Grading Black Commander Staples of EDHREC | Which Black Staples are Worth Playing?

welcome to the picking there's another episode where we grade commander staples this time black cards [Music] i'm your host joe cherries i'm your host beezy and that makes us the nitpicking nerds bringing you daily magic content if you like daily magic content you have no choice but to subscribe to the channel right now and if you want to support us otherwise you can go to patreon.com and there's a link in the description where you can buy magic cards and once you buy those magic cards through the link we get to kick back on the order because we appreciate how generous you are joe what are we doing so today we're taking a look at some black cards from edh rock these are the 30 most played according to that website what we're going to do when i take a look at them we're going to give them a grade or explain what those grades are so you understand what those grades are and we're just going to discuss the cars a bit to tell you what we think of them yeah it's basically your consolidated resource for all the picking nerds opinions on the 30 most popular black staples on edh rick uh if you're going to ask why a card's not here it's only because not enough people played on earth we have no choice um okay so what first thing we're going to do before we begin we're going to go over our criteria type thing what a b c d and f means then we're gonna like do a little thing where we say this isn't about cdh but which is right now which is right now and we'll also probably repeat it at the end because there's gonna be a card that always i it's made the comments of both videos so far so i'm sure it'll come up there's always like for the white one it was silence for the blue one it was the spell and i'm sure there's going to be like some nonsense on here that's like a terrible card but amazing in cdh uh a's are cream of the crop one of the best cards in its role often their auto includes sometimes they're irreplaceable soul ring demonic tutor rustic study a you can think of as auto include b staples that will make a lot of decks or very strong cards that require a little synergy once you have that synergy will be some of the best cards in your whole deck think of lightning greaves swansong heroic intervention b build around c cards that are strong but often replaceable unless they have good synergy with your deck start getting cut as you make improvements to your decks these are all the cards we do shorts on so like cultivate terminate there's a couple ones that are going to be in this video so c is like cuttable these are cards we aren't going to include in most decks unless the deck has a restriction sort of like you're building with collection or you have a heavy theme or decent cards that are easily outclassed this is like merciless eviction putrify mortify all that type of stuff d don't bother for anyone who's seen you know what i'll save it at the end okay that's going to be our tidbit so and what do we have for f f is unplayable cards we wouldn't even play we just would not play these cards with like red elemental blast decimate explosive vegetation f is fugu then the so red elemental blast i made the comments the last two videos that's actually what i was referencing because people have brought it up now twice and i'm sure we'll get brought up again let's go again three four three is not cdh we're not talking about cdh at all whatsoever we're not talking about budget whatsoever i think a great way to look at this is the lower the grade is the more of a reason you need to play it whether it be synergy your budget your build around anything whatever the reason you have for putting a car in your deck it needs to you need to have a way higher reason if you're playing an afternoon deck right now f's aren't comp like we we've described them as unplayable they're not i guarantee there is a card that i would give enough that i would that there is a deck that if i was given i would put it in but that's not all cases that's not most cases so if you see a low grade for a card you play you might still have a good enough reason to play that card yeah and that works for the other way too what's the reason to place put soaring in your deck uh you're playing magic that'd be the reason yeah that's completely fair uh what we're saying about the couch is way more important than the actual grade number if we say a and we don't explain why the character is good that'd be useless i mean it's like well nate for six studies i have just put in my deck wow let me explain to you why you should put in your deck the card's actually really bunked it's like listing pick orders for draft doesn't doesn't help you at all yeah there's a cherry on top first card i guess the most played card in uh black is demonic tutor this is just an a plus it tutors for every card in your deck it's the best card in your deck in all situations it's only a two minute price you're paying nothing else really exists too similar to it there's like five tutors that are the best and then nothing else can come close this is the most a plus of a pluses it is a plus plus i mean it's kind of crazy because if you're building for power and you're in the color black i don't see you ever not playing this card i'm just going to lump in the number two card vampire computer it's the same grade for the same reason so i'm not going to retread that ground exactly both the best twitter effects in the format there's i mean yeah tutors are boring i actually i'll be honest these are a pluses these are auto includes i don't play them because i fit a point in my age career where it's like i find i build decks well enough and good enough that whatever combination the cards i draw is good i don't need to tutor for the pieces i mean you just don't want games to be as like i've done vampiric tudor win i've done it many times i'm good the new the old decks i have them in sure they can stay in there new decks just don't need it as much i have no i have less desire for them it's just like cyclonic they're so good my desire to play them has gone down yeah exactly yeah then this isn't obviously uh one last thing we didn't mention we're not reading fun we're it's tough to rate fun how can you i think these cards could be like a c for fun but i'm never gonna you you don't write fun because it's impossible it's so subjective next we have friction arena it's a c minus it's a card you really have to you have to stretch and look for a reason to play it usually it's usually just cuttable it's so cuttable it's fine and the earlier you draw it in the game honestly the better the thing is when you draw this and you play it on your turns two and three this card is great and it always feels great but as soon as you like you draw it a little later and maybe there's two turns off in the whole game i might draw you one card i don't like this card at all yeah i know you're a lot lower than me so low on it turn three yeah it's okay how often does it happen you have a hundred card deck and you're never tutoring for this so pretty rarely you're gonna cast this on turn three any other turn where you need cards you don't get diddly squat you get nothing and then you wait a whole turn cycle and then it replaces itself and then you wait a whole turn cycle and now you're up one card i do not like this at all there's definitely a short coming down the pipeline where we talk about forex in arena because it's a card that we always rag on like cultivate and grave titan but we just haven't gotten around to making a short yeah um usually for my type of decks because i'm not i'm not at high restrictions i'm usually playing b's knob sometimes i switch to c's especially because uh c's are usually the thing with something like fraction arena is it doesn't have very many synergies there's nothing that really works with this card in particular like so this is a random one i just pull out of my head that is a c is fairy seer that card is a c it is the most cuttable nonsense card i've played it in two ducks now and because once if you can if you have the synergies and the reasons you can do it but that's what that's the problem with for ximena there's not those synergies and reasons i guess if you're playing the gary doc if you're playing the mono black gary devotion duck and that's all you're doing sure then this card has synergy and as your power goes up your desire for this goes down because it's not that strong so we can move on to a card that is very strong toxic deluge literally possibly the best board wipe in the entire format i mean it's probably contentious i think you could just call it the best boardwalk in the format and not be too disappointed it's an a plus this is three mana modal like the choices are endless up to you can't be one-sided boardwalk it's ludicrous the fact that you're in control of the amount that's paid is there's just not a boardwalk like this in any way um besides the fact that it is a three-minute boardwalk you start there that's already the cheapest boardwalk we have there is not a cheaper board wipe this can wipe the whole board get rid of literally everything on the board or it can do you know keep your creatures around it can just give it of dorks i it's weird to me how versatile and how powerful this spell is because you know it's three mana you think oh okay you're going on the three mana you're going to need a huge oh there's not a downside oh it's amazing and it kills hex proof indestructible creatures and if i have the biggest creature it's a one-sided board wipe wait but they reduced it by a mana oh and it's only one black pip okay yeah this couch insane it's a 40 life format this is a 40 way format this card is just it's stellar i i have been nothing but i played in every black deck and sometimes it can be a little boring but i think the difference between a card that can be boring like toxic deluge and vampiric tutor when you cast vampire tutor and demonic tutor they the boring one is when it's the best of the best it wins when you cast toxic day illusions the best of the best you've reset the board yeah i mean it's a spell that only does one thing it wipes creatures so it's not like it can be dead uh it can be quote unquote bad uh it just never is i actually almost never when i was when i started doing this list i put this at a and i'm like no i can't i can't put it in there can't you can't replace it i mean it is it is worse than vampiric demonic twitter but the fact is this is the i love i like going back to cream of the crop there's nothing that's gonna do this job as well in any color yeah it's just there's no board wipe like this especially in black when you go down to damnation it's like five steps worse uh intoxicated deluge let's give it an a plus uh speaking of cards that are worse what if you added one black one in a black to the tudor price of the demonic tudor well you get diabolic tutor and that means your card sucks it's an f just recommend never playing this the cost of tutors gets exponentially harder to actually justify one amazing two perfect fine three oh it's totally fair and it's nothing special four one nope get out of your deck agreed yeah four zom four is you're never touching it it's this card isn't um this card is one of those cards that can easily perform for you you're gonna you will see it will never it won't be too disappointing too often yeah but you can oh you can just do better and you're quickly going to do better this guy doesn't synergize with diddly squat no i mean it's just neither does it slow you this demonic tutor but it it's literally half the cost well the computer is one fourth of the call it's literally twice as slow as a card that you know you take a tempo hit to play it and that makes up for the fact that it's best it's your best card what if you need a board wipe you need now you need nine mana to cast a a five minute board wipe like what yeah exactly yeah so i know what what another thing about diabolic tutor is it's supposed to be this budget card like that's the that's the reason it's so high here that's why it's number five like we understand we completely understand that this is up here because it is a budget card i think tutors get way worse in budget so i think like you're tutoring for worse cards i wouldn't do this even on a budget exactly so you're you're going so as you go down in budget your your average care gets worse and so like maybe you're saying okay i can't afford the money to put in a diabolic tutor but now instead of searching for your tax like they lose you're searching for your six mana boardwalk or crux of faith now you've added like 10 mana to the thing that you were going to do it's like if i demonic tutor for a toxic day lose weight yet that's five mana that's there's all really good cards if i diabolically if i toxify diabolic through for crux of fate that's nine mana you four oh like it just the cost just starts getting really high really fast just avoid diabolical when possible yep uh next dark ritual this is your classic d plus uh just don't need to play it unless your deck has some crazy nonsense synergy with it or your deck's going super fast otherwise you just avoid it it is the most cuttable of cuttable cards it puts you down a card and only puts you up two mana so you have to use it or don't play it yeah never playing this in any deck really unless i it really you need something you need you need a great reason storm um storm is usually the reason um maybe your commander if your commander comes down it's such a big advantage like um i haven't actually so i'm playing a tibble duck and like my commander coming down is huge card advantage i'm not playing their ritual in that deck specifically it could like sort of like jessica's will uh it's the same kind of concept where it's like i wanna i don't mind casting it just as a ritual i don't mind just casting rituals to get my commander out because the card i lose is gotten back by tibble he draws four cards when he enters and you can't stop it uh so dark ritual you know it looks a lot worse when you do something like that that says well yeah you go down a card but then you go up four three turns two turns sooner than you would have so exactly just consider that stuff uh next zulaport cutthroat this is one of the best uh blood artist type effects and i'll go ahead and lump his buddy blood artist in who's the next card down anyway which we gave a b there b plus and b for the same reason zul porcato i think it's just a little bit better does more damage there's more of a life point swing when it works but blood artists has the upside of stopping infinite combos on the other side and then triggering every time when any creature dies these both have upside yeah like you said i think superpower cut throats better because ultimately the thing that you're looking for out of these cards is for it's a trigger off of your creatures that's the real that's really what you want so i think the zulber cup flute is the cream of the crop of these it's the bee it's a b-plus but you need a lot of synergy you can't you you absolutely need to have a duck that cares about creatures dying lots of creatures are going to be dying sac outlets proactively exactly things like that so you can't just throw a snake duck and that's why it's not nay like if this one in any that could obviously would be an a because the way it performs in the decks it's good in it this card will play like an a in any deck that you wanted i can win you the game yeah i mean with zulapor cutthroat you know you have 35 creatures that die that's all you have to do and you just win you don't even have to attack you have to do nothing except kill 35 creatures in a turn and you can do that yeah one thing i want to mention about these we've become very saturated with these effects now oh yeah um it's an effect they put it on which is fine um i actually like that because one you get to have like if you can't afford like let's just say i think zulu was like two dollars whatever there's cheaper ones there's still cheaper ones because what there's a bastion now of remembrance which you know it's the same thing but do not over saturate your deck with these there are so many you can play like i think you could play like 10 or 12. there's a lot if you go into white you probably have 10 or 12. yeah so white has a few too um next read the bones uh now i love this card this is one of my probably one of my favorite magic cards you know it's in like my top 100 it's just an f uh you just don't play this in commander ever i'm never going to it's not even i love it and it's still not good enough for me to play it out of like nostalgia it's just too slow with two for one for three mana and you lose two life uh i think nights whisper is a lot better than this and i still don't usually play nights whisper so just stay away from read the bones i don't think we need to even go any further yeah exactly yeah i i just don't think so um just to compare it to something like fraction yeah you get your cards back a lot faster with this kind i like it better well you i know you do but i think this i think the thing that you ignore unfortunately is the ceiling is really high and sometimes sometimes you get that those five cards out of your out of your three minutes that's over five turns though yeah i'm i'm not arguing with that but like it can get you there is a high ceiling if it lasts time if given time the ceiling the ceiling is obviously well it's not infinite but it's as many turns as you can survive so but the ceiling on read the bones is always too courageous the ceiling on it is always bad uh yeah so you can't be disappointed with it just like you know what you're getting i you know i might our uh challenge anyone playing for exceeding arena and not nights whisper to make that one for one switch and see how it goes for you um read the bones you can just stay away from it next what is it uh well it's great merchandise without you just need a lot of black peps yeah this is a b-plus card is very good i actually i've like if not for the fact if it's need of synergies this is like an a-plus this card is it i think it's sometimes ignored and forgotten because it's such a staple and you just see it all the time let me ignore it um i think people often just like don't even think about it sometimes like what are some of the best cards in the four black cards in the format great motion is one of the black best black cards in the format yeah it wins so many games exactly like on the level of site rift in that it's so good that it's boring to play against the time exactly i'm like sick of seeing this it's just good though yeah i agree with you 100 where it's just like i i like i said if this doesn't need synergy it's just like an a plus the power of this card what it does is crazy you just you build up you play magic so you build a board by playing magic then all of a sudden oh i have one two three four five six seven uh that's it's gonna be a 42 point life swing yeah and it's the best type it's a creature with an etb so you can spam it over and over and abuse it oh reanimate animate dead all this type of stuff and then just get like three or four triggers it wins games all the time uh next oh wait it's animate dead this is a b you can't animate any creature but much like zulliport cutthroat you have to be animating creatures proactively and putting them there so you can get them back otherwise i'm not taking a crap shoot at see if somebody has a better creature than me you know oh i'll wait till you randomly mill gingko taxi and say oh gotcha it's like i'm not doing that yeah i agree completely anyway that's fine it's totally it's very good in the decks that you if you want to pull some in your graveyard and there's reliably going to be something in your graveyard well guess what this is the second best effect for doing this we'll actually get to the next the other one which i see that i misgraded and i will fix that when i get there oh yes next uh it's visceral seer the the best creature for set as a sacko like there's other sack outlets like the altars but as a creature it's the best one i think i think so you have to yeah i'm taking into account it's not the best effect but the it's the best creature we have to take into account mana cost so it's one mana and it gives you pseudo card advantage by scrying you a bunch this card's amazing it's a b plus the only caveat is play creatures and then you're playing this card yeah every time yeah exactly you're just it's not it's not every time it's again you just you want to be you it's the same decks that want your zulu for collecting i would be interested to see a black deck full of creatures that doesn't want this card oh no that's fair because i guess when you build your black creature decks they tend to just do the aristocrat thing naturally like what are you what are you doing that isn't you're like going wide and attacking with tokens you probably have a way to sacrifice them for value that's true yeah even like when we played uh commander legends uh decent amount the black white dot one of the visceral c every time it was a token stack i mean you just in that format it couldn't die because it was never the biggest threat it was barely even a threat oh it died a lot and you well it had to because i know what happened was you scribed ten and then it's super frustrating and you find all your best cards yeah i mean there was there was enough little if you had it with like nate dior as your commander well that's just ludicrous yeah yeah ludicrous is a great way to put it uh next we have bola citadel you know what you love it been around for like two or three years now a a one of the best cards in the format one of the most powerful most common easiest win conditions to pull off it combos and they just critical mass kills people by itself yeah i mean i've played this i still play this in a lot of ducks i think the only i think i have a couple black decks i only have it in one i have it in my life game deck because at least if it's the theme of life game that's something that i do more often now it's like i don't just throw all the if you throw all these in your deck your deck gets boring really really fast according to us what uh according to us well yeah okay talking i i tend to believe that i tend to feel and when i play this is my experience when i just throw all the staples the a's right into my dock i just end up with this boring soulless soulless pile of cards that is super strong and will win tons of games but it doesn't have an identity it doesn't even feel like the commander deck it's just the demonic tudor vamp tudor uh cyclonic rift citadel smothering time maximus heuristic study force of wealth where we're so where are the car none of these cars synergize with anything what where is the synergy for my deck yeah so boss it's it's easy mode it feels great and uh wins the game all the time play crafter is next this is a b-minus it's like the best each player sacrifices a creature i'm not gonna there's no reason to retread ground a million times here creature decks want it it's the best effect of its kind in the creature decks moving on as soon as you hit i the thing about playcrafter that takes it above and beyond i would i'd probably give the other ones of these which we might talk about later i'm not actually sure um like c's or c pluses but this one i've i've seen it hit a planeswalker i've seen it make players this card that's already so much more upset you get from the other ones the other ones are just like oh yeah get rid of a creature which you know you get your three for one it feels pretty good kind of except some decks don't care but now it covers every possible base oh your deck doesn't care about creatures okay well now you discard a card that's way that's way worse for you yeah exactly oh man i've had someone kill my planeswalker with it it's like no the board was empty i put a plane trucker it's supposed to be alive right everything i'm supposed to do oh no next is reanimate it's gotta be plus it's just animate dead but it's better and there's no weird tying your reanimation to an enchantment so you don't have to worry about getting removed the life loss is completely negligible and it's just twice as good as animated this it's exactly yeah the one um is especially as you get more powerful the one man is gonna make a big difference also you can't you you can blow up the animated to kill the creature you can't do that with reality making this card just 10 steps better 40 life format blah blah blah number 16 not that we're keeping track of the numbers but it's damnation two black black blow everything up uh b minus this is the second best board wipe in black i think yeah um so when we say b minus i there's one caveat i do want to say if you step into white this falls down to like a c um if you're if you're in black white any combination of those two colors white's just got better boardways more versatile board wipes and we've talked about that in our white staples video and check it out you can go check it out yeah exactly but if you're in black any combination without um without white sure yeah this is going to be it's like blue black i don't know some green decks don't care about board wipes and red you got like blasphemous act but you know i mean it's just depends yeah like blue black is what i always think of with the animation yeah and there's certain green black ducks i mean if if you're playing obviously if you're playing the green black like your character maron type decks those don't want damnation but there are other green black docs i know i wish i wish to be fair i one that might actually use it well is like willow because willow actually sometimes might want a second board white i don't know i can't think of any green black decks or karen or marin uh the green black seer that puts counters on i can't think of it because it's not those two and those are the only green black ones oh i'm missing something uh-huh that's that this is just a joke it's because karador has whitened it it's a joke it's like hey i like these cards that's that's all there is oh okay well in my head what what i was saying is uh carrador merida and like all of the other green black comments they all i care about is the grave there's so many there's so many izony thousand eyes that's all there is man i mean i don't even i can't even think of them but i know there's like 50 of them if you care about the graveyard you should play diabolic intent just need a bunch of extra creatures sacrifice it is literally demonic tudor exactly except can be better in the decks that have a bunch of fodder to sacrifice sometimes it's upside then to monitor okay well that sounds amazing yeah exactly you just need the the build around demonic tutors insane we already know this go back to what we said about demonic tuner and then just add build around after it and then we can go to the next one yeah exactly you just need yeah build around it you're on uh next necro potence card's insane is that our top 15 best cards of all time because i mean this is one of the best ddh characters this card's stupid i stone the train that should be banned it's not fair and that means it's one of the best cards ever you should definitely play this anywhere you can almost the only time i think it drops off at four colors when i stop playing necropones if your mana base is good which every mana base should be good otherwise go check your mana base uh yeah this is easily castable uh even turn three four not that big of a difficulty and it just runs away with the game by itself because it says pay life draw card on it yeah it's this we don't need to talk about more but nevertheless is so stupid i don't like it i honestly i'm very very sick of seeing that character which is irrelevant for this video just just to clarify yes um it's still an a plus like i didn't give it a lower grade because of my disdain for the card it's in the top one percent of all magic cards i mean in 88 just like the 0.01 percent that's how good it is next we have what is it torment of hale fire this is a b-plus you want to be able to make sure you can make a lot of mana not every deck is designed to make a live man up but as soon as you meet that caveat this card is stupid and honestly another card i am so bored of oh god i lose this card all the time it's so good i mean i'm not going to tell you not to play this guy because guess what it's killed me probably 50 times by itself i'm glad this car was printed i never really was a fan of exanguine i don't think that card's super great this is an actual way to sync mana in and just finish the game i don't find much use for a card that says drain everybody for 10. even though it's a big life swing like you could have ended the game with torment of hellfire now that this card is out it just actually seals the deal i don't mind it as much because at least the game's over yeah it's not like you're almost dead it's like no you're gonna take you know 56 damage unless you lose the game okay it feels similar uh so for me it feels similar to like one of those cobbles you can kind of throw in almost any duck yeah the synergies is like non-existent exactly like this is my uh like i'm not trying to insult my friends but my friend plays um what is it called quick he plays quick and it's like he does all those cool quick stuff and he's doing this that and everything is just like his main he then like like we were playing a game and it was it was back and forth and all of a sudden he untapps he goes he has like a bunch of men he goes kryptgast uh tournament hellfire to basically kill so it's like well that wasn't really quick or anything to do with a quick deck it was just one of the best black spells ever and it's like that bores me and i've seen it i've it maybe it's because i've just seen it a lot the card is obviously good i mean my again we're not going to give it lower grade because of my poopy babiesism yes uh turmeric hellfire the best black mana sink i think and then when they eventually get rid of cabal coffers because i hate that card and it says poop uh then this card goes down yeah that's fair uh what do we have next uh victimize which is right in there at a c this is definitely cuddle one and this almost makes none of my decks because it's not that efficient of a spell it's three mana for sacrifice the creatures get two creatures uh it's totally okay i just it's not the problem is it's not a creature there's a lot of creatures that do something similar to this and it's not one or two mana uh and a lot of times you don't need two creatures back or it's hard to get two relevant creatures back because you have to fill your graver that much more it just is a card i cut very often yeah i agree the options are just better but there's a lot of there's a lot of good reanimation um that has a lot of uses and synergy victimizers isn't one of them yeah you can't dilute your deck too much with like 10 of these you just you want the best three or four what's next uh sir conrad the grim we gave this a b plus i am very high on this card it's a blood artist but it's the best effect not the best cost five mana i think what puts this in a uh like a grade above the rest is even so with the blood artists as well per cut throat you have to be really doing your thing for them to go off this just says if you have mana so all of a sudden it's like okay uh i even let's just say i got completely destroyed and i draw bladder just off the top terrible draw okay i have like one other card in hand there's nothing i can do if i do the same thing get completely destroyed and i draw a gr oh now i can use all of my mana just throw it into this just keep hitting my opponents while i try and come up with something else to do also in the decks you're playing this in milling yourself is just going to be an upside because you probably have reanimation spells yeah it kind of says pay 2 mana deals 6 damage you know 2 2 and 2 you're probably gonna hit two creatures out of four so two man ideal six to your opponents that's a pretty good rate next is buried alive this is right up there at a b you need to build around power and then once you get to a high enough power you actually don't need this card anymore but what you right in the middle of like six to eight power you're gonna play this card search for three creatures put some in the graveyard right where you want them if it's not where you want them don't play this card be be wary when playing this kite though be wary yes be wary because a lot of people are like all right i've gotta set up for next turn i'll do my buried alive to sorcery that's the weakness of this card cast it put my three best creatures in my yard oh my next one's gonna be so good oh no yeah yeah so be careful hey it's a target on your head yeah i have seen people definitely get blown out because they just throw too much good stuff just you should probably what you should probably do is get a dredger uh a reanimation target and then whatever third thing you want yeah depends on what your commander is next dictate a varibose this card sees so much play i think these cards are a little overrated but this one is right at a sitting at a b totally solid in the decks it goes in it's not totally solid in any deck period deck needs a lot of creatures black kind of just does that all the time though half of black decks i feel like are kobol koffer's ramp and then the other half is like visceracy or sacrifice so probably in half of black executive variables can be a board wipe or better yeah i've seen this card be very good and i think it is strong i think the problem with cards like this so dictative airboats is an enchantment that wants to be in your creature decks now the the main issue with these things is when you build your green black deck your black red deck your white black creature ducks you want a high concentration of creatures like 40. i was going to say between 30 and 50. yeah like somewhere in that range so you only have a limited number of slots and yeah this is one of the better ones you're probably going to want this one in those decks but you have to beware that um some of these cards are going to miss cuts often because there's just too many of them yeah you can't dilute your deck with 10 of these like i keep saying it you need creatures you need like 40 creatures okay well some of them ramp and card draw but you're in like you know let's say rakdos or green black or uh not green black because that is perfectly ramping up any black deck that's not green now you're gonna play non-creature ramp how many of these do you have spots for not too many yeah we just um we are we're waiting for the under caustic creature to do this effect like we not butcher a male gear oh man so yeah yeah i'm talking about i want the three mana two three i'll com that card will be annoying i don't want to deal with that card i know it's super good but it's just like that's what we need i mean that's what that's what for the sake of talking about like eda like say i'm if i'm printing a card to sell my aristocrat stack that's what i know aristocrats wants that card soap oh man the dictator already runs over games um if you put on a creature oh let's give the creature flash geez let's get the creature flash and it has to be a 3-2 because every it has to be two and a black for a three-two every new push card is a three-two two they're all the same cards we'll do it like that yeah they do do that [Laughter] moving on we have entomb b plus e maybe even an a minus for entomb you go find our vampiric tutor and then add build around it and then you have it it's just it's better it's literally just the best tutor in the game in a graveyard deck yeah it's built around that's all you want to have ways to use those kites in your graveyard this can just be one mana get your dredger and get your game plan just on the road you could keep like the sketchiest hand well this let's keep a two lander that doesn't do anything go find life from alone you're back in exactly go find life from the mom oops all of a sudden i'm just playing the game again and i love this i love entomb i think it's super good i don't have any decks for it because i don't play a lot of graveyard strategy but i am very aware of it in term reanimate feels like cheating especially when you get back something that's super powerful you can go the protein hulk route or even just like oh i found my crater hoof game's over i spent two mana you guys feel like do you guys feel like you had a chance i have eight mana untapped i don't even need it you guys are dead all right well what do we got next next is sign in blood it's a d minus it's better than what's it called read the bones and it's worse than uh what's what's it called versus things night's whisper i always think of i always think of let me rascal you a question like think of that card i've not been a fan of any of these type of effects two men draw twos they have no synergy it's hard to put them in decks they're still better than foxy arena uh in his opinion next yeah he's hot that that's not my opinion don't let this man tell you that that's my opinion this is just so replaceable i'll probably talk about it yeah exactly what i'm just saying i think fraction i like it better than these draw two effects busy likes the two draw two effects more next we have we can also play the old maid instead of forex and arena the ace of spades might do something similar go away you're so mean defense to apple's card vaccine arena is crying itself to sleep it really is wait for the short next we have gast it's a b um you just need synergies uh so you need to be monoblack that's the synergy you just play a bunch of swamps dilute your mana base uh kind of take all of the fun like weird quirky cards and just replace them with swamps because there's like six or seven cards that are totally gonna pay you off for it yeah that's uh monoblack is much like um model black amount of blue have the payoffs for their swamps and islands i think the blue one's way cooler yeah so there's there's reasons to want to play black i think that it's just i think that you one of the main reasons you like blue a lot more is when you play it well obviously if you and two oh yeah and two you see model black a lot more you don't see those models i just can't i just can't uh build a monoblect it's not currently with the selection of cards it is not possible for me to build them on a black deck and be like that was cool but kryptgast i like that it has stored and uses the extra man it makes unlike some of the other sinks just a rock solid b but it doesn't really go anywhere other than like swamp themed decks so it's like a very niche card yeah exactly next we have living death b-plus you just you just need to be in the deck that wants it when you're in that deck this card is one of your best cards it's a wing con it's a one-sided boardwalk that also went through the game or it could just win you the game anyway on top of being a one-sided board wipe it's like a zero effort i win or i'm so ludicrously ahead now that you might as well quit and you only spent five minutes on it so it's so good there's many living deaths there's combos with this card you're getting it back with an eternal witness stacking your whole team again doing the same thing over and over again until somebody stops you maybe you just need to pay off we have zulaport cutthroats uh those were b pluses that kind of interesting the three men of three two with flash that's um dictative airboats that card's really good it's insane what do we want to call that card uh arabos's disciple arabos is uh maybe like his name is his name is tate dick dictator his name is tate his legendary creature richard tater richard tate arabos's emissaries richard tate dick dictate for short moving exsanguinate is worse than torment of hellfire i've i basically already did extinguinate it's a c you're mostly going to cut it i might even for the bz personal director's cut c minus i don't like ever playing this card yeah i don't play this game very often either like it's very cuttable that's why it's in the cuttable section but i like putting cards in c that are c's because um what this cart is is it's amazing it it isn't bad and it's going to perform it's just gonna you're gonna see it and you're gonna play it and it's gonna be great a lot of times just like you're victimized it's gonna be great a lot of times but if you're upgrading power and you're just looking to like replace that slot you can find something pretty easily there's not too many decks that boost when it exsanguinates in it uh like oh living death well it's a it's an okay card but if you're in a graveyard deck it's one of the best cards in magic and excitement is it's an okay card oh you uh you're in a deck well uh what deck are you doing i mean i don't count having cabal coffers in your deck as you know mono crazy synergy with insanity it makes it better but it makes every spell better you have more mana yeah exactly i like like this and torment hellfire so they go they're the this is the most one for one slot i've ever seen these cards are very similar they're just you want to pour your mana to it to get a big effect yeah guess which one's better it's the one that does basically three acts yeah check the math on it what does x1 do for this what does x3 do i mean you're really not casting either spell for x three or less you gotta look at these as like eight drops you can't look at them as a two drop you know you can't say oh it fits right in my curve it's the top of your curve yeah um next pitulus plunder i gave this a b plus this card is nuts this guy can just do a lot the mana that you get from it just allows for so many different types of combos it's a six dollar uncommon for a reason it might even be up to seven by now but it's a five dollar plus uncommon this is the black card and the cycle of push to treasure cards i think a lot of people recognize this was strong but i think it's even stronger i think it might still be underrated there's just almost limitless infinite combos that this specific card enables that a lot of other cards don't i think uh as time goes on less and less people are sleeping on this obviously it's the 29th most played card so not too many people are sleeping on it but if this was a rare and it was a rare from ixalan which is nobody opened this would be like a forty dollar fifty that'd be like smothering tight prices it would and that's crazy to think about like i honestly i'm talking about with the reprint that's gotten obviously yeah if it had been reprinted here and there then it would have been like mystery booster yeah whatever but exactly that pitiless plunder because it isn't a rare we're lucky it's only like six or seven dollars it is it does 40 50 worth of work yes it pulls it pulls its weight big time this card's amazing last one ravenous chupacabra or ravi choops for short this is a b minus because in a creature deck that's going to cast it from the graveyard reanimate it sacrifice it after comes out four mana destroy creature is a bad rate when you do it once when you do it four times it's pretty good it's b minus bbc plus this is for me this isn't making most of my decks it can be cut it's a little slow actually i mean i kind of prefer shriek ma as a two mana option i mean yeah it frequent says non-black narrow effect that's most things yeah um yeah so i'm going to move this to let's go c so sure i'm like c plus i've i've cut chupacabra a lot of times yeah supercab was a totally reasonable card and if you don't have the better options then yeah go with chupacabra fishing your creature ducks need synergy but that's the last card we got for you uh that is all the staples and special shout outs to all of our patrons love you guys all as much as we can without making you uncomfortable you guys are awesome thank you for supporting the channel we have a great number this card just i remember i love i always have memories when we talk about patrons um but i remember when the card well now it's animated sentence it shut up did you ever have a dream were you so finishing my sentence now please if he's interrupted like a big jerk you actually keep starting new ones we have the scrolling card here that looks pretty cool you know it's got all the names they go by the old card i remember it got even it used to just be like stationary it became a meme uh it was stretched like this but we literally got to open was like we can't fit them yeah what are we gonna do well originally was this is contained contained on the text box of a regular magic i was like and then it was like the magic card just got like yeah it was like it was like three people on the card and it's like okay hey um and it was three people and we were memorized their names and shouted each of them out each week sorry i would love to do it but maybe you know what i'll make you a deal for our 30 sub goal 30 000 we're already reading all the magic cards i'll also read all of our patrons names out loud at the end when we thank patrons well we'll thank every patron yeah so we'll thank every patron by reading their names what's a couple hundred extras yeah we're already reading ten thousand twenty thousand things twenty one thousand cards i mean at that we might as well go full meme and read the patrons yep you can check out our link in the description it's tcg player link takes you to the home page and you navigate where you want to go and you buy the cards you want and you get a kickback for us on the order so you spend zero extra dollars and we get not zero extra dollars in our pockets which is amazing because it helps us live our dream do the discord shout out uh discord is a place where you know nepeaners fans get together they play magic they hang out um discuss magic we have a deck help section where there's tons of players who watch our videos helping you out and i help it too i use i tend to do it in chat sometimes i i sometimes i do go crazy i made a deck building area in the thing and like i was chilling today and i and like everyone was deck building in the chat i'm like i'm going crazy i just want to relax i'm going to move the draft and chill that's what we made drafting show for that very purpose i actually did i we made i created draft and chill uh because for for like first justifiable like hey i'm just trying to draft right now like i love building decks too i love building decks i like talking to everybody but like sometimes when especially when me and bees are on and doing a draft again we're doing a draft we're trying to discuss our plays we're trying to discuss our draft picks and it's like sometimes like there's like seven people in there which is fine i love hanging out with people but like seven people yelling and you're busy do i take the removal spell or they're really good two drop the b no no there he's no b yeah uh tidbit because i remembered from earlier when i said d was for don't bother i was i am like genuinely curious if any other human being has seen on uh disney plus what is it called it's um it's the mighty ducks game changers why are you watching that i can't stop yes you can it's not even good it's just like the show's like not good i was watching like i remember thinking i've never really seen the muddy ducks so i watched like the old ones okay like a million west was like yeah they're all right whatever they were like way worse pretty bad than i uh it might like the first one kind of like charming and the second third ones are just bad and it was really funny because it seemed like this is going to be a mighty ducks tidbit i guess that this so if you don't just leave now i'd just everyone leave i think emilio estevez just kind of like quit because for the third for the third movie he's like on the cover and everything but he's not even in the movie the first thing he does is tell the the main kid like sorry i got a coaching opportunity i'm gonna leave and then he leaves for the whole movie until the middle then he comes back and wins a lawsuit against the college and then he just leaves again it's like he's listed as like the top guy he's like not even in the movie it seemed like he quit or had a reduced thing and they're like okay we gotta no one's gonna see this movie if this is money nook's three no one even cares anymore but the the new one i don't know it's just not is it milestones back he's back he's chubby he's back he just looks like he hasn't done anything since mighty ducks three which i think is true he's he's famous for being charlie sheen's brother at this point yeah there's um uh i mean i think he's actually a pretty good actor but there was a there's like a nerdy girl on the hockey team and i guess it's actually ties brain breaking magic gathering because they just wanted to make her nerdy so she just randomly at one point for no reason said i go to magic the gathering conventions i'm like oh she's nerdy convention yeah that's so definitely a real magic player wow like people make fun of me for going to magic the gathering conventions like no i'm going to make fun of you well the worst part about that is like i hate when they write when they have their their writing they're so close they literally went like nerdy thing yeah they put or they knew about magic the gathering but they don't know any events you could literally take five minutes to research what a magic event is called yeah ah man i i that stuck with me and then i was gonna bring this up anyway and i'm like oh it actually relates back to magic so the two people who stuck with us you know what i have a better tidbit for wednesday's video so you can't top this one like how do you talk about cobra kai i didn't think that bc was going to go on this long i had a real tidbit but that's fine it's going to be about out of shape um we'll we'll we'll save it is he out of shape i don't know maybe peace out trap scout [Music] be

Channel: Nitpicking Nerds

Views: 83,379

Keywords: Grading Black Commander Staples of EDHREC | Which Black Staples are Worth Playing?, black staples mtg, black staples edh, black staples commander, mtg, edh, commander, nitpicking nerds

Id: 2GxusJKmQck

Length: 43min 41sec (2621 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021