Black is quite possibly the most varied and multifarious mono color in Magic: The Gathering. Between its myriad tribes, mechanics, and available strategies, black possesses a sizable roster of viable commanders in the Commander format. Whether it be through graveyard-based decks, Zombies, Vampires, or even Voltron, black has the upper hand when it comes to available deck options when comparing it to some of its mono-colored counterparts.

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So here today, we're going to talk about the best that black has to offer in regards to the frontrunners of its possible Commander decks.

Updated August 29, 2022 by Paul DiSalvo: Since this article was last updated, we've seen a number of powerful mono-black commanders from sets like Dominaria United and Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. A few older cards have also risen up in popularity as the Commander metagame constantly shifts and adjusts.

18 Horobi, Death's Wail

Horobi, Death's Wail

Horobi, Death's Wail was printed in Champions of Kamigawa and is among the most underrated mono-black commanders in the entirety of Magic.

A 4/4 with flying, Horobi states that whenever a creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, that creature is immediately destroyed. Not only does this prevent opponents from making use of effects that buff their creatures, but it converts previously innocuous cards such as Liquimetal Torque, which are used to target a creature for a minor effect, into cheap and repeatable sources of removal.

When playing a Horobi deck, it's important to note that as this effect is universal, meaning opponents can use this effect to target your creatures as well. As this effect only affects creatures, one easy way around this is to primarily use card types such as artifacts and Planeswalkers that are capable of targeting your opponents' permanents, rather than using creatures that can be more easily removed than ever.

17 Erebos, God Of The Dead

Erebos, God of the Dead

One of black's biggest strengths as a color is its versatility. Black has, in some capacity, dabbled in many of the game's different mechanics across Magic's history, but if there's something that's always been present in black, it's the ability to slowly drain your opponent's life. One of the original gods from Theros, Erebos, God of Death is one of the more open-ended of the original Gods, though his abilities greatly benefit the god's controller.

Firstly, Erebos shuts down your opponent's capability to gain life. This means that any losses of life become more and more crucial, and any life that you can gain is even more of an advantage. Additionally, by simply paying two mana and two life, you can draw a card at any time, preventing you from ever simply running out of plays.

16 Toshiro Umezawa

Toshiro Umezawa

A unique and underrated commander, Toshiro Umezawa has the ability to provide instants in your graveyard with flashback whenever a creature an opponent controls dies.

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This allows a Toshiro Umezawa player to often get twice the value out of their kill spells, as they can use them to take out a threatening creature, and then immediately cast the same spell again thanks to their commander's ability.

15 Anowon, The Ruin Sage

Anowon, the Ruin Sage

Many commanders such as Anowon, The Ruin Sage benefit from creating an all universal effect that greatly hinders your opponents while being harmless to their controller.

Anowon only possesses one ability, one which causes each player to sacrifice a non-Vampire creature during each of your upkeeps. While this ability can easily throw off many creature-light decks, and can even deal with resilient creatures possessing hexproof or indestructible, Anowon can lead a Vampire themed deck that will have no problem with such an ability.

14 Chainer, Dementia Master

Chainer, Dementia Master

Black has been long-known for its ability to resurrect creatures from the graveyard, and when it comes to mono-black recursion commanders, few are as effective as Chainer, Dementia Master. By paying three black mana and three life, Chainer allows you to return any creature from your graveyard to the battlefield, making that creature a Nightmare in addition to its other types.

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With the ability being both affordable and repeatable, you'll be capable of generating huge threats through your graveyard. Unfortunately, Chainer possesses a drawback, making a player exile all nightmares they control when Chainer leaves the battlefield. Luckily, there are means of circumventing this drawback, such as the card Conjurer's Closet, which allows you to blink any of your creatures, washing them of their Nightmare typing before they'd be exiled from Chainer's death.

13 Braids, Arisen Nightmare

Braids, Arisen Nightmare

A reworked take on the classic and infamous banned mono-black commander Braids, Cabal Minion; Braids, Arisen Nightmare is a commander that sacrifices permanents in order to put opponents in lose-lose scenarios.

For the low cost of three mana, Braids states that at the beginning of your end step, you may sacrifice an artifact, creature, enchantment, land, or Planeswalker you control. If you do, each opponent can choose to sacrifice a permanent that shares a card type with the permanent you sacrificed. For each player who doesn't, that player loses two life and you draw a card.

This means you can pressure opponents into sacrificing cards key to their strategy by targeting specific card types, otherwise drawing a substantial number of cards throughout a game.

Due to her ability to sacrifice creatures, Braids can make for a powerful mono-black Aristocrats option that blends the use of several card types to adapt to whatever types of decks your opponents may be playing.

12 Syr Konrad, The Grim

Image of the Syr Konrad, the Grim  card in Magic: The Gathering, with art by Anna Steinbauer

While milling strategies are often associated with blue, Syr Konrad the Grim serves as one of the strongest milling commanders in the game, while also being versatile enough that he can be utilized with other strategies.

Dealing one damage to each opponent each time a creature dies, a card is put into a graveyard from a library, or even when a card leaves your graveyard, Syr Konrad is capable of dealing a great deal of damage over the course of the game, triggering his ability off of numerous instances. Pairing well with everything from basic removal, mill, and even recursion-based strategies, Syr Konrad can suddenly accumulate large sums of damage seemingly out of nowhere.

11 Skithiryx, The Blight Dragon

Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon

In a format in which players start with forty life, a frequently discussed topic between players is whether or not Infect should be adjusted. An ability that causes damage to be dealt via poison counters, effectively reducing a player's life total to ten, some tend to view Infect as a sort of boogeyman, while others view it as a cornerstone of agro. Either way, Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon is the only legendary creature with infect.

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Skithiryx allows for very aggressive decks that tend to utilize either infect-focused strategies or Voltron strategies that bolster the effectiveness of Skithiryx itself. Costing five mana to play, with additional investments of mana, Skithiryx is capable of regenerating itself as well as giving itself haste.

10 Vito, Thorn Of The Dusk Rose

Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose

A Vampire Cleric for three mana, Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose is a commander capable of converting life-gaining effects into damaging effects.

A 1/3, Vito states that whenever its controller gains life, they can have target opponent lose that much life. In addition to weaponizing various life-gaining effects, this effectively causes creatures with lifelink to deal twice as much damage to players.

This is quite great, as Vito features an activated ability for the cost of five mana that provides lifelink to each creature under its owner's control, meaning a Vito player will consistently have access to some form of life-gain.

9 Gisa, Glorious Resurrector

Gisa, Glorious Resurrector MTG Card

The most recent iteration of one of the most iconic necromancers in Magic, Gisa, Glorious Resurrector serves as graveyard hate while augmenting its controller's removal spells.

A 4/4 for four mana, Gisa states that when a creature under an opponent's control would die, those cards are exiled instead. Not only does this shut off many graveyard synergies opponents may be utilizing, but Gisa also returns all creatures exiled with it to the battlefield under its owner's control at the beginning of that player's upkeep.

While the cards Gisa returns from exile gain decayed, making it so they can only attack once before sacrificing themselves, this ability essentially allows a Gisa player to steal an opponent's creature through the use of removal spells.

8 Ayara, First Of Locthwain

Image of the Ayara, first of locthwain card in Magic: The Gathering, with art by Ryan Pancoast

Introduced in Throne of Eldraine, Ayara, First of Locthwain is a popular commander choice for Mono-black Aristocrats decks. A 2/3 Elf Noble for three mana, whenever Ayara or another black creature enters the battlefield under its owner's control, its controller gains one life and each of their opponents loses one life.

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Additionally, Ayara's activated ability allows it to be tapped, sacrificing another black creature in order to draw a card. When paired with easily recurrable creatures like Gravecrawler and cards that can create several black tokens at once, Ayara is capable of accruing great value.

7 Marrow-Gnawer

Marrow-Gnawer

Though Rats are not often brought up in discussions of Magic's strongest tribes, Marrow-Gnawer definitely makes its case as one of the strongest tribal commanders that mono-black has to offer. Marrow-Gnawer possesses two abilities, each of which synergize with the other as well as with the rest of your rat-based strategy.

Firstly, Marrow-Gnawer can sacrifice a rat you control in order to create an amount of 1/1 rat tokens equal to the number of rats you control. This ability can get out of hand very quickly as you escalate and create a veritable rat swarm. Additionally, Marrow-Gnawer bestows all rats you control with Fear, making them only blockable by black and colorless creatures!

6 Ghoulcaller Gisa

Ghoulcaller Gisa

If there were a single commander who truly exemplified the concept of raising a zombie horde, it would be Ghoulcaller Gisa. One of the most popular commanders for mono-black Zombie tribal, Gholcaller Gisa is a commander who doesn't care about the quality of zombies you control, rather, the quantity.

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Possessing the ability to sacrifice a creature and create an amount of 2/2 black zombie tokens equal to the sacrificed creature's power. Doing this effectively doubles the amount of power that a single creature was supplying, as the zombie tokens enter the battlefield as 2/2s. When paired with zombie lords, creatures that increase the power of each zombie you control, Gisa can create a massive army of zombies that really pack a punch.

5 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse MTG

Alongside Braids, Arisen Nightmare; Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is a potent mono-black commander introduced in Dominaria United.

Simple yet incredibly effective, Sheoldred is a commander that simultaneously rewards you while punishing your opponents for doing one of the most popular things in the entire Commander format: drawing cards.

While you gain two life whenever you draw a card, each of your opponents lose two life whenever they draw a card, making universal card draw effects such as those offered by cards like Howling Mine incredibly punishing. This can also deal massive sums of damage to opponents who may attempt to overzealously dig through their deck by drawing countless cards, as doing so with Sheoldred around can take them out of the game. For those with Commander metas rife with high-powered card draw, Sheoldred can apply a significant amount of pressure and force opponents to play around this card.

4 Tinybones, Trinket Thief

Tinybones, Trinket Thief

It should come as no surprise that in order for most decks to be able to successfully utilize their respective strategies, a given player must be able to actually play their cards. For two mana, Tinybones, Trinket Thief is a Skeleton Rogue that incentivizes a player to run as many hand-disruption spells as possible, potentially denying opponents the chance to play their cards.

At the beginning of each end step, if an opponent discarded a card that turn, Tinybones's controller draws a card, allowing for consistent additional card draw when used with enough hand disruption. Additionally, Tinybones comes with an activated ability that can turn a reduced hand into damage, dealing ten damage to each player with no cards in their hand at the cost of six mana.

3 Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

yawgmoth, thran physician

As the longtime primary antagonist of Magic: The Gathering, many were excited at the release of Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, and it's safe to say that the card did not disappoint. Toting numerous abilities and a great deal of flexibility, Yawgmoth is a commander capable of leading numerous strategies.

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Capable of both putting -1/-1 counters on creatures, serving as a sacrifice outlet, and even proliferating, Yawgmoth can be the perfect commander for strategies ranging from Aristocrats to mono-black control, to even infect.

2 Tergrid, God Of Fright

mtg tergrid god of fright front and backsides

Printed in Kaldheim, Tergrid, God of Fright is an incredibly potent commander for five mana. A 4/5 God with menace, Tergrid states that whenever an opponent sacrifices a permanent or discards a permanent card, Tergrid's controller can immediately return that card to play under their control! Like Gisa, Glorious Ressurector, this improves a variety of removal spells, though also hand-disruption spells, allowing a Tergrid player to potentially steal many great cards from their opponents!

1 K'rrik, Son Of Yawgmoth

K'rrik Son of Yawgmoth MTG Card

There are two common traits found in some of the strongest cards in the history of Magic: The Gathering. The first of these traits is versatility, and the second is possessing a means of circumventing mana costs. K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth is a mono-Black commander possessing each of these traits.

Revolving around the Phyrexian mana mechanic which allows players to pay life rather than mana, K'rrik effectively converts every black mana symbol in costs of spells and abilities into Phyrexian mana symbols. This allows for incredibly impactful cards to be cast for extremely noteworthy reductions. As if this ability was not strong enough, K'rrik grows larger through +1/+1 counters over the course of a game and possesses lifelink, allowing him to gain back life you'd lost through playing spells.

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