{"id":375,"date":"2010-09-30T18:37:55","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T23:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/2010\/09\/30\/black-and-creature-keywords\/"},"modified":"2010-09-30T18:37:55","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T23:37:55","slug":"black-and-creature-keywords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/2010\/09\/black-and-creature-keywords\/","title":{"rendered":"Black and Creature Keywords"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, Mark Rosewater responded to one of Aaron Forsythe\u2019s \u201crandom card comment of the day\u201d entries, and in <a href=\"http:\/\/gatherer.wizards.com\/Pages\/Card\/Discussion.aspx?multiverseid=5555\" target=\"_blank\">his response<\/a>, included this phrase that just seemed really wrong to me: \u201cBlack is very restricted in creature keywords.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hunh?<\/p>\n<p>My perception is that black is the <em>favorite<\/em> child for creature keywords. Seems to me like black gets pretty much everything, not the other way around.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll look only at cards that are Standard-legal, or were just a couple weeks ago. Let\u2019s walk through keywords and just throw out a few examples for each:<\/p>\n<p>Deathtouch: Giant Scorpion, Grave Titan, Nirkana Cutthroat, Painsmith<br \/>\nLifelink: Child of Night, Escaped Null, Vampire Nighthawk<br \/>\nHaste: Blackcleave Goblin, Bloodghast (conditional), Crypt Ripper, Extractor Demon<br \/>\nFirst Strike: Black Knight, Nirkana Cutthroat, Vampire Hexmage<br \/>\nFlying: Gloomhunter, Cadaver Imp, Howling Banshee<br \/>\nTrample: Abyssal Persecutor, Thought Gorger, Demon of Death\u2019s Gate<br \/>\nRegenerate: Null Champion, Skeletal Wurm, Skithiryx<br \/>\nShroud:  Hey, look, a miss!<br \/>\nVigilance: OK, another miss.<br \/>\nIntimidate: Surrakar Marauder, Guul Draz Vampire, Geth<\/p>\n<p>Now, yes, Trample only appears at high rarity, First Strike appears only at uncommon, and Regenerate doesn\u2019t appear at common, either, but most colors don\u2019t get regenerate at all, so that\u2019s not much of a limitation.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and I refuse to count Reach, at least for any color which get actual, you know, FLYING.<\/p>\n<p>So, the only keywords that appear to be off-limits (so far) to black are Shroud and Vigilance. Compare this to white, which has \u201cnone\u201d 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 <strong>six<\/strong> blank keywords while Black has only two.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and of course Black is one of the two colors that got Infest, which I didn\u2019t count because it\u2019s new and block-specific. Infect is certainly flavor-consistent, but not exactly a limitation for Black.<\/p>\n<p>So, uhh, how is Black \u201cvery restricted\u201d in creature keywords, again?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, Mark Rosewater responded to one of Aaron Forsythe\u2019s \u201crandom card comment of the day\u201d entries, and in his response, included this phrase that just seemed really wrong to me: \u201cBlack is very restricted in creature keywords.\u201d Hunh? My perception is that black is the favorite child for creature keywords. Seems to me like black &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/2010\/09\/black-and-creature-keywords\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Black and Creature Keywords<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[15],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byrneweb.com\/sunburn\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}