MTG Salvation

Quote from Ace_Stevo »

I do have a relatively newer playgroup so cards like Bob, Blossom and LotV are skill testers and newer people only see the damage they are being dealt or the downside on them not the upside associated with 1/1 flier each turn or drawing a card each turn.

I pose this question, does Black have this stigma because of the "downsides" printed on these awesome cards that affects newer players evaluation of these cards? Black is probably my favourite section.

I think you nailed it, as newer players I've noticed tend to go towards more aggro/midrange decks, and stick to more linear cards. They see creatures as the most feasible way to win the game, and if you have the creature with the highest power/toughness, then you're going to win. Cubing with newbies is really fun though. The reason I got into cubing and constructing my own cube was because my friends had only played casually, and never had enough money to really try out awesome cards or go to FNM too often. It's been awesome teaching them the game through cubing, and seeing how they learn the game the same way we all did growing up. It takes time, but newer players eventually get it. They understand that it's not just about getting your opponent to 0 life, but how you get them there. Being able to understand that your graveyard and life total are actually resources is the next step in this progression, and I think cube does a better job showing these magical methods better than any other format.

Sometimes they see it, and sometimes they don't. That's when you have to do what was mentioned before and show them why a certain card/archetype is strong. I remember when Lingering Souls came out, I told my friends that I thought it was a bomb. They didn't get it then. They do now.

The most disbelief I've ever gotten though came when I had to teach them all about lands, and how insane they truly are. Return to Ravnica just came out, and we decided to do a 6 man draft. By the end of the first pack I had 3 Shock Lands. I felt like I was ripping my friends off because they weren't aware of how pricey these lands could get, and that in RtR they were awesome cards. Not a single person believed me, and thought the idea of dealing yourself damage to play a land was ridiculous. Plus, why waste a draft pick on a card that you can just substitute for a basic? It took them a long time to finally understand this truth, and I'm sure there were a lot of hands with Vampire Nighthawk's and Silverblade Paladin's where the mage sat there thinking "Man, I with I had another plains/swamp."

Great post above. I had a similar experience with my group. And I've learned probably as much as my group has through designing and evolving my cube. In fact, there are many older cards I never got to play with until cube. Cards that were highly recommended on the forums that I didn't see the power of until I played them. There is no better format than cube. It's the only way to play this game.

Black is deceptively powerful and it isn't always obvious how best to utilize some of the more powerful cards. If anything, it has more cards I want to run than any other color (except maybe blue).

Quote from Ace »

I pose this question, does Black have this stigma because of the "downsides" printed on these awesome cards that affects newer players evaluation of these cards?

This could very well be. I think the value is harder to see and a lot of it is cloaked with drawbacks, and those things combined make it appear superficially weak when the color is very strong in practice.

The stigma is also related to blacks power level previously, and trying to support "monoblack". Since zendikar, I feel like black has gotten the largest boost of any color and it isn't very close.

Black is really the only colour that has the "power at any cost" (mostly your life total) mentality and that is the main allure for me. I spent some time with someone explaining to a newer player why Thoughtseize was a very good turn one play and still even good in the mid to late game and yes, even though it deals you 2 damage.

What would everyone's ideal Mono B deck look like, is it viable/supported in your Cube? I assume most Cubes support Mono decks of each colour with Black arguabley being the worst Mono deck potentially? I originally tried to support a Mono B deck early on when building my Cube and failed pretty hard so I ended up trying to make Black a colour any deck could pretty easily splash by removing really good cards with too many swamps in the casting cost, Geralf's Messenger etc . Hand disruption, removal and reanimation are the main themes in my Black section with some aggro creatures and a bit of a glut in the 3 drop section but a lot of easy splashes into other decks. Take a look here: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/10650 as see what you think.

Maybe for fun we should try and force Mono B decks via Cubetutor drafts and post them up here and see what they look like and if it can come together?

Most monocolor decks arent as good as the two color ones especially black. Pushing monoblack in cube forces you to play lots of cards with super awkward costs like obliterator. Monored and monowhite decks can come together without too much support.

I pushed mono black in the way described above and wasn't a fan. That all changed when Devotion became a thing though. I really like the heavy black decks now because Grey Merchant is a real beating in the right deck and actually feels like a nice reward for being heavy black.

I tried drafting Mono-Black in my own cube, as Ace_Stevo suggested, and came up with this: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/299046

I had to stretch a bit to get to 23 playables, but overall the deck feels really solid. It does almost everything Black does in my cube: recursion, reanimation, tokens, kill spells, and disruption. Of course, getting 4 conspiracies will help any deck

Cool blacksmithy, I'd definitely play that! After checking out yours I did the same thing in mine and came up with this: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/299304

I did ok with playables, even had to make some cuts. Early hand disruption, not much removal but some solid mid game with a chance of reanimating or hard casting Grisel in the later game. I'd happy to take this into battle.

I like this "Draft the mono black deck" idea! Here are a few of mine from the cube:

http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/299388

http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/299389

http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/299390

Keeping in mind that I was trying to go into mono black only. I would have splashed a little to get a few other cards in there if this was more serious and the decks would play better as B/x decks with a heavy focus on the B.

Here are two different options from my cube:



Pickings were a bit slim for blaggro here, hence the low creature count.


Aggro and staxy control are probably the best options for a mono-black deck, but it also forms the backbone of reanimator. I'm not so sure how well a mono-black reanimator deck would turn out though, because those decks typically need blue and/or green for discard outlets and/or reanimation targets.

I didn't do an aggro deck but here is one for that too. I should have taken a 4 drop or two but I like doing the 15 lands and nothing over a 3 drop deck a lot.

http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/299430

Here's one of my Cube Tutor's list.

http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/295783

This is a Bw Aggro deck with some 4-drop top curvers (Braids and Nether Void). There's also Ob Nixilis planeswalker and Tombstalker at the top. White is splash for Sorin, Lord of Innistrad and for Vindicate. Curve seems high for 16 lands, but I think there's enough stuff at the 1 to 3 cost to have suffisant fuel early game. After that, 4-drops smash the game off.

Just forced black through my cube and came up with http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/304772. It's fairly decent, I guess.

That deck is absolutely all over the place, it's somehow aggro, reanimator and midrange all at once. With random sweepers. I would have brought red in from the SB, cut the top end, and gone full aggro. It doesn't look like a good cube deck though.

@ Plowshares, I wouldn't have tried to force that to be solidly black as you end up just tossing black cards in the deck that don't add to the focus of the deck. You have some solid aggro support in the other colors so try making a B/x aggro deck with that in mind. For example, here is a B/R Aggro deck I made from your cube:

http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/305198

Here's my shot at a mono-black deck: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/305208.

When I tried to force mono-black, I used to end up with aggro decks. Or at least aggressive midrange.

Aggressive midrange with a hint of mana-denial: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/299120

Aggro deck with a tiny reanimation component: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/299407

Here's my second mono-black draft. http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/305261
This one came out a little more midrangey, with some Living Death synergy and a surprising amount of Dark Ritual synergy (mostly via Conspiracies fiddling with various numbers). Of course, the main plan of attack here is Pack Rat beatdown, since each rat gets an additional +1/+1 counter from Muzzio's Prep.

Also, I don't want to derail the thread, but here are mono decks for each other color in my cube, just for fun:
Mono-Blue (ended up in a double strokin' Tinker deck): http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/305266
Mono-Red (really weird combo/reanimator/aggro hybrid deck): http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/305274
Mono-White (Jitte/Stoneforge beatdown): http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/305276
Mono-Green (Rampy ramp ramp): http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/305281

I think black is one of the strongest colors in small cubes, but one of the weakest in large cubes. This is due to the top 20 cards in black being very strong (second best color), but the 55+ range being relatively weak (worst color).

A lot of it's weaknesses are getting filled up as sets get printed. Black agro has a cool sub-sac theme with stax/braids now and is almost as powerful as red agro in medium cubes. I DEFINITELY wouldn't have said that was true 2 years ago.

Insane cards (almost power):
Mind Twist
Demonic Tutor
Vampiric Tutor
Recurring Nightmare

1st pickable cards (but not common):
Bitterblossm
Liliana of the Veil
Thoughtseize
Dark confidant
Animate Dead
Necromancy
Entomb
Griselbrand
Grave titan
Hymn to tourach
Imperial Seal

That's pretty crazy... those are some damn good cards. All these cards are WAY too powerful for current standard for example. (thoughtseize is a card who's power doesn't scale much depending on the power of the environment and is stronger in cube than in standard)

Adding to Lucid's good post:

Bloodsoaked Champion is steadily making its way up our pick order. It's both one of the best aggro creatures, and one of the best creatures for recursion midrange decks.

Ophiomancer is becoming a very high pick since it just Moats certain builds for free wins, but also fits into the same recursion decks and token builds as well.

Reanimate is just a great value card for every deck type at worst, broken at best. I don't think I've seen it wheel very much.

Toxic Deluge might just be the best sweeper in the cube, and of course Damnation goes pretty highly too.

Braids, Cabal Minion is high pick to build around.

Braids is also picked very highly here.

I know they're multicoloured but Vindicate, Maelstrom Pulse and Creeping Tar Pit are also very high picks.

I also consider Ophiomancer and Toxic Deluge as pretty solid staples. Among the best black 3-drops.

The facture that Ophiomancer trigger tokens every upkeep is huge. And Toxic Deluge dodge regenarate and wrath so cheaply.

Another great black card that needs to be mentioned:

Shriekmaw is both an answer and a thread. It is splashable and goes into all kinds of decks, from aggro to control. It is one of the best "fair" cards in the whole cube.

Ophiomancer is the best black 3-drop in the cube, and Toxic Deluge is probably the best pure wrath effect available.

And Braids is a top 10 black card, IMO.