Struggling to Stand: A History of Black

Published 2 years ago by Rein Article Views 4,817 Estimated Reading Time 7 minutes

1. Introduction

Greetings and salutations! If you’re like me, Black speaks to you. Within Black you may find the Metal Empire and it’s allies waging a war on the Digimon Card Game to establish its forward base of operations. The D-Brigade launches ambush on unaware foes and an Unidentified Virus is being propagated behind the scenes to launch untold devastation. And, when the hour is bleak, the Royal Knights will stand beside the Metal Empire!

Welcome to my overview of Black in the Digimon Card Game!

 

2. History of Black

a. BT1 – New Evolution

Right out of the gate, Black did not exist at all, along with Purple. Unlike Purple, this is going to haunt Black moving forward.

 

b. BT2 – Ultimate Power

Here, we’re introduced to Black for the first time, with barely enough choices of cards to make a deck. They attempted to supplement this with the Tournament Pack Vol.1 Promotional, which included an entire additional Diaboromon line. Unfortunately for some EN regions, the Digimon Card Game had not made it to their areas until BT4 – Great Legend, and this pack has been retired. Without reprints, this Promo Diaboromon line has become some of the most expensive unique cards you can possibly get. The P-016 Diaboromon alone is sitting at $90.99 at the time of this article, making it the number one most expensive unique effect card in this game.

P-016 Diaboromon

BT2 – Ultimate Power is also the start of a trend where Black cards are one of the only Secret Rares available.

So, what do we have?

For unique powers, Black gets access to &ltReboot> and &ltDe-Digivolve&gt. &ltReboot&gt unsuspends your Digimon during the opponent’s Unsuspend Phase, making it untargetable for &ltPiercing&gt attacks, and also allows &ltBlockers&gt to still be &ltBlockers&gt after attacking. Next is &ltDe-Digivolve&gt, Black’s “removal”. &ltDe-Digivolve&gt trashes the top cards of an opponent’s Digimon until it has no sources left, or has reached Level 3.  &ltDe-Digivolve&gt gains rulings in BT4 – Great Legend that interacts with &ltDigi-Burst&gt that can results in to complete Trashing of a Digimon, but &ltDigi-Burst&gt also usually results in making &ltDe-Digivolve&gt a completely functionless power. Another feature is the proliferation of &ltBlocker&gt throughout the entire color. While most colors only have access to a couple &ltBlockers&gt in Level 4, Black has access to them at every level, with several options at each level.

Upfront, we have the Black Unidentified, or more commonly, the Black Diaboromon deck list. This is the first “tribal” type deck we see in Black of many. Thanks to it’s reliance on out-of-print Promo Diaboromon line cards, this is probably the most expensive deck in the entire Digimon Card Game to put together. DigimonCard.IO evaluates this deck at roughly $730. It’s purpose is to fill the niche of “Rookie Rush” strategies by Digivolving to BT2-082 Diaboromon, and produce Diaboromon Tokens with it. You may then overwhelm the target with “Token Rushing” or go into P-016 Diaboromon to build up several &ltSecurity Attack+1&gt’s to break the opponent’s security in one fell swoop. Unfortunately, the requirement to hit Level 6 on two seperate lines made this deck list too slow.

BT2-066 Machinedramon is added. Unfortunately, since its power is based on its 12 play cost [On Play] effect, it’s best suited for multi-color “Mega Zoo” type decks.

This leaves Black with BT2-064 HiAndromon, BT2-065 WarGreymon, and BT2-112 BlackWarGreymon for it’s remaining Level 6 cards to build with. BlackWarGreymon, as of BT2 – Ultimate Power, lacks support in Black to function. It’s better used in Green, which offers many tools to suspend opponent’s Digimon. So the only Black decklist aside from Diaboromon in BT2 – Ultimate Power is WarGreymon, supported by HiAndromon, featuring the &ltReboot&gt/&ltBlocker&gt tech mentioned earlier. Enhanced by &ltJamming&gt and &ltSecurity Attack+1&gt offered by it’s own exclusive line of Greymon and MetalGreymon, it wasn’t necessarily bad, but it’s lack of access to it’s own tech made it a deck list that didn’t offer much power for the memory being spent. Additionally, without hard removal, or ways to counter hard removal, this deck fell to the wayside.

The only Level 7 available for Black at this time is BT2-083 Millenniummon.

At BT2 – Ultimate Power, we begin to see the trend of Black Level 6 cards being made Secret Rare at an unusual frequency compared to other colors, starting with BlackWarGreymon.

 

c. BT3 – Union Impact

This set introduces some interesting power. We first get BT3-019 RagnaLoardmon and the Legend-Arms “tribal”. This tribal can be built into either Black or Red, with the splashing only occurring at Level 6. Because RagnaLoardmon is Red, this deck list inevitably is favored more by Red. In Black, it gains access to a couple instances of &ltDe-Digivolve&gt, and digivolves to Level 7 fairly cheaply, supposing the opponent doesn’t have an “Opponent can’t gain memory unless by Tamer effects” on board. By it’s nature, it’s a top-heavy deck, and is very prone to bricking, despite having BT3-062 Ludomon, which helps with digging for Legend-Arms and RagnaLoardmon whenever it can.

BT3-074 MetalEtemon is introduced, along with its Level 5 counterpart that helps to pull for it. Maybe in the future, with perhaps EX1, which introduces more Etemon cards, this will see some play.

BT3-073 CresGarurumon is also introduced. It’s one of the very few ways Black gets access to that can play other Digimon for free.BT3-075 Craniamon

Finally, there’s BT3-075 Craniamon, and the introduction of Black &ltBlockers&gt as a deck list. Craniamon is &ltBlocker&gt that protects all of your &ltBlockers&gt from being deleted by effects. In a meta run rampant by removal, and also one where Black lacks any substantial access to removal of it’s own, this works amazingly well to stonewall Red and Purple from deleting your digimon with Gaia Force, Trump Sword, Hell’s Gate, Omnimon, and so on. Those other colors rely heavily on their removal to work, so this stone wall works amazingly to choke their strategy. Craniamon’s personal option card BT3-105 Breath of the Gods is also introduced, which grants &ltReboot&gt and also with soft-wall DP Reduction and removal to Hand and Deck type removal, featured by Yellow and Green. Unfortunately, that’s just a 2 cost protection for only one Digimon for one turn. This also makes the card something of a dead card in your hand if you’re not playing against Yellow or Green. It’s Security effect stops the opponent from being able to attack players for the rest of their turn, but doesn’t stop them from attacking Digimon, and having &ltPiercing&gt go through and hit your Security Stack stack anyways. This becomes relevant in BT4 – Great Legend.

The only Level 7 that Black gains access to here is BT3-112 Omnimon Alter-S, which is Secret Rare.

 

d. BT4 – Great Legend / ST5 – Machine Black

Black finally gets to have some fun here with the D-Brigade “tribal”. It got a Commandramon back in BT3, and then another Commandramon in the accompanied starter deck, Machine Black. BT4-063 Commandramon is introduced, which when paired with BT4-071 Tankdramon, begins an engine where you attack with Commandramon, and go digging through your deck to play more Commandramon. Effectively, D-Brigade is Rookie Rush with some juice added to it. The cream on the cake with D-Brigade is what happens once you have 5 D-Brigade units in the Trash. BT4-074 Darkdramon becomes playable from the hand for only 3 cost with &ltRush&gt, and then stacks the top of your deck with 5 D-Brigade units. Finally, there’s the removal option, Dark Roar, which for 3 cost deletes an opponent’s Digimon of 3 cost or less, but you may add 1 cost to that cap for each D-Brigade you have on the field.
BT4-063 Commandramon

The next thing Black starts to look at is it’s own “One Turn Kill” deck list. Using the two new promo cards, P-033 Sunarizamon and P-026 BlackWarGreymon, and BT4-075 Blastmon, you gain access to several attacks amplified by &ltPiercing&gt and &ltSecurity Attack+1&gt’s. The aim is to emulate the OTK deck lists in other colors. Unfortunately, Black still lacks the memory value gains of other colors in this instance, as well as removal. Furthermore, it doesn’t have room for removal protection. Additionally, it requires an expensive setup if the opponent puts any &ltBlockers&gt on the board. As you need a separate Sunarizamon for the &ltPiercing&gt buff, and Blastmon can be blocked by any Digimon.

The only Level 7 added in this set was BT4-090 Chaosmon.

 

3. Conclusion

Black is currently not in a competitive space at this moment. It’s never been 1st place at an Evolution Cup. It’s only a couple of times broken into the top 8. But not to fear! Remember! We have our Unidentified Virus being produced in our secret labs (BT5 – Battle of Omni), and the Royal Knights will soon be here to save our forces from certain annihilation (BT6 – Double Diamond). On top of that, the Cyborg and Machine joint army (EX1 – Classic Collection) will be marching on Christmas! This was the history of Black. My next article will be going over the future of Black.

 


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