The 34 Best Black Ramp Cards in Magic Ranked

Last updated on April 3, 2026

Cabal Coffers | Illustration by Don Hazeltine

Ramping is one of the strongest things you can do in Magic. Playing ahead of the mana curve gives you a massive lead over your opponents and can snowball a game in your favor. Effectively playing on turn 5 while your opponents are stuck on turn 3 lets you deploy better threats and answers while they struggle to keep up.

Ramp spells have historically been within the domain of green spells and artifacts. It makes sense that the color of life, growth, and verdancy would be a core color that utilizes ramp. Artifacts are also a sensible card type for ramp as gems and trinkets that store energy for later use.

But black has its share of ramp, even if most of it is less sustained than green’s steady growth. So let’s look at the best black ramp spells in Magic!

What Is Black Ramp in MTG?

Terisiare's Devastation | Illustration by Bram Sels

Black ramp includes spells that produce extra mana so you can play ahead of curve. The important thing is that these cards produce mana when you cast them or activate their abilities. Mana filtering effects like “: add a mana of any color” aren’t ramp, so cards like Blood Celebrant don’t make the cut.

We also care about cheap ramp spells. Ramp is at its best when it allows you to accelerate in the early turns of the game, giving you a dominating board state before your opponents have found their footing. More expensive ramp spells are thus weaker, though some might still find a home in certain decks.

Much of black’s ramp is ritual-based, or cards that produce a burst of mana for a single turn. This fits black’s desire for power, sacrificing cards in hand or creatures in play for a chance to grasp something powerful and profane.

#34. Wreck Hunter

Wreck Hunter is the type of card you can hold in your hand forever and never actually find an opportune time to cast it for value. If you can land it after a sweeper, you can get pretty far ahead with Powerstone mana. It's a nice follow-up to Yahenni's Expertise or Blasphemous Edict, which make it easy to drop Wreck Hunter into play post board wipe.

#33. Basal Thrull

This is the card that inspired Basal Sliver; the main benefit here is that Basal Thrull only costs 2 mana to produce 2 mana. You won’t get to use it until the turn after you play it, but going from turn 2 to turn 5 is a huge power spike.

#32. Treasure Dredger

I mean, just compare Treasure Dredger to Vesper Ghoul. That's more an indictment of the Ghoul than praise for the Dredger, but you could do worse than a creature that can pop out an extra Treasure token each turn.

#31. Liliana of the Dark Realms

Liliana of the Dark Realms has incredible potential as a ramp piece since its ultimate emblem quadruples your mana. But it's so slow, and its other abilities aren’t strong.

Liliana doesn't effectively protect itself the turn it comes into play, and drawing Swamps for three turns is underwhelming.

#30. Terisiare's Devastation

Terisiare's Devastation is a black board wipe that [hopefully] leaves behind a stack of Powerstone tokens. Powerstones have limited use, but you can usually find a mana sink to filter the mana through, if not just use them as fodder for some artifact sacrifice engine.

#29. Lord of the Forsaken

Lord of the Forsaken is a super expensive ramp piece, but it does come stapled to a 6/6 trample for 6. Only producing colorless mana for cards cast from a specific zone does make this incredibly narrow and only useful for hyper-specific decks.

#28. Carnival of Souls

Carnival of Souls hits a lot of the notes you want from a ramp piece. It comes down early and it’s repeatable, but it does have a few weaknesses.

You can lose a lot of life on an opponent’s turn when you might not be able to use the mana, and it’s limited by the number of creatures you can play.

#27. Skirge Familiar

This is another card that’s a little expensive but has a bunch of potential. Skirge Familiar won’t get you ahead in the early game, but it’s a solid midgame ramp option. Pitching cards for mana could lead to explosive turns, even though it's capped by, well, the number of cards you have in hand.

#26. Spoils of Evil

Spoils of Evil has great potential hidden behind some intense weaknesses. Three mana is a lot for this card to overcome to become mana positive. It also relies on someone at the table having a significant mill theme to really pop off.

#25. Life of Toshiro Umezawa / Memory of Toshiro

Life of Toshiro Umezawa is a bit awkward as a ramp piece. It takes a few turns to get to Memory of Toshiro, which only produces mana that can cast instants and sorceries. But it also has utility outside of just producing mana, making it a solid card.

#24. Overeager Apprentice

Overeager Apprentice gets a lot right as a ramp piece. It’s not hindered by summoning sickness and it produces a solid chunk of mana. That said, it's only mana-neutral the turn you play it, and needing to sacrifice the Apprentice and discard an extra card is a bit steep.

#23. Lake of the Dead

Lake of the Dead starts off mana-negative, but gives you the option to sacrifice creatures for a huge burst of temporary mana. The card is stupidly expensive thanks to the Reserved List, and extremely vulnerable to land destruction, so it's not even that impressive if you do snag a copy.

#22. Priest of Forgotten Gods

Priest of Forgotten Gods does a lot more than just ramp your mana with its ability. It's a powerful piece in an artistocrats deck. The main thing holding it back is that it takes a fair amount of work to make this happen, especially if you want to activate this every turn.

#21. Gonti, Night Minister

Theft decks want you to think they always have opponent's cards to play, and while that might not always be true, Gonti, Night Minister is there to reward you with treasure. The thing is, Gonti supports theft, even when opponent's do the stealing, so this can turn into more than one treasure per turn at the right table.

#20. Teval's Judgment

Teval's Judgment sneaks onto this list because of how consistently you can create treasure. Cards leaving the graveyard is a specialty of black's, so this lovely enchantment has two other good choices, and one of them moves your mana meter up.

#19. Priest of Yawgmoth

Priest of Yawgmoth offers a lot of repeatable value. The main weakness of this card is its dependency on sacrificing artifacts. Black isn’t generally about artifacts, making this powerful but niche.

#18. Bog Witch

Bog Witch is a bit slow but does a lot of things you want from a ramp piece. It's able to produce an extra 2 mana every turn.

Discarding a card isn’t the worst in black, and getting just two activations out of this can put you really far ahead.

#17. Cabal Stronghold

The nerfed Cabal Coffers, with the upside that it always at least taps for colorless mana. You need at least five basic Swamps in play before Cabal Stronghold nets you positive mana, and you can't cheese it with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth quite as much, since the Stronghold only counts basics.

#16. The Soul Stone

The Soul Stone may not provide a burst of mana, but an indestructible mana rock that costs 2 is already great. Pile on the collectibility, and major upside if you can harness this infinity stone and you get an artifact that is truly legendary.

#15. Nirkana Revenant

A mana doubler is super powerful, but Nirkana Revenant has a drawback in costing 6 mana. It's capable of giving out a hefty beating with its pump effect, but you can just get this effect for cheaper.

#14. Sacrifice

Sacrifice is an incredibly efficient ramp piece that can produce a large burst of mana. It also works as a way to use creatures that are about to die to an impending board wipe or removal spell. Sacrificing a creature is also on theme for what black wants to do.

There's also the very similar Burnt Offering. Though physical copies of this card don't show it, Burnt Offering has a red and black color identity, which is clarified by the oracle text on the card.

#13. Black Market

It takes some time for Black Market to get rolling, making it fall into the slower category. But this enchantment-based ramp it snowballs very quickly. Creatures always die, and this can generate large amounts of mana consistently and quickly.

#12. Soldevi Adnate

Soldevi Adnate looks an awful lot like Priest of Yawgmoth, but the flexibility added by letting you sacrifice creatures and artifacts is huge. Free sacrifice outlets are always welcome, and this one even nets you mana and can be activated turn after turn.

#11. Cabal Ritual

Cabal Ritual is a powerful card that takes a relatively small amount of work to get going. This card provides a major mana advantage for minimal investment with threshold active. It only nets you a single mana without it, which is still playable.

#10. Bubbling Muck

This is just the black High Tide. It’s a powerful one-off effect, even if it’s a little weaker in black given a lack of untap effects like Turnabout. But doubling your mana for a turn can be all it takes to warp a game.

#9. Songs of the Damned

One thing black is very good at is filling its graveyard with creatures, and Songs of the Damned makes excellent use of this. It takes some work but can produce an astounding amount of mana in a deck focused around self-mill.

#8. Grim Hireling

We tried to minimize the number of Treasure-makers on this list, since they're often one-and-done, but we can't leave out Grim Hireling, a 4-drop that can produce up to six Treasure tokens a turn if combat goes in your favor. What you do with that mana from there is up to you, but the Hireling even spots you a free mana sink if you need to remove some creatures.

#7. Black Market Connections

Black Market Connections only produces one mana a turn in the form of Treasures, but producing Treasure is super valuable as they accumulate and fix for all colors.

#6. Rain of Filth

Rain of Filth is a mana doubler that comes at a bit of a cost, but you're in black so you'll take power at any cost. Sacrificing your lands can put you at a disadvantage unless you can leverage that with something like The Gitrog Monster.

But it’s still a powerful effect.

#5. Crypt Ghast

Remember when I said there was a cheaper way to get Nirkana Revenant? That’s Crypt Ghast. It doubles your mana consistently at a greatly reduced cost.

Like the Revenant it also comes with a mana sink that enables you to deal damage, but it’s just better since you don’t have to worry about the Ghast connecting with the opponent.

#4. Culling the Weak

We’ve looked at a few cards that sacrifice creatures to generate mana, but Culling the Weak does it the best because it turns a creature of any size into 4 mana. This is incredibly explosive, especially if paired with creatures like Ornithopter or Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh.

#3. Phyrexian Tower

Easy to see why Phyrexian Tower is such a Commander powerhouse. It's a sac outlet attached to a land, much like High Market, and gives you double mana if you feed it a creature. That means it only fits a specific style of deck, but it's excellent in those builds.

#2. Dark Ritual

The king of explosive starts and perhaps Magic's best black instant. If you’ve played Legacy then you’ve seen the power of Dark Ritual into Thoughtseize, Exhume, Reanimate targeting Griselbrand. It takes no setup for this to deliver a huge mana boost that sets you well ahead of your opponents.

#1. Cabal Coffers

Okay, maybe it’s cheating to have Cabal Coffers as the best black ramp spell, but you’re never playing this black land outside of black decks and it does so much. It’s pretty much a mana doubler and produces obscene amounts of mana.

Unlike other mana doublers in this list, this card does so consistently and is far harder to interact with. It’s hard to beat the value and mana this card produces.

Best Black Ramp Payoffs

The best payoffs for these black ramp spells are cheap but powerful spells. Things like Liliana of the Veil make a huge impact when played on curve, but this great black planeswalker gets even better when played a turn or two early.

Because most black ramp is bursty, producing extra mana for a single turn as opposed to putting extra lands in play, decks seeking to maximize the impact of these cards must also look to play in explosive spurts. This makes things like storm and reanimator strategies effective plans to use these spells as one turn is often all it takes for those decks to win.

Of course, X-spells are fantastic places to put a gripfull of mana. Most decks playing cards like Cabal Coffers or Rain of Filth are trying to end the game with a finisher like Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate. Death Cloud is another option if you have some sort of contingency plan for wiping the entire board away.

Let's end with a couple of mana sinks. Rot-Curse Rakshasa turns extra mana into a fun way to make opposing creatures pay dearly for attacking. Ramp's sibling in cost reduction means The Darkness Crystal might not belong on the list, but is very welcome for a similar effect, and this card so happens to be a cool way to spend extra mana and get very real benefits.

Wrap Up

Crypt Ghast | Illustration by Chris Rahn

Black is a color that’s all about obtaining power at any cost. Its ramp options reflect this, often throwing away cards in favor of surges of mana that can put you ahead of your opponents as long as you can use it quickly. Black leans into an explosive ramp style that shows off the power of ramp as a whole.

Adding these cards to your deck is a surefire way to gain an edge over your opponent, letting you play cards a few turns early while they try and set up their own strategies. It’s a great strategy to leave them on the back foot.

What do you think of these rankings? Let me know in the comments or over on the Draftsim Discord.

That's all from me for now. Stay safe, stay healthy, and wash your hands!