In March of 2021, Magic: The Gathering put out a Secret Lair drop called Black Is Magic. The limited edition set focused on unique Black character cards in the MTG universe. A different Black artist illustrated each beautiful foil card and infused their own style into the Magic: The Gathering pantheon. The whole set was sponsored by Black Girls CODE, an organization focused increasing the number of women of color in the developer workspace.
Needless to say, Super. Black. was on board and purchased the set immediately. The final product was as beautiful and engaging as we hoped. Each card was an art piece worthy of praise. Sadly, the table top card game giant has a dubious track record for depicting Black characters within it’s lore, so this exquisite set was a small mea culpa on their part. As a person familiar with Magic: The Gathering but unsure of how to play, these cards certainly made me curious on the ins-and-outs of the game.
Is a full deck of Black Is Magic possible?
After purchasing and staring at the cards for a few minutes, a thought arose. Is there a way to build an all Black Magic: The Gathering deck that can also win a match? We will leave legacy BIPOC characters to history, and hopefully find new cards that are less…infuriating. I have no idea what other Black characters in this game look like, how they behave, or if it’s even possible to combine them all into a single, working deck. But the hunt is on.
I will be scouring the Magic decks to see if I can pull various Black character cards to build the ultimate lack Is Magic deck. If the deck proves invalid, categorizing these cards is an interesting midlife crisis to adopt.
Support Super. Black. and all its random ideas
Do you know of any good Black Magic The Gathering cards? How about adjacent cards that can fill out the deck (lands, vehicles(?), or some knockoff of a popular Black comic book character that made it into the game)? Let us know, and let’s build a deck worth playing.
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