The 47 Best Black Cards in Magic Ranked

Last updated on April 30, 2026

Damnation | Illustration by Kev Walker

Ah, the color black. A color that will do anything to get extreme power, and a crucial color in Constructed MTG formats right from the beginning of the game with its discard, removal, card draw, and impactful demons. Dimir () was an extremely competitive Constructed color pair for many years, mono-black decks had their time in the sun on several occasions, and there was even a period known as “Black Summer” when black decks dominated the scene.

Today I'm showing black in all its splendor, highlighting the best black cards that MTG has to offer. I want to especially consider the historical value of these cards in Constructed decks, whether in Commander or in Legacy/Vintage.

Without further ado, let's see what I have for you today!

What Are Black Cards in MTG?

Doomsday | Illustration by Noah Bradley

Black cards include any card with a mono-black color identity. That means cards like Toxrill, the Corrosive are out since they have blue mana in the activation cost. That also means no gold or hybrid cards that contain black mana.

Flavor-wise, black cards show the boundaries you'll push in order to obtain power and achieve your goals. You’ll see themes like paying life to cast spells, sacrificing creatures to get their energy, and outright killing the enemy. It’s common to see cursed monsters or artifacts in black too. Typical creature types in black are zombies and demons, but also rogues and assassins.

#47. Doomsday

Doomsday is the weirdest card here, but it’s a powerful one-card combo. You get to trade in your library and graveyard to turn your next (last) five draws into your best. How you’re going to use Doomsday varies with the format (Cube, Vintage, EDH), but you’ll usually want a card like Laboratory Maniac or Thassa's Oracle and draw spells like Gush or Gitaxian Probe.

#46. The Sibsig Ceremony

The Sibsig Ceremony is a mono-black enchantment with a niche ability to build around. This enchantment reduces the cost of creatures, but destroys them as they enter, replacing them with a 2/2 Zombie Druid token. Now, why would you want to do that? Well, this cost reduction means you can cast a ton of cheap creatures for 2/2s, and all the aristocratic benefits that come from creatures dying. Cards like Myrkul, Lord of Bones, Teysa Karlov, and The Meathook Massacre have amazing interactions with The Sibsig Ceremony.

#45. Bolas's Citadel

Bolas's Citadel is a fixed Ad Nauseam, so to speak. This amazing black artifact lets you play cards from the top of your library, and since it’s an artifact, you can cheat it into play with cards like Tinker or Daretti, Scrap Savant. It's one of the few cards labeled as a Game Changer in EDH.

#44. Dauthi Voidwalker

Dauthi Voidwalker is a 3/2 with shadow for 2 mana, which is basically unblockable given that your opponents are probably not playing shadow creatures. What’s more, it exiles cards from graveyards and you may play one of them for free later. It puts pressure on opponents while messing with their graveyard plans at the same time.

#43. Phyrexian Arena

Many cards can be described as a “personal Howling Mine” since they draw two cards instead of one each turn. Phyrexian Arena is one of those, and you’ll play it whenever your game plan is to get ahead on resources, like to get an edge in midrange mirrors or to beat control decks.

#42. Deadly Dispute

Deadly Dispute allows you to sacrifice a creature or artifact and draw two cards. This card is king in grindy formats to the point of being banned in Pauper, countering removal and interacting with artifact lands. It’s efficient enough that you can play it in Rakdos sacrifice decks in many formats and in artifact-based EDH decks.

#41. Blood Artist

Blood Artist is an aristocrat’s best friend, so to speak. There’s nothing more that you want than to drain people for 1 life each time a creature dies, and it doesn’t even need to be your creature. One of the best black creatures, Blood Artist is an important source of repeated lifegain triggers for the decks that want it, as well as a win condition.

#40. Day of Black Sun

Day of Black Sun is an incredibly versitle board wipe. Common board wipes like Damnation either set you back or force you to build a deck low on creatures. With Day of Black Sun, you can destroy cheap, aggressive creatures at a reasonable cost while leaving your larger threats untouched. It’s particualrly good at stopping token and aggro decks.

#39. Mirkwood Bats

Mirkwood Bats is a centerpiece in many token/treasure decks. Many black-based decks can create a hefty amount of Treasure tokens, and just creating and sacrificing two Treasures deals 4 damage to everybody else. This is a pretty scary card to see alongside any real token synergies.

#38. Dark Confidant

Although it’s fallen from favor, Dark Confidant is a premier 2-drop, 2-power creature in black thanks to the ability to draw an extra card on your turns. Power creep and removal spells have caught up with “Bob”, but it’s still a powerful creature and can shine in the right metagame.

#37. Gurmag Angler

Gurmag Angler is a virtual vanilla 5/5 creature that can be cast for as low as thanks to the delve ability. You’ll usually play Angler in aggressive decks with a self-mill component. Paying 3 mana for it is already a fine rate; just be wary of multiples in your opening hand.

#36. Braids, Arisen Nightmare

Braids, Arisen Nightmare is a very popular black aristocrats commander, being the automatic payoff for having junk you already wanted to get rid of. With Braids around, cards like Hopeless Nightmare and Tithing Blade become extra powerful: They do something good when they enter, and you can sacrifice them to punish your opponents. Plus, being able to warp a game around your commander is good, and you’ll be drawing a bunch of cards while triggering sacrifice synergies.

#35. Grave Titan

The Titan cycle deserves a top spot among MTG’s most powerful cards, and Grave Titan is no exception. Cast it to get a 6/6 deathtouch alongside two 2/2 zombie tokens, a total of 10/10 worth of stats from one card. Each time it attacks, you make more zombies. It’s one of the best black creatures to play in a zombie deck, and it’s a good card to play in midrange and recursion decks.

#34. Ad Nauseam

Ad Nauseam is a risky way to draw a bunch of cards in a single turn to find your combo pieces or whatever else you need. In decks like Ad Nauseam + Tendrils, the card is used either to get enough storm count by drawing free spells or to find your Tendrils of Agony win condition.

#33. Super Shredder

Big creatures and Voltron strategies tend to be in other colors, but Super Shredder can get pumped to an extreme size efficiently. Permanents leaving the battlefield is such an easy trigger to build around. Sacrificing Treasure from Pitiless Plunderer, getting additional card draw from Obsessive Pursuit, and The Ozolith for insurance are all great cards to use here.

#32. Torment of Hailfire

Torment of Hailfire is a way to turn a lot of mana into a win condition. Especially in EDH, since it applies to each opponent. Whatever your infinite mana combo is, Torment of Hailfire finishes the game off. You can even get nice results with excess mana from Cabal Coffers or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx.

#31. K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth

K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth has a unique ability that makes them a “glass cannon commander”. The main thing with K’rrik is to aggressively spend your life total to cast black spells, which in turn leads to lifegain. You gain more life to trade for black mana, repeating the process enough times to win. For example, you might combine Bolas's Citadel and Aetherflux Reservoir, giving you card advantage and life to offset the life loss, or maybe have reanimate loops using Chainer, Dementia Master and Gray Merchant of Asphodel.

#30. Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber 

Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber starts off with a slightly worse Phyrexian Arena considering the amount of life you pay, but this room enchantment is more complete. You can follow it with your own 6/6 flying demon after unlocking Ritual Chamber, and at that point, you’re draining your opponent for 2 every turn. It works pretty well in multiples, too, since the demon from one room qualifies for the Annex of another.

#29. Entomb

Reanimator decks need a key fatty in their graveyard, and there’s no better card to do the job than Entomb. Having your opponent entomb a key card like Griselbrand is scary. Buried Alive and creatures like Oriq Loremage do a similar job, but no one’s as mana-efficient as Entomb.

#28. Blasphemous Edict

Blasphemous Edict is close to an auto-include card in EDH as a very efficient sweeper that you can cast for as little as – and unlike Blasphemous Act, its regular mana cost is just 5. The ability to just sweep the board and follow it up with your own creature on the same turn is strong. It’s naturally weaker in 1v1 formats, as boards usually won’t have 13 creatures on them, so cards like Damnation become better options.

#27. Damnation

Damnation is Wrath of God in black, and the ability to destroy all creatures for 4 mana is precious in decks like Dimir control since you don’t need to splash white for this effect. Black’s got a few sweepers based on toughness, but none of them are unconditional like Damnation.

#26. Bitterblossom + Bitterbloom Bearer

Bitterblossom is like a mini planeswalker with a single activated ability. You can produce a flying 1/1 faerie token each turn and lose a life, and the flexibility of what you can do with it is huge. Bitterblossom can be the base of a faerie typal deck, add fliers to the board, pressure control decks, and synergize with ninjutsu creatures, all in one package. Bitterbloom Bearer is a creature version of the enchantment, but provides flexibility with flash.

#25. Infernal Grasp

A 2-mana unconditional creature removal spell with the low downside of losing 2 life. Infernal Grasp isn't a synergy piece by any means, but it's one of the best Doom Blade variants ever printed.

#24. Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER / Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel

Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER is a solid and popular aristocrat piece. This provides a sacrifice outlet as well as a drain trigger, all at a very curve-friendly cost of three. In dedicated builds with cards like Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and Umbral Collar Zealot, you can easily lose four creatures to transform into Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel, which adds even more to the aristocrat strategy with huge card draw, and permanent, stackable life drain emblems.

#23. Gray Merchant of Asphodel

Gray Merchant of Asphodel, or Gary, is a creature that dominated its Standard format. Gary was a reason to run mono-black decks with lots of permanents on board. It gets better in EDH since you’ll drain all opponents at once. Gary’s best in heavy black decks running life drain synergies or alongside other drain effects like Sanguine Bond and Ayara, First of Locthwain.

#22. Overlord of the Balemurk

Overlord of the Balemurk is a nice value and self-mill card that has seen play in many Magic formats, from Standard to Modern. The fact that it sits on the battlefield and can be flickered is invaluable. Plus, it’s not half bad as a 5/5 creature that can Raise Dead when it enters and when it attacks.

#21. Ardyn, the Usurper

Ardyn, the Usurper is one of the newest reanimator targets. Once in play, you get even more reanimator power with this card’s Starscourge ability. Giving haste to a reanimated creature can be huge, especially when paired with cards like Sower of Discord, Lord of the Void, or even Jumbo Cactuar.

#20. Reanimate + Animate Dead

Black is famous for the cheap reanimation effects it provides, and those are among the best. An easy way to get an edge in a game is to pay a single mana to Reanimate a big threat like Grave Titan, even if you lose 6 life while doing it. Modern MTG asks you to pay 4+ mana to bring a creature from the graveyard to the battlefield, so paying only 1-2 mana is a huge deal.

#19. Archon of Cruelty

Since it's one of the best ETB effects on black cards, Archon of Cruelty is one of the best reanimation targets printed since Griselbrand. You won’t draw seven cards like Griselbrand does, but if your deck needs variety in reanimation targets, go for it! Archon generates card advantage and impacts the board when it ETBs or attacks, just like the Titan cycle.

#18. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is a very popular commander since you have lots of small abilities that combine to make a very attractive package. It’s a free sacrifice outlet in decks like aristocrats, and it can proliferate, draw a bunch of cards, and remove small creatures all by itself.

#17. The Meathook Massacre

Part sweeper, part aristocrats, and even part black devotion card, The Meathook Massacre is the complete package. You sweep the board and immediately gain life, and then it sits there for the rest of the game, slowly draining your opponents to their death.

#16. Hymn to Tourach

There’s a reason WotC doesn’t print “discard at random” effects anymore, and that’s because it’s very frustrating to play against. Hymn to Tourach is efficient because your opponents can’t choose what they’re discarding, so they can’t get rid of the worst cards from their hand. You’ll see it played the most in Legacy and Cube, since the effect doesn’t scale that well in EDH. In Modern, the closest you can get is the referential kicker on Tourach, Dread Cantor.

#15. Dismember

Technically a colorless spell in spirit, since the colored pips are all Phyrexian mana, Dismember does a few things right. Even in black decks, you can cast it for less than 3 mana when needed. It gives a creature -5/-5, so it gets around indestructible and can shrink bigger creatures. Add to it that you can play removal in a mono-blue deck and you get a hell of a card.

#14. Fatal Push

Fatal Push has changed what a 1-mana black removal spell can do. You can destroy any creature with a mana value of 2 or less, and together with fetch lands you can remove any creature with a MV up to 4. Black didn’t have a cheap and reliable removal spell like Lightning Bolt or Path to Exile before this was printed, and Push revolutionzed black removal when it was printed.

#13. The Soul Stone

The Soul Stone is a wonderful black utility artifact in the bookends of a game. Early on, you get solid black mana production with the added benefit of being indestructible. This ramp is great, but this card comes with an even better benefit in the late game. You can spend mana and exile a creature to harness The Soul Stone and create your own reanimator engine.

#12. Dark Ritual

Generating 3 mana for the cost of 1 seems innocuous at first, and Dark Ritual is card disadvantage. The ritual effect it provides is really powerful, though: This is one of the best black instants in the game. It was used it MTG’s early years to play 3- and 4-MV cards ahead of time, but now the main application is in storm engines to generate enough mana to play a card like Ad Nauseam or Dark Petition.

#11. Griselbrand

Griselbrand is at the peak of possible reanimation targets, at least in mono-black. Reanimate it to draw 7-14 cards in a single turn. With so many cards in hand, it’s fairly easy to cast some rituals and some free spells to win. Not many cards allow you that much quick power, and it’s easy to label Griselbrand as one of the best creatures ever, despite being restricted to reanimator decks.

#10. Liliana of the Veil

Liliana of the Veil was a former “best planeswalker of all time”, and proved its worth for over a decade. This amazing black planeswalker is a powerful turn-2 play via mana accelerants, its +1 activation attacks your opponent's hand, and alternating between the discard ability and the sacrifice ability generates a lot of resource advantage. The way you win is either by supporting your attacking creatures or ultimating Liliana.

#9. Grief

Grief is basically a 3/2 menace that has a discard effect attached. Like in all the Modern Horizons 2 elemental cycle, you can evoke it by pitching a black card to quickly disrupt an enemy without spending mana. The real power of cards like Grief comes when you combine it with blink effects like Ephemerate, which allow you to get two ETB triggers and keep the creature in play.

#8. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse

I didn’t think this card would have that much impact when I first saw it. After playing with and against the card, I quickly realized how much of a powerhouse Sheoldred, the Apocalypse can be. It stabilizes the board, contributes lifegain triggers, and deals damage to opponents in your aggressive decks. It quickly became one of the more popular black commanders, and one of the most played black creatures in formats like Standard and Pioneer.

#7. Toxic Deluge

Toxic Deluge fits the bill of a cheaper and more flexible/effective sweeper. You can wipe almost anything for 3 mana, ranging from a Damnation to a Plague Wind. You’ll tune the sweeper by paying life, so you can allow your 4/4 to live while sweeping small creatures only, which you can’t do as easily with a traditional Wrath of God.

This is among the best board wipes ever printed, especially in formats where the life total starts above 20. It was even included as a New-to-Modern card in Modern Horizons 3 despite originally being a Commander card.

#6. Orcish Bowmasters

Orcish Bowmasters is one of the most influential creature designs in recent years. Just having this card in the metagame invalidates x/1 creatures, and it helps to fight decks that go wide with tokens. The design was probably intended to fight decks that draw many cards, but it quickly became a meta-warping card that’s often in ban-worthy discussions.

#5. Yawgmoth’s Will

Yawgmoth's Will provides a ton of card advantage by allowing you to replay the cards in your graveyard once more. This is a much-needed effect in storm decks since you need spell redundancy and a big combo turn. It’s usually best paired with Dark Ritual or Lotus Petal since they’re cheap effects that generate mana and raise the storm count. It’s not unlikely to win shortly after you cast this card.

#4. Necropotence

This card took a while for competitive MTG players to realize how utterly broken its effect is. When Necropotence decks got traction, they quickly became the best option by far. For just 3 mana, the Necropotence player can pay a chunk of life in a single turn to draw a bunch of cards. Necropotence is black's best card-drawing effect, and that’s precisely what combo decks are looking for.

#3. Thoughtseize

Thoughtseize is the most played discard spell because it costs a single mana and the effect is unconditional, unlike its brethren Duress and Inquisition of Kozilek. The loss of life is acceptable, but it can be a liability when facing aggro and burn decks. Even with the downside, the benefit you get from information and making them discard a key spell is worth the life loss, and control/combo decks hate to see a turn-1 Thoughtseize.

#2. Vampiric Tutor

Vampiric Tutor is the best instant-speed tutor and can be cast for only 1 mana, but it has a little downside: You don’t put the card directly in your hand. It’s commonly used together with Sensei's Divining Top so that you can draw the card you just tutored. Being able to get any card you want is essential to combo decks, especially in singleton formats like cEDH.

#1. Demonic Tutor

Demonic Tutor can get you any card from your deck without any card disadvantage or life payment. WotC realized since the beginning of the game that this was a very powerful effect to print, and because of that great tutors are somewhat scarce. The flexibility of paying 2 mana to get one of your combo pieces and potentially win is what puts this tutor at the top of the list.

Best Black Card Payoffs and Synergies

Black in MTG is a color that works well with itself. This is done by MTG designers to show that the color is corporatist and selfish, and black is one of the colors where these definitions best apply. A good reason for going mono-black is that black can cover almost all bases well (except artifact destruction). Here are some incentives for it:

Cards like Corrupt, Cabal Coffers, Mutilate, and Defile want you to play as many swamps as possible, so their efficiency is maximized in mono-black decks. Or make sure your dual lands are shocks, or lands with the swamp type.

The devotion mechanic is really strong in black with payoffs like Gray Merchant of Asphodel and enablers like Phyrexian Obliterator, Ayara, First of Locthwain, and Doomsday Excruciator, just to cite a few.

Lifegain and life drain are features that many black enchantments have, like Sanguine Bond. Mono-black cards like South Wind Avatar can support these strategies, but it’s most often used in sacrifice strategies with Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat, or with commanders like Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose. With Bloodthirsty Conqueror, you can add more redundancy to this life drain combo.

What Is Black Good at in MTG?

Among the effects that stand out the most in black's portion of the color pie are creature removal spells, tutor effects, targeted discard effects, and explosive mana generation through rituals. This is why cards like Doom Blade, Thoughtseize, and Dark Ritual are so iconic and integral to Constructed.

Tutors like Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor are essential for assembling your combo pieces in older formats like Legacy and Vintage, as well as cEDH.

In multicolor decks, black typically plays a support color role offering creature removal to colors that don’t have access to it like blue and green. Black complements white in card advantage and creature recursion and adds to red’s aggressiveness with life drain effects and unconditional removal.

Black has powerful planeswalkers that generate a resource advantage and the ability to trade cards for life, which are traits that midrange decks appreciate very much. Think of cards like Sorin the Mirthless, and Liliana of the Veil. Cards like Phyrexian Arena are also staples across formats, allowing you to have game against slower decks while slowly burying them in card advantage.

Reanimation is a famous and quite powerful black archetype with cards like Entomb, Griselbrand, and Animate Dead.

Let's also highlight the potential to do completely unfair and broken things like drawing dozens of cards from Necropotence or Yawgmoth's Bargain. That, or being able to recast all your cards from your graveyard via Yawgmoth's Will.

Graveyard hate is also an area in which black excels. You have staples like Cling to Dust, Leyline of the Void, or cards like Bojuka Bog or Crypt Incursion that will also get the job done.

Finally, there’s storm combo. Black is one of the main engines in generating fast mana via Dark Ritual or Cabal Ritual, and black cards can cast spells from your graveyard all over again by using Yawgmoth's Will. Or, you can use Ad Nauseam and finish the game with Tendrils of Agony. Even in EDH, you can go off when you have Professor Onyx in play and cast or copy a bunch of instants or sorceries.

Wrap Up

Grief | Illustration by Nicholas Gregory

Black is the color of selfishness and ruthlessness, a color whose cards reflect the extremes of what someone is willing to do to achieve their goals. It’s often mistaken for evil, which indeed many black cards are. To match the game’s flavor, this ruthlessness translates into kill spells, zombie hordes, and demonic pacts.

Black has always had its share of powerful cards throughout MTG’s history, be it powerful Alpha cards like Dark Ritual and Demonic Tutor or more recent cards like Grief and Archon of Cruelty.

What about you, black mages? Are you more of a “kill everything in sight” player or a “tutor your combo” player? What didn’t make the list? Let me know in the comments or let's talk on Discord. While you're at it, check out The Daily Upkeep newsletter to stay up to date on all the latest MTG news.

Want to see the best cards in other colors? We've got them here: White, Blue, Red, Green.

Stay safe, folks, and thanks for reading!