I've been excited to share with you the White and Blue Underrated $1 Rares, but I'm hopeful that Black will be the best of these three so far. Lots of ways to draw cards or "draw cards" through putting cards into our hand and losing life. Black can be seen as the greedy color. It does whatever it takes to get ahead. So where would Black's weaknesses be? Well, exactly that - It does whatever it takes. Let's talk about how Black has underrated cards less than $1 and still gets advantage!
Oriq Loremage
Oriq Loremage($0.41) is a card that is highly underrated and under priced. I say this because we can tutor for any card into our graveyard. This can be very powerful when we can interact with our graveyard. For example, commanders that care about this are Araumi of the Dead Tide by putting a certain creature in our graveyard or The Gitrog Monster by putting a land into our graveyard and letting us draw a card.
If we care about instants and sorceries, we do get to put a +1/+1 counter on Oriq Loremage. It's already a 3/3 and adding counters would be a plus (no pun intended). A Commander that cares about instants an sorceries in our graveyard would be Dralnu, Lich Lord. This gives our instants and sorceries Flashback. Yes, we'll need to exile them afterwards, but maybe we need a boardwipe like Damnation or a removal spell like Murder. Oriq Loremage is one to consider putting in your decks that care about your graveyard.
Dreadhorde Invasion
Dreadhorde Invasion ($0.33) is a budget version of Bitterblossom($45.86). We get a creature at our upkeep and lose 1 life by doing so. Dreadhorde Invasion is a bit different. It has Amass 1 and this means we will be adding +1/+1 counters to the zombie we make. Well, we can always sacrifice the 1/1 zombie we get or block with it. This way we're always making a creature at our upkeep.
Meren of Clan Nel Toth wants our creatures to die. When they do, we make an experience counter. So our 1/1 zombies dying can help add those counters up fast. This gets easier with a sac outlet and that way every turn we are consistently adding an experience counter.
Command the Dreadhorde
Command the Dreadhorde ($0.79) can be an amazing yet costly way to bring creatures and planeswalkers from any graveyard to our battlefield. We just have to pay the 6 mana (which is super cheap in my opinion) and pay the mana value of those we choose with our life. This isn't a big deal if we're grabbing a lot of cheap mana value creatures and planeswalkers or if we have a lifegain strategy with our deck.
I mean, I think this could go in any deck that has Black in it. It's that good. Rise of the Dark Realms is $14. This lets you get all creatures from all graveyards for 9 mana and does not cost you any loss of life. I think I'd honestly pick Command the Dreadhorde over this one. Maybe we only want/need a 5 creatures out of the 20 in all graveyards and their mana value isn't that much either.
Life is a resource and Command the Dreadhorde helps us remember that. we save 3 mana compare to Rise of the Dark Realms and we can pick what we get back. Maybe the budget option is better for you as well.
Extinction Event
Extinction Event ($0.84) is a powerful board wipe. It can exile even or odd converted mana cost creatures. If you were to choose even, you would be able to exile all creatures tokens. Creature tokens like a 1/1 White Soldier have 0 CMC! Token decks will be the most vulnerable to this card. We could choose odd for Extinction Event and target Obosh, the Preypiecer decks. This heavily rely on odd CMC cards. Either one of the choices will be powerful and impact your game.
Dark Tutelage
Dark Tutelage ($0.68) is a great budget alternative to Dark Confidant ($29). They both accomplish the same thing which is to get an additional card into our hand at our upkeep and we lose life equal to the CMC. The only difference, besides price and mana cost of the cards, is Dark Tutelage is an enchantment. This lowers the likelihood of it being destroyed to board wipes like Wrath of God.
You could save $28 by picking up this budget version and more of a chance to keep it longer in your games of EDH with it being an enchantment!
Boneyard Parley
Boneyard Parley ($0.24) is Fact or Fiction type of card. We exile up to 5 creatures from all graveyards and an opponent makes 2 piles of the selected cards and we choose one pile to go onto our battlefield. For 7 mana, this can be truly devastating when we choose powerful creatures like Avenger of Zendikar, Consecrated Sphinx, or even someone's commander!
I think this could go in any deck that has Black in it. Even if it's not a graveyard focused deck. This has great potential later in the game and when it costs 7 mana, it will most likely be cast later in the game and that's ok.
When choosing an opponent with this card, we can make deals. Maybe all 5 of the creatures are in 1 pile and we later owe that player a favor. Nothing wrong with making deals in EDH! If you need/want to make more deals in your Black decks, try this one out.
Gruesome Menagerie
Gruesome Menagerie ($0.13) is highly underrated an underrated in my opinion. When put into the right deck, this is a powerhouse. Teysa Karlov loves whenever a creature we control dies because we get twice that amount of "dies" triggers. So being able to bring low CMC creatures back to our battlefield for 5 mana.
Great creatures to target with Gruesome Menagerie, with Teysa Karlov as our commander, would be: Grim Haruspex, Zulaport Cutthroat, or Doomed Traveler! Grim Haruspex gets us reliable card draw and that is important in any deck. Zulaport Cutthroat will help us deal damage overtime and that will add up quick! And finally, Doomed traveler has a "dies" trigger. This will be doubled with Teysa Karlov and get us 2 1/1 spirits.
Gruesome Menagerie will definitely work for any graveyard deck and decks that sacrifice their creatures often. If you have one of these themes or types of decks, you may consider adding this great budget rare.
Null Profusion
Null Profusion ($0.50) is a card that, initially, may seem bad. We have to skip our draw step and have a max hand size of 2. The plus is, whenever we cast a spell, we draw a card. This card excels in Damia, Sage of Stone. We skip our draw step anyways with it, and at our upkeep we draw the difference from our hand to 7. So having a max hand size of 2 with Null Profusion is actually really good for us! This means each turn we draw at least 5 cards.
Does this card go in every black deck? I don't think so. If you can take advantage of the "down sides" of this card, then absolutely run this in your deck.
For $0.50, it won't hurt your budget to even try it in your deck(s) and it's also 6 mana. So by turn 6, or sooner, we can do very powerful things!
Conclusion
Black gives a very different feel of their less than $1 rares and in a great way. Like I mentioned at the beginning, Black is focused on power whatever the cost (even budget options). I can't wait for Red and sharing what great rares they to offer.
Thank you for your time! If you'd like more budget content (EDH Deck Techs, Budget Alternatives, etc.), be sure to check out my YouTube channel.
I'll see you all in the next one. Uuuuuuh peace!
