Once again, we get a piece of Core Set filler
with a guild's keyword tacked on to pretty it
up. Weapon Surge is Kindled Fury with the added
option of affecting your whole team for a single
mana more. First strike can be a very handy
ability and a hard one to play around, so this
will usually trade for an opponent's blocking or
blocked creature, so that's okay. The trouble
is, at higher levels of play, fewer players put
much stock in block. Most creature-based decks
are all-out offense, or they don't bother to
attack if they can see they're not getting
through. And for the Overload to deliver, you
need multiple creatures blocking or being
blocked, or you need a gang block scenario, and
those don't come up much at all. Occasioanlly
it'll also push through a few more points of
damage to the opponent, but at +1/+0 each, if
you got through with enough creatures to make
Weapon Surge worth the Searing Spear you
could've cast instead, you didn't need Weapon
Surge to win.
Is it odd that the first thing I thought of when
I saw this is "Wow, it's another Overrun effect
for pauper decks!"? I am kind of odd, though. If
anything, I maybe like it better than Overrun
for certain situations. I mean, you can't use
Overrun as a combat trick (barring some sort of
trick with Vedalken Orrery - I'd love to see
that!), and it's much harder to chain any
multiples of it under normal circumstances.
Today's card of the day is Weapon Surge which
is a one mana Red that gives target creature you
control +1/+0 and First Strike or it can be
overloaded for two mana to give all of your
creatures +1/+0 and First Strike. This is
a solid combat trick that can completely
eliminate an opponent's forces on offense or
defense in the right situations. With a
low cost and ability to benefit a token swarm
this should be a popular card for Red decks in
Casual, though the low damage boost with smaller
numbers and situational power will make it
scarce in more competitive formats.
In Limited this is a very effective card in the
creature dominated format and just the
possibility of having it in hand can drastically
impact how an opponent manages attacks or their
blocks. If they forget about Weapon Surge
or gamble on you not having it the effects can
be devastating and quickly change the state of
the battlefield. An automatic inclusion for any
Red decks in Sealed and worth an early on color
pick in Booster.
