War DanceHow it works & interactions with other cards

Strumming the Verse

War Dance uses a triggered ability that occurs at the beginning of your upkeep. This ability allows you to put a verse counter on the enchantment, representing the growing intensity of the song. As an optional ability, you must remember to add the counter during the upkeep phase; official rulings state that if you forget to add one, you cannot back up and add it later in the turn.

The Grand Finale

The true strength of War Dance lies in its activated ability. By sacrificing the enchantment, you grant a target creature a +X/+X bonus until the end of the turn, where X is the number of verse counters currently on War Dance. Because the sacrifice is the cost of the ability, the enchantment is moved to the graveyard immediately, and your opponent can only respond to the stat boost once the counters are already locked in.

Strategic Timing

Since you can sacrifice War Dance at any time you have priority, it serves as a powerful combat trick. You can wait until after blockers are declared to ensure your creature survives a trade or pushes through lethal damage. Remember that once sacrificed, the enchantment is gone, so make sure the bonus is sufficient to achieve your goal before pulling the trigger.

Interaction examples

Basic Verse Progression

You cast War Dance on turn one. On turn two's upkeep, you choose to put a verse counter on it. If you sacrifice it during combat that turn, your target creature gets +1/+1. If you wait until turn four, you could have three counters, providing a +3/+3 boost instead.

Scales and Songs

Hardened Scales

While Hardened Scales increases the number of +1/+1 counters put on creatures, it does not interact with War Dance's verse counters. Verse counters are a unique type of counter that are not +1/+1 counters, so Hardened Scales will not increase the rate at which War Dance grows.

Construct Synergy

Urza's Saga

You use Urza's Saga to create a Construct token. As the game progresses, you add verse counters to War Dance. During a big attack, you sacrifice War Dance to give your Construct token +X/+X. This bonus is independent of the Construct's own ability that scales with artifacts, potentially making it an enormous threat for a single turn.