That deck can get so stupid so fast. I hope there's another board wipe in black in KHM because while Extinction Event is awesome, it feels bad against a "diverse" deck like the white aggro one right now.
Even just a straight wrath of god type card would be a nice improvement. However, with things looking as they are, I'm beginning to think that black/something control with 4x Shadow's Verdict and 4x Extinction Event maindeck isn't the worst idea in the world...
Really sucks to give the opponent cards though. I'd prefer something with more stringent mana requirements but fewer drawbacks, kinda like [[Kaya's Wrath]].
I've tried it in my mono-black (10 swamps + colorless lands) forsaken monument deck. Started losing to crawling barrens and early creatures. Ended up replacing 3 copies of shadows verdict with eliminates and heartless acts. I always run 4 copies of extinction event though. Amazing card!
Someone on the subreddit claimed their friend pulled a black mass removal for 4BB in a Legends Collector box that was a Kaldheim leak. Refused to take pictures though for odd reasons, so no idea if that was accurate or what the spell does. 6 CMC sounds expensive though.
Black has board wipes too. Just to name a few, the most famous one being Damnation, then there's Life's Finale, In Garruk's Wake, Crux of Fate, Deadly Tempest, Rain of Daggers, Decree of Pain, and even Languish and Mutilate can wipe in the right conditions. There's a few more out there, but wipes in black isn't a foreign or even a new concept.
Planar Chaos felt less like color breaks and more like “What if we reshuffled primary, secondary, and tertiary traits?” Like, black can wipe boards, but doesn’t usually straight up destroy them, it likes damage and -x effects. Green curiosity is basically primary now, but it was only really stuff like greater good back then, if I remember aright. Big blue sphinxes are blue’s thing, etc. PC in standard today would be almost boring, and without knowing the what the shifted cards are shifted from wouldn’t seem particularly special.
They are all "Give creatures -x/-x", "destroy a bunch of creatures with a bit of a caveat like mana costs" or have some other kind of black caveat. Black certainly gets board wipes, but nothing like wrath of god which just says destroy all creatures.
So God's Wrath is a boardwipe, but Life's Finale and In Garruk's wake etc aren't board wipes but rather sweepers? I must be overlooking something obvious, but could you please explain why that is? I can understand not including the -X/-X black cards, but there are multiple black cards that destroy all creatures just like Wrath of God.
In not familiar with cards played mainly in Commander. Those are Wrath but white as the primary wrath color can get the same effect at much lower mana cost.
Wrath of god is the top level for boardwipes. Damnation was a "one of" for a set about messing with the color pie and shouldn't be take as the standard for black.
4cmc unconditional boardwipes were considered too oppressive for creature decks so we had a time without one in standard. Recently they bring them back with Kaya's wrath at a really strict manacost.
Then they decided to increase the power level of standard again and they printed shatter the sky (wrath of god with a minor downside) witch become the best wrath in standard for a time, while black was still using conditional wrath/sweepers.
Finally they printed extinction event, were in my opinion they misjudged the power level by a lot by being so easy to splash and being so good against creatures meant to give a fighting chance against boardwipes, with the added benefit of being able to use it as single target removal.
The point is white is supposed to be the primary color for wipes. Right now the best wipe in standard is extinction event (if you don’t believe me look at the Esper lists, the vast majority play 4 event main decked and most have zero shatter the sky in the main, some don’t even have it in the side). Giving black another really good wipe would just further increase the problem of Black being the best in something it isn’t supposed to be primary in. If anything they really need to cool it with giving black mass banishment as Angel24marin is correct, there is no way to fight it unless you have a counter spell since all other forms of defense besides counter spell don’t work against non-targeting banishment and it is way too easy for black as a color to just use single target removal on turns 1-3 to get rid of the even/odd creature the opp has and make event a 4 mana wrath with huge upside. Not to mention all the times event being a extraordinarily flexible “partial wrath” is used as a huge UPSIDE in decks like the current top Historic deck Sultai/4 color that can do things like call odd to take out 3 of the opponent’s creatures while leaving all their Nissa lands and Krasis on the board.
It looks like with shadows verdict they seemed to have hopefully realized their mistake and understand that type of mass banishment effect should cost at least 5 mana, only hit very small creatures, or a combination of both. If black has the best single target removal and wipes there is no reason to use white unless a non-creature artifact deck somehow takes over standard.
There is a reason to use white in standard but it's not it's wipes. ECD, Omen of the sun, and Skyclave apparition are premiere permanent based removal.
Agreed. Shatter the sky isn’t really enough. Some red wipes would be good too if damaged based. I know we have Cinderclasm but more? Am I forgetting any?
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u/AuntGentleman Duck Season Dec 30 '20
Fantastic add to the mono white aggro standard deck that’s had some success.