Creature Removal in the time of Zombies and Hoofies (3 of 3)

Welcome to the last part of this series on creature removal in Standard. If you missed the earlier articles, here are links to them:

Article 1 of 3 - featuring Red
Article 2 of 3 - featuring Green, Blue and White

Let us move on to talk about the last color yet to be tackled.

Black
Creature removal has been a defining forte for Black. Today's Black in Standard offers a wide array of tools to do the said task.

Victim of Night

Its double black casting-cost and its targeting limitations have not stopped this card from making it into the list of many top-rank decks. This is partly due to the fact that, for a time, many players steered away from playing Zombies. During this time, the only creature that it was likely to face that it couldn’t target was Stormkirk Noble. With the resurgence of the brain-eaters, players are likely to shelf their copies of this.

Crippling Blight

So you don’t like manadorks around and have no access to red? This card does the job while also being able to prevent a bigger target from blocking. It can take out a pesky Falkenrath Aristocrat, too. Despite these creamy highlights, this card isn’t likely to be a choice spell for competitive play. 

Mutilate

Standard currently does not have enough swamps to power Mutilate into the effectiveness that we all hope it would do. 

Tragic Slip 

A very popular card before rotation, Tragic Slip has seemed to have fallen out of grace from the RTR scene, seeing less and less deck time from players. Cards like Rackdos Cackler, Ash Zealotand Silverblade Palladin, and Diregraf Ghoul have made this card circumstantial at best and even ineffective at worst.

Sever the Bloodline

A certain nightmare for token strategies. The quality of exile has also become valuable with reanimation and recursion strategies in the metagame. Oh, its got flashback and that’s just gravy.

Murder

Like Victim of Night, Murder also offers instant-speed removal but without the restrictions of the former. I’m still skeptical about its casting-cost which is still a bit steep which is one pinch short from casting a Sever the Bloodline or a Mutilate (of course, Murder is, unlike Sever, castable at instant speed and no one really uses Mutilate). 

Ultimate Price

This card is able to take out most of what you need off the board. The short, short list of creatures that this card can’t kill (Cackler, Smiter, Olivia, Huntmaster, and Dracogenius) are outweighed by those that it can. None can touch Geist of St. Traft and none of the other spot removal spells (save Tragic Slip and Crippling Blight) can finish Falkenrath Aristocrat anyway, so Ultimate Price earns its place into decks that have access to black. It’s not surprising then to find three copies in Fernando Aguilar’s deck for San Antonio, which was essentially UW Flash but found it worthwhile to stack in seven check lands that had black.

Barter in Blood

I was personally thinking that Barter in Blood would be welcomed into decks come rotation. So far, the presence of Sigarda has benched this card from black decks.

Tribute to Hunger
Three mana to force a sacrifice and gain some life points. Invisible Stalker - check. Geist of Saint Traft - check. This is all assuming there is only one critter on the other side. Sigarda - choke. And then there is also the pesky presence of instant speed creature summoning that makes this card bad to play.

As in the past, black is given a whole arsenal of removal spells but with the traditional restrictions - individually strong laced with slight drawbacks usually targeting exemptions. Yeah, something like Murder has finally been awarded to Black, but it would have been awesome if they gave it the casting cost of, not even Terror, but something more splashable. 

Which brings us to the discussion of some Gold cards of standard

Gold

As assumed as early as the spoiling of the shock lands, Return to Ravnica would bring out the multi-color all across the game. The design teams made sure of this by combining the inevitability of creature-based strategies across the format and by making sure that the best spells related to removal would be, erm, "golden." Here they are without further ado.


Dreadbore
Cheap and versatile card and U/W players just wish the casting cost wasn't Rakdos. This is one of three reasons why people want to have Black and Red in their decks (the other two of course are Slaughter Games and Rakdos Returns).

Supreme Verdict

Control deck fanatics rejoiced with the spoiling of this card and for a good reason – tempo can’t tempo all the way with a card like this and agro stops dead on its tracks. This card ends aggression. With the exception of Undying, indestructible and Thragtusk, nothing survives the Verdict. 

Detention Sphere
Takes out anything that's targettable, isn't a land and isn't a Detention Sphere. Rids all copies of the target in the process. Is a good card one-to-one with the potential gravy of taking out more than what you pay for.

Abrupt Decay
Unstoppable removal of anything cheap. Given that the use of countermagic is already in the decline, this spell's lack of versatility keeps it out of many decklists in favor of "smarter," more flexible spells. 

Vraska the Unseen
Vraska was highly anticipated coming into the Return to Ravnica release as a new Johnny card with a powerhouse of effects. She turns out to be one big disappointment with near-to-nil appearances in winning decks, deeply plunging its price-hype. Vraska is good for what it immediately can do on the board which is take out a non-land permanent and serve as a target for the next attack. It should be able to destroy some creatures with its +1 but is very circumstantial. Trading a Vraska to a Thragtusk is already

Clockwise from Top-Left:
Garruk, Relentless - Liliana of the Veil
Chandra, the Firebrand - Vraska the Unseen
Tamiyo, the Moon Sage - Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker

something decent this planeswalker's controller could get - but in the end, it doesn't really take five mana to take out the beast out either. I could talk about regenerate but you get the point.

Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
This card ends games. It hits the board, it'll throw your opponent a disadvantage after another. Its removal effect is better than any - taking control of an opposing creature.

Izzet Charm

This card has been discussed numerous times and everyone says, or at least admits, that its flexibility is remarkable. Removal of small creature at instant speed or the counter of a pesky spell after a tap-out are excellent options early in a game. Late game, ditching to dig isn’t bad at all. 

Azorius Charm

An Azorius Charm in hand at any point of a game serves as a glimmer of hope for the UW player. Early deck skimming is accelerated with this card when it serves as an early cantrip. I’ve seen its life gain effect turn around so many games and its pseudo-removal effect is basically a one-to-one move. Nothing to lose when you play this spell. 

Selesnya Charm

Perhaps the least to get from this charm card is its pump bonus – which is actually quite a nifty combat trick. Casting a 2/2 body with vigilance at instant speed isn’t bad either. Finally, its exile effect of a creature that is too big for comfort is astounding. Seeing a Thundermaw fall to this is always charming.

There you have it. I’m going to end the discussion before this article becomes an in-depth on charms – this has been so many times before.

I’d like to point out at this point the importance of cheap, effective removal for decks. Players realize this and go as far as splashing color for even just a handful of cards as in the case of Aguilar (as mentioned earlier) and Gerry Thompson – splashed red for a set of Pillar of Flames in his main deck (sinking in fifteen red sources, including one mountain), not to mention a set of Izzet Staticasters.

Cavern of Souls makes sure that critters hit the board and everyone is bound to deal with creatures after they resolve. Removal options in the current metagame all have their respective pros and cons. This was made so, IMO, to allow creature strategies to continue to flourish. Casting cost, removal effect, color access, removal restrictions and the creature content of the metagame all count in our considerations in choosing our removal tricks.

Every time I re-do my deck build, I am reminded that there are so many threat-drops to think about and the most efficient spells can't really answer everything that could hit the board. I feel that 75 cards aren’t enough. But we are all without choice but to deal with the fact that the current metagame is a win-some-lose-some situation for everyone. It’s actually something that I personally like about today’s standard: it’s anyone’s ballgame, or rather, cardgame. I'm sure a lot of us are inspired to compete in tournaments in the same lieu and light.

How will you be using Black and Gold cards in your decks? Lets discuss in the comments!

Coming soon:
Featured Magic Shops
Interviews of M:TG Personalities (Top Players, Traders, too!)
Tournament Coverages

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