Black Commander Gift?
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Dec. 21, 2015, 2:11 a.m. by BringerOfStorms
Hello all,
I am considering getting my brother a Black Prebuild Commander Deck for Christmas. We do not yet play Commander but may.
The only restriction is that he does not care for demons. He prefers vampires.
Thanks,~BoS
BringerOfStorms says... #3
Thanks for the feedback vault I appreciate it!
~BoS
December 21, 2015 2:18 a.m.
BringerOfStorms I know you said black non-demons, but the golgari Plunder the Graves Precon is amazing. Personally I think it is the best of the C15's and I know a lot of people who would agree.
December 21, 2015 2:49 a.m.
as someone who bought the BG commander deck form this year I'll back up what xavrr said. It is actually pretty solid straight out of the box. with some upgrades it becomes pretty filthy. It's also a lot of fun if your brother likes to do graveyard shenanigans. It isn't much of a vampire deck though but I've personally found it to be really entertaining to play.
December 21, 2015 2:57 a.m.
I don't think I have heard anyone say that monoblack makes for bad EDH decks. That description is usually applied to monowhite and monored (but that doesn't stop people from making them anyways).
Anowon, the Ruin Sage and Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief are both good options for vampire commanders (and not even the only ones).
December 21, 2015 5:16 a.m.
That_Guy_You_Know says... #7
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed is a by far one of my favorite commander generals.
December 21, 2015 7:50 a.m.
Gidgetimer says... #8
but 1empyrean black suffers from a lack of control options and has no good tutors. (/sarcasm)
December 21, 2015 7:50 a.m.
That_Guy_You_Know says... #9
How can someone say that black is a bad color for edh? Best murders, best tutors, Phyrexian Arena. What's not to love?
December 21, 2015 8:03 a.m.
Gidgetimer Ha!
That_Guy_You_Know I've got a gut feeling that Mikaeus might not be the best option for someone just getting into EDH.
December 21, 2015 8:04 a.m.
LittleBlueHero says... #11
Black suffers from having a lot of fun cards that are high costed. Ramping is difficult to say the least in mono black with some of the best options not hitting the board until turn 5.
Its hard to keep an entire table in check for 5 turns while you build up the mana to start dropping bombs.
BUT its biggest problem is complete lack of artifact and enchantment removal outside of Gate to Phyrexia. If someone plays a probalem enchantment or artifact you basically have to hope someone else deals with it or you kill that opponent quickly.
I play a mono black Ghoulcaller Gisa right now and its speed is always an issue.
December 21, 2015 noon
CastleSiege says... #12
Black has the second best ramp in the game behind green with cards such as:
- Bubbling Muck
- Crypt Ghast
- Nirkana Revenant
- Cabal Coffers
- Magus of the Coffers
- Phyrexian Tower
- Heartless Summoning
And so on. It's really not too hard to cast your high cost spells in black, especially when you can reanimate your fatties.
Black is honestly probably the best colour overall since it has the second best ramp, second best card draw, has the best/most tutors, most kill spells, second most board wipes, and is the best at letting you pay life for advantages.
The only thing black really lacks is artifact and enchantment removal like you said, but this can be made up for with the inclusion of artifacts.
December 21, 2015 1:15 p.m.
For what it's worth, Black has plenty of board control.
December 21, 2015 2:19 p.m.
BringerOfStorms says... #14
Thanks for all the information and recommendations everyone. Especially CastleSiege.
~BoS
December 21, 2015 2:42 p.m.
LittleBlueHero says... #15
CastleSiege you aren't wrong in that Black has the second MOST ramp but the ramp in black is very often single use only or puts you at card disadvantage or costs more than 4 mana (even your examples are mostly high costed). They aren't searching for lands and putting them in play. If I have a hand full of 5 or 6 cost creatures getting one to hit the board is great but next turn I am not guaranteed to be able to follow it up with another. And in commander if that creature was even a remote threat someone will be targeting it.
I would argue that white's ramp is better only because they have enough cards that put more lands directly into play. (not much else going for it though)
Reanimation is a much better route to getting your fatties in play most often simply because it something I can do more than once with the right cards. But even that can be time consuming. Dropping a Dark Ritual type card and getting out something huge in commander isn't really the best thing you could be doing because chances are whatever you just sped out is getting the next kill spell and now you are down two cards. I get that suicide and such is blacks calling card I just don't think its as effective in a multiplayer format like commander.
Again I am not trying to dissuade anyone from playing mono black, i play it too and It is a lot of fun more often than not. Just trying to help new players better understand its inherent weaknesses :)
December 21, 2015 3:59 p.m.
CastleSiege says... #16
If you think white is better at ramping then I don't really know what to tell you.
As for searching for lands and putting them into your hand, Liliana of the Dark Realms does that AND ramps you when you ultimate her.
As for ramp cards costing 4 or more mana, black and every other color have access to a plethora of mana rocks to make casting them early game really easy. And lets not forget black also has every tutor under the sun to grab what you need.
December 21, 2015 4:25 p.m.
A) Green is the only color with true ramp. You can accelerate a little bit with every color, but without green you NEED artifacts, most of which are not cheap to cast in the first place.
B) If you think Liliana of the Dark Realms is good, then I have news for you. In a casual environment, she'll die as soon as possible because of the whole "holyshititsaplaneswalkerkillitnao" mentality. In a competitive environment, you're spending 4 mana to do nothing. It'll take 4 turns to ult her, and the game will be long over by then. Even her neg option is pretty poor removal in comparison.
I believe black is the strongest color in EDH in combination with at least one other color (assuming that one other color isn't red).
Black has the most powerful tutors and the most powerful card advantage, strong recursion, as well as the single most powerful wipe in the form of Toxic Deluge. It has decent creature removal as well as some good mass wipes.
But it can't deal with anything else. You can't take care of ANY problem permanents with the exception of creatures.
There's also a stark lack of utility creatures. What do you have? Grave Titan? Rune-Scarred Demon? Sure. Without green, you'll lose before you can even play them.
You can do stuff with black. You just can't do all the stuff. That's why I play BGW. Because I can do all the stuff.
Maelstrom Pulse, Beast Within, Vindicate, Utter End
Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile
Sun Titan, Karmic Guide, Eternal Witness
Farseek, Nature's Lore, Three Visits, Skyshroud Claim
Black just can't do it all. That's why I recommended getting one of the 2 color precon decks.
Mono black is worse than mono blue, mono green, and even mono white. Mono white can go staxy. Look, more problem artifacts that black can't deal with.
December 21, 2015 5:10 p.m.
BringerOfStorms,
Welcome to Commander! The precons are a GREAT way to get into it.
Short story: I recommend you pick up Mind Seize (Blue/Black/Red) from your LGS or Amazon for your brother. I'd also pick up Nature of the Beast (White/Red/Greem) for yourself :-)
A wall of text with more details is here:
December 21, 2015 7:05 p.m. Edited.
Frankly I feel people underestimate mono-colored decks in general.Sure mono-colored decks can't deal with everything but quite frankly even high powered 5-colored builds will struggle to deal with certain threats. Yes they can theoretically answer more stuff but you can't always find the cards you need in time.
Think about it this way you can have a deck full of 64+ (assuming you play 36 lands) answers but you will still be out numbered on threats because the total number of threats you will have to deal with will be 128+ (assuming a 3 or more player game) simply because commander is a multiplayer format usually. Sure sweepers help with this a little but still expecting to be able to answer everything is kind of foolish.
This is not to say I don't believe having answers to opponents threats is completely pointless. It is probably equally as foolish to play no answers as it is to play to many of them. I just feel like people overblown the lack of answers for certain things as a reason not to play mono-color. Besides their are a ton of good colorless cards now that can answer permanents that are hard for a single color to deal with (Karn Liberated, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon All Is Dust, ect.).
I also strongly disagree that black is a weak color by itself in commander but I feel like this post is long enough already so I will go into that another time.
December 21, 2015 7:14 p.m.
Er, White/Red/Green* :-)
Also, I forgot to link all the deck lists:
December 21, 2015 7:28 p.m.
Pedrodamus says... #21
First of all - mono colors are the most DIFFICULT to build well and pilot, they are not POOR. I have a mono green and mono black deck that are very competitive. Second of all, Black is awesome, you just need the right general. Here's my deck if you want to check it out.
Blackest Night
Commander / EDH
SCORE: 26 | 52 COMMENTS | 5365 VIEWS
December 21, 2015 11:59 p.m.
BringerOfStorms says... #22
Thats a pretty rad deck ChinoEX... looks like about $1000 worth of blacky ass kickery. :)
~BoS
December 22, 2015 11:16 a.m.
Pedrodamus says... #23
Thanks :D Been foiling it out for a long time. I need to just get that foil Demonic Tutor and cry about it later lol
-Fulcrum says... #2
Typically mono color makes for rather poor Commander decks, with Black being among the worst. Get one of the new 2 color C15 precons. They're all pretty balanced and a ton of fun, a definite improvement over last year's. Welcome to Commander.
December 21, 2015 2:17 a.m.