Black

Card Draw
* Enchantments
* Land
* Artifacts
* Planeswalker

Black is the color of death, amorality, and individualism. It seeks power through ruthlessness.

Popular mono-black commanders include K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, and Marrow-Gnawer.

**See the top Black cards in EDH!**

## **Identity**

Black believes the only thing that should matter to an individual is their own success and power. Black looks at the world and sees that the people who are willing to do anything to gain power are the most successful. Black believes this is just the way life is, and thus, the only thing the individual can do is accept the state of things and ruthlessly pursue their own self-interest. Black believes concepts like goodness and morality do not exist, and are only tools for other power-hungry people to control the masses. This means that there is no length that black will not go to in order to achieve its goals. While this does mean that black can do things no other colors can do, this ruthlessness can often create more problems for black than it solves.

## **Popular Strategies in Mono-Black**

* Aristocrats**Aristocrats** is an *Archetype* or deck type, that seeks to sacrifice it's own creatures for advantage. The advantages (such as cards drawn or tokens created) replace the sacrificed creature, while often the deck can repeatedly return sacrificed creatures to the battlefield or their hand.
* Reanimator**Reanimator** is an *Archetype* or deck type, that seeks to put powerful creatures into it's graveyard and then use spells to put them from the graveyard directly to the battlefield far earlier than they could cast them.
* Lifegain**Lifegain** is an *Archetype* or deck type, that seeks to increase it's life total (*sometimes dramatically*) to make it harder to defeat them, while using that inflated life total to generate powerful threats, or even outright win the game.
* Discard**Discard** is an *Archetype* or deck type, that seeks to prevent it's opponents winning them game by causing them to discard most of the cards they would use, and then having their cards reward them when they make their opponents discard.
* Zombies tribe Tribal**Tribal** is an *Archetype* or deck type, that seeks to utilize rewards by sticking to a single creature type. Normally an Aggro (*combat based*) archetype, but some tribes or commanders may allow them to play differently. Decks

## **Common Tribes in Black**

* Zombies
* Vampires
* Demons
* Rats
* Spirits

## **Strengths**

### **Creature Removal**

Mono Black is the premier color for creature removal, usually able to destroy any type of creature it needs to, as well as mass removal that can destroy many creatures at once. Black may also use effects that force players to sacrifice creatures, or give all creatures -X/-X until end of turn.
**Examples:**
* Go for the Throat
* Decree of Pain

### **Reanimation**

Named after the card Reanimate, Black is the best color to bring creatures from the graveyard back to play. Black can also return these creatures to hand but often these effects are not as good.
**Examples:**
* Exhume
* Rise of the Dark Realms

### **Ramp**

Black uses Ramp**Ramp** is a term for utilizing that increase your access to mana every turn, ideally leaving you consistently able to cast bigger spells than all of your opponents. to advance its mana production, often by doubling the amount of mana its lands create. However, this form of ramp is almost exclusively dependent on the use of Swamps over other land types, making it less effective in multicolor decks.
**Examples:**
* Cabal Coffers
* Crypt Ghast

### Sacrifice for Value

There is no life that black will not use for their own ambitions. Mono-black can make small tokens or creatures and then sacrifice those creatures for beneficial effects, and gain advantage when those creatures die.
**Examples:**
* Viscera Seer
* Grim Haruspex

### **Card Advantage**

Mono-Black excels at many abilities, including card draw, but almost always must pay life to access these abilities. Black may often accumulate a significantly large number of cards in hand, though often at the expense of hefty life payments.
**Examples:**
* Phyrexian Arena
* Bolas’s Citadel

### **Tutors**

Mono Black is the color with the most diverse Tutors**Tutors** are the term for cards which can search your library and give it to you, normally into your hand but sometimes on top of your library., able to search its library for any type of card it desires. It may also use tutors that put specific cards directly into its graveyard.
**Examples:**
* Demonic Tutor
* Final Parting

## **Weaknesses**

### Artifacts and Enchantments

Black may excel at destroying creatures, but it is difficult for black to remove artifact and enchantment cards from the battlefield. Black's cards that interact with Artifacts are rare, old and often expensive, while it has only recently gained a few cards with some limited capability to remove Enchantments.
### **Graveyard Hate**

Black uses the graveyard more than any other color. As such, it is shut down hardest by cards that exile cards from their graveyards, such as Rest In Peace. Most of these effects also tend to be artifacts and enchantments, which compounds on Black's weaknesses.
### Hubris

Mono-black uses life or sacrifices permanents to gain lots of advantage, but it can be very easy for Black to push this too far. Large life payments, for instance, may provide Black with significant card draw, but will leave Black with an extremely depleted life total, which may allow opponents to defeat them much more easily.