him a Konda's Banner, Sword of the Paruns or Dragon Throne of Tarkir and you might need to break out a calculator for how much damage you're dealing.

Bow of Nylea, Sosuke, Son of Seshiro - Who says mass creature destruction is out of the colour pie for green?

Natural Affinity, Living Plane - Who says mass land destruction is out of the colour pie for green?

Primalcrux, Aspect of Hydra - The tokens made by the War-Pride are exact copies of the original, right down to name, creature types and even mana cost. Any card with Chroma or Devotion will see three green symbols for each War-Pride token that shows up, meaning Primalcrux gets +3/+3 for each creature your opponent controls and Aspect of Hydra will likely triple the buffs possible with Might of the Masses.


Overall, the Nacatl War-Pride is an open-ended card with a lot of fun and interesting potential. More thought-provoking than bluntly powerful, its massive and unique self-cloning trigger has no shortage of hidden potential to be tapped into. The Time Spiral Block was a gold mine of creative card design like this, but unfortunately - likely in part due to its aggressively monocoloured cost and/or confusing abilities - it was not revived for Alara block. I fear that this cat's meow is likely to be from a 'future' we'll never see come to pass, but you're free to build around and experiment with the card so long as its Future Sight frame roams free.