How is Black Market Connections Balanced?
General forum
Posted on April 8, 2024, 8:38 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
Black Market Connections is an amazing card, and I have copies of it in several of my decks, but I wonder how it is at all balanced, given that it produces so much value for a relatively small and one-time payment of mana. It heavily outclasses both Bitterblossom and Phyrexian Arena in a significant number of situations, and has a very lenient mana cost, so I think that it would have been perfectly balanced at 4 mana (with a heavier color weight in its cost; i.e., ).
What does everyone else say about this? How is Black Market Connections at all balanced?
DemonDragonJ says... #3
wallisface, that is true, but I do think that the leniency of the color weight in its casting cost is rather surprising, since black has historically been the color that most cares about color weight, in keeping with its philosophy of caring about only itself and not working well with others.
April 8, 2024 9:20 p.m.
wallisface says... #4
DemonDragonJ do you have anything to back that claim up, as this is the first time i’ve heard anyone make such a claim, and it’s not one I believe to be true.
April 8, 2024 9:26 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #5
wallisface, Mark Rosewater has stated that black is the most selfish of the colors, and cards such as Phage the Untouchable and Reiver Demon have very strict casting costs.
April 8, 2024 9:30 p.m.
wallisface says... #6
DemonDragonJ yes black is definitely known for its selfishness, but that doesn’t materialise in it’s cards devotion-weighting.
Those two cards you’ve presented don’t prove anything either-way; all colours have loads of cards with very greedy colour-pips.
April 8, 2024 9:36 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #7
wallisface, in that case, perhaps I am misremembering what Mark Rosewater said.
April 8, 2024 9:55 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #8
I’m just surprised to see a Breeding Pit-esque enchantment that makes 3/2s who are not only thrulls, but also zombies and demons and skeletons and slugs and knights and everything else black could want lol. It does seem heavy, but pretty much everything seems that way to me nowadays. Sarpadian Empires, Vol. VII hold my beer!
April 10, 2024 2:15 p.m.
SteelSentry says... #9
On the topic of Black wanting you to play more black, that's definitely something Rosewater has mentioned. Not just a lot of pip-intensive cards on both the cheap and expensive ends from Black Knight to Griselbrand, but black has a lot of cards that want you to play more swamps; a lot more swamps. Dread Presence, Crypt Ghast, Hecatomb, Cabal Coffers. From the Black episode of his podcast:
And the idea is that black kind of likes to encourage you to play more black. That black is the color that kind of says, “Hey,” you know, that tempts you. Like, you know, the way I always joke about it is, imagine black is trying to, like, you know, pitch itself to the—to the Magic users. “Hey, Magic user, come here. Oh look, we can kill creatures easily, and oh look, we can do discard, and…” Kind of lures you with things that it can do.
And then when you’re there, it’s like “Oh, well, for just a little more black you can have a Black Knight, or you can…” You know. Like, it just sort of—it does the soft sell, and at some point you’re like, “Oh, well my swamps produce more black mana? I should just play mono-black.”
And I like to think that black has the—has the best salesmanship. That like, it slowly lures you in, and maybe makes you want to play more black. And I always consider that kind of a fun—like, that’s kind of black’s nature, that black will like lure you in with some splash, and then before you know it you’re just playing mono-black, like “How’d I get here?”
wallisface says... #2
Keep in mind Black Market Connections is printed directly into an eternal-legal set, where as the other cards you mention were printed into standard. Context matters.
Added to that, that the life-loss from this is a lot higher than the other cards you mentioned. I wouldn’t consider this card busted until I saw some playrate data to back up these claims.
April 8, 2024 9:17 p.m.