This can destroy a creature per turn. Incredible card advantage beyond common or even uncommon.

Meh. 'Nonblack' is quite oldschool of a requirement. Reminds me of Lingering Death though this supposedly triggers on your end step, making it effectively sorcery speed removal with a minor delay. The creature couldn't be removed precombat as a blocker for example.

So this could be less expensive?

Well, it certainly could as powerlevel is relative generally speaking anyway. Looking at recent common removal WotC has been printing, this looks similar powerwise, but they have been backpedaling on removal for years now to achieve certain effects in limited.

For example, if you wanted your environment to be defined by crazy-strong removal, you could make this cost . This would then make creatures without ETB effects, haste, or any kind of 'immediate value' much less desirable. In this particular card's case, it would make nonblack creatures less good which would be a weird angle to push. That would then mean you could push their p/t to mana cost ratios as well to compensate.

Hm. I think I'd like to define all my sets by having the strongest power level available. I'd also like to have my sets set 4 years in the future, ie silvania have stronger power level than earlier ones.. I think that's the realism I have been wanting, but not trying for. it would take a lot of small edits for months to get that up to standards, but would be well worth it.

I think i'd be fin with this at 1 mana, but i wouldnt want to push anything other than generic power, good removal is a part of that. But i wouldnt want to have to then make black creatures stronger... i suppose i could take out nonblack... But i dont really think a single card with that line would change the format.. Might not fit, but black has used nonblack often before

You did say that nonblack isn't recent, but doomblade is pretty recent, right? Also fatal push is infamously powerful, so I think i should be allowed to have similarily powered cards.

­Fatal Push was specifically made to push removal in modern. It's also an uncommon so it has a much lesser effect on limited.

The last time Doom Blade was standard playable it was M14. Relatively recent I guess, but I think it's of a 'dying breed'. Standard has no cards with the word 'nonblack' in it. Even modern has just 30 or so black removal cards with that word. Outside of Doom Blade, Hideous End and Corpsehatch look to be the most recent ones. So the trend seems to have died around 2010? Festergloom is new, but there the nonblack tech is used to turn the design into a potentially one-sided mass effect.

Nowadays, power levels fluctuate so that we get less powered sets followed by more powered sets and on and on. So power creep isn't that linear anymore though we get specific cards time to time that push the known envelope.

If all removal is as strong as this card, then it wouldn't hinder the playability of nonblack creatures. However, it's still a common, so I might be wrong on that. 'Nonblack' is just an awkward design choice since when you do come to face a player playing with creatures this becomes a dead card. That's kind of swingy and unfun among other things.

I understand. Will remove nonblack, and should likely pump this up to uncommon as well..

I kind of want my sets to start with the modern top power level, and to grow in strength as if I/we was/were looking into the future to see what power creep would have an effect on... Maybe that is unecessary, or even volatile because standard is ever-shifting... IDK, it might also be more work than it's worth

Sorry for my outdated knowledge, I always hear people talking about doom blade so I assumed it was new

As people say; it varies a lot. As a general rule, currently - if a removal card is good enough that you might actually consider putting it into a constructed deck willingly? It's too good to be printed except at rare.

The nonblack clause is very much a holdover from the orignial Terror though. There, it made flavourful sense. You're scaring a creature to death. How can you scare a zombie to death? How can you scare a golem? So for pure flavour reasons, they can't be affected. That then persisted as a semi-flavour semi-lets-stop-black-being-jut-blatantly-the-best-at-everything clause for a long time. But it's prettty much gone now.

So by sane standards - this is a fine card. Perfect removal, proper cheap - slower even than sorcery speed; but fast enough to kill things before the summoning sickness wears off, so good for defence.

By "What wizards actually print nowadays" standards - this probably needs to cost more. But certainly a set can come along and reintroduce removal as a permitted thing.

Alright. So power levels can only be judged by 'well it's always changing, and nothing is exactly right, so just make your set how you want it and don't blatantly break the game'

> As a general rule, currently - if a removal card is good enough that you might actually consider putting it into a constructed deck willingly? It's too good to be printed except at rare.

We aren't there yet thank god. Most removal in standard decks seem to be of uncommon rarity at the moment. Seemingly Fatal Push and Cast Down being the more prominent ones. You could argue that Vraska's Contempt and its kin are of higher rarity because they mention planeswalkers. It's a pretty flimsy argument though.

This article/post explains good guidelines when it comes to handling cards at different rarities: "A Rant on the Relationship Between Rarity, Efficiency and Complexity"

EDIT: I actually now remember these articles with the premise of "What would the future of MTG look if powercreep was linear"

• http://www.recoculous.com/2012/03/01/predicting-the-future-part-10-magic-2114-1-of-3/
• http://www.recoculous.com/2008/10/21/power-creep-part-1/
• http://www.recoculous.com/2009/02/11/sixty-years-in-the-future-part-1/

That rant article was super helpful thank you! I am going to try and remember those tenets: Efficiency, Utility, Complexity, originality

I like the idea of those articles, but they seem awfully satirical, as well as a bit more foresightful than I have any need for... I would like to know what it would be like if power creep was linear... I wish it were that way, but I suppose they have their reasons for not doing it like that..