It does so by: Killing things efficiently Summoning powerful/under-costed creatures Drawing extra cards Using the graveyard as a resource Forcing the opponent to discard key cards Top Cards These are some of the best black cards in today's competitive Standard
Even if it does get removed, since it's played in decks that are often reanimating, this hardly matters since you can just bring it back from the graveyard again
A lot of green decks are going to find ways to modify creatures (using the definition of the mechanic modify, of course), but in a pinch you can use Silkguard to modify them anyway
Similarly, if you cut cards like Top and Library of Leng, Urza's Saga effectively does nothing
Burn your way to victory with the Blazing Volcano theme deck
Anyway, back to the article, and those juicy Japanese Pokemon cards