In which our diabolical villain gets to indulge his evil side with a look at the Black cards from Planar Chaos. Have fun, kick puppies, play Swamps.
“Ah, evil evil evil. Lots of lovely evil. What abominations shall we breed today, my pretties?”
*knock knock*
“Who could be disturbing us at this hour of the day?”
“Doom doom. The hour of doom is upon us.”
“Really, I didn’t think my Global Thoracic Conflabulator would be operational until at least next Wednesday.”
“Repent, sinner, for our time has come. For, lo, Planar Chaos hits the stores today. And, lo, the sun shall turn black, rivers of blood will flow and Britney Spears will be elected President of the USA.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad. I mean she could hardly be worse than…”
“Doom. We are all doomed. In 19 days the time of our Damnation will be at hand. So say the gospels of Saint Mowshowitz.”
“Did you not hear me? Damnation, I tell you! We all face eternal Damnation!”
“Really. Oh, that is such splendid news. I just may have to put in an order for some fermented vegetable product to celebrate.”
“Yes yes, I know. Don’t mind me, the cat needs feeding.”
“Damn-yARGHHHHHHH!”
“Kitty, now I’ve told you before about playing with your food.”
…
On February 20th, Planar Chaos becomes Standard legal. This might be a good time to take a look at what the set offers and how it might impact on the Standard metagame. I’ll throw up some deck lists, but bear in mind this is largely theoretical as I don’t have access to the cards yet. Treat these lists as experimental, probably needing work, blah-dy blah and etc. Any discussion in the forums is welcome, as I’ll have probably missed stuff. If anything interesting pops up I’ll run it in MTGO when Planar Chaos is available and report the findings back here.
In case you haven’t guessed already, I’m going to start off with the Black spells, for the simple reason that it’s the color that contains the most talked-about card of the new set. But before we start with the “it’s kind of like a Wrath, but it’s Black…” let’s have a look at what Black is currently doing in Standard.
Not a great deal, as it happens. A look at this week’s run down on MTGO and a trip to the Karsten deck-o-pedia, and we can see that Swamps are fairly scarce in the Top 8s at the moment.
In 10th place we have the Black Rack deck that’s been kicking around for a while. It had a brief surge in popularity, but is kicking around on the outskirts at the moment.
A deck that came from nowhere to charge up to 5th this week is Green/Black Dredge. Is this a new player, or just one of those MTGO flavor-of-the-month silver bullets that vanishes overnight? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Creatures (26)
- 4 Hypnotic Specter
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 2 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
- 4 Elves of Deep Shadow
- 4 Golgari Grave-Troll
- 4 Stinkweed Imp
- 4 Greenseeker
Lands (22)
Spells (12)
Sideboard
Overall, not too healthy for the wielders of Swamps. Now let’s take a look at what Planar Chaos offers:
Rare
Damnation
Extirpate
Imp’s Mischief
Magus of the Coffers
Mirri the Cursed
Null Profusion
Roiling Horror
Temporal Extortion
Uncommon
Big Game Hunter
Circle of Affliction
Dunerider Outlaw
Enslave
Kor Dirge
Muck Drubb
Phantasmagorian
Shrouded Lore
Treacherous Urge
Waning Wurm
Common
Blightspeaker
Bog Serpent
Brain Gorgers
Cradle to Grave
Dash Hopes
Deadly Grub
Melancholy
Midnight Charm
Rathi Trapper
Ridged Kusite
Spitting Sliver
Vampiric Link
By now we’ve probably realized that Black is definitely not where you want to be in the Limited game. Just look at all those common removal spells… oh no, sorry I was looking at the Blue cards.
I mean, what is going on here? Black is the color of evil, evil I tell you! Where is the point-and-dead? This shower couldn’t even beat up the Andrex puppy. Rebels? Guys that fight for freedom alone… what the hell is with that philosophy? We’re Black, we’ll eviscerate our own grandmas for cold hard cash. Freedom and other ideals, bah, that’s just so… White.
But what about Constructed?
Well, there is one little card you might have heard of…
Any article talking about the possible impact of Planar Chaos on Constructed can’t avoid talking about Damnation. Wrath of God is almost the last of the dinosaurs, or some drooling member of the Cthulu’s pantheon. All of its equally-nasty brethren from the dawn of time, like Armageddon and Counterspell, have been sealed away for the good of humanity, but Wrath is still out there, menacing existence and breaking the hearts of little Timmies all across the world. Now it gets a dark twin in Damnation.
I think we can safely say this is a rare that is going to be worth something. Wrath of God still maintains a decent price despite being reprinted in every base set for the last twelve years. (How does it do that? Surely everyone must have four copies by now. Is there some evil cult out there eating Wraths to keep the population down?)
In Constructed terms, it opens up a lot of design space. If your deck absolutely, positively needs a way to sweep the board, then it no longer has to go begging cap in hand to White (admittedly, with all the good fixing around, this is not necessarily as hard as it used to be).
A Wrath effect for four mana in Black is not exactly a new thing. Mutilate (ah, good thoughts) was functionally a Wrath for most of the time in mono-Black (most of the time, as in not the times they flashed back an enormous Roar of the Wurm token the turn before). But Mutilate needed Swamps. This doesn’t, and it will be in two-color decks for the next two years.
The other biggy in terms of cash is Extirpate. For some reason there is a whole section of the playing public that goes nuts about this kind of card. We’ve had Haunting Echoes and Cranial Extraction, and both were hideously over-priced for most of their life span. Unless you’re lucky and snag a card in their hand, these cards don’t affect the board state. Let me repeat this in case it isn’t obvious. THESE CARDS DON’T AFFECT THE BOARD STATE.
Removing all copies of a card that may hurt you if your opponent draws it at some point in the future is fine, but it doesn’t stop the creatures currently on the board from pounding your face in.
But despite this, I think Extirpate will have a role in the Constructed environment. Against certain strategies (Martyr Proclamation, Firemane Angel, Dredge, Ichorid) it’s much more of a precision bullet than Tormod’s Crypt. It may even play a useful role in control mirrors, where you know the game is going to go long and ripping all the Teferi’s out of your opponents deck will probably cripple them. Other than that, I suspect it will only be a sideboard card or one-of in a deck that can tutor for it.
With the big two out of the way it’s time to look at the rest.
Imp’s Mischief is an interesting Misdirection, but doesn’t have the alternate pitch cost to give it that true surprise value. It’s not going to save you from Demonfire either.
Cabal Coffers was a powerhouse, but its Magus feels a bit like a Durkwood Boar. My gut tells me he’s a bit too slow and expensive, but then there’s also Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth floating around. A block deck, maybe? One to possibly examine another time.
I can’t really think of a home for Mirri either. She’s got some nice abilities, but ultimately feels too fragile for something that costs four mana. Hypnotic Specter isn’t getting much play now, despite costing one mana less and having a far scarier ability if he connects. I always read these kind of creatures wrong anyway.
Null Profusion is Recycle, but this time is in the wrong color. If there is a Recycle deck I suspect it will probably be Green anyway to take advantage of the mana acceleration, although there may be some options with the Red rituals. In the past, Recycle was always vulnerable to instant kill with Stupor, but suspend cards and Chromatic Star give it some buffering against discard. I won’t talk any more about Null Profusion, as it’s one of those cards to file away for future reference and have a play around with later.
Roiling Horror is a nice Timmy / Johnny card, in that some games he’s going to absolutely enormous (Martyr anyone?). It’s not going to do anything, but I do like cards like this and occasionally some turn out to be proper gems like Greater Gargadon.
Temporal Extortion (and to some extent Brain Gorgers and Dash Hopes) go a long way to explaining why Black in pretty much Damnation or bust this set. The “punisher” mechanic was a feature of Red in Judgment and, rather unsurprisingly, Red was the whipping boy of that set. Giving your opponent a choice is a bad strategy as the card will never do what you want it to.
Moving briefly onto the uncommons, we have the all-purpose Big Game Hunter. He’s a rebel and has Madness, giving him some nice synergy with multiple strategies. This would be great apart from the fact he’s a little short of actual game at the moment. The quality creatures of the moment appear to be Lightning Angel and Teferi, neither of which has four power. He does kick the snot out of Spectral Force however, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a sliver deck he can feast on in block.
Not much else here.
I love the way Enslave really rubs salt into the wounds. I’ll take your best creature and you can take damage every upkeep. Constructed playable? Again it’s probably a little on the costly size, although I distinctly remember thinking Time Spiral (the actual card, not the set) was too costly at six mana (whoops).
Circle of Affliction is basically rubbish, but I think I’m going to have to call out the card-naming department on this one. Virtually every Circle of… prevents the damage being dealt. Despite the name, this one doesn’t and having something not do what is expected is sloppy design (or rather name management) in my eyes.
Onto the commons…
Erm, okay… let’s talk a little more about Damnation…
Actually, there are a couple of linear (or is it the other way around? Wizards design speak confuses me most of the time) themes for casual deck designers to get behind.
In keeping with the alternate reality shenanigans of Planar Chaos Black, has become a bit of the rebel color (White at least got some mercy, in that they chose not to saddle it with any Mercenaries — although White does actually have a card of that name, curiously enough). More importantly, it got a searcher in Blightspeaker. In itself this isn’t enough, as the strategy is really crying out for a one mana searcher like Ramosian Sergeant, and possibly a top-end finisher. I’d put this is in the category of not quite there yet, but there’s probably enough to keep casual enthusiasts happy. Again something I may come back to (especially if the last set adds anything interesting). I say come back to, but despite being English, I was never really much of a rebel player. But no fear. I have Ormerod’s brain in a jar around somewhere, and Ben Ronaldson is locked up in the dungeon (ha ha, I bet you were wondering where they got to). Unfortunately, Warren Marsh has escaped to the States and still eludes my detection, but we can make do with what’s available.
The other linear mechanic involves madness. Black got three more cards with madness, but it’s probably the presence of Reckless (Arrogant) Wurm in Red that sets off the flags here.
I could throw up deck lists for these and maybe even something involving slivers, but it will probably detract a little from the focus of my article. (What, your articles have focus?)
While we’re on focus, or rather the lack of it, now seems like a good point to mention a card that is sort of Black, but not really. I was really hoping Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth would give you some way to hose your opponent by making all their lands into swamps, but alas, there isn’t much around other than the odd Mire Boa. Feel free to inflict Spreading Algae and Angry Mobs on your casual playing friends, though.
Okay, so onto actual deck building and the options Black Damnation gives us.
I thought I’d talk about some of the mainly mono-Black strategies, as they’ll mainly be containing the obviously good cards, and presumably they will be a decent starting point. And also because I ran into someone at FNM who got the different strategies mixed up, which got me thinking about Black cards in the first place.
First off, let’s take a look at the building blocks available for Black.
The creatures of interest are:
Plagued Rusalka
Dark Confidant
Ravenous Rats
Dauthi Slayer
Nether Traitor
Stromgald Crusader
Withered Wretch
Nantuko Husk
Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
Hypnotic Specter
Stinkweed Imp
Faceless Butcher
Mindslicer
Mortivore
Nekrataal
Dimir House Guard
Plague Sliver
Sengir Nosferatu
Twisted Abomination
Skeletal Vampire
Stronghold Overseer
Avatar of Woe
This list is by no means exhaustive. There are probably creatures that can fit a gap in a pinch, and some things on here that are probably too specialized (Mortivore, Avatar of Woe).
And the other spells:
Bad Moon
Phyrexian Arena
Enslave ? (giving some bias to the new cards)
Darkblast
Extirpate (again wanting to include new cards)
Funeral Charm
Last Gasp
Sudden Death
Tendrils of Corruption
Seize the Soul
Moonlight Bargain
Soul Spike (a stretch, I have tried to make this card work)
Blackmail
Cry of Contrition
Deathmark
Cruel Edict
Smallpox
Delirium Skeins
Stupor
Nightmare Void
Damnation (obviously)
Diabolic Tutor (more on this)
Dread Return
Persecute
Consume Spirit
And finally, some support cards:
The Rack
Coldsteel Heart (as well as other “diamonds,” like Prismatic Lens and any Black Signet)
Bottle Gnomes
Disrupting Specter (for the nostalgia)
Phyrexian Ironfoot
Phyrexian Totem
Serrated Arrows
Gauntlet of Power
Mirari
Triskelavus
Arena
Desert
Gemstone Caverns
Ghost Quarter
Mouth of Ronom
Quicksand (this might be kind of obsoleted by Desert, but it does kill Mire Boa)
Scrying Sheets
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
The problem with the deck I faced at FNM was that it featured the following three cards in the same build:
Dauthi Slayer.
The Rack.
Stronghold Overseer.
To my eyes, this is trying to be three different decks. Looking at the building blocks available I think there are three basic strategies a Black deck can follow.
The first is an aggressive deck based around Black weenies and Bad Moon, and would probably look something like this:
Creatures (30)
- 4 Hypnotic Specter
- 4 Dauthi Slayer
- 4 Nantuko Husk
- 2 Faceless Butcher
- 4 Dark Confidant
- 4 Plagued Rusalka
- 4 Stromgald Crusader
- 4 Nether Traitor
Lands (22)
- 20 Swamp
- 2 Ghost Quarter
Spells (8)
Sideboard
[Wow, I love the Black Damnation moon in the funky deckbox! — Craig, amused by shiny trinkets.]
This plays straight aggro while still having a number of useful interactions. As already mentioned, two Nether Traitor are very good times with either Nantuko Husk or Plagued Rusalka. Faceless Butcher can be turned into permanent removal with either Nantuko Husk or the Rusalka, as you sac it in response to the remove from game comes-into-play effect.
The first big problem with the little Black guys is that Desert just flat out kills so many of them. Bad Moon is an answer, but you need to see it.
The second big problem is the absence of one-drops. This makes it hard to really curve in the way a Boros deck or Green deck might.
The third big problem is that the other aggro decks are most likely quicker. Want to try racing a turn 3 Spectral Force with this? Didn’t think so.
Another option is to take out the aggressive elements and add more disruption in the form of discard. Again, I don’t think there’s much that Planar Chaos adds. In fact the only thing I’d probably want to do is try and work in Delirium Skeins and Haakon to give the deck a little more resiliency. Rix Maadi and some Red would give an uncounterable source of discard (and a way to put Haakon in the bin), but the Pact-Husk deck I tried modifying used to have real problems even with this little splash (although it was admittedly running the triple black Grave Pact).
Something like:
Creatures (18)
Lands (22)
Spells (20)
Sideboard
Other versions touch on White. This gives Shrieking Grotesque, Jotun Grunt, and the obvious synergy between Flagstones of Trokair and Smallpox.
But then we have new control strategy. Way back in Odyssey block, Torment was the designated “Black” set, and had enough pieces to spawn a dedicated Black control deck. Is Damnation the card to give that strategy another run?
This is Olivier Ruel Mono-Black deck that finished 2nd at Pro Tour: Osaka 2002:
4 Cabal Coffers
23 Swamp
4 Laquatus’s Champion
4 Nantuko Shade
2 Shambling Swarm
4 Chainer’s Edict
2 Diabolic Tutor
1 Haunting Echoes
4 Innocent Blood
4 Mind Sludge
1 Morbid Hunger
3 Mutilate
1 Rancid Earth
3 Skeletal Scrying
Sideboard
4 Braids, Cabal Minion
3 Mesmeric Fiend
1 Morbid Hunger
1 Mutilate
3 Rancid Earth
2 Shambling Swarm
1 Skeletal Scrying
I don’t think Magus of the Coffers can be considered a replacement for the land itself, although it should probably be tried out, especially with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. Instead, the raw power is probably going to come from Gauntlets of Power. Gauntlets of Power on Swamps should power out some fairly monstrous Consume Spirits.
In this case the heart of the deck is going to look something like:
Damnation.
Consume Spirit.
Gauntlets of Power.
Phyrexian Arena.
A finisher, with Skeletal Vampire the most likely candidate.
Another artifact around that used to go very well with lots of mana is Mirari. One of the tricks that could be run with Mirari was to fork Diabolic Tutor to fetch both the target and another Tutor to fetch something else.
A prototypical Mono-Black Control deck might look like:
Creatures (9)
Lands (23)
Spells (28)
- 2 Persecute
- 2 Diabolic Tutor
- 1 Mirari
- 4 Phyrexian Arena
- 3 Consume Spirit
- 3 Cruel Edict
- 4 Coldsteel Heart
- 4 Gauntlet of Power
- 4 Damnation
- 1 Extirpate
Sideboard
This is very mana intensive and risks being a little slow and clunky, especially against counter-magic.
It’s kind of odd, but Blue is probably a nightmare opponent for Black nowadays. In the past, Black discard decks used to beat up Blue decks for fun. But back then they had Dark Ritual, and used to do dirty things like a slip a Hypnotic Specter or Necropotence down turn 1.
Now it’s not too good. Desert kills virtually all the early critters, the card drawing is good enough to quickly bounce back from hand disruption, and the countermagic can match most of the threats card-for-card.
I don’t think it’s impossible, though. Black decks used to have problems in the past, in that they could either be tuned to attack the hand or deal with the critters, but not both. Damnation helps because it is such a solid creature sweeper. Now the discard decks actually have a tool to survive the rush. If anything, Damnation is more brutal.
Hold creatures back in hand to avoid the Wrath? Well, I’m going to strip them out with discard.
Over-commit so you don’t lose them to discard? Well, I’ll just wreck you with Damnation.
A more mid-range discard deck might look like:
Creatures (6)
Lands (24)
Spells (30)
- 2 Persecute
- 4 Stupor
- 4 Phyrexian Arena
- 4 Consume Spirit
- 4 Cruel Edict
- 4 Coldsteel Heart
- 4 Smallpox
- 4 Damnation
Sideboard
A further modification would be to work in the Haakon / Stromgald Crusader engine to give the deck more longevity or “cockroach” factor. If a deck can’t break through Blue’s countermagic then the other alternative is to try and wear it down. My main worry is getting Haakon to the graveyard, as Delirium Skeins probably hurts you too much.
There is no reason to restrict the deck to pure Black either. I have done here for simplicity’s sake, but if you really want to push the cockroach factor then there is the dredge option. Grave-Shell Scarab strikes me as a card that might finally have its day. I also like the idea of playing around with Life from the Loam and Ghost Quarter / Mouth of Ronom in this style of deck.
Maybe something to try out in the future.
As I said before, these are basically sketches and rough outlines rather than the finished products. Hopefully it will give you some ideas for when February 20th comes round.
Anyway, I have a specialist order for some office cubicle-busting flying attack porcupines to deliver. So until next time, be evil.
Prof