...I`m always way more sensible than the rest of you freaks!
Boo-hoo - black has no good monsters below BB3, boo-hoo.
Neither does blue.
Neither does red.
So what`s your point? In fact black possibly has better monsters than either of those colors. Just because you can`t cast a 3rd-turn PLaguelord you want to take your ball home and won`t try to adapt. If a 5th turn Wumpus is too slow then use Peat Bogs or Diamonds.
Creatures are poor right now, only green monsters and Ramosian Serbeant and LIn Sivvi are really worth playing below 5cc. Congratulations - you maybe now understand why I was so critical of Invasion and Prophecy and the like. Black has no good creatures. But it has monster spells - Addle, Stupor, with Persecute and Duress returning; Rain Of Tears, Despoil, with Befoul returning; 57 flavors of removal, with Choc And Nut returning.
And if Ravenous Rats, Chilling Apparition, Plague Spitter, Abyssal Spectre, Blazing Spectre, Derelor, Evil-Eye, Thrashing Wumpus, Avatar Of Woe aren`t good enough for you I suggest you check your reality at the door. Plaguelord is overpowered for the new Type-II - it would own the board when it came down.
Ritual goes. Boo-hoo. Good riddance. It was broken. Black was meant to gain an advantage by trading resources, but Ritual allows it do that too effectively, just like Necro did - the Ritual often gives you just as much card advantage as Necroptence does because it brings the end of the game so much closer. Remember that Ritual was one fo the original 3-1 cycle of cards, and both Ancestral Recall and Lightning Bolt have proven that 3-1 is too effective, and Ritual was far more broken than Bolt - it just took longer for people to realise it.
Black has never really had strong creatures. It`s true, if you care to look. Apart from weenie decks the slower black decks have never really had the benefit of strong creatures below 5cc, and the ones they did have were all artifacts, like Ticking Gnomes and Steel Golem.
Black has never had creatures. You name Plaguelord, I name Wumpus as a fairly good analogy of Plaguelord - they fill the same slot in the expansion (competitively costed black creature with a strong removal ability). After Plaguelord what other non-weenie creature were you thinking of? Rats? Still in. Derelor? Still in. Abyssal Spectre? Still in. Where do you go next - Hypnotics and Masticores? Gone, and good riddance - they were the two most powerful creatures ever printed. I don`t know which black creatures you are thinking of, because I sure as hell can`t think of any off the top of my head. In many ways black creatures are better than ever - give me Plague Spitter over Crypt Rats any day of the week, Phyrexian Scuta is a fatty beating stick to compare with Juzam, Hidden Horror is back, Fallen Angel is still here, etc...etc...etc...
It just looks as though without Negators, Plaguelords and Skirges you have thrown your dummy out of the pram.
It`s not often I get fed up with people complaining,because most of the time I`ll be the first to exercise my right to complain. But right now you are complaining about a situation that isn`t even that bad. Don`t blame bad black spells, blame your bad deckbuilding and inability to make the best of a bad situation (two of my best T2 decks are currently almost entirely black).