Playing Black in Magic: The Gathering

In Magic, there are 5 colors: White, Blue, Black, Red and Green. Each color has its own strengths and weaknesses, tactics and combos available for play. If you are reading this article, you are interested in playing with Black.

Black is one of the most difficult colors to play by itself. Black has some very strong spells and abilities, but most of them are not powerful by themselves, and it requires the utility provided by another color to make the deck truly strong. But there are certain ways you can play Black entirely by itself.

One of Black's strongest features is the ability to maintain Card Advantage (having more cards in your hand than your opponent) through both drawing cards (at the cost of life), and by making your opponents discard their cards. Cards like Sign in Blood, which allows a target player to draw two cards at the cost of two life, and Necropotence, which lets you draw as many cards as you wish while paying a life for each one, are famous for allowing you to fill up your hand, and cards like Hymn to Tourach, which makes a target player discard two cards at random, and Thoughtseize, which lets you select a non-Land card from your opponent's hand and make them discard it, are known well for causing many headaches in the beginning of a game.

Most of Black's more powerful abilities require the player to pay life. Seeing as how this makes you easier to kill, this may seem like a bad idea. Fortunately, Black has a whole host of abilities that deal damage to your opponents or their creatures and allow you to gain life. This can be incredibly useful as it not only allows you to play the powerful abilities without risking your own death, but also damages your opponent and gets rid of their creatures.

In addition, Black has the most abilities in the game that can destroy permanents. Terror and Doom Blade are the most popular creature killers, for their low mana cost. Then there's Rain of Tears, which can destroy Lands, and Eradicate, which can remove a creature (and all copies of it in your opponent's Deck and Hand) from the game.

As for win conditions, Black has many options. You can win with the multitude of large, powerful Black creatures available (such as the 5/5 Tomb Stalker, the flying beast that can sometimes be played for as low as 2 mana), you can win through direct damage effects such as Underworld Dreams, which makes an opponent lose a life every time they draw a card (a minimum of 1 during the draw step of their turn, and can be enhanced with cards such as Sign in Blood). Black also has a vast quantity of Zombie creature cards that can all enhance each other's effectiveness, creating a Tribal-style Creature deck, while still being able to include the vast utility that Black has to offer.

As far as playing the color goes, you have to keep on your feet. Try your best to force your opponent to make difficult decisions, as they may make a wrong decision. When it comes to black, any choice your opponent makes can be turned to your advantage, if you use the right cards, and know when to use them. Just try to plan your deck to handle any situations you may come up against, and try to predict what your opponent is going to do.