The 35 Best Black Instants in Magic Ranked

Last updated on April 29, 2024

Dark Ritual | Illustration by Wonchun Choi

Instants are the most flexible card type in Magic because they lack the timing restriction of other cards. You can play them whenever you have priority, whether on your turn or during your opponent’s. This versatile timing is why the best removal spells in a given format are often at instant speed.

Black is a color that knows plenty about decent removal, as killing creatures is a prominent part of its share of the color pie. But black instants can do much more than send creatures to your opponent’s graveyard. There’s incredible card draw, some sneaky tricks, and even some of the most busted cards in the game.

Time to jump in!

What Are Black Instants in Magic?

Village Rites | Illustration by Igor Kieryluk

Black instants are spells with black in their casting cost and the instant card type. This list focuses on mono-black cards, so any Commander deck with black in their color identity can use them.

Black’s instants often focus on killing and sacrificing creatures. Power at any cost and domain over life and death is very much black’s share of the color pie, which is represented well in its instants.

There are two criteria instants must meet to get on this list: efficiency and utility.

Efficiency is super important for Magic cards in general. Why spend 5 mana on Unholy Hunger when you could spend 2 on Infernal Grasp? Grasp lets you hold up additional effects or play a card on your turn and hold it up, whereas Unholy Hunger often consumes your entire turn. Efficient spells also help you trade up in mana.

Likewise, utility matters. If a card is only good in specific situations, can you call it one of the best, especially if that situation rarely arises? Not every card can always be good, and some options are only helpful for specific strategies. But those cards make those strategies, enabling you to do something powerful you wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. If the card doesn't enable a powerful strategy, it must be versatile enough to work in numerous situations.

#35. Ulcerate

Ulcerate is a clean, effective removal spell. It embodies black’s willingness to pay life for power, but that can also make it a rough sell against aggro decks. When playing against mono-red or white weenie, the last thing you want is to take a Lightning Bolt to kill their 1-drop. This kills most early creatures, and it's a combat trick against bigger creatures, so it’s far from useless.

#34. Nurgle’s Conscription

Zombify and similar cards tend to be sorcery speed, so permanent, instant-speed reanimation is a step up. This card can be a heck of a combat trick, reanimating a creature to block. It’s also a piece of graveyard interaction, letting you exile an opponent’s graveyard. That said, needing to reanimate an opponent’s creature is restrictive, especially if you're against a deck running few to no creatures.

#33. Spinning Darkness

Spinning Darkness is an interesting little card I found in Pauper. Spells with “free” casting costs, especially ones that impact the board, have a lot of value. This isn’t the best version; it requires a heavy black deck and won’t be free until the later turns of the game, and exiling cards from your graveyard can be a cost in black. It’s still a solid interactive piece that could massively swing a game in your favor if your opponent thinks you’re dead and out of castable spells.

#32. Village Rites

Getting two cards for one mana isn’t quite Ancestral Recall, but it’s almost kind of close. Sacrificing a creature is a cost black is often happy and willing to pay, thanks to token production and recursive creatures like Gutterbones. There are several variants of sacrifice to draw two, but Village Rites stands out as one of the most efficient.

#31. Soul Shatter

Edicts, or effects that make your opponents sacrifice creatures, have a prominent weakness: Your opponent decides what dies. Edicts aren't good against token decks and don’t always kill the most relevant card on the board. Soul Shatter helps cover that weakness by making your opponents sacrifice their most expensive creature. It won’t always hit the most relevant threat, but you’ll still hit something decent and won’t worry about Raise the Alarm messing up your removal spell.

#30. Defile

Defile is highly efficient, if restrictive. You need to be mono-black for this to have the desired effect, but you’ll get a 1-mana spell that kills most relevant creatures when you do. It’s far from the only spell that wants you to play Swamp tribal, pairing well with cards like Corrupt and Dread Presence for mono-black decks trying to extract value from their simple mana base.

#29. Cut Down

Cut Down is such an interesting removal spell. One-mana removal needs some restriction so it’s not busted, and going off the combined power and toughness of a creature is a brilliant way to go about it. It ensures that this spell kills almost every early threat but also gives room for high-statted cards to slip through. Cut Down’s effectiveness depends heavily on the meta you’re playing in, but in a format of cheap creatures, this is pretty good.

#28. Lethal Scheme

Convoke is a great mechanic that often lets you cast spells for free or at least at a steep discount. Just two creatures make Lethal Scheme an efficient removal spell that’s sometimes free. Making the creatures that convoke this spell connive is the icing on the cake; in an ideal world, you see four fresh cards, but looting once or twice with your removal is still a great deal, especially with black’s ability to utilize its graveyard as an additional resource.

#27. Malicious Affliction

Doom Blade is strong, but not as strong as two Doom Blades! Malicious Affliction is generally a two-for-one, and having the floor be a black-intensive Doom Blade is perfectly acceptable. Black triggers morbid easily between all its removal and sacrifice cards, like Woe Strider and Carrion Feeder, so it’s not a hard threshold to hit.

#26. Withering Boon

Withering Boon is a bit of a color pie break since black isn’t the color of counterspells. And that’s part of what makes this so good. Nobody plays around Essence Scatter in a black deck. Paying 3 life isn’t as costly here as with Ulcerate, as you’ll stop problems well before they happen, and this trades up in mana well. It’s fantastic with the instant-speed removal we’ve looked at to have answers for threats on the board or the stack.

#25. Feign Death

Thanks to the Modern Rakdos Scam deck, everybody can see how powerful Feign Death and other versions of this effect like Undying Malice and Malakir Rebirth are. It takes a bit of work to set these up; you want something as powerful as Grief and Fury to exploit these cards. They are also fun tricks in EDH that allow you to wipe the board at instant speed and retain your best creature or save your commander from spot removal. You come out on top after your black board wipe and bury your opponents.

#24. Hostile Negotiations

Fact or Fiction is an amazing card, and Hostile Negotiations gives it a black spin. It creates an interesting little subgame as you show cards to your opponent, forcing them to choose between the devil they know and the mysteries of your face-down cards. In some black decks, filled with reanimation and Raise Dead effects, chucking three cards into the graveyard and three into your hand can even be the same as drawing all six.

#23. Hero’s Downfall

Sometimes, you need a hero, but every hero falls. Hero's Downfall is such a simple card. Three mana to kill pretty much anything black’s slice of the color pie lets it kill is efficient and clean. It’s not broken but trades even or up on mana in most games. It’s a quintessential black removal spell that might not be as good as when it was introduced but is still a solid option if you’re as worried about planeswalkers as you are creatures.

#22. Surgical Extraction

Surgical Extraction is the most over-sideboarded in Magic. I assure you, it’s not as good as you think to take the remaining three Thoughtseizes from the Jund deck. This card is incredible against combo decks, especially with hand disruption like Thoughtseize. Playing against a deck like Doomsday or Indomitable Creativity and removing their marquee card puts them in a bind. It’s not guaranteed to win you the game but forces your opponent to be more creative in how they proceed.

#21. Slaughter Pact

While every color has a Pact, it feels like a particularly black effect to seize power now and pay the consequences later. Slaughter Pact kills pretty much anything for no mana upfront, and paying isn’t a particularly egregious cost. It can be a little risky, especially early in the game, but it’s generally solid. Plus, if you win the game the turn you played the Pact, you never have to worry about that cost.

#20. Infernal Grasp

Infernal Grasp is one of the best 2-mana removal spells black has to offer. It’s a sharp upgrade over Doom Blade; paying 2 life is well worth the upside of killing anything. There’s not much more to say. It just kills everything for 2 mana and 2 life.

#19. Imp’s Mischief

Imp's Mischief is functionally another black counterspell, but far more interesting. While you can win a counterwar to protect spells on the stack, you can also get a two-for-one by redirecting a removal spell away from one of your creatures to one of your opponents’. You can even redirect some spicy spells to make some memorable plays, like Time Warp or Thoughtseize.

#18. Plumb the Forbidden

Plumb the Forbidden offers excellent card advantage for black token or sacrifice decks. Sacrificing one extra creature puts this on par with Night's Whisper, which is the lowest number of cards I’d want to draw for this to be worthwhile. It only gets better; spending 2 mana to draw three or more cards is a fantastic rate, even if a few Zombie tokens need to bite the dust again. This pairs surprisingly well with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse because you net 1 life for each card drawn.

#17. Songs of the Damned

Black used to be the primary color of rituals in Magic. While the color pie has moved on and we find rituals in red these days, many of black’s old mana accelerants still hold up as fantastic ways to get bursts of mana. Songs of the Damned takes a bit of work to set up because you need a high creature count and a reliable way to get them into the graveyard, but this offers far more mana than Dark Ritual if you meet those requirements. It’s not for every black deck, but some get to win the game with this card.

#16. Shallow Grave

Shallow Grave has been a Cube all-star for a while. While a temporary Reanimate isn’t as good as the real deal, this card (and the similar, though weaker Corpse Dance) has the distinction of letting you reanimate Eldrazi Titans, like Emrakul, the Promised End. Since it’s instant, you respond to Emrakul’s shuffle trigger and force your opponents to give up their entire board. Since it gives haste, it can be effective with cards like Archon of Cruelty and Grave Titan that have powerful ETB and attack triggers.

#15. Burnt Offering + Sacrifice

Burnt Offering and Sacrifice are more powerful rituals. Offering is a little stronger since it can fix your mana but has a red-black color identity, so it slots in fewer decks. These two cards need a strong sacrifice theme to be truly effective, especially since sacrificing tokens to them isn’t great. But they pull a ton of weight, especially when played in Commander alongside cards like Dargo, the Shipwrecker.

#14. Saw in Half

Saw in Half is one of the few Un­–set cards legal in black-border formats, and it’s a fun one. It doesn’t use stickers or any weird mechanics; it’s just a fun little value engine. Getting to split Gray Merchant of Asphodel in two can legitimately kill a player in a single turn. It’s great for creatures with strong ETBs like Archon, or ones with powerful death triggers, like Junji, the Midnight Sky that you want to sacrifice over and over.

#13. Demonic Consultation + Tainted Pact

Demonic Consultation and Tainted Pact have risen to fame thanks to their game-winning synergy with Thassa's Oracle, which is in part why they’re so high on the list. But they’re also powerful tutor effects. Exiling cards out of your library is a cost, especially if you’re trying to combo off, but you also get to find the exact answer you need when you need it. I might not play them in many decks without Thoracle, but they’re still strong in their own right.

#12. Go for the Throat

Infernal Grasp is amazing, but Go for the Throat stands out as being incredible in most formats. Your local meta might have too much affinity or similar decks for this to work. In formats nearly devoid of artifact creatures, this is a highly efficient removal spell without any restrictions aside from its mana cost.

#11. Culling the Weak

Culling the Weak offers a fantastic burst of mana, even if you need to sacrifice a creature. Since this spell always adds , you don’t need to worry about having something beefy to sacrifice. You can throw away tokens from Bitterblossom or Orcish Bowmasters as happily as you would a big creature your opponent slapping a Pacifism on. You can even use it to save a creature from exile removal, should you need it back in your graveyard.

#10. Snuff Out

Free spells are busted, and paying 4 life is a minuscule cost. Snuff Out only asks you to have a Swamp and a little life to deal with most threats. It sees lots of Pauper play and even pops up in Legacy lists, usually ones running Death's Shadow.

#9. Fatal Push

Fatal Push is one of the strongest removal spells in black. It doesn’t kill expensive creatures, but that rarely matters in eternal formats like Modern and Legacy where efficiency is king. Enabling threshold is simple with fetch lands and Treasure tokens around every corner, so you don’t need any sacrifice package to make this work.

#8. Deadly Dispute

Deadly Dispute is an amazingly flexible card draw spell. Letting you sacrifice creatures or artifacts makes this better than the creature-only variants, turning excess Treasure into real cards. It only costs 1 mana, recouping half its cost as a Treasure, which also ramps you and fixes your mana in a tight spot. It’s especially great in Pauper, where affinity decks often sacrifice Ichor Wellspring to pay its additional cost, drawing a total of three cards for 1 mana, which is Ancestral Recall. Even if you’re not into artifacts, plenty of creatures either draw a card when they die or draw cards when other creatures die to exploit this in other formats.

#7. Cabal Ritual

Casting a ritual that only puts you up by 1 mana isn’t the strongest. But getting to go up by 3? That absurd power is why Cabal Ritual has been a crucial part of mana Legacy combo decks like Storm and Doomsday. It takes a bit of work to hit threshold, but in a deck full of fetch lands, rituals, and cantrips, it takes minimal effort.

#6. Dismember

Phyrexian mana has seen many a card banned. While Dismember isn’t quite ban-worthy, it’s an amazing example of why the mechanic is so busted. This instant is a top-tier removal spell, practically a Snuff Out that kills most relevant creatures and functions as a combat trick against those it can’t. And any deck can play it, provided they don’t mind paying a little life. It shows up in Modern decks like Tron, which can’t afford to pay colored mana for removal, and cascade decks that use it as a “1-mana” play that doesn’t stop them from cascading into Crashing Footfalls.

#5. Vampiric Tutor

While Vampiric Tutor is technically card disadvantage because you’re using a card from your hand to fix the top of your deck instead of advancing the board state, it’s still an amazing card that wins games. It’s at its best in unfair decks looking to win with combos since fair decks suffer the card disadvantage more. It’s also effective with cards like Bolas's Citadel and Mystic Forge that allow you to cast spells off the top of your library.

#4. Entomb

If you’ve played Legacy, you’ve lost on turn 1 to Dark Ritual, Entomb, Reanimate, and Griselbrand. In the color that cares about its graveyard the most, Entomb enables some of the strongest strategies in the game. Reanimation decks are among the most powerful, dropping strong creatures into play on turn 1 or 2, but you can also set up combos with cards like Necrotic Ooze or any number of combos that require at least one piece to be in the graveyard.

#3. Rain of Filth

Getting a mana advantage is one of the easiest ways to win a game, which is why so many of these top cards are rituals. Rain of Filth requires you to put a lot on the line for its burst of mana, effectively making your lands Ancient Tomb if you’re willing to sacrifice them. It’s a risky maneuver that can pay off if you’re confident in your ability to win because this often generates 6 or 7 mana itself.

#2. Ad Nauseam

Ad Nauseam might be the best card draw spell short of Ancestral Recall. Five mana is a lot, but the card advantage you get from this is insane. You’ll often see it in cEDH decks that take advantage of a very low curve and high life total to play this fairly, but it also sees play in Modern alongside cards like Angel's Grace and Phyrexian Unlife that prevent the AdNaus player from losing, even when they’re at -23 life.

#1. Dark Ritual

Dark Ritual has been the first step to many, many broken starts in Cube, Legacy, and Vintage. Having access to 3 mana on turn 1 lets you play 2 turns ahead of your opponent. This is especially potent in these older formats that can pair Dark Ritual with spells like Doomsday or Entomb and Reanimate. Even something as simple as a turn-1 Liliana of the Veil can put you in a winning position as soon as the game starts.

Best Black Instants Payoffs

Many of black’s best instants are simply efficient interactive spells, but there are also other ways to pay them off.

To start with those fair spells, one of the best ways to use them is to pair them with blue. A bunch of instant-speed black removal and blue countermagic sets the foundation for a solid control or midrange shell with plenty of ways to answer threats on the stack or the battlefield.

As for the rituals, you want to do unfair things with them. While rituals provide a powerful mana advantage, they’re also inherently card disadvantages. Let’s say you use Dark Ritual to play a 3-drop like Graveyard Trespasser on turn 1. While you’re a little ahead of the opponent on mana because you spent 3 mana on turn 1, you’re behind in resources because you used two cards from your hand to put one into play.

This is why you need something broken to substantially close the door before your opponent can exploit the card disadvantage. Reanimator doesn’t care about the card disadvantage when it gets Atraxa, Grand Unifier, or a similarly powerful creature in play turn 1. Card disadvantage affects fair decks more because they can’t drop a creature or cast a Doomsday that threatens a win within a turn or two.

Wrap Up

Entomb | Illustration by Seb Mckinnon

Black’s instants often play with killing creatures and interacting with the graveyard because black cards generally tend to. This is why some of the game’s best removal spells are black instants, but the color has much more to offer. From niche cards like Feign Death to sideboard staples like Surgical Extraction, there’s a lot to see here.

Black has some of the most busted cards within its pool of instants. The color pie has shifted so that black is no longer the primary color of rituals, but it got some incredible ones in its day like Dark Ritual. What’s your favorite black instant? What’s the best start you’ve gotten of a Dark Ritual? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and keep performing your rituals!