Gotcha!

It's looking like the best support colour right now. Black needed a couple of things it got, and one thing it got which no other colour in the control archetype had. Those were:

Fatal Push - Dreadnought cheese? Dead. Pumped Longtusk Cub? Dead. Copter? Dead. Heart? Dead. Manlands? Dead. High toughness tokens? Dead. Any other 2cmc creature you care to mention in aggro decks? DEAD! Black needed splashable aggro removal at instant speed, we got it at uncommon. Revolt for this is easier to trigger in less control based builds, but you'd be hard pressed to find a reason to not run this in any Black deck.

Herald of Anguish - Whilst more narrow than I'd have liked, Black finally has a GOOD demon finisher (Kothophed crying noises). He won't be that efficient for 7 mana outside of artifact decks, but he will excel in those and "heralds" a change in Black's good creatures all being the lower costing ones.

Yahenni's Expertise - Wait, this sweeper is worse than Languish. It's one whole less damage! Oh, except that it lets you free cast a Dynavolt Tower or Liliana in control, a whole slew of artifacts in Tezzeret decks, and replace any board presence you lost in Midrange decks. As far as sweepers go, this negates one of the big disadvantages of tapping out on curve to wipe the board: Leaving yourself at the mercy of your opponent's next turn with no response.

We're still lacking hand hate, which is probably about as likely as us getting Negate at this point, and I'd much rather prefer a more open-ended demon finisher, but we're at a point now where Black no longer sucks! It's still not quite the colour that can dominate in builds where it's mixed with other colours, but it's surpassed Red as the best supporting colour in my eyes. Now, if only Blue was a good colour outside of Artifacts decks or drawing cards...

Kothophed does NOT suck!!!!

This is just a restatement of the stream, which everyone should've listened to by now.

This.

Kothoped lowkey was GOAT during the Origin days.

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OT: I do want to talk about some other cards received though.

Renegade's Getaway - This card might have some tech in aristocrats; if you're pumping a Nantuko Husk, and they go to kill it in response, you can protect it with this, and you get a 1/1 artifact for more food. It goes great with Marionette Master aswell.

Gifted Aetherborn - I know you touched on this card a bit in the podcast BBB, and I agree; I love it. It goes great in aggro; imagine T2 this into T3 Always Watching, regarding the crazy mana requirements. I can see the argument for running it in midrange aswell as an early blocker.

Battle at the Bridge - Decent removal spell and a good way to gain life, but I do believe it wont be as popular as others imagined due to it being sorcery speed, but if you were to generate multiple artifacts/mana then this can kill anything non-hexproof.

Gonti's Machinations - I'm probably the only one of the few who actually likes this card. It goes great with Fretwork Colony, and it's a good way to gain energy in . It also goes will with Live Fast, and offsetting life loss with life gain shouldn't be a problem.

I stand by Kotho being underwhelming.

Getaway is absolutely about crats or other "this thing must live" decks. I don't know if those decks are probably better off running other cards instead (Dec in Stone ruins that plan after all). We'll see.

Gifted Aetherborn was already a gusher for me

Battle at the Bridge is good for artifact decks, but that falls under a similar category of cards Black gets each expansion. The ones that fit in one archetype really, REALLY well...then suck outside of them (vamps, eldrazi etc).

Machinations just looks like a pipe dream to me

I think battle is probably pretty decent, even outside of dedicated artifacts decks. Never forget you can kill for way more X than you need. It could be a HUGE lifeswing. Is it in every deck running black? No, but it's not bad, imo, and can kill ALOT of things. It does not replace instant speed removal options though, so it's definitely a lower pick than many other possible cards.

It could, for example, be an interesting card in some kind of full blown ramp deck, which may need a solid way to recover from early damage. Maybe Jund plays it, for example.

I gotta bring out the "Beast Argument" again, what are we taking out of those decks to put this in? Is it worth it the majority of the time?

Dude that's the DJ argument lol. Reread that thread, and stop using it against me (or at least say, hey DJ, but you said this...).

Anyway, I don't know, I was trying to answer that question with my post. I think time will tell if it can ever be worth it outside of artifacts.

I think the proper place for Battle is some B/x Clue/Thopter/Servo deck. As one example, you could use it in UB with Clues and/or Thopters and Mechanized Production for beat recovery while you try assembling your combo.

The thing that I like about Gonti's Machinations is that it's good at racing someone if you're going up against another aggro deck; y'all are trading life back and forth, then you make them lose 3 more life and then you gain 3 in the process. It triggers revolt too.

At that point, you might as well just play Alms of the Vein...it at least could be used to draw a card or activate a creature via madness.

Getaway and Machinations are awful. Therefore, Black is still awful.

I don't see Gonti's Machinations as anything other than unplayable. It's a bad energy generator, the effect is not repeatable (you can only sacrifice it once), and you can't even aim the damage at a creature.

I'm also not as impressed by Fatal Push from first looks as some people are. Triggering revolt is not easy in Duels: few current KLD decks can reliably trigger it, and our only fetchland is Evolving Wilds. Other revolt triggers cost mana (e.g. sacrificing a clue, sacrificing something to Evolutionary Leap) or takes some special deckbuilding (Eldrazi scions - these should trigger revolt, but they don't produce black mana). Without revolt I think the effect is quite meh. Black already has access to one of the best removal spells around, Grasp of Darkness, and that also deals with all the cards mentioned in the OP. It does cost one more mana, and that can be tremendous, but you don't have to worry about revolt, and it can kill stuff like Archangel Avacyn, Kytheon (against 3 open mana), etc + enable advantageous trades (my Skysovereign attacking into your Skysovereign for example).

Yahenni's Expertise is a card I'm genuinely excited about. Clearing the board and then landing your own threat is fantastic. Yahenni's Expertise into Liliana is likely to be one of the most busted turns that happens semi-regularly in AER.

We still can't reliably kill ourselves by paying our land taxes, so gonti seems a little too unreliable for us.

I love Kothophed so much. Is that little fun animation that plays when you drop him unique to him? It is like a bunch of cloudy bats or something.

That is why he is a x2 in every black deck for me.

Mono black kicks butt now, except against spirits/long road homers.

I think some mythics/rares get there own unique effects, I know Part the waterveil gets a spinning clock animation and Woodland bellower gets a roar sound effect

aka some mythics from Origins.

The good old days.

Origins meta was fun tbh.