Black Market – Mercadian Masques
Date Reviewed: March 21, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 1.17
Casual: 3.75
Limited: 3.00
Multiplayer: 3.50
Commander [EDH]: 3.63
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
At a mana cost of five, Black Market is not going to be the kind of card that ambushes people in ways they can’t disrupt. For that much mana, you don’t really have a choice but to spend the turns before that setting up; even against an opponent/s who aren’t specifically familiar with the card, they’ll likely see that you’re setting up for something and try to disrupt it. Even if you have a bunch of things you can sacrifice the same turn you cast it (cf. Viscera Seer, etc), you have to wait a whole turn for the mana boost. That doesn’t mean it’s always a bad card – there are definitely decks that can take advantage of it, especially if you manage to set up under the radar in a multiplayer context.
Constructed: 1
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 3
Multiplayer: 3.5 (it ramps up much faster in any multiplayer format)
Commander [EDH]: 3.5
Expensive engine cards are always a bit of a dicey proposition; they can get you even further, but they tend to take far longer to get there than you like. Black Market is one such card; it’s five mana and needs at least a whole turn cycle to start providing, and all it does is provide mana. That said, it represents a lot of potential mana, as creatures tend to die often and this is agnostic about their ownership.
This has long been an intriguing Commander card, a format that tends to allow more time to get going, but…it’s not good in Legacy, a format that tends to be lighter on creatures and more hostile to enchantments that don’t do anything immediately. This is a card that can cause a massive explosion if left to its own devices, but it’s definitely too ponderous for my liking.
Constructed: 1.25
Casual: 4
Limited: 3 (best if you have a payoff for the potential mana)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 3.75
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