One day, Erik Lauer came to talk with me. He was concerned about the color black. Other than blue, which doesn't tend to destroy things, every color had one card type it couldn't destroy. White couldn't destroy lands (well, singular lands), red couldn't destroy enchantments, and green couldn't destroy creatures, but black had two things it couldn't destroy, artifacts and enchantments. Also, red, green, and white can all destroy artifacts, but only green and white could destroy enchantments. His suggestion to fix this issue—what if we let black start destroying enchantments?
I took the idea to the Council of Colors. They were sympathetic with what Erik was saying. It was odd that it was harder to kill enchantments than artifacts, and the fact that three colors could destroy artifacts but only two could destroy enchantments was odd. Letting black have access to enchantment destruction would fix some of these issues, but there was a problem.
The reason we haven't let black have enchantment destruction was partly because we liked the "deal with the devil" enchantments we make in black and didn't want black to be able to easily get rid of them.
What if, someone suggested, we don't let black get rid of its own enchantments but only their opponent's enchantments? We also decided that if we introduced it, we wanted it to be the weakest color at enchantment destruction. This led to the suggestion of allowing black to make the opponent sacrifice enchantments. Okay, let's give it a try. Our first attempt was a card called
Mire in Misery in
Commander (2019 Edition).
It definitely raised a few eyebrows as this was us letting black explore new color pie space, but overall, the effect was pretty weak. (Note that we tend to shoot a little low when exploring new color pie space as we're trying to get a sense of what works.)
Theros Beyond Death is our next foray into this new area for black. Pharika's Libation still forces the opponent to sacrifice a creature or enchantment but now makes it modal so you could choose which card type you want to affect. This will make it a little easier to get rid of a pesky enchantment, although probably not too easy in an enchantment-rich deck (or
Theros Beyond Death Limited).