The 50 Best Black Sorceries in Magic Ranked

Last updated on March 17, 2026

Imperial Seal | Illustration by Milivoj Ceran

Black spells are all about destruction and disruption. They’re a force to be reckoned with when cast against your opponents. And given that black is the color that can do just about anything (for the right cost), you can expect a lot of power packed into black's best sorceries.

Get prepared for your next game night by upgrading your black decks with some of these awesome black cards.

What Are Black Sorceries in MTG?

Hymn to Tourach | Illustration by Liz Danforth

A black sorcery has an exact black color identity and the sorcery card type. They’re spells that destroy creatures, cause discard, incur life loss for card draw, or other destructive features. These black sorceries can positively or negatively affect one or more creatures or players in different ways.

A black card draw spell lets you draw cards but usually at the cost of losing some life. This is a good representation of how Magic players who love playing black utilize their life total as a resource.

Honorable Mentions

Card advantage is important for every color, and black loves them, but I had a hard time justifying these useful sorceries for the proper ranking. Two-for-ones don’t get much cleaner than Night's Whisper. Two cards for 2 life is fair and effective, making this black sorcery a simple and reliable black staple. Sign in Blood and Read the Bones are fine alternatives, though more restrictive on the casting cost. Midgar, City of Mako is more town and adventure card but a handy mode to have, and Barter in Blood is easy to gain an upper hand with, so it's no wonder that it's been reprinted many times since it first release with Mirrodin.

#50. Blood Money

Sure, Blood Money is a high-cost 7-drop black board wipe. However, casting it when the battlefield is flooded with creatures will reward you with Treasure tokens. A sweeper that refunds the mana spent on it is quite powerful, even if you have to wait a turn to use those Treasures.

#49. Aether Snap

Aether Snap is a more conditional black sorcery, but it can work in the right instances against counters or token-themed decks. Counters decks pump their army with +1/+1 or other types of counters as token decks go wide with creatures. Aether Snap puts a temporary stop to their board states.

#48. Peer into the Abyss

Seven mana ought to get you a lot these days. How’s drawing half your deck or an instant-kill against an opponent sound? That latter sequence requires comboing Peer into the Abyss with a draw-hate card like Underworld Dreams, but cashing in half your life for half your deck isn’t a bad proposition either.

#47. Unearth

Unearth is often 1 mana for 3 mana’s worth of a card, with creature selection no less. We’ve seen this sort of effect shifted over to white cards like Helping Hand, but the cycling on Unearth is the perfect buyout in case your graveyard gets tampered with.

#46. Monumental Corruption

Monumental Corruption is great for artifact-heavy decks. The more artifacts on your battlefield, the more cards that you or an opponent draws and the more life loss that occurs for either of you.

You have to be really deep on artifacts before this is a consideration, but black artifact decks are already full of goodies like Bolas's Citadel, Jet Medallion, Whip of Erebos, and Bontu's Monument.

#45. Will of the Abzan

One effect is decent, and Will of the Abzan is really strong with both effects like all the Wills. What deck doesn't want opponents to lose life, the best opposing threats gone, and your best creature returned from the graveyard?

#44. Ghouls’ Night Out

There’s so much underrated reanimation on this list, but that’s one of the things black cards do best. I’ll award Ghouls' Night Out 0 points for the name, but the quadruple reanimation effect makes up for that. Decayed is a drawback for sure, but piecemealing together four utility or ETB creatures from graveyards is well worth the downside of their non-participation in combat.

#43. Gix’s Command

Choose from two of the four effects on Gix's Command to customize how you want the game to go. Getting rid of a large Voltron creature can be beneficial by having all the opponents sacrifice their highest-powered creature. You can also board wipe a token player by destroying all creatures power 2 or less.

Alternatively, get back two of your best creatures that were sent to the graveyard earlier in the game, or pump up your creature with a couple of counters and lifelink to gain life. Choose your two modes wisely!

#42. In Garruk’s Wake

Alongside Rise of the Dark Realms, In Garruk's Wake is black’s other 9-mana game-ender. You have to back it up with some sort of pressure, but resetting your opponents’ boards without harming your own is excellent, even at this cost. Check out Overwhelming Forces for another take on this effect.

#41. Victimize

No, not the Linkin Park song. I’m not sure why Victimize seems to be dropping off lately; it’s a great double-reanimation effect. Sure, there’s set-up involved, but you’d expect that from a 3-mana spell with this sort of output. It even loops with regrowth-style effects like Archaeomancer.

#40. From the Catacombs

The initiative is strong enough that I’m willing to pay 5 mana for a reanimation effect just to get that designation. At worst, From the Catacombs always lets you search for a basic land thanks to The Undercity’s first room, and you can always escape this black sorcery to steal back the initiative while reanimating another creature.

#39. Exsanguinate

Pour your black mana into a game finisher by casting Exsanguinate to drain your opponents while gaining a large amount of life. This card is especially dangerous with big black mana producers like Cabal Coffers. And of course, Exsanguinate pairs well with lifegain payoffs like Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose.

#38. Decree of Pain

Decree of Pain isn’t asymmetrical like In Garruk's Wake, but the alternative plan of cycling it to wipe out smaller creatures works wonders. Even better, that’s an activated ability, so it’s hard to interact with outside of specific Stifle effects. Oh, and it’s pretty incredible to cast it if you’ve got the 8 mana lying around anyway.

#37. Command the Dreadhorde

Mass reanimation rarely lets you bring back planeswalkers, but Command the Dreadhorde throws them in the mix. This is a dangerous card to resolve if you get too greedy, but there’s a trick to it! If you have an effect on board that nullifies damage, like The Wanderer or Platinum Emperion, you can reanimate everything and your life total won’t even budge. You have to control them before resolving this spell, though, since the damage is dealt before the reanimation targets enter the battlefield.

#36. Strategic Betrayal

Players love Strategic Betrayal in 1v1, and boy is it effective against voltron commanders. There continues to be utility from the graveyard in every color, so as long as you're strategic when you fire off this card, you can consider it cheap removal.

#35. Death Cloud

The reason you don’t see Death Cloud very often isn’t because it’s not strong enough; it’s because Death Cloud is such an obnoxious card to play with and against. It’s a super Smallpox that usually leaves players with little to no lands. If the player casting Death Cloud isn’t capitalizing on the land destruction somehow, the game can drag on for quite some time. Only misers cast it to “see what happens,” while a savvy player uses Death Cloud as a wincon.

#34. Hymn to Tourach

I’m not exactly sure what it is that caused Hymn to Tourach to fall out of favor. Maybe it’s just not there with the relative speed of most Eternal formats where it’s legal, but it’s hard to deny the card’s utility. Two mana for a double-discard is above the usual Mind Rot rate, and random discard that can hit lands is even better. Now the question remains: Do you Thoughtseize first, or second?

#33. Finale of Eternity

Finale of Eternity from War of the Spark acts mainly as creature removal. If you have 12 or more mana to pour into this spell, it also acts as a graveyard recursion resource for reanimator decks. Getting all your creatures back and swinging in for the win with Finale of Eternity can be a strong win condition for your deck.

#32. New Blood

Vampire decks will benefit greatly from having New Blood in the build. When you gain control of any opponent’s creature, their creature type changes to vampire, which can trigger other vampire payoffs in your deck.

Captivating Vampire and Thirsting Bloodlord can each pump the creature you gained control of. With Crossway Troublemakers on the field, the creature will gain lifelink and deathtouch whenever it attacks.

#31. Day of Black Sun

Day of Black Sun is a neat way to get around indestructible and hexproof, and it shuts off death and leave-the-battlefield triggers. You get plenty of flexibility with in the cost to make this one of many unique designs to come out of Avatar: The Last Airbender. WotC could've easily made this a color hoser, but I'm glad they didn't.

#30. Villainous Wrath

Surprise the token player with a game over, then get around those tough to handle threats with the second sentence on Villainous Wrath. It's a straight-forward board wipe with very good upside.

#29. Locthwain Scorn

Call me a Cheatyface for including this, but Locthwain Scorn is in fact a black sorcery when you cast it. It just so happens to be an adventure attached to Virtue of Persistence, a much flashier black enchantment. Locthwain Scorn is a solid black removal spell that paves the way to the more expensive side, and it triggers all your spell payoffs like Witherbloom Apprentice and Sedgemoor Witch.

#28. Praetor’s Grasp

Praetor's Grasp gives you access to one of the best cards in your opponent’s library as long as it stays exiled. If an opponent is missing a combo piece or win condition, you can grab it from them, forcing them to refine their strategy.

My favorite home for this card is Zevlor, Elturel Exile, where you can steal a critical card from each opponent.

#27. Buried Alive

Buried Alive can place three of your best creatures from your library into the graveyard to use later in a reanimator deck. The Beamtown Bullies or Chainer, Dementia Master are great examples of commanders that resurrect creatures to the battlefield at little to no cost.

#26. Persist

Persist, a black sorcery card inspired by the persist mechanic, returns a creature to the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter on it. While it can only target a non-legendary creature, it can be valuable by returning a synergistic card to the battlefield. This is ultimately cheap but fair reanimation.

#25. Season of Loss

Now this is a black board wipe with some style. In the running for the best of Bloomburrow‘s pawprint Season spells, Season of Loss starts off as a quintuple edict effect that you can adjust based on the boardstate. It’s part black card-draw spell, or part finisher with the 2- and 3-paw modes, which is some excellent utility on a baseline wrath effect.

#24. Scheming Symmetry

Scheming Symmetry is a black group hug card, essentially giving yourself and an opponent of your choice a painless Vampiric Tutor. While you can foster some good will here, you can also be much more sinister, pairing this tutor with a mill effect, or an effect designed to steal the card your opponent tutors, like Gonti, Lord of Luxury.

#23. Patriarch’s Bidding

Patriarch's Bidding is another group hug card in black where each player can choose one creature type to resurrect from their graveyard to the battlefield. It can return things to normal to get a game back on course after a board wipe.

#22. Dread Return

Sacrificing three creatures isn’t exactly free, but paying no mana on the flashback end of Dread Return is the perfect hands-free way to finish out a huge combo turn, usually involving Narcomoebas and the like. The card was ceremoniously banned in Modern quite some time ago, though the downshift to common in Commander Masters gave it a new unlife in Pauper.

#21. Afterlife from the Loam

Though it is far removed effect-wise from Life from the Loam, Afterlife from the Loam has that powerful delve text that lets you abuse your graveyard for a strong reanimation tool. Capitalize on cards leaving the graveyard and you're all but guaranteed to come out way ahead of this transaction.

#20. Black Sun’s Zenith

Players running counters decks will tremble seeing their opponent casting Black Sun's Zenith. The great thing about this spell is that you can customize how many -1/-1 counters are placed on creatures based on the mana you pour into it while casting. Since you shuffle in Black Sun's Zenith after resolving it, you never know if it’ll return for you later in the game.

#19. Invoke Despair

The opponent can lose up to 6 life and you can draw up to three cards with Invoke Despair. Alternatively, you can diminish an opponent’s board state if they have all three permanents to sacrifice, which is still a win. Good enough to get the ban hammer while it was in Standard, this sorcery loses a little bit of its appeal in Commander, since the effects can't be split up across different players.

#18. Breach the Multiverse

Breach the Multiverse is an instant board-in-a-can, and rivals Etali, Primal Conqueror as far as 7-mana March of the Machine cards that steal everyones' spells are concerned. It even has applications in mill decks since 10 is a big enough chunk of cards to matter.

#17. Duress

Duress allows you to remove a variety of different cards from an opponent’s hand. Casting this spell on turn 1 will force your opponent to pivot their strategy while giving you valuable intel on what they're holding.

#16. Bloodline Bidding

Convoke goes a long way in pushing this up on the ranking. Bloodline Bidding is a mass reanimation spell with potential to cost very little mana. If you're able to fill your board and your graveyard, scary good things will come from this.

#15. Diabolic Intent

At the cost of sacrificing a creature and paying 2 mana, you can search for any card in your library and place it in your hand with Diabolic Intent. If you’re low on mana, you can even use this card to search for a land.

If you’re close to the end of the game, use Diabolic Intent to search for your win condition. Maybe you’re missing a combo piece. Tutor it with this card instead of waiting for it to appear during your draw step.

#14. Rise of the Dark Realms

As one of the highest-cost black sorcery spells in MTG, Rise of the Dark Realms is also one of the most valuable for reanimator decks. For 9 mana total, you can have access not only to your creatures in the graveyard but also to the creatures in your opponents’ graveyards. This card creates substantial value in a 4-player pod, especially if you’ve been milling opponents’ libraries throughout the game.

#13. Living Death

Living Death pulls an old switcheroo between the creatures in play and the ones in everyone’s graveyard, in so many words. It’s a wrath and universal mass reanimation all at once, and it does this in a way that even gets around indestructible creatures and reanimation hosers like Grafdigger's Cage and Kunoros, Hound of Athreos. You’ll have to be diligent about checking opponents’ graveyards before running this out, but the person playing Living Death should be the best-positioned to use it. Shout out to Living End for the alternate suspend version, which has made a name for itself in various Constructed spheres.

#12. Thoughtseize

Thoughtseize is a better version of Duress because you can select any nonland card from your opponent’s hand to discard, giving you more choices on what to remove. This discard spell is one of the best ways to break apart degenerate strategies relying on early combo kills.

#11. Reanimate

Choosing a creature from any graveyard to revive back to the battlefield is a powerful ability. And that’s a high-value card for 1 mana! This is the standard by which all reanimation spells are judged, which is fitting, given the name.

Losing life equal to that card’s mana value is only a small trade-off for getting a powerful creature back into your possession or utilizing one from your opponent’s graveyard.

#10. Damnation

Damnation‘s a great board wipe, and hilarious when it stacks up against creatures that can regenerate (they do exist!). It’s the black version of Wrath of God, which has the same text printed on it. Why fix it if it ain't broken, right?

#9. Agadeem’s Awakening

Agadeem's Awakening is the flip side of one of the best bolt lands, Agadeem, the Undercrypt. The more mana you dump into this, the more mana values you unlock from your graveyard.

#8. Splinter's Technique

Splinter's Technique is like Demonic Tutor with an additional cost of meeting the sneak conditions or pay more. Thankfully that unblocked attacker could be a harmless 0/1 flier, but the capability not far off, and at worst you get a Diabolic Tutor.

#7. Mind Twist

It’s a wonder MTG ever caught on with cards like Mind Twist in the very first Magic set. This Alpha discard spell is pretty miserable to play against, since it often forces an opponent to become hellbent immediately. The saving grace is that it’s significantly worse in multiplayer games, and even in Constructed it usually takes some fast mana or rituals to make this black sorcery worth the while.

#6. Toxic Deluge

Here’s another card where you must use your life points as a resource to get ahead. Toxic Deluge is a full-on board wipe for only 3 mana with the power to remove almost any creature. As long as the caster is willing to give up the corresponding life points, it can be a more powerful board wipe than Damnation!

#5. Torment of Hailfire

Torment of Hailfire is best cast immediately after a board wipe when opponents have little to no permanents on the field to sacrifice. Put enough mana into the X cost of the spell to win the game by whittling down opponents’ life totals.

#4. Doomsday

You know you’ve got an all-timer Magic card on your hands when there are entire Eternal-format decks named after the namesake card. Doomsday is an entire compact strategy on its own, approaching one-card combo territory. The idea is to resolve this (as early as turn 1 with a Dark Ritual) and stack your library with a sequence of game-winning cards, usually a couple of cantrips and a Thassa's Oracle. It’s a strategically difficult card to play, but it’s rewarding for those willing to take on the challenge.

#3. Imperial Seal

Vampiric Tutor is a strictly better Imperial Seal, but there's no competition on a list of only sorceries. This back-up tutor is still in the running for all-time best tutors, though it's a clear step down from the obvious top two, Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor.

#2. Demonic Tutor

Demonic Tutor is one of the most used black sorcery spells for searching cards. Use it to find whatever you need in the moment, whether that's your land drop for the turn or the second copy of Approach of the Second Sun to win the game.

#1. Contract from Below

The best black sorcery in Magic is one you’ve likely never played with, and never will. Contract from Below is perhaps the biggest design mistake of all time. From a power level perspective, this is a single mana to draw seven cards, which is laughably unbalanced. And then there’s the ante text – hands down Magic's worst mechanic, ever – which is enough to write off a card already.

I can’t help but wonder how often this card was played for ante in the early years of Magic, and how awful it felt losing to it. Funnily enough, the Pokémon TCG made an almost identical mistake with the Professor Oak Trainer card, also featured in that game’s first expansion.

Best MTG Black Sorcery Payoffs

The first place to look for black sorcery payoffs are the typical spellslinger payoffs that create game objects when you cast spells. That’s more commonly associated with blue cards and red cards, but black has access to Sedgemoor Witch, Fandaniel, Telophoroi Ascian, and Lord of the Nazgûl.

Spell mastery cards like Dark Petition require you to have two instants/sorceries in your graveyard for their full effect, while delirium cards like Tooth Collector are easier to “turn on” with access to a few spare sorceries.

Oriq Loremage is an interesting card that can Entomb key sorceries while growing over time. Professor Onyx is another magecraft card that keys off casting spells.

While it doesn’t reward black sorceries specifically, Kaervek, the Punisher lets you cast a black spell from your graveyard whenever you commit a crime, which black does well. You can even chain together spells if the cards you’re casting keep committing crimes. My favorite move is to cast a criminal instant on the opponent’s draw step, then “flash back” a discard spell like Thoughtseize before they have a chance to cast what they drew.

Wrap Up

Thoughtseize | Illustration James Ryman

Which black sorcery spell do you think is the best? Chime in down below in the comments to start the conversation! Connect with us on the Draftsim’s Facebook page to be updated on new blog content.

If you haven't played a deck featuring black yet, now's your time to try and include some of these black sorcery spells for a competitive edge! Make sure to let me know what you think in the comments or join the official Draftsim Discord to get to know some like-minded MTG Players!

Until next time, stay safe, and stay healthy!