Witness the return of Mono Black control. With
the coming of Time Spiral and the soon-to-arrive
Planar Chaos, Black has begun to rack up several
powerful control-related elements. Smallpox is a
good example, and without revealing too much,
Black is going to borrow a bit of blue as well
as white. These cards together could work in
tandem to create a brutal control situation for
the opponent, supplemented by Black's specialty:
Targeted hand destruction. Time will tell if MBC
proves to be a contender in the future.
One of the neat things about Damnation is that,
while it is a complete shift of Wrath of God
into black, it still makes a fair amount of
sense. While Black typically employs cool and
calculated creature destruction (See Barter in
Blood,) in the Planar Chaos "Alternate
Timeline," black has a "Forget it, let's just
kill everyone" streak. I look forward to seeing
more of these "Planeshifted" cards in the weeks
to come.
Constructed: 5/5. This will probably become a
huge force in Standard, and may open up an
entire new deck archetype. Keep an eye on Mono
Black.
Limited: 4/5. Extremely powerful, and can swing
games in your favor, but care must be taken to
play around your own Damnation, because it can
be more difficult in Limited to build your deck
around a board-sweeper as absolute as this one.
Casual: 5/5. This is going to be a chase rare.
The demand for a Wrath of God in black is going
to be crazy high. Some say that they like it
even more than Mutilate.
For those of you who haven't seen this before,
Wizards' home page has a neat graphic on the
front page showing Wrath of God "planeshifting"
into this parallel universe counterpart,
Damnation. Now, ignoring the ramifications of
such blatant Christian influence on a game that
sells all over the world and has been persecuted
as "Satanic" by extremist conservative groups,
this card has already caused some severe
discontent among players. Many fear that with a
Black Wrath and a White Wrath both Standard
legal, already powerful B/W decks will dominate
the format and creature-based strategies will be
obsoleted. Others insist that the existence of
Mutilate proves that the game can handle a Black
board sweeper. The true impact remains to be
seen, but now that Black no longer needs White
to kill all creatures for 4 mana, and can now
handle Akroma in a new way, Black decks should
be much more viable.
