The Magic Color Series - Back in Black

Happy new year everyone, and welcome back to the Magic Color Series!

Three weeks ago, I wrote the second post in this series on the color blue. (Christmas interfered somewhat with the plan to post this article last week.)

We're at the bottom-right now - just gonna keep going 

around the circle. Whoever guesses the next color gets a prize*!

So just as a refresher... well, this is the third article in the series already! You guys should already know what the color pie is by this point. And if you don't, just go back to one of the earlier articles. Don't be a rebel. Read things in order.

And without any further ado - black!

What does black represent?

Well, the symbol for black mana is a skull. So it shouldn't be too hard to see where black stands on matters of morality. But just as white isn't necessarily the color of goodness, black isn't necessarily the color of evil, either. When it comes down to it, black's mentality can be summarized as "power at any cost" - it's not so much evil as it is self-serving. Black's ultimate goal is omnipotence, and it isn't afraid to use underhanded or morally ambiguous methods to do so.

Like murder.

That being said, there is more to black than just selfishness in the purest sense. Black is also closely linked with death (again, the skull should have given that one away), or at the very least, manipulating death to suit its own purposes. Essentially, anything that can be considered an "underhanded tactic" would likely fall under black's jurisdiction. Madness, disease, death, undeath... they're all black. But it's important to remember that all of these things are secondary to black's real, self-serving goal of power.

What does this mean for gameplay?

The whole "power at any cost" thing takes on a slightly more literal sense when it comes to black's gameplay. Ordinarily, cards have mana costs, which you have to pay with your lands (or other cards that produce mana), but occasionally, cards can have alternative costs. Black is the color in which these alternate costs are arguably the most common, and these costs often involve paying life or sacrificing creatures. In other words, if you're playing black, chances are you're hurting yourself in order to hurt the other guy more.

Like I said before, black is willing to use any methods to achieve its ends. In game, what does this mean? Well, black is the color that most often outright destroys other creatures, a la Murder (pictured above). It will make enemy creatures weaker by giving them penalties to power and toughness, which often represents disease, and going along with that, it is likely the most prolific user of -1/-1 counters (which permanently make creatures weaker). Black will often force opponents to discard their cards - if we continue with the analogy from the previous article that your deck of cards is the sum of your knowledge and your hand of cards is the things you are currently thinking, then forcing a player to discard their cards could be seen as driving them mad. And finally, black is the master of graveyard manipulation - black is never afraid to bring back the cards that have been destroyed, or to use their dead things for their own ends in other ways.

In terms of creatures, black is the most willing to use creatures that others may find twisted, demented, or just morally grey. Black is where you'll find the vast majority of the game's zombies, skeletons, and vampires, as well as stuff like snakes and scorpions and rats to a somewhat smaller extent. But black's mentality of "I don't care if I suffer a bit, but I've got to make sure the other guy suffers more" is clearly seen in perhaps the most distinctive black creature - the demon. Usually, demons are supremely powerful and cost-effective, but have a fairly significant drawback. It's like you, as the player, literally struck a deal with a demon - you'll get a huge benefit, but you could end up regretting the decision.

I mean, he looks cool and all, but something gives me the

feeling he's not the most magnanimous of individuals.

My opinions on the color:

Well, now we come to the important part of the post (in my oh-so-humble opinion), and frankly, it's a bit of a tough question. A lot of my opinion of the color depends on how it is played, really. In some cases, black can make for a very interesting deck, with versatile and powerful cards that have significant trade-offs, which of course means a lot of decisions have to be made. If my opponent plays a demon that causes him to lose life every turn, I may want to destroy it as soon as possible, but I may also want to just prevent it from attacking and leave it on the battlefield so that my opponent is forced to take the life loss. It can be the cause for a lot of interaction between the players in the game.

On the flip side, black decks can be very frustrating to play against. Some black decks, especially those using older cards, rely on forcing opponents to discard cards from their hands, destroy anything that the opponent plays, and just generally making it a one-sided and unfun game. In my preferred format, Commander, black can be frustrating for another reason, which is the overwhelming presence of tutor cards (in other words, cards that let you search your deck for any card that you want). Since Commander can sometimes be prone to silly infinite combos that instantly win you games, having tutors to grab you the exact cards you need can turn a game from "Hey, if I happen to get the right combination of cards, I can win in a silly manner!" to "I win every game because I go fetch the right cards for my infinite combo using all my tutors." And black has no shortage of silly infinite combos.

Like this one.

As for me, black isn't really a color I play too often. I don't dislike its gameplay as much as I dislike white, but I just don't like the risk/reward thing that black does most of the time. It can also often feel mean to play a black deck, since it can be frustrating for the opponent. (I find that whenever I play one of my black decks, I end up painting a giant bulls-eye on my chest for everyone else in the game.) That being said, it can be fun to play from time to time, and one of my absolute favorite decks is mostly black - it's got some green and blue in it too. But overall, I have very mixed feelings on black as a color.

And there you have it!

As always, I plan to post up the next article in this series in two weeks! To read more about black's place in the color pie, a series of articles was written by Mark Rosewater, Magic's current head designer, on the subject of the color pie. Which is really where I got a lot of my information about the colors anyway. You can find his article about black by clicking here.

*You can get your prize here!!