Color Matters Creature (Black)

[Anusien]

I was looking at the "You can't play artifacts" and such thread, and I had an interesting idea.  Basically combining that sort of restriction and black's love of being insular to try to give incentives to players to play monoblack.

Neyd Sahna Me, Lichlord of the Pit - {B}
Legendary Creature - Zombie
You can't play nonblack spells.
All creatures and spells you control have Lifelink.
5/5

He doesn't have the most exciting ability, but I wanted to have some beefy guy that gave you a big reward for playing him but forced you to build your deck around him.  I could see other potential abilities deal with either life payment for a reward or gaining or losing life.

[RichardD]

Lifelink sadly isn't really a black ability though.

Wither and Fear and such are...

[Anusien]

Lifelink is now because of all the vampires, and lifelink on spells is almost exclusively black (with all the draining and Consuming of Spirits and such).  Lifelink is used 40 times on cards, and 12 (1/4) is on a black card.  32 (3/4) is on a white card.  Black can certainly get this.

[Lil Lobos]

This doesn't look so bad in a full black deck, but since the new thing is haveing hybrids I guess this creature can be good to a certain point. The lifelink is a booster for not being able to play non-black spells so I guess its okay.

[Anusien]

Well, multicolor won't always be the theme.  But if this guy is in play, you can't even play Terminate, for example.

[Matt]

This guy would be a lot easier to parse if he was like

"Creatures you control are vampires and have lifelink"

and of course he should himself be a vampire.

I really don't like giving spells lifelink, especially since most black spells that do damage are Drain Life variants anyway.

[Anusien]

Is the ability good enough?  He has a sizable downside, so I'd like to see a sizable upside as well.  Any other strong black abilities I could play to?

[Matt]

Death Pits of Rath comes to mind.

[Darkenslight]

Well, multicolor won't always be the theme.  But if this guy is in play, you can't even play Terminate, for example.

Actually, you can, as Terminate has black in its cost.  This works in the same way as the Leech cards from invasion + multicoloured spells; if the spell shares the correct attribute with the Leech, its cost is increased.

I suggest this change:

Creatures you control have intimidate and liifelink. (Creatures you control can't be blocked except by those that share a color or are artifacts).

[Anusien]

Err, that might be true re: nonblack.  If so, this should say: "You cannot play blue, white, red or green spells."  It's intended that you can only play mono-B and possibly artifacts.

[Matt]

Instead of the flavorless "you can't play R, U, G, or W spells," why not go with:

"If a permanent you control is tapped for mana, it produces instead of any other type and amount."

That effectively does the same thing (barring floating mana before this guy CIP, but that's only for one turn), while being much more flavorful. I was going to suggest a Blood Moon-esque ability turning your lands into Swamps instead of whatever they were before, which is even more flavorful, but it would let artifact mana workarounds happen.

[Darkenslight]

Instead of the flavorless "you can't play R, U, G, or W spells," why not go with:

"If a permanent you control is tapped for mana, it produces instead of any other type and amount."

That effectively does the same thing (barring floating mana before this guy CIP, but that's only for one turn), while being much more flavorful. I was going to suggest a Blood Moon-esque ability turning your lands into Swamps instead of whatever they were before, which is even more flavorful, but it would let artifact mana workarounds happen.

What about this workaround:

If you would put mana in your mana pool, it becomes instead of its normal type.

That way, it also affects things like Grim Monolith and Ancient Tomb, which prosuce colorless mana in multiple amounts.

[Matt]

My wording already does that:

"If a permanent you control is tapped for mana, it produces instead of any other type and amount."

[Darkenslight]

My wording already does that:

"If a permanent you control is tapped for mana, it produces instead of any other type and amount."

No.  There is a key difference between my wording and yours; your wording nerfs a wide variety of cards, from the Monoliths to Gilded Lotus.  You tap the Gilded Lotus to get just under your wording.  Look at the wording on Harvest Mage and you'll see what I mean.

link fixed, you had http in there twice, and also a quotation mark -Matt

[Matt]

1. I have no idea how Harvest Mage is supposed to argue against me, but that's moot because...

2. ...I see what the confusion is: I assumed your wording was intended to produce one black only. The point of my suggestion was to emulate Contamination; I wanted (and still would prefer) gilded lotus to only tap for one , and I was assuming you shared that goal.

I suppose another possibility would be "You can't add nonblack mana to your mana pool," but that precludes stuff like Everglades, has some unintuitive interactions with Vineyard or that Spectral artifact, and anyway I prefer to evoke Contamination.