Black doesn’t seem like a very good color for group hug but it is actually very useful! When I think of the color black in Magic I think of tutoring and reanimating and there are ways to share both abilities with the table! Let’s take a look!

Master of the Feast is yet another Howling Mine on a creature! Where do I start with the next card… Seizan, Perverter of Truth is group hug Legendary creature that is a Font of Mythos in the command zone! It also adds some inevitability to the game by taxing everyone two life per turn. Which can be sweet if you have a Vilis, Broker of Blood in play! Also, who designed this card? …It’s a group hugging pervert???

Scheming Symmetry is only one mana and it allows two players of your choice to tutor up any card in their decks! Wishclaw Talisman is a great way to pass a tutor around the table and Maralen of the Mornsong creates a very interesting game every time it hits the table! Master of the Feast is yet another Howling Mine on a creature!

Here are three options for reclaiming cards back from the graveyard. Empty the Catacombs can be a big play especially if you have played around it the whole game!

Virtus’s Maneuver is very versatile and the mana cost is a bargain!

Ill-Gotten Gains can be very mean if played at the wrong time. In fact it is almost always very mean to at least one player at the table! use with caution!

Oath of Ghouls is a great addition to a group hug deck and it can keep a player from falling behind if their key creature gets removed! I wrote a whole blog post about the Exodus Oath cycle here!

Mill and reanimation are the two thing I like best about black in Magic!

Incarnation Technique is such a well designed card! I wrote a whole blog post about Demonstrate and other similar keywords here! It mills you for ten cards and reanimates two creatures for you!

Speaking of similar keywords Join Forces is also mentioned in the above blog post! Shared Trauma can sometimes really mill a lot of cards but it can also flop pretty hard. It all depends on how graveyard focused your meta is!

Enslaved Horror is a great late game play for the table. Just keep in mind it targets each other player so you don’t get the effect. But if you are feeling generous or are playing with a lower power level group this helps to speed the game along!

Infernal Offering can be a real bomb against a Voltron player and grab extra value for you and another opponent!

Tempt with Immortality is very interesting but can fall flat in the wrong deck. You have to be playing some pretty helpful creatures before people will take you up on the deal. If you happen to have Enslaved Horror in your graveyard usually you can work out a deal with someone but for the most part it’s creatures of other colors that people will want to see come back on your side of the board!

All Hallow’s Eve and Twilight’s Call do basically the same thing by providing a mass reanimation spell for the whole table! I love effects like this that beg to be built around! Imagine the board state after you mill the table the whole game then drop one of these spells! As a disclaimer it should be stated that All Hallow’s Eve is on the reserve list and is very expensive. It’s kind of my unicorn card because I feel like owning a card that is that edge case and that expensive would really be the crown jewel of my group hug card collection!

Endless Whispers is the kind of chaos that many players really don’t like to play against. But it is such a fun game of musical graveyards and it also encourages political play in a huge way!

It’s at this point you might be thinking, hey couldn’t I build a mono black group hug deck??? And I would applaud your thinking! By the time you add in the obligatory mana rocks and self mill cards I think it is a totally viable option! Also, wow your Magic hipster points will go through the roof! I’ve been working on a Seizan, Perverter of Truth build for a while now and I can’t wait to try it out!

- marksquare