Magic the Gathering TCG- Strategy and Origins of the Black Control Deck
Hey everybody, happy Friday and welcome back to another Magic the Gathering TCG strategy guide. Today I wanted to write to you about an awesome deck that has its origins at the beginning of the game. Before I start, I wanted to give the credit for all these artworks to Wizards of the Coast 1993 to present a subsidiary of Hasbro Inc. i took all the photos on my phone and all credit is given to the artists on the cards themselves, so let's get into it.
Back in The day, Magic the Gathering was a different game. There were combo decks, aggressive decks and controlled decks similar to those seen today, but we were getting used to gameplay and strategy and oftentimes great cards went unnoticed. One of the Decks that evolved over time was called the Black Control Deck- black itself is the color of evil and Magic the Gathering and their cards including Drain Life, Dark Ritual, Sacrifice and the like that are all focused on evil and necromancy. Black Control decks evolved from aggressive black decks that utilized creature destruction and hand destruction spells to control the game. Players would use finishers including Nightmare and Drain Life to blast their opponents after a tempo-altering barrage of card advantage generated from hand and creature destruction aimed on controlling the board.
Black Control decks focus on battlefield denial and tempo control, just like other control decks. Unlike the traditional blue and white control decks, the primary mechanism is creature destruction and hand destruction. Cards like Hypnotic Spector, Mind Twist and Hymn to Tourach were played to destroy your opponent's hand to gain you card advantage. Cards including Hypnotic Spector and Disrupting Scepter were amazing in the deck build for consistent card advantage. A major identified weakness of the black control deck is that black cannot destroy enchantments or artifacts, and for the most part the deck relied upon Nevinyrral's Disk to blow up the board if you got too heavily involved. This meant you really had to manage your resources and keep a Disk in your hand throughout the game. The discard element of the black control deck really gave it a novel advantage over a lot of other decks. Many control decks want to keep cards in their hands as answers later in the game- for example you want to you might want to keep a Lightning Bolt to kill off a Hypnotic Specter, Counterspell to stop emergent threats or you might want to keep out a Swords to Plowshares to take out your opponent's Mahamoti Djinn finisher. Discard put pressure on your opponent and made them hasty. Breaking your opponent's tempo and causing them to make errors in gameplay due to pressure made the Black Control Deck terrifying.
Necropotence brought Black Control to the forefront of Magic the Gathering in 1995. The World Champion winner used a Necropotence deck to win. In essence, Necropotence is an extremely powerful card that allows the player to pay life to draw cards. This allowed the Black Control Deck player to gain immediate card advantage over their opponents and opened up the ability to gain recursive card advantage. Necropotence has subsequently been banned and restricted in many tournament formats due to its ability to win games as the engine in a black control deck. Many iterations of Necropotence decks have arisen since it's introduction in 1995 in Ice Age.
Black control decks really came in their own in the early 2000s. Urza's Saga debuted and Duress is a hand destruction spell that cost one mana that found heavy usage in Black Control Decks. When Mercadian Masques came out several years later, two alternative cost black spells debuted that helped Black Control. What really got the deck going was the early game hand hand destruction of Duuress was compounded with Unmask which was that can give you a free removal of card from the hand or free discard. On turn one, you could play Duress, look at your opponent's hand and remove a card then drop an Unmask. This would technically give you a card disadvantage as you would remove three cards for your opponent's two, but you could massively disrupt your opponents early game play and tempo. The haymaker of the deck was Hymn to Tourach, which is a huge part of the deck. It's textbook card advantage with two random discards for two mana. If you haven't played this card before, the look on your opponent's hand when you play it is priceless. Later on Thoughtseize would get into the game and if you back up all this hand destruction with creature destruction including the alternative casting cost card called Snuff Out, you could really hurt your opponent quickly and take over the game. The deck would use around 8 to 12 creatures usually large ones and the one that fit the role was Phyrexian Negator 3 Mana for a 5/5 with trample and the downside that you would have to sacrifice permanents for each damage done to it. The great thing about this was if you were ahead you could sack your lands out and it will only take a few turns to win. Drain life and Corrupt rounded out deck for big time direct damage and life recovery.
In the early 2000s, Black Control was fully solidified on the tournament scene. The Necropotence deck or the Yawgmoth's Bargain deck were huge you could pay life to draw cards. Gaining card advantage while disrupting your opponent's hands was a cornerstone of the deck and you could be very fast you can get out of turn one Necropotence. The decks used Phyrexian Negator, Drain Life and Corrupt as finishers. These were incredible decks they were fast, efficient and effective. Magic the Gathering decks were now published fully online, so you could grab a deck from online and the cards you needed for around $150 this was called "netdecking". Falling in the tradition of other control decks, these decks would use generally one or two finishers some of them would use Skittering Scourge as a finisher as it was cheap and it could effectively evade your opponent. These decks had their day. just like the original black control decks including Necropotence, the key here was breaking your opponent's tempo and if you could keep the pressure on your opponent and drop a finisher quicker than they anticipated they would have to react. If you made them react in such a way that they were overextending themselves and you dropped a Disk or continued pressure this would be the end of the game. The Black Control Deck also employed land destruction in the form of Wasteland and Sinkhole, which were played in this deck and that you could destroy your opponent's resources and stop their ability from playing cards. They would then have more cards in their hand and you could use discard to effectively destroy their permanents before they even hit the board.
The black control deck has a major advantage over a lot of other decks in that it is fast Dark Ritual supports the strategy and in general most of the cards cost three mana or less. The Necropotence deck has really waned due to the fact that Necropotence has been banned or restricted in most formats but the cards engine or the deck extension rather is one that remains in our memories.
Playing a black control deck in Magic the Gathering is a lot of fun. Discard is not something that's commonly seen in other colors, so you're going to be the one in control of hand destruction make sure once again you play test and you make sure you can get something out on turn one to set them off. You are playing a disruptive deck and this is designed to put pressure on your opponent in a unique way. Break their tempo and really just drive them to make mistakes in gameplay. This deck is a lot of fun, and I've often put Winter Orb into the deck so that I can fully control my opponent's hand then use Hypnotic Spector to win the game. You're going to need a finisher so make sure that you add in about four to six finishers so that you can take your opponent out quick.
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