OSSR: Ice Age: Colons: Colors
Black
About one step away from busting out the electric guitars.
AncientH:
Black is one of the winners of the Ice Age block in general, and Ice Age set in particular. Don't get me wrong, it has a lot of the same nonsense going on as in Blue. There are, for example, many Ice Age card clones and equivalents:
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2109&type=card)
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=1155&type=card)
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=159193&type=card)
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2127&type=card)
...in addition to which, many crowd favorites like Dark Ritual, Fear, and
Terror Dark Banishing were reprinted, and you even had a couple
upgrades:
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=3871&type=card)
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2100&type=card)
And on top of that, Ice Age gave Black many very good new cards, like Necropotence. However, while Black in Ice Age is very good, many of its cards are also very shit, and many of them don't quite...work together.
FrankT:
Black is more of an attitude than it is a set of mechanics. Is Black supposed to be big creatures? Small creatures? Life gain? Life loss? Card draw? Mana ramp? Removal? Resilience? Combo? Tempo? Aggro? Control? Black is all of those things. Like Necromancy in Dungeons & Dragons, you can justify absolutely any effect so long as you put a skull on it somewhere. What Black doesn't have is a particularly deep bench. In any particular format, Black is going to be shoehorned into whatever corner its good cards happen to be in. When Black has good aggro cards you play aggro, when Black has good control cards you play control. You don't get a lot of variants of cards that fulfill similar functions in any set, so if a card isn't good in a particular archetype that archetype is probably bad for Black.
The obvious comparison is Red. Red always gets burn cards in every set. So when Burn is Good, Red is Good. By contrast, when Black gets a burn effect, they usually only get one or two. So Black decks do burn if and only if the burn effects they have are good. Black is almost always good, but what it is good
at changes seasonally.
From the very beginning, the authors of Magic tried to say that Black wasn't necessarily the bad guys. In the latest set, one of the main protagonist heroes is mono-Black. But at the time, the writers were fairly bad at painting a picture of Black that was even arguably morally neutral.
In Ice Age, they dropped the pretense of even trying.
Black in Ice Age are the bad guys. They don't fuck around or pretend to be misunderstood or something, they are just the capital-E Evil of the set. There are various Black factions (Stromgald, Lim-Dul, Leshrac, and Tevesh Szat), and there are the factions that are part-Black like the Krovikans and Marit-Lage. But there are only 56 cards in Black. I
honestly can't tell what the fuck any of these assholes want to do other than “be evil.” There's world building in here, but it pretty much gets as far as giving you a list of villains.
The Stromgald Knights appear to be a faction in Kjeldor that wants to genocide... somebody. I'm actually not sure who they want to commit genocide on, but I'm guessing it's the Elves.
The goals of Leshrac and Lim-Dul are even less well explained, and they mostly just seem to be bad for the sake of being bad. Leshrac seems to want to eat the sun, maybe? And Lim-Dul has text all over the fucking place but he seems to just be an all-purpose evil necromancer who pledged to Leshrac. Maybe he betrayed Leshrac afterward? I can't even tell. The cards in this set have a lot of text in tiny print, but the flash fiction storytelling isn't well done.
Compare to the latest set, where Drana's story is told rather effectively in 16 words.
AncientH:
![Image](https://casualmagic.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/magic-comics-ice-age.jpg?w=460)
The tie-in comic books and things don't really help much. However, Ice Age is when the game was starting to really tie its setting together, with its explicit references to Urza and Mishra from
Antiquities, with references that would get even
more explicit in the sequel set
Alliances. Indeed, a large part of the storyline for many years was that the Brothers' War had actually
caused the Ice Age, like a kind of nuclear winter.
For me, though, one of the things I appreciate about Black are some of the
artistic references:
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=109725&type=card)
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=159840&type=card)
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2022&type=card)
Richard Thomas had a good gig for a while.
FrankT:
The constant desire to make shittier versions of basic set cards is here for Black just as it is for Blue. Ice Quake is shittier than Sinkhole. The Abyssal Specter is worse than the Hypnotic Specter. Mind Warp is weaker than Mind Twist. And so on. But sometimes those weaknesses were used by later inane combo decks as strengths. Demonic Consultation is infinitely more likely to cause you to accidentally lose the game than Demonic Tutor was, but...
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=230788&type=card)
“
I name 'Throat Wolf'.”
AncientH:
Some of the same complaints as Blue apply here. Big Black was a thing just like Big Blue was a thing, and for much the same reason. However, Big Black's archetype is:
And as we pointed out in Fallen Empires, they tried to follow that up with Praetor of the Ebon Hand (with its weird rabbit tribunal). Ice Age doesn't have anything quite as big as the Lord of the Pit and Cosmic Horror, but they have several critters in the same vein:
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2475&type=card)
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2474&type=card)
The main thing about these is that they're overpriced, underpowered
for the price, and liable to bite you if you don't keep them fed. That's Big Black for you. And the downside of Big Black is that as big as its critters are, they generally aren't
as big as you can get from Green or Red or even Blue, and and they often cost
more on a point-by-point basis than their other equivalents, in addition to having whatever horrible downside the design team dreams up.
It's characteristic of one of the design shortcomings of Black in general: while Black has often been ahead of the game in treating
any card as a resource, it often requires substantial costs to achieve many effects. Black players are almost necessarily placed into a much different mindset than other players, and can't get sentimentally attached to the idea of just summoning a big critter and attacking with it. Or sentimentally attached to
anything, really.
On the other hand, Black actually has several cards designed to work with its "allied colors":
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2439&type=card)
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2463&type=card)
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2479&type=card)
These individually aren't enough to make a Red/Black or Blue/Black deck. They are, in fact, not enough to even entertain the concept. But they're
not bad cards in general; Burnt Offering in particular has a good bit of potential.
FrankT:
We can't really talk about Black in Ice Age without talking about talking about Necropotence. It's in many ways the most insane card of the set.
At the time, it was pushing a rock uphill to get people to realize that this card was balls to the wall awesome. The WotC message boards of the time were full of mouth breathers declaring that Necropotence was like casting Underworld Dreams on yourself.
It kinda is. Except for the part where you also get to draw as many cards as you fucking want.
What this goes down to is that over the course of the game you see a finite number of cards and a finite number of life points. If you spend half your life to get an extra ten cards you put yourself at a
huge advantage. Sure, a life gain deck can gain life much more easily than a card draw deck can draw cards and could plausibly spend some its life gain to draw more cards to get more life gain effects, but the truth is that you didn't have to do any of that shit.
The only life point that actually matters is the last one, while cards are always worth something and worth more the earlier you get them. Even a deck with no life gain potential at all would do well to draw three cards a turn for four turns and then stall out and win or lose based on the giant card advantage they'd accumulated. The simple fact is that your deck should probably be able to win with some finite number of draws from itself. And if that number is less than your life total – which it fucking well should be – Necropotence just makes you win the game.
As opposed to its companion card the Oath of Lim-Dul, which just makes you lose.
What the hell was up with Oath of Lim-Dul anyway? It's just a kinda ok card draw engine, there's no universe in which that's worth the drawback of giving your opponent a free Desert Twister for every point of damage they get through to you.
AncientH:
There's a few odd cards in Ice Age Black. In fact, if you look at it, there's a lot of just sort of competent low-level 2-and-3 mana guys like Legion of Lim-Dul and Lim-Dul's Cohort, and some spells that you might fill out a deck with but aren't...great. Mind Ravel is no Hymn to Tourach, Mind Warp is just expensive. Then you have things like Pox, which is just "Fuck the world, lol":
I kinda love Pox because it's one Dark Ritual away from being cast. It's something you can use to royally fuck up somebody's early game. And, if you're sufficiently clever about it, there's plenty of ways to take advantage of it - notice that it doesn't say anything about artifacts or enchantments.
Some cards in Ice Age Black you never hear about, even though they're relatively good. These two come to mind:
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2484&type=card)
Both of which are great, provided no-one's playing a dredge deck, and work well when you have limited lands but a good-sized graveyard (yours or someone else's).
FrankT:
Black tried to play nice with its neighboring colors.
This is almost all of the backstory these Black/Blue organizations get.
There's certainly some stuff you can do with this. BU was probably the strongest deck of the time, it just didn't rely on the explicitly Black/Blue combo cards for much. The deck was a pile of Black threats and Black answers powered by Blue card advantage so that you had more threats
and answers than your opponent did.
Marit Lage was revisited in Cold Snap, which gave us some of the dumbest things ever. You can bring a 20/20 avatar of Marit Lage into the world by putting on a play for 3 mana and two special lands, which is... not an infinite loop but still obviously nonsense. Krov was similarly revisited in Coldsnap and apparently it was supposed to be
in Kjeldor, which sort of ruins pretty much everything. I mean, if Stromgald and Krov are both inside Kjeldor, then there isn't much use in labeling
anything as “Kjeldorian” because fucking
everything is Kjeldorian at that point.
Anyway, the color cooperation cards in this set don't rise to a particularly high bar. I mean, you can use Blue mana to do shitty flight effects with the Elementalist or you can use Red mana to do shitty firebreathing effects with him. But if you have Blue mana, why not just use a Blue spell that's actually good at that? If you have Red mana, why not just use a Red spell that's actually good at that?
It took a long time before WotC was able to make cards that used multiple types of mana that felt
like they belonged in multiple colors. It was many years after Ice Age came out that a card actually used both Black and Blue mana and felt like it was both Black and Blue.
AncientH:
Let's talk about bad cards. Ice Age Black has them. Anything with CU. There aren't many of them, but you seriously don't need this or this:
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2459&type=card)
Every single critter is overpriced. That sounds bad, but it's true. And you might actually find yourself dipping into Fallen Empires for thrulls, because so many cards require sacrificial lambs to grease the wheels but there's a distinctive lack of cheap chaff in Ice Age Black. That's no joke: there is only a single critter that costs B to play, and it's Kjeldoran Dead, which requires you to sacrifice a critter to play it. And that brings to mind one of the major problems of a straight Black Ice Age deck: the early-mid game. You basically need three mana to do practically
anything worth doing in this deck; it raises Dark Ritual from a handy tool to an absolute necessity to get anything off the line in the first couple turns at all. A lot of Ice Age monoblack decks' first turns consist entirely on playing a Snow-Covered Swamp and saying "Pass."
Black doesn't interact with Snow-Covered things very well. In Cold Snap they tried to do ridiculous things with "Snow permanents," but for here it's less silly but also less prevalent. Seriously, a lot of these cards just look like afterthoughts:
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2492&type=card)
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2466&type=card)
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2451&type=card)
Black also wins the Tiny Text award for some of these cards:
This is undecipherable. You might as well play the Korean version.
FrankT:
Black in Ice Age gets some pretty brutal speed cards. Dark Ritual and Burnt Offering let you trade cards for mana. Necropotence lets you trade life for cards. Spoils of Evil lets you trade cards for Life. The circle goes round and round, and no matter what you need to get things in hand or in play well ahead of the curve, Black can get you there. The thing is that since winning before your opponent does is literally the only thing that matters in the game, this made Black better than you.
What it was missing was decent midrange creatures. You were not going to play a Hyalopterous Lemure or a Dread Wight.
Seriously, you were not going to play these.
It brought up the very real question of what the hell Black was supposed to be ramping
to. You could very quickly put a third of your deck into your hand and produce enough mana to power your weirdest fantasies. But what did the designers think you were going to put into play as your master stroke? As Ancient mentioned, Big Black was a pile of smelly smelly ass. Hell, big
anything was a pile of smelly ass back then because the designers hadn't had it driven into their skulls that anything with a CMC over 4 needs to have an
upside rather than a
downside because Red Deck Wins is going to eat your face before you pay 7 mana for anything. In actual tournaments, the correct answer was Hypnotic Specters, Juzam Djinns, and Juggernauts, because the basic set and Arabian Nights were still tournament legal. But if you didn't have those, you were stuck drawing a shit tonne of cards and using them for black weenies. Which also worked. But it left you staring at the Dark Rituals and shrugging for the most part.
If you have Necropotence up and just draw all three of these cards every damn turn for four turns straight, you're probably going to win the game. But the swamps won't have much to do but pump your knights after a bit.
AncientH:
Basically, you were ramping up to Drain Life. Sorry, but that's the truth. You couldn't mill your opponent fast enough with anything Black had on hand, and nothing in Ice Age is really going to get you there either. While nominally stand-alone, Black needed too many things from 4th edition just to have goals to play
to.
And to go further than that, Ice Age doesn't replicate a lot of staples of the black deck. Nobody plays Dance of the Dead if they have Reanimate Dead.
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2442&type=card)
No one plays Mind Warp unless they're out of Mind Twist.
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2114&type=card)
Hell, no-one plays Withering Wisps if they have Pestilence.
![Image](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2119&type=card)
So it really is the case that Black in Ice Age just has more expensive/shittier cards than 4th edition had. In a weird way, Wizards of the Coast proved that sometimes "ancient magics" were a lot more powerful than some of the SOTA stuff in the latest set.
FrankT:
I have absolutely no idea how this card is supposed to work. You set the cost based on how many cards your opponent has in their graveyard. But it resolves with the same X, that might now be a different number?
I don't know! I mean, it's a marginal card (which I could see something with clearer writing being played in a modern Hardened Scales deck), but I genuinely have no idea what's supposed to happen when someone responds to its casting with a Dark Banishing.
Ice Age cards are not written for clarity. Like, at all.
AncientH:
To sum up: Ice Age Black is very very good at some things. But it's really hard to see it stand on its own. It plays better with others, but not...completely. You can definitely see how Blue/Black was a strong Ice Age deck. If you had a solid strategy to ramp up to, you could ramp up to it very fast. But if you were new to the game, and just wanted to deploy zombies and stuff, you were going to struggle during the early game and the end game involved critters that were too expensive for their power.
Next up, I think, is red.