Woah. Big news, everyone. A new MTG Duskmourn card has been revealed, and it’s (arguably) the best enchantment removal black has ever had. Withering Torment is a three mana spell which can blow up a creature or an enchantment at instant speed, with the minor downside that its caster loses two life.
I know what you’re thinking: enchantment removal in black? Is this a sacrilegious break from the MTG color pie? Despite the commonly held wisdom that black can do anything the other colors can do, provided it pays a cost, its enchantment removal options have been – until extremely recently – laughably lackluster.
Aside from edicts which can force players to sacrifice enchantments, Feed the Swarm is the only really viable enchantment removal spell you can play in black, and it only came out in 2020.
But the new card, Withering Torment, is probably on the same level as Feed the Swarm. The big downside is it costs one mana extra – and some Commander players balk at the idea of playing three-mana removal – but there’s plenty of upside to go with it.
For starters, the two life loss is very manageable. If you hit a Smothering Tithe with Feed the Swarm you’re paying double that, while taking out an Omniscience costs you a quarter of your starting life total. The fact that you can cast this at instant speed is also brilliant, as Feed the Swarm is only a sorcery.
But as to the question I posed in the title, the answer is no. While black has traditionally not been able to take out enchantments, Wizards of the Coast has slowly, carefully, started letting it have this ability.
In 2019, head designer Mark Rosewater said the company was “still experimenting with it” and next year we got Feed the Swarm. In 2021, he released an article on changes to the mechanical color pie where he explained the adjustment.
“We’ve started allowing black to destroy enchantments. It’s clearly third in the ability, after white and green, and it usually comes with an additional cost Often it only works on opponents’ enchantments,” he wrote.
This change is great news for anyone with a mono-black MTG commander deck (like me). Black can wipe the board of creatures all day long, but not being able to remove other problematic permanents like enchantments or artifacts can be a real problem for the color.
Just yesterday, Rosewater reaffirmed Wizards’ position that “black should be worse than white and green at enchantment removal”. This is no Abolish or Krosan Grip, but it is pretty darn solid, all the same.
If you want to read some more words about Magic: The Gathering, check out our guides to the best MTG Arena decks and all currently working MTG Arena codes.
Source: Wargamer
