Is deckbuilding a science or an art? Is precise, mathematical calculation the key to a killer creation, or are creativity and intuition more important? Perhaps it's a combination of both. Looking at things from a strictly black or white standpoint, cards are often simply better than others. For example, Lightning Bolt is better than Shock in just about every conceivable situation. Why play with Air Elemental when you can use Morphling instead?

These are examples of preferring one card over another based on pure logic. In other cases, the aforementioned creativity and intuition of the player must be used. Should Disenchant go into a blue-white deck, or is it worth one more mana to run Dismantling Blow? Does Hibernation fit in the sideboard of black-blue, or is Slay better? These types of questions are rarely straightforward, and answering them correctly is the sign of a talented deckbuilder.

Still, that logical, calculating philosophy that many deckbuilders use can often cause some cards to be overlooked. It's all too easy for someone to say "Why should I play _______ when I can just play _______, which is obviously better?" Even though a card may perform a task better than another, the deck itself may benefit more from using the supposedly "weaker" version.

To give you an idea of what this concept is all about, take a look at Mutilate. Sure, it's fairly impressive. It's the kind of card you'd love to open in a draft. But for Constructed? Now you're probably thinking "Why would I use this when I can play Pernicious Deed?" After all, Mutilate is very conditional. It requires you to be playing one color for it to be truly efficient. Plus, it doesn't have the added benefit of removing artifacts and enchantments like Deed, which can prove to be incredibly beneficial against otherwise hard to handle cards like Circle of Protection: Black or Static Orb. As is the case with many new cards, the true efficiency of Mutilate presents itself once the entire set is taken into consideration.

In case you haven't heard, Torment is "The Black Set". That means lots of powerful black cards, which will make monoblack a viable deck once again. Additionally, there are many cards in Torment that are only as powerful as the number of swamps you have in play. In order to maximize their efficiency, you're going to have to deprogram yourself from the multi-colored configurations you've been used to thanks to Invasion Block. In some cases, you're not going to want to splash green for Deed, or splash red for Flametongue Kavu and Void, because it would weaken the Torment cards in your deck. Still, you're probably going to want a mass removal spell. See where this is going?

So if a splash is out of the question, and you're going to run as many swamps as possible, Mutilate suddenly becomes the best tool for the job. For the same cost as Wrath of God in white, it should be able to kill off every creature on the table. Granted, it's a bit more conditional than Wrath which kills off everything, no questions asked, but this can actually be beneficial. For example, you can play Phyrexian Scuta with kicker on turn four, and follow up on the next turn with Mutilate. It's very likely that your opponent's board, which may contain Elves, Elephants, Shadowmage Infiltrators or Meddling Mages will be cleared, while the 5/5 Scuta survives the -4/-4 wave of destruction.

Perhaps the best thing about Mutilate is that it finally gives black a way to get around some of the more annoying creatures that have become popular. Since Alpha and Terror, black has always been restricted from killing off its own creatures. Nekrataal and Dark Banishing still saw a respectable amount of play, but they still couldn't touch black creatures. Fast forward to 2002, and some of the best creatures are black, and therefore, hard for black to kill off. Shadowmage Infiltrator is blockable, but removing it outright would prove to be quite hard for monoblack. Spiritmonger is even worse, since even Pernicious Deed can't send it to the graveyard. But Mutilate can. Finally, black has a way to slaughter creatures of all colors and sizes, provided that the black mage has enough swamps in play. There's also the added benefit of immediate effect, while the Deed often needs a turn of setup time.

Obviously Mutilate works exceptionally well in a strictly black deck, but it can also prove to be very useful in a two-color deck. For example, in a green-black deck, Mutilate won't be a board sweeping, kill-everything-off kind of spell because there won't be as many swamps in play. A deck can be built to use this to its advantage, using some of green's best fatties to survive the smaller Mutilate, while the player on the other side of the table loses his or her army.

Imagine that one side of the table boasts an army of Spiritmonger and two Phyrexian Scutas, while the other side of the table contains a zoo of Birds, Elves and Elephants. The black mage now casts Mutilate, which is only -3/-3 because the deck's land configuration has both forests and swamps. The smaller creatures will die off, and the bigger creatures will smash through the empty battlefield and onto victory. In this case, the fact that Mutilate is weakened by building a deck as two colors actually proved to be beneficial, because the spell was not powerful enough to kill off the larger creatures. In fact, you could even throw four Pernicious Deeds into the deck, giving your deck a strong strategy of one-sided mass destruction spells.

The bottom line here is that black is back, and in a big way. Monoblack will be a force in Standard for the first time in years, and two-colored decks that use black will be given new tools to work with, but will also be forced to adapt. The one constant with these decks is that Mutilate will often be used as an efficient, creature removal centerpiece. Why not use Deed? Because sometimes, Deed just isn't good enough.