(Greed | Art By Izzy)

That Sinking Feeling

Welcome back to our lesson on mana sinks. In this article, we’re going to be covering the remainder of the color pie, starting with black. If you missed part one of this series, where I cover white and blue as well as an introduction to why mana sinks are important in Commander, I encourage you to check out the first part in this miniseries before moving on to this one!

Don’t worry, I’ll wait... Right, you’re back? Great!

Black

Moving through the colors of Magic: The Gathering, we're coming to black.

As I mentioned in the last article, some colors have it easier than others when it comes to making use of your spare mana. Black will reward you with plenty of options to turn that mana into mischief, you just might have to pay a little life to go with it.

Let’s start with an old favorite, Greed. Greed goes all the way back to the Fourth Edition of Magic: The Gathering. Since 1995, we’ve been able to slot Greed in our decks and turn our excess life and mana into more cards. If you’re new to the game, Greed is the epitome of the advantages a black card can grant you. You’re able to pay a small amount of mana coupled with a little bit of life to get that extra card. You can try to draw the key removal piece you need or your next land drop. What makes Greed truly black though is the temptation. It’s only one mana, it’s only two life. How deep are you prepared to go to get what you want? (Don’t answer that question, that’s why Ad Nauseam is a card) That is black magic.

Many of these effects exist in black, you can find the same ability tacked on to Erebos, God of the Dead. A very powerful commander in their own right, although one you see less and less of these days. Erebos slots nicely into the 99 of any deck that wants to make a lot of mana and have a place to spend it; with the added bonus that your opponents can’t gain life attempt to claw back the life they’ve lost. The added utility plus the fact that it’s stapled onto an indestructible enchantment that has the potential to become a creature is why you’re paying an additional mana here over Greed.

A modern rendition of the same effect is Dockside Chef. While it pays a lot less to be a chef than an extortionist, card draw is nothing to be sniffed at. Rather than life, you’re looking to sacrifice other creatures or artifacts. If you’re looking for a way to shoehorn this effect into your deck at a lower mana value, the chef absolutely performs to a T. If your deck is running disposable artifact tokens like Clues, Treasures and Food, it’s easy to turn tokens card draw when you need them.

Now, it's worth knowing that black can do more than just draw you cards with your excess mana. There's no better way to invalidate your opponents' removal than ensuring that your creatures don't stay dead!

Black has numerous ways for you to get creatures back from the graveyard. Phyrexian Reclamation will allow you to return creature cards from your graveyard to your hand for two mana and two life. Once again, it works at that standard rate of two mana and two life for a card that black seems so fond of. Phyrexian Reclamation also allows you to reuse your best enter the battlefield effects: being able to sacrifice and recur your own Gray Merchant of Asphodel and drain the table for life. That life can then be used to refuel Phyrexian Reclamation and potentially close out a game very quickly, much to the chagrin of your opponents.

Red

I have been so excited to write about red for this article. Black and the notion of paying mana for card advantage is a tale as old as time. Red is all about paying mana to give your creatures more power. Now, the purpose of this article series is to encourage the effective use of your mana.‘Firebreathing’ effects, like the ones listed on Shivan Dragon and the namesake card Firebreathing, are great at pushing through excess damage on your turn. They can also be used to surprise your opponent during combat as you block their creature and increase your creature’s power to ensure a trade. I don’t want to cover those effects though, as frankly, I believe modern red can do a lot better. There is an effect that will allow you to make better use of holding up your mana than spending it all on firebreathing on your turn. That effect is Goad, and it is far more useful than you think.

When I talk about Goad, I’m not talking about Goad itself or forced-combat themed decks. I’m talking about the inclusion of cards that can give out Goad's effect at instant speed and the utility that it provides.

, Enterprising Salvager is a card from the recent set, The Brothers’ War: Commander. has a static ability that creates colourless artifact tokens whenever non-token artifacts are put into the graveyard from the battlefield. This is great for effects that care about artifacts in your deck that may already exist. The ability that really makes this card shine, however, is its activated ability.

So now, let’s think about why instant speed Goad is important:

• Let’s say there’s a huge scary creature in play, like a Blightsteel Colossus.
• You have a Chaos Warp in hand, you could remove the Blightsteel Colossus immediately, and you don’t have to worry about being hit.

In this scenario, you hold up the Chaos Warp until the player with the Blightsteel Colossus attacks you which could be first, could be third but either way, the threat is dealt with and it’s onto the dealing with the next threat from the next player.

Or, with :

• Let’s say there’s a huge scary creature in play, like a Blightsteel Colossus
• You have a Chaos Warp in hand, you could remove the Blightsteel Colossus immediately, and you don’t have to worry about being hit.
• Instead, you decide to hold up two mana to activate in response to that player moving to combat. You are now not getting hit, guaranteed.
• The player with the Blightsteel Colossus must attack the other players and begins the process of removing your opponents for you.
• It is now in the other player's best interest to remove the Blightsteel Colossus instead of you. If they don’t have the removal, they are at threat of dying from Infect. If they do have the removal, the Blightsteel is removed and you still have the Chaos Warp.

In this scenario, you have dealt with the Blightsteel for a potential of several turns for a two mana investment. Even if you didn’t have the Chaos Warp, you have extra turns to try to draw the interaction you need to answer the Blightsteel Colossus when the other players are dead.

Laurine, the Diversion has the same ability printed on her, albeit she’s able to sacrifice both artifacts and creatures, widening her flexibility. She offers no way to generate either, due to her initial printing with her Partner commander Kamber, the Plunderer. Remember that Laurine’s ability can be paid with generic mana (making her the more flexible card to activate), so it’s up to you which to run!

That wraps up part two of our series on the different types of mana sinks in Commander. Hopefully this article points you in the direction of some useful cards to spend all that excess mana. In the final part of this article series, we will be looking at green and some artifacts that can find a home in any deck. This quick look at colors should hopefully allow us to identify each color's weaknesses. So I'll be recommending some artifacts you might want to include in white, blue, black, red and green!

In the meantime, I received a lot of great feedback from you all with suggestions for your favorite mana sinks. Why not drop a couple more down in the comments below? Or you can discuss them with me on Twitter (Yep, it's still called Twitter to me) at PrinceofBielTan.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you in the next one!

Read more:

• Preview Review - Mana Sinks (Part One)
• Too-Specific Top 10 - Mana Positive
• Solve the Equation - Mana Efficiency VS Sequencing

Joshua Clough

Joshua is a Medical Researcher from the UK. He's played Magic since Dragons of Tarkir and loves all things Commander, the more colours the better! When not playing Commander, he can be found insisting Jund is still a viable deck in Modern and painting tiny plastic miniatures on Twitter @PrinceofBielTan