M13 EDH Set Review, Part 3: Black

This post brough to you by the color Black: Making parents think Magic: the Gathering is Satanic since 1993.

 Poo. This already existed at 3 mana, and didn't see play. Bad card, good art.

Terrible, except that it's an Instant, so it might be fairly useful as a foil against Ghave and Rhys decks.

Yeah, this is kinda win-more. By the time you sink enough into this for it to be cost-effective, you're probably tutoring up 5 or 6 cards all at once, which means you probably won't be able to cast more than one of them that turn, if any. On the flip side, Cabal Coffers exists, so... I might be wrong. Either way, this is a powerful Tutor, and powerful Tutors will always get played.

Momentous Fall has always been good to me. I'm not sure trading Instant speed for a 2/1 body is really all that worth it, but this is stil a highly playable card. I love it. Very good fit for Black, and will be very useful in a wide variety of decks.

Wouldn't have warrented mention at all if it weren't for having Haste. Still, I'm not sure it's at all playable in EDH, but a black creature with Exalted and Haste is curious enough to take a second look at.

 Nope, still not good enough. Blue/Black has way more cost-effective unblockable guys.

 Much like the White counterpart, this guy has badass art, and is a cool enough card to see fringe play just because it's somebody's pet card of the set, but mostly it's weak sauce.

So. This version of Liliana has her haters and her fans. Personally, I think she's terrific at what she does, albeit a bit more narrow than her two previous iterations. That's fine though. Mono-Black decks, or decks that reliably and consistently find Urborg should all be very happy to play this Liliana.

Clearly worse than Solemn Simulacrum, but still very much in the realm of playability. While it doesn't technically ramp, per se, hitting that crucial fifth swamp could be a big enough deal for a number of decks to include this. Should see play, though not nearly on the level of Solemn or other, better mana fixers.

Such elegantly beautiful design. Murder. How did it take them this long to design this card?! Usually, these little spot-removal spells get overlooked in EDH, but Go For the Throat and Doom Blade have been known to make appearances, while Terminate has been played a ton. I usually don't want to pay more than two mana for this kind of effect, but the flexibility and lack of targetting restrictions means I'm willing to give this a shot, at least when Terminate, Mortify and Putrefy are all off-color.

Terrible. I dig the flavor, but still terrible.

Oh sweet! Another Skullclamp engine piece... oh wait, it comes back to my hand? Nevermind.

Cute little trick. Not sure this would ever warrant play over more broad GY hate like Withered Wretch or Nihil Spellbomb, but it's neat that the option is there.

Very cool flavor; great top-down design. On the low-end of the playble spectrum, power-wise. It's going to be great for lower-powered, more casual metagames. Doesn't stand a chance against Titans or Consecrated Sphinxes and such, but still a really fine card if you can make her work.
















Black is kind of a mixed-bag. Definitely better than White, but not as deep as Blue. A few really high-powered spells, and some narrowly playable ones. I think I'm most excited about Disciple of Bolas, but I expect Diabolic Revelation to have the biggest impact on the fomat as a whole.

Red is up next.