Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1007: Black with Corey Bowen

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

This is another in my series where I sit down with color representatives from the Council of Colors. In this podcast, I talk with Corey Bowen about black.

I'm not pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to rather drive to work at Home Edition. So I've been doing a series where I've been interviewing members of the Council of Colors, and today we have Corey Bowen with Black. Hey, Corey. Hey, Mark. Okay, so let's start by talking a little bit about what do you think is the most misunderstood thing about black most misunderstood thing about black black is interesting black gets to do a lot of things i think more recently kind of i think a lot about black and its access to treasure i also think about black as perceived as you know mostly evil or dark or this big evil

entity which which i think that there are a lot of positive spins on black um so i i don't know do you want me to expand on one of those yeah let's dive into treasure so let's talk a little bit should black be doing treasure right should black be doing treasure uh when you when you put it on the board treasure doesn't feel back so treasure in its like essence is kind of it's fast mana it is ram uh it's just like it's just mana production and typically green gets a lot of long-term mana production and red gets a lot of fast-term mana. And so then we ask the question, well, when does black get mana production? Well, actually, black used to get mana production. Back in the day.

Back in the old, old day, black used to have, you know, dark ritual and all these little cards that did make some black mana. But we don't want want to do that anymore, so is that precedence for treasure? The real precedence for modern treasure is that pirates are cool and black,

or at least they were black when we brought them back and we started printing treasure. We thought, this is cool enough, let's do this, we like this, and we made some treasure and hey, all of these artifacts say the word sacrifice on them. Isn't that pretty neat? That technically works with what black wants to do. Hey, isn't it really fun to sacrifice little things that mean very little in black?

Black loves sacrificing permanents. Sacrificing artifacts is still pretty fun. So it's kind of wiggled its way into making treasure. So it's kind of wiggled its way into making treasure. And there is some stance where it's like, oh, treasure doesn't really fit, but it does fit. Oh, yeah, black is also greedy. Black likes money. I love cards where black is caring about money or commerce. And clearly treasure really fits well in money and commerce and stuff like that. so then can black just make treasure it's just kind of a

mana refund i think more recently in the color council of colors i've been pushing for hey whenever black makes treasure i don't want to treat it as a mana refund anymore where it's like a spell that does something and then also makes treasure i would rather it exchange a non-mana cost for the treasure whether it is something has to die or you're paying life or you're paying cards or whatever other non-mana resource i think black is really good at exchanging those um and kind of getting what it wants through other means. So I like that. There's another angle I think about a lot where, sorry, I'm rambling.

Do you mind if I keep rambling? Hey, we're here to have you ramble. I mean, the thing that's most important for people to understand of what you're sort of saying is sometimes we get in the trap where it kind of flavorfully, like we made pirates in Ixalan. It made sense that pirates were black. Treasure made sense for pirates. And then it'sfully, like, we made pirates in Ixalan, it made sense that pirates were black, treasure made sense for pirates, and then

we, you know, it's sort of like, what are we doing exactly? And it wasn't just black, blue got treasure, I don't even know what blue's doing with treasure, blue shouldn't have treasure at all, and so, we definitely sort of bled a little bit for flavor, and that gets us into a dangerous spot. And like, what you're saying is, we've sort of

re-looked at treasure, and what we said is blue can't have treasure, and black gets treasure, but only under certain circumstances, and in a way that's more black, and that it's red. You want a pirate that just gives you treasure? Go to red. Red's the color that can do that, red's a pirate color, you know, and that's what

I found very interesting in this, is we tend to drift a little bit sometimes, and then it's up to the council of colors to go, whoa, whoa, whoa. We kind of drifted a little bit. We got to pull back. So that's a good... Let's go to this topic. What has Black done that it's not supposed to be doing? Like Treasure, where

does it sort of push a little bit of, like, we have to be pulling back? Where's the push that we have to be pulling back? Well, I think Treasure feels like the main one for me in this aspect, but even then,

to some degree, I think Treasure is just fine in black if it's paying the right costs, only because the output of Treasure, to some degree, is to get more mana and I guess every color has different ways to get more mana in their own ways but I think

about like reanimation as another mana cheap way so I don't know Black clearly gets to like sacrifice creatures to add mana right like it's not that black can't produce mana what we're saying is a creature that enters the battlefield and all it does is just gives you a treasure where you've done nothing

there's no cost, that's not particularly black. Yes. So what, what, what was the prompt again? What black is doing that it shouldn't be doing? What is black doing

that, you know what, it's kind of drifted, it shouldn't be doing that? Or, you know, what are the areas where black has sort of got into spaces it shouldn't be getting?

I know black is tricky because black has this weird thing of, hey, pay a life or sacrifice a creature. Black does most things, right? It's a question for black because it is so versatile, but here's some things that come to mind. First, I'll say one thing

I've been thinking about recently is that we've been paying one life for a lot of things, and I think one life is not very relevant in some of our formats, so I want to start paying one life for a lot of things. And I think one life is not very relevant in some of our formats. So I want to start paying two life for more things. Okay, more life! Threshold up, let's get those costs up.

But other than that, I think a lot about some mechanical themes that have kind of expanded to black in the past few years. I think about plus one, plus one counters in this aspect, more like caring about plus one, plus one counters. Zendikar had black

green. Zendikar Rising, I think, had black green plus one, plus one counters mattering. Kaladesh or Ederable also had black one, plus one, plus one counters mattering. Plus one, plus one counters mattering, which I thought were weird for black. Plus one, plus one counters mattering um which i thought were weird for black it plus one plus one counters are kind of agnostic nowadays they go in other colors it's

fine for black to care about them um but it it is a little bit of a this isn't it's it's not a core central theme of black i don't think it should be a core central theme of black um other colors have that as a core central theme um so i guess I would like to see less black cards that care purely about plus one, plus one counters. I also think about black's method of recursion, and we've talked about this a lot recently. Black can bring back creature cards from your graveyard to your hand. And historically, in sets with

big artifact themes, it can also bring back artifacts. In sets with big enchantment themes, it can also bring back enchantments to your hand for what it's worth. I don't think we do a lot of reanimating to the battlefield with artifacts and enchantments, but Black's Recursion

gets kind of stretched depending on the needs and the themes of this set. However, we have this hard line in, like, Strixhaven, or currently we have a line where we don't want Black to bring back Instants of Sorceries from your graveyard to your hand. So there is a line that exists, which to me spells that, because we've done it for some permanent types,

or some card types, but not other card types how much should we be restricting that more? Should it be a hard line on creature? It depends on the need to the set at the end of the day and at the end of the day, strict saving and other ways to make sure you could cast spells and recurring instances

and sorceries isn't always the most fun it can be a little repetitive so I guess those are my answers. Plus one, plus one counters, and Black's ever-encroaching march to dominate all of the recursion of Graveyard. Okay, so let's ask

the opposite question now. What isn't Black doing that, you know what, maybe Black should be doing? Where are you pushing? Outside space, you're like, you know what, I do think Black should be doing this a little what? I do think Black should be doing this a little bit. I do think Black should be doing this a little bit. One thing I've been noticing about how we use goading,

goading in Commander sets, is that goading right now is staunchly a red and blue mechanic. We believe it is red. We believe it is red. We believe it is blue. And I, in Commander 2020, made a cycle of auras, one in each color, that would attach to a creature

and keep it goaded forever, which technically put goading in all colors, but more on this tertiary level. So right now, as it stands, goad is red and blue and then all the other colors in tertiary. But the feeling of goading feels like I'm sabotaging you. It's almost a pseudo mind control, which FYI, black gets mind control at a secondary tertiary level.

We just don't do it often because it's not that fun. But technically it gets to do that sometimes. But goading is like a slice of that. It's, you know, I'm controlling your guy. I'm the puppet master. I'm pulling the strings. So goading is like a slice of that. It's, you know, I'm controlling your guy. I'm the puppet master. I'm pulling the strings. So goading feels like something, and we made a lot of black or red cards,

like black, red, multicolor cards that goad, and I think the more we've done that, in my mind, it's cemented this idea that, hey, this definitely is red, and it kind of feels black in some senses. It feels insidious. I also think about, on a non-mechanical angle,

positive spins of black characters, like positive ambition, non-evil black stuff, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, no. I've done a bunch of podcasts on this topic. It's very easy to see the negative side of black, and it's a little trickier to see the positive side.

Ambition can be a negative thing, but it can be a very positive thing. It's fun for me. I like seeing the dark side of white and the better side of black and stuff like that. Yeah, for a while i was trying to think about what is like a mundane example of a positive to neutral ambition and my favorite example is like you have you probably know that one person in your life who coupons way too hard they have a bunch of coupons they hunt coupons they're always looking for the best deals.

They have groupons or whatever. They're clipping everything. I think that is a mono-black activity to really hunt for those coupons to get yourself the thriftiest deal possible. Yeah, another interesting thing about black is the idea of merit-based systems. A system in which people should,

by their merit excel that the people that try harder should do better and that that idea is a very black based idea

even though I think a lot of people go but there's nothing wrong with that what's wrong with merit based systems where people that do better you know

but go talk to white white's not about merit based systems so everybody should get the same treatment in current White. Right. Merit-based stuff is because it rewards the person who, like, you know, they're the best. Like, Black was like, I want to do what I need to do to be the best.

Yeah. And I reward the best. That's Black. Like, I want systems that reward people that put more time and energy in. But also, ironically, in the same way, in merit-based systems, energy in so but also ironically in the same way in merit-based systems black characters are more often to find ways to like skirt the rules to get to the top of the merit-based system well i mean i mean black's whole thing is i'll do whatever i can that i'm allowed to do you know so right exactly okay okay so i want to talk about something that uh one of the changes the last couple years i want to talk about enchantment destruction. Yeah.

So let's walk through, many years ago, Black could not destroy enchantments. Now Black can, so I want to talk about how we got to it, being able to do it, and what are the current rules

about enchantment destruction? Yeah, enchantment destruction is a tricky one, and it's very interesting because not only was there a lot of allowances for Black to destroy my opponent's enchantments, but we also more recently had started making allowances for black to destroy its own enchantments, which is not something you typically think we would even safeguard. So black could not destroy enchantments, it destroyed creatures and planeswalkers.

And after a while, we started thinking about kind of like black, red limited decks. I think particularly during Theros Beyond Death, when we were playing that limited, there was reports of some people even being frustrated that in a red, black limited deck, you couldn't really answer enchantments. And some enchantments were a big deal. There was a heavy amount of them, and it felt bad. There was several, like a whole color combination or, you know, multiple colors that couldn't answer this card type that we wanted to be prominent in certain sets. And so the first time we experimented with this was Commander 2019. And Glenn said he had a card.

I'm going to say it out loud. Now I'm going to open Scryfall so i can read it because i know all the podcasts it's called in misery uh my misery is one b for sorcery each opponent sacrifices a creature or enchantment and this was an uncommon in commander 2019 it's kind of weak because they can choose a creature or enchantments so it's not reliable at getting your opponent to sacrifice enchantments and this was this is one of the kind of core tenets of black enchantment destruction is that we like we don't want it to be as strong as white or green so we don't want it to be incredibly reliable or we want

it to pay a cost uh in pharaohs beyond death we had another one which i have to look up hastily uh so why you look at why you look it up real quickly let me just give some background to the larger conversation um eric lauer who is one of the main set designers um he brought to our attention to the council colors attention that one of the weird things about black was that it was the only color that couldn't deal with two different permanent types. Because black can't destroy artifacts, and at the time, black couldn't destroy enchantments. And he said

that it was really odd that it was kind of causing problems in black. That we made environments, and so we looked at it, and we said, well, red can't destroy enchantments. We already have a color that can't destroy enchantments. So we liked black not to destroy artifacts. We liked that already have a color that can't destroy enchantments. So we like black not to destroy artifacts. We like that there's a color that can't destroy artifacts.

And artifact had destruction in red and green and white. So there were three colors that could destroy artifacts, but only two that could destroy enchantments. And so that is why we made the change. That's why we started on this path. So go ahead. Did you find your card? Yeah. In Theris Beyond Death, we printed

Frigga's Libation, which is our iteration here. It's the 2B, 3 mana, for an instance, and you choose one, either your opponent sacrifices a creature, or your opponent sacrifices an enchantment. So this is more reliable if they have one enchantment and one creature.

My Art Misery, the previous card, they would sacrifice the worst of the two, but with Frigga's Libation, you can force them to sacrifice the enchantments. But it's still needed. If they have multiple enchantments, you're not able to get rid of it as easily. And that's kind of...

We want Black to have effectiveness against interacting with those decks, but not complete choice. Well, I not, you know, complete choice. Well, I mean, it's funny. When we started, like when we started, we dipped our toe in and slowly advanced, right?

Early on, early on, it's like, well, you don't have complete control and maybe they don't even do it. And then, well, now we can force them to sacrifice an enchantment. But, you know, it's interesting how we keep getting, like, as we do more of it, we're allowing black to have, like, more and more.

Yeah. My personal favorite black enchant removal card comes from Zendikar Rising, called Feed the Swarm. Feed the Swarm is a sorcery, 1B, so 2 mana, to destroy target creature or enchantments and opponents' opponents controls but you lose life equal to that permanent mana value um i like a lot of things about this card i like that

you pay a black cost which is losing life in exchange for the versatility i like that typically destroying a creature on an average game of magic is going to be more impactful than destroying enchantments so it's it's rated kind of towards the stronger side, which is destroying a creature, but it has the versatility or the utility of being able to answer an enchantment if that's what you need in the game you're in. So it's a little below average for a removal spell on a creature, but you are paying some cost to have this really good utility that black doesn't get very often. Which I think is one of the better ways to make black enchantment removal. It feels weird to make a card in black that its sole purpose is to destroy enchantments.

I don't know if we've done that yet. But if I'm black, I get to remove creatures as I always do. And I pay some efficiency for the utility of being able to destroy enchantments, maybe for a cost, maybe for unreliability. I think that's really cool, and at least gives black, again, interaction against that card type.

Okay, so one of the things I've been doing in all these podcasts is I've been talking to the representative about the other four colors. So, let's start with white. What do black and white fight over from a color pie perspective? Right now, I think we're fighting... Well, recently white's been getting more reanimation

from the graveyard to the battlefield. So that's something that we're sharing that sometimes the lines need to be defined on because the cards will look too close. I think right now, whenever i think about why i think about the separation between white board wipes and black board wipes i think for a long time white has gotten a lot of the kill everything indiscriminately cards uh like wrath of god kills, destroys all creatures on the battlefield, but to me, that feels more black, and it feels more white to leave stuff behind.

And white has parts that leave stuff behind, but I would like black to have more of the board wipes that clean, clear the board, and white to have more of the board wipes that leave some sort of material, either big or small, behind. Okay. Let's move on to blue.

What do black and blue fight over? Black and blue, do we fight? I feel like we don't interact. I mean, black and blue is historically the least overlapping two colors, so let's start there. We have done some stuff to make them overlap a little more, but... Black and blue has this great relationship in my opinion where blue draws so many cards and black also draws so many cards

but uh because blue draws more cards we just kind of get to draw cards without letting other people know that we're drawing a thousand cards uh so i mostly i think about card advantage in black and blue and black's card advantage is so many more words than white's card advantage more often but um uh to me i see that as whenever i'm reading a black card that draws cards in one way or another i'm always comparing it to what blue can do and so i guess that's the most often way i conflict with blue okay so i'll pick up a few other places they conflict see what you think of um go for it. How do we differentiate milling between blue and black? That's a great question.

Oh, that's even stealing from libraries in blue and black or stuff like that. But yeah, differentiation. I feel like both colors just get to mill. It's where both colors get to mill the opponent and both colors get to mill themselves. Should there be differentiation, mill as of now or historically has been niche enough where I don't think it's needed be differentiation. Mill as of now or historically has been niche enough where I don't think it's needed a differentiation. I mean, black for a long time couldn't do it.

There was a period of time where blue was king of mill and black didn't mill and we decided that we needed a second mill color and we wanted more black-blue interaction so we started giving black milling. And now black does all the milling it wants to do. I mean, blue is still better than black at it but um we do let black have plenty of access to it yeah i always see like blue as the color of raw mill like my i mill for the number of cards i

know and i i've always viewed black as i mill for like for something i'm milling you so i can take your thing i'm milling you so I can count the creature in your graveyard. That's the way I've always viewed it. Maybe that's because we don't do enough black mill that when we do, it's for a reason. Another one you just brought up was the idea of sort of casting the opponent's stuff, whether it be out of their library

or you hit them in exile stuff. Is there a clear delineation between blue and black? Like casting the opponent's spells? Yeah, I mean, blue used to do it, but since recent times, black is... I mean, both colors in the past have been mastery of my opponent's library. Like both colors are so good at getting my opponent's library

and getting stuff out. But more often we found it more fun to kind of lead into that as a sabotaging nature for black, where black can get stuff from my opponent's library or it can draw a card from my opponent's library effectively by exiling them face down

or face up and being able to cast them later from exile. Blue gets... Blue can still cast random stuff from my opponent's library it can still get random creatures from my opponent's library but we don't do blue cards that effectively draw cards from the top of my opponent's library nowadays because we think that is fun black space and blue gets enough unique effects in my opinion uh do you have any thoughts on this? On where you see the clear lines? Yeah, I mean, I think the black wants

to feel more invasive than blue and so I think that like, clearly black's better stealing stuff out of the graveyard is way better at black than blue is. And that, we've done a little bit more black of like, I'm hitting you and exiling and then capturing your cards. We've started making a little more black than blue is um and that we've done a little bit more black of like i'm hitting you in exile and then capturing your cards we've started making a little more black than blue so here's here's like

black can steal from your library it can steal from your graveyard it can steal from your hand yours being your opponents so black can steal from all of your zones effectively blue can steal from your battlefields it can steal incense and sorceries from your graveyard sometimes because recently we've let red do that and it can steal random stuff or yeah random stuff from your uh library also blue can steal from your stack that's another thing you can do that black doesn't do yeah black doesn't do the uh stack. Okay, let's move on. Red. So black and red, let me say that white and green and black and red are the two color pairs that overlap the most.

So where do black and red fight? Yeah, I mean, black and red, when they're together, they're very aggressive. Either aggressive or wildly destructive, which just makes a lot of sense. But like mono black aggro decks mono red aggro decks just aggressive cards in general i think will will appear very similar they're both like doing damage to your opponent directly just like by loss of life or by literally lightning bolting into the face um so i think they struggle for differentiation in those kind of forms. And then when we're making heavy cost of black-red cards,

it's just all about big explosions and destruction and doing all this stuff, which is not necessarily terrible. I also think that's – well, maybe that's not actually a conflict here. Well, let me bring one up that I know is one we always talk about, is sort of killing creatures. How do we delineate black killing creatures from red killing creatures? This is actually a really weird line, right?

Because black can straight up murder any creature. It can just murder. And so it usually gets most subsets to murder, but also very often we get that black can kill small creatures i can destroy a target creature with power three less i can destroy a target creature toughness three or less or whatever um which is identical to dealing damage right like a burn spell is just saying i kill creatures under this threshold and it has a little bit of flexibility

but also we you know red can kill creatures through damage but to prevent it from feeling too much like black we have this like limit on how much damage a burn spell can just do like do we want to print a four mana sorcery that deals seven damage to target creature that kind of starts feeling close to a black card because seven doesn't matter at this point it's not a threshold that's relevant. So I guess that's a place where they conflict. Yeah, one of the areas we've been having issues with is Black does

minus X, minus X effects, and it's very hard to not feel direct damage when you're doing minus X, minus X effects. It is very often when you're doing minus X, minus X, it is when you are killing the creature, which is the same case of when you're dealing damage. You know?

And I know we've been trying to be careful about... I mean, we want red to be king of damage, and so we've been trying hard with black to sort of... Like, we did a little experiment for a little while where instead of loss of life, we were doing damage. Remember this experiment? Yeah, because we thought it was cooler with lifelink and stuff like that

uh it was just i don't know it felt weird no exactly we we were we were like okay they're they're very similar on the rules what if we just make them the same and then the feedback from the audience was yeah no that doesn't feel like black and so we just we went back okay black life it was weird it didn't feel like black the The words read very red because it's damage. Red does damage, obviously. And it was more words on the cards. So whatever. Yeah, it was, yeah.

Okay, let's move on to green. Black and green. What does black and green fight over? Well, you know, I'm always arguing about regrow. Which color could regrow things from the graveyard? Why does green get to get any card from the graveyard? Isn't black the graveyard color? Isn't the one that has master over the graveyard?

And, you know, we talked about this. Yeah, the funniest thing about this is I blame Richard Garfield, which is, I don't know why black is the tutoring color that goes and gets anything out of the library like blue really speaking blue should be that color but it's it's been grandfathered into black um and in the same way green got kind of grandfathered in the graveyard and the problem is we don't want one color getting anything out of the library and anything out of the graveyard so it's like well if black's going to do the library color getting anything out of the library and anything out of the graveyard. So it's like, well, if black's going to do the library, then green gets to be the graveyard. And so, like, it's just Richard made some decisions very early on that have definitely swayed things.

And it's hard to get the inertia to go a different direction. Green has this, like, really weird thing going on where because it can get anything, it can get subsets of anything, but sometimes once in a blue moon, we'll print a card in green that just returns a creature card from your graveyard to hand, and those look so weird to me compared to this. That's a black, that clearly is a black card. It's a necromancy thing.

Those look very weird to me. I guess it's all. Green, what we've learned is getting anything's okay for green, what we've learned is getting anything's okay for green or getting a permanent is okay for green but right when you say a creature it steps on black when you say a spell it feels weird because it steps on blue and red like you know when you get too specific reminds you of another color that's the problem too specific reminds you of another color and it makes you think, why is green getting everything? Yeah, the other thing that's quirky is the graveyard is one of those things that

every color needs some interaction with it. Totally. It's funny, back in the day, in the block system, we'd hit themes a little bit slower. But now that we're doing a lot more different sets, we hit graveyard themes so fast because it's just

a very popular theme and it plays really well. And so, I feel like we're doing graveyard sets all the time these days. I mean, they're varied and how we use them are different, but from a console color standpoint, we're always going, oh, how does green, how do the colors interact with the graveyard?

So, oh, okay, so that's black and green talking about the graveyard. Um, let's talk a little bit about like death touch. Um, where do we, where do you have any sense of where did, where, where the lion gets like, um, they both have death touch. They both, um, I guess that's the big one between them. Um, in my, in my eyes, like death touch is a very weird mechanic i think about it as in

black i think about that touch not only as oh this is like my creatures of murder but also to me it's evasion to me it's like if i'm attacking you you have to make the choice between losing your giant creature or me dealing damage to you which feels very black in green i see it mostly flavorfully as poison stuff and poison feels fun in green as a flavor thing, not a mechanic. Well, maybe it's a mechanic too but I don't feel like I have

hard lines on where Death Touch can go in green and black. I think it's very obviously more often on black cards but we make prints one mana one one Death Touches in green For limited, right? for limited, yeah I mean, that's

there's another weird thing that goes on in the color pie where like certain formats have certain needs like we talk a lot about like how we've been shifting things to make things work for commander

but like limited like the green the small green death touch creature exists almost exclusively because green needs help in limited to deal with creatures. And it's a nice, clean answer because we like green creatures dealing with other creatures. Yeah, green is about creatures.

And if green's removal is effectively a creature, that's great. My Death Touch creature is technically removal. Also, one card I don't like, I don't like Ambush Viper in green. Ambush Viper is 1G, 2-1, Flash, Death Touch. And to me, it reads so much like Destroy Target Attacking Creature, because that's what it is. Death Touch is tricky when you combine it with other things. It starts to feel like the base function isn't green, I guess.

Yeah, you've got to be careful. Green, we always joke that, like, it's a flash green creature that fights when it enters the battlefield with death touch. Like, you're like, that's called terror. That's not a green effect. Yes. That is a removal effect.

Okay, so we are almost out of time here because I can see my desk. So final thoughts on black. What's your final sort of, as the keeper of black, what's your final things of where the future of black lies? Black is awesome.

Black's cool. We should pay more life than black. I'm tired of getting away with paying one life. Let's pay two life. That's the campaign I'm on right now. More life. Let's go. I think black is relatively stable.

I feel good about black. Other than I want to make sure we're paying more significant non-mana costs for the things that black gets to do that it shouldn't get to do for free. Yeah, the interesting thing going on about black, just real quickly before we leave, is red and white have had this issue for a while because of the rise of commander. Red and white really aren't, like,

they weren't suited for how commander functions. We had to make a lot of changes to fix it Blue and Green were like they're perfectly suited for all the Commander stuff and so like we've had to weaken Blue and Green a bit to like take away some stuff for them to help balance them but Black's been sitting in the middle

so Black's definitely been I'm not too good I'm not too bad you know and so we've other than the Enchantment thing I don't think we've made major and we gave Black Flash I guess a couple years ago but we haven't done a lot with black versus the other colors no but i will say treasure is impactful for that format right because uh we haven't we know recently because we're not doing dark rituals or black market or whatever we don't have a lot of black cards that generate a ton of mana um and then so and man is really great in commander in those longer game formats so currently this introduction

of more a little bit more treasure in black uh does contribute to like having black be yeah i think in my head a little higher on the pedestal yeah okay well i want to thank you for joining us cory thanks talking black with us yeah Yeah, thank you so much, Mark. And everybody else, I'm at my desk, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.

So I want to thank Corey for being with us. And I'll see all of you next time. Bye-bye.