What's the deal with 7th?

[Whimsical]

Or more precisely, what's the deal with black in 7th?! <sighs> Off the top of mah head, lessee ... Corrupt. Nightmare. Megrim. Err... Hmmm. I'm getting vague here. <laughs>

Point number one. WoTC seems to be pushing mono on black players ... in a current environment which loathes mono (that goes for y'all Skies and Rebels out there). Eh?

Point number two. Black got shafted. Again. Let's do a small rundown of the fatties each color has...

Green has Thornie and Verdie. Kinda like Bert and Ernie...

White has the queen of skies, Serra.

Red has the king of the skies, Shivvy lizard.

Blue has the court jester, Fat Moti.

Black has ... Bellowing Fiend? Nightmare? Fallen Angel? Abyssal <shudder> Horror? Oh, wait. We've got the East and West Paladins. <sighs> At least WoTC had the grace to bring back Crypt Rats.

Once Mercadian Block rotates out, we'll be left without even Dark Ritual. Black got the really short end of stick ... again. Sad isn't it?

 

[Killer Joe]

Now, what was it you said?

Not a Black Mage, sorry. However, I am dissapointed that Black recieved a little less than the others, but I guess Wiz Co. was tired of GREEN being the whipping boy .

 

[Whimsical]

Nice to see you too, YJ dearie. It's been a while. How's the article writing business?

Moving to on topic. Green stopped being the underdog ever since Urza block. Mercadian just added the 'Derm ... and Invasion just added more cheap mad cow disease to the lot.

Black is the underdog nowadays ... followed by Red. I guess it's WoTC's way of balancing out the karma...

 

[Baron Sengir]

Yeah, black got hosed this time around. Not even any vampires or anything. If they're gonna bring back favorites in three of the colors, I wish they'd have been consistant. Don't get me wrong, I loooooooove the fact that my Shivans and Serras and Mahamotis are all tourney legal again but would it have killed them to reprint some other creatures on par with Serra? How about Sengir Vampire or Erhnam Djinn? Screw that Boxed Set, I want tourney legal Erhnams again.

I remain
The Baron
although the new Sengir Vampire picture does look a lot like me ...

 

[Duel]

It does piss me off.

They brought back serra and shivan and Moti and birdies
but do you recall
The most famous black card of all.....
Sengir, vampiric black king
Was a very funny guy
And if you ever saw him
chances are that you would die
All of the other flyers
Used to pump him up through death
They'd all look small in the end
Even ones with firebreath!


Anyways, Black DID get shafted. I've got news: Duress ain't that good right now. What does black have a for a fattie in 7th? Revenant..... riight.....

 

[Cateran Emperor]

Did somebody ask for a black mage?

Yes, I am more than a little mad that we have no good fattie

And now, a message to Wizards, spoken in a loud, angry voice:

STOP PRINTING NIGHTMARE ALREADY, BLACK MAGES DO NOT LIKE IT TAKING UP OUR FATTIE SPOT! FRIGGIN SKITTERING SKIRGE IS A BETTER CHOICE THAN HIM FOR A BIG FLYER, AND HE'S ONLY 3/2! GIVE US SOME DECENT FAT; WHERE'RE OUR PLAGUELORDS, NEGATORS, OR AT LEAST OUR BELOVED RITUAL??? BUT NOOOOOOO, LET'S GIVE THEM SUCH AMAZING CREATURES AS REVENANT, AND NIGHTMARE, BECAUSE FRIGGIN EVERYONE LOVES NIGHTMARE!!!!! CAN'T WE HAVE SOMETHING THAT'S AT LEAST BETTER THAN A 3/3 FOR FIVE MANA? THAT WAS THRASHING WUMPUS, THE LAST GOOD FATTIES WE HAD WERE IN MASQUES BLOCK, AND THEY WEREN'T THAT AMAZING, THOSE BEING DELRAICH, ASCENDANT EVINCAR, THRASHING WUMPUS, AND EVEN COFFIN PUPPETS AND GREEL IN A SENSE.

SO WHY SHOULD WE BLACK MAGES EVEN CONSIDER BUYING 7TH? GETTING FOIL VERSIONS OF THE OLD SCHOOL VICTORY CONDITIONS FOR THE OTHER COLORS? FOR CARDS THAT WE ALREADY HAVE PLENTY OF SUCH AS DURESS? OR HOW ABOUT FOR THE ALMIGHTY NIGHTMARE, OBVIOUSLY THE BEST BLACK FATTIE EVER. AFTER ALL, WHY WOULDN'T YOU KEEP REPRINTING HIM IF HE WEREN'T SO HIGHLY USED?

And on a lighter note, hi Whimsy! Where in the Nine Hells did you go? And please say you'll continue the Weatherlost, for poor ol' Spidey if nothing else

 

[Spiderman]

Moi? I'd love for it to continue but I didn't realize I was clamoring for it so vigorously to come back...

 

[DÛke]

...it's a reference to how Whimseee absolutely adores you...she would even finish the Weatherlost...if not for anyone, than for you.

That's what Cateran Emperor meant.

As for Black...

...when I used to play Magic, I didn't always see Black as the color which demands for fat...rather, it was the color that destroyed them. Sure, I mean, having a monstrous 5/5 wouldn't hurt at all, but Black, I believe, could absolutely do without, due to the amazing creature removal it has. Hey, it will not allow anyone else to have fat, why should it?

Speaking of Black’s ability to destroy creatures, whatever happened to our lamentation invoker, Avatar of Woe? Let me analyze it. Avatar of Woe makes for great fat, given the right deck. The right deck requires nothing, but Black’s devotion to creature removal. Not only that, but along this Avatar, stands Revenant. Revenant may have power, actually, right now. Focus on creature removal, get that Woe out to continue the goal, and set out a huge Revenant. Playing Revenant and Avatar of Woe requires great devotion to Black mana, meaning that we will need a mono Black deck – not good in the current environment due to the many, many, many other options available to multi-colored decks; however, if a mono Black decks warrants it, it is possible to break the Gold, and fly out to mono. Speaking of mono…

...Nightmare will not be hot at all, especially in the Invasion environment, due to the emphasis on multi-colored decks...Nightmare, obviously, requires a mono Black deck so it can function efficiently, and even at that point, it's not that hot. With the fragile idea I listed above, Nightmare MAY be worth the while.

...I know this is crazy, but since the environment has noticeably slowed down, there may be a chance for untouched fatties, like Cateran Overlord, to show up here and there. Cateran Overlord, a 7/5 for 7 mana - fair - but the regeneration really kicks it in...not to mention, it is completely invulnerable to most Black removal. I understand there's Terminate, but I also see that B/R is not so hot.

...My best bet would be Thrashing Wumpus...an average fat, I believe. It’s offensive and defensive at the same time; defending against hordes while, little by little, feeding on the opponent's life total…yet, again, this Wumpus would clearly function better in a mono Black deck.

Believe it or not…I think Wizards are trying to hint that Black should be desolated from the Gold and the multi-theme as a whole...

…only time will tell us what becomes of what…

 

[Hetemti]

Why are you pickin' on the pony? It is a 6/6 flying for 6, albeit BBBBBB, and it gets better as you draw more swamps. She can tackle Shivan, Serra, and Moti with ease as well. So far, I've lost only one game that I've played the Mare...and that was due to bad Karma.

If you don't want Nightmares, fine, send 'em to me.
__________
I've a place in my stable,
ready, willing, and able,
to give her some oats 'til
I throw her on the table.

 

[Purple_jester]

<poke, poke, poke>

It sure feels like Whimsy. Where'd you come from? Where have you been? You're fading away just like black is...

Let's analyze their choices for 7th...

Nightmare... Needs swamps. Lots of swamps. If you play with swamps you'll get a good Nightmare. Swamps are the weakest land right now. Nobody in his right mnd would play with just swamps. Ergo, Nightmare is stupid.

Revenant... Needs dead creatures. Wow. Lovely. Suicide black would be a great deck to put this in.

Crypt Rats... Ahh. The Rats of God. They don't need swamps, but DO require black mana. But I sense a combo with Revenant here.

Fallen Angel... This pathetic excuse for a Sengir Vampire might be able to fill my graveyard with creatures for my Revenant to eat. Yet another sterling card.

Duress... Still powerful in whatever format. Gets rid of Chimerics, Parallax Wave, Fires, Saproburst, Counters, Wrath of God, Terminate, Void, Fact or Fiction... Possibly the only card black has going for it right now.

Megrim... I sense someone pushing a U/B Warped Devotion/Megrim combo, but I'm probably wrong.

The Paladins... Eunuch versions of their white counterparts. The white guys kill permanents, these guys can only off creatures. So, no enchantment destruction capability. Blech. Can't even kill a damned Blastoderm.

Apparently, they're pushing mono-black. In an environment that despises mono. Where they didn't even have the decency to reprint Nevinyrral's Disk or it's castrated cousin Powder Keg. Where's the Living Death? Where's the Diabolic Edict?

Nowhere of course. They don't want to see another swamp in a tournament for a long time. Not with the way Trix has dominated Extended. Then again, Trix is dead when they killed Necro and Consult. Did they bring back Vault and Ritual? No. They could have just banned Hatred, but they're pissed at black for some reason.

Underdog color? No. Dog-poop color is a more proper description.

 

[FoundationOfRancor]

Are me and Hetemti the only ones that like Nightmare?

Im gonna hold off my opinion untill I see the real spoiler...

 

[Apollo]

Well, look who deigned to show her mischevious little face...

Anyway, black did get screwed. And it has been getting screwed. Just like everyone has said. I like Nightmare, but it isn't tournament-worthy. All it has going for it is a real nice picture.

 

[Cateran Emperor]

I absolutely hate Nightmare, for a whole lot of reasons.

1. Eh flavor text
2. Eh art

Now as for real issues, let's see:

First off, for anyone lucky enough to have never gotten or seen a Nightmare, this is what it is:

Nightmare
5B
Creature - Nightmare; X/X
Flying
Nightmare has power and toughness each equal to the number of swamps you control.

Problem #1: If you don's use all swamps to cast him, you have a really weak creature. He has awful synergy with Dark Ritual, black's best friend (who was kidnapped by the police I might add). At the very best, you pay BBBBBB for a 6/6 flyer. Okay, that's not terrible.

But wait, isn't Invasion a multi-colored environment? Well, as DUke pointed out, perhaps Wizards is trying to tell us something. Maybe black should stick to mono-black + artifacts. So if Nightmare is our victory condition, we should be taking out all of our non-Swamp lands yes? What does that take away then?

Peat Bog - Mana Acceleration
Rishadan Port - Stall tactic
Dust Bowl - The bane of counter decks.
Ebon Stronghold - Don't laugh, it's actually pretty good in a deck with many 3 drops.

So, we're taking away basic advantages vs. control decks. Then, we're supposed to build up to 6 swamps, and then cast the Nightmare, all the while doing nothing to disrupt their blue mana? That's not gambling, that's the equivalent of Nightmare being:

5B
You and your opponent each discard a card. That opponent pays UU.

Yee-ha. That's quite a beast there.

So what if we aren't playing against control? How about beatdown? Well, taking Fires as an example, Fires drops a whole bunch of 4 mana creatures on turn 4, then summararily smacks you with them. But never to fear, Nightmare will save us! We'll just use Dark Ritual to get him out faster, thereby making him a 4/4...against decks with mainly 4/4 + creatures, and multiples of them...

Okay then, so we aren't dealing with fast decks either? Okay then... we aren't playing a slow deck... and we aren't playing a fast deck, so what the heck are they playing? Some peculiar deck that somehow is neither fast nor slow? Well, then surely Nightmare must fit into that bracket of often played decks I'm sure.

Much better than Sengir or Plaguelord could I'm sure.

 

[Zadok001]

Personally, I don't think Sengir should be reprinted - The true black fatty, in my personal opinion, is Phyrexian Plaguelord. The Beast. While Nightmare is big and all, it just old fashioned STINKS right now, over costed, and underpowered. Furthermore, Black _still_ lacks a way to deal with it's worst enemies, Story Circle and Saproling Burst. I mean, there have been exactly ZERO black cards that can deal with enchantments. ONE that can deal with artifacts. And THAT'S not Type 2.

You want the REAL problem with black? It has nothing to do with Nightmare. It's those friggin' enchantments, chief!

Zadok001 <--- Channeling Rizzo

Discard doesn't count. Why? Because discard can almost never stop a topdeck. And I'm sorry, WotC, but in real life, people topdeck spells and play them. There is no conveinent opportunity for the Black Magi to play sorceries and get rid of the Story Circle that's about to utterly annihilate all things black BECAUSE BLACK HAS NO ENCHANTMENT OR ARTIFACT REMOVAL.

None.

You follow?

Blue has bounce and counters. Green has Desert Twister, Creeping Mold, Uktabi, etc... White has... Everything. Red, the weakest of the four, can at least kill an artifact once in a while.

Black has nothing.

Black is the retarded step-brother of the four real colors.

I thought black was the removal color? Yah, right. Black has no way to deal with untargetables - Every other color at least has a prayer against 'Derm. Black has no way to deal with Burst - Every other color has a fairly strong solution. Black has no way to deal with Story Circle - Every other color (excepting Red) has a solution. What does black have?

Umm...

Duress? Maybe? In a month? Warped Devotion? No, that's supposed to be Blue. Oh! Black has Druge Skeletons! All is well!

And soon, we'll have NIGHTMARE, too! All is well with the world!

WTF kind of sick joke is this? WotC can't handle the testing needed to try out all five colors of decks, so they knock off a color to reduce the number of test decks for each set?

(The real problem is, when green was bad, at least green could simply have it's current themes enhanced and become good. Black can't. It needs NEW themes.)

 

[Sidar Jabari]

Is Diabolic Edict in 7th? I can't remember. If it is then don't complain, with that and Massacre, and discard coming out strong from 1st turn onwards, you've got no problems.

And as for black not having enchantment removal, I think that's completely fair! Mono-colour decks should have weaknesses. Besides, you can get around story circle with drain life type effects, which cause life loss, not damage.

I do, however, think that black needs to either get ritual back or have some more cheap effective disruption. I also think it should get more effects like massacre, and maybe even a wrath of god type spell. And they need to give it some more spells that reduce other players life total without actually doing damage (kind of like drain life without the draining bit!)

To keep everyone happy, wizards need to provide cards that facilitate agressive styles and control styles for every colour and also lots of multicolour synergy for the more ecleptic mages. Of course, they're never going to do that because they are always obsessed with having trends such as the weenies of tempest block, mono-colour of urzas and masques, multi-colour of invasion, fatties of the seventh edition etc....

 

[Spiderman]

DUke: Uh, I think you're overestimating my "influence" . I believe I asked once along with most everyone else and darned if she did NOT hop to it and complete another chapter. I think she said she was tired of it and that's fine. Maybe she got her wind back thoughm who know.

All: Huh. When I think black fattie, I think Lord of the Pit. I guess I'm just old school.

I didn't look at the spoiler so I have no idea what's on the list but is that enchantment that makes all lands swamp still around and legal in Standard? Does black still have Pestilence and Massacre? whatever it is that gives all non-black? creatures -1/-1? You're saying there's NOTHING by way of removal to get rid of intargetables? Maybe I'd better look...

 

[HumanError]

I have to wonder sometimes if WotC really wants me playing. I left during Masques block but popped back up when Prophecy and Invasion beckoned to me. But now...

Holy crap, I mean come on, if you look at that spoiler (which I still think is questionable, but we'll forget that for now), it looks like WotC made almost a conscious effort to utterly destroy black. For those uninitiated in the ways of black, let me explain.

Black has a couple of distinct traits that make it so good, so black, and BALANCED:
1. Big spells with big drawbacks. Black IS a good color for fatties, because they often come with drawbacks, like my newfound friend Devouring Strossus. Black requires fat. It's part of the theme.
2. Targeted creature removal. No other color has it in spades like black does.
3. Speed for a heavy price. Black plays fast, hence the big spells with big drawbacks. Cards like Flesh Reaver and Hidden Horror are par for the course.
4. No enchantment or artifact removal. This is a specific weakness built into black so it doesn't utterly dominate the other colors. But they've been so thorough with it that it doesn't even have a chance to take out white sometimes, which leads to...
5. Complete and utter opposition to white. The two colors are supposed to be at constant odds. The problem here is that WotC doesn't understand that black is constantly getting the shaft. White had rebels, black had mercenaries, which one wound up being better?
6. Discard. Black just does discard, an ability strictly black. There aren't any other colors with any real discard.

The problem is that WotC is screwing up the balance in colors, making black and red whipping boys. We bitched about green and they fixed it and made it competitive, but they felt that red was too powerful and so they weakened burn without weakening its antithesis - countermagic. White was weak for a little while, then Masques came along and overcompensated.

Every color should be able to stand on its own against other colors. Blue has always been extremely butch. White generally is, too. Green has gotten that way. But they've destroyed burn and severely decelerated black. 7E will suck simply because the balance has been killed.

Dark Ritual was never broken. Necro maybe, but I'm just partial to the Skull. =)

And for the record, Nightmare is good. Not tournament worthy, but this isn't www.tournamentplayers.org now is it?

Always drives me nuts when you kids get so wrapped up in what's tournament worthy and what isn't. Don't you guys ever run fun but crappy decks just because you can?

 

[Baron Sengir]

Black needs a consistant fattie that they can count on for beatdown. The Sengir Vampire is a prime choice and it is not as powerful as a Serra Angel (IMHO) so there's no fear of it being too strong. I like Nightmare but it's too conditional. Landkill will ruin your day and If you're not playing mono-black, Nightmare is a joke.

There's a real easy way for Black to get around the problems it has right now. Two words:

Nevinyrral's

Disk.

With Nevy's back in rotation, Black has no problem dealing with enchantments, artifacts, untouchables, etc. Sure, Draw-Go made good use of the disk as well but it's not that powerful. It comes into play tapped and can be easily nuked by a disenchant, shatter, creeping mold, counterspell, etc, so it's a good card with lots of ways to beat it.


I remain
The Baron
Reprint the Disk!

 

[Whimsical]

After sifting through the various responses <waves hi to everyone moi knows on an aside>, I do agree that Black never really needed fatties. In fact, Black WAS the antithesis of fatties, having the best gosh-darned spot removal in the game.

It'd have been nice to see a decent fatso for black though...

Also ... I can't believe I missed this. If WoTC WAS pushing mono-black, then they'd better reprint Larry's Disk! I'd play mono-black again ... IF they brought back the disk. Fat friggin' chance though ... <laughs>

Maybe if they brought back the life-for-cards theme? Just food for thought...

 

[HumanError]

As much as you think or even want to think black is the antithesis of fatties, I really have to jump in here and point out one of black's main themes, established in the very VERY beginning:

Fat creature, fat drawback.

It's been there for all ages. It is appropriate to the color. Even from a story standpoint - shouldn't there be REALLY BIG DEMONS?

The most screwed up thing here is that white has bigger fat that black does in 7E, which is just ludicrous. Just think about that for a second.

And yes, I agree, if they're gonna push mono-black they need to bring back the Disk, which might also help to solve some of red's problems, since that's a color that's been flagging for a little while, too.