Recently, Mark Rosewater responded to one of Aaron Forsythe’s “random card comment of the day” entries, and in his response, included this phrase that just seemed really wrong to me: “Black is very restricted in creature keywords.”
Hunh?
My perception is that black is the favorite child for creature keywords. Seems to me like black gets pretty much everything, not the other way around.
We’ll look only at cards that are Standard-legal, or were just a couple weeks ago. Let’s walk through keywords and just throw out a few examples for each:
Deathtouch: Giant Scorpion, Grave Titan, Nirkana Cutthroat, Painsmith
Lifelink: Child of Night, Escaped Null, Vampire Nighthawk
Haste: Blackcleave Goblin, Bloodghast (conditional), Crypt Ripper, Extractor Demon
First Strike: Black Knight, Nirkana Cutthroat, Vampire Hexmage
Flying: Gloomhunter, Cadaver Imp, Howling Banshee
Trample: Abyssal Persecutor, Thought Gorger, Demon of Death’s Gate
Regenerate: Null Champion, Skeletal Wurm, Skithiryx
Shroud: Hey, look, a miss!
Vigilance: OK, another miss.
Intimidate: Surrakar Marauder, Guul Draz Vampire, Geth
Now, yes, Trample only appears at high rarity, First Strike appears only at uncommon, and Regenerate doesn’t appear at common, either, but most colors don’t get regenerate at all, so that’s not much of a limitation.
Oh, and I refuse to count Reach, at least for any color which get actual, you know, FLYING.
So, the only keywords that appear to be off-limits (so far) to black are Shroud and Vigilance. Compare this to white, which has “none” for Deathtouch, Regenerate, Intimidate, and Haste. White has only a single mythic rare for Trample (Mirror-Sigil Sergeant; almost totally unplayable; I had never even heard of this card before it came up in the search), and very little with Shroud in mono-white. though there are some gold cards with white that have shroud, all of those are because it shares color with blue or green. White has effectively six blank keywords while Black has only two.
Oh, and of course Black is one of the two colors that got Infest, which I didn’t count because it’s new and block-specific. Infect is certainly flavor-consistent, but not exactly a limitation for Black.
So, uhh, how is Black “very restricted” in creature keywords, again?