In Magic The Gathering, black is the colour of ruthless efficiency. 'Victory and power at any cost' is the mindset of a black player, as they sacrifice, extort, and drain their way to victory.
But with so many black creatures out there, knowing which ones you want to put into your 99-card Commander deck can be difficult. Whether you're playing Zombies or Aristocrat, Mill or Knights, there are a few really solid cards you should consider including. Here are the ten best black creatures for MTG's Commander format.
10 Dark Confidant
Black is a colour all about power at any cost, and Dark Confident is an excellent example of that. It provides effectively a second draw each turn, but, in exchange, you must reveal it to the rest of the table and lose life equal to its mana value.
In Commander, where lifegain is plentiful and the starting total is so high, that isn't a big deal. You might need a way to get rid of it later on if you're getting a bit short on life, but in the early game, it's fantastic.
9 Grim Haruspex
Card advantage is essential in Commander, and Grim Haruspex is one of the best mono-black creatures to enable it. Whenever a nontoken creature you control dies, you draw a card. Considering that black is the colour of sacrificing your own creatures for big effects, this can easily turn into a major card draw engine. It's also got the added benefit of having the sneaky morph ability, so you can pay one black mana to put it face-down as a 2/2, and then turn it face-up to become a 3/2 at any time.
8 Dauthi Voidwalker
One of the newest cards on this list comes from Modern Horizons 2, a set that had a huge impact on multiple formats. Dauthi Voidwalker is a 3/2 for two mana, which on its own is respectable, and it even has shadow to make it difficult to block.
It completely shuts down graveyard strategies by exiling cards instead, and you can sacrifice Voidwalker to play an exiled card without paying its mana cost. With black's ample creature reanimation Dauthi Voidwalker can just keep coming back and being a constant threat to everybody at the table.
7 Pitiless Plunderer
Black might be good at scraping together any resources it can, but one thing it can sometimes struggle with it ramp. It doesn't have much that can search directly for lands, so it needs to rely on direct mana and treasure tokens to fuel itself. This is what makes Pitiless Plunderer incredible: whenever another creature you control dies, you make a treasure token. This works in loads of black decks, such as Zombie tokens (as it doesn't specify 'nontoken') or, of course, sacrifice-heavy Aristocrats decks.
6 Opposition Agent
Opposition Agent is one of a handful of controversial cards to come out of Commander Legends. It's often compared to the now-banned Hullbreacher as being a 'feelbad' or 'unfair' card, but as long as your playgroup is fine with it, it can be a really powerful creature to use.
The card is a little bit weirdly worded. In effect, whenever an opponent would search their library for a card, you do it for them instead and exile the card 'they' (you) find. Considering tutors are often either setting up a winning turn or a desperate move to search for land, dropping an Opposition Agent at the right time can be stone-cold brutal. To make matters worse, it has flash; you can play an Opposition Agent in response to someone casting a tutor, and they might not have any way of stopping it.
5 Plaguecrafter
Another of black's big mechanics is forcing your opponents to sacrifice their own creatures. This is way better than destroying them yourself, as it works around both hexproof and indestructible. Though there are a lot of creatures who can do this, like Fleshbag Marauder and Butcher of Malakir, Plaguecrafter has the added bonus of forcing those who have no creatures to sacrifice into discarding a card.
A popular strategy is to play Plaguecrafter than sacrifice it to its own effect, putting it into your graveyard ready to pull back out. A well-tuned deck might be playing this every turn to devastating effect.
4 Syr Konrad, the Grim
The only Legendary creature on this list is Throne of Eldraine's Syr Konrad, the Grim. Konrad doesn't just punish graveyard strategies by dealing one damage whenever a creature it put into any graveyard, or when one leaves yours; it's also got a built-in milling activated ability to speed up the slow drain he causes.
Sy Konrad can work admirably as your Commander, but he is also a big player as part of the 99. If you're playing Aristocrats, Mill, or Reanimation, or can produce infinite black mana in some way, he's likely going to be one of your win conditions.
3 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
One of black's most famous win conditions is the Gray Merchant of Asphodel, affectionately known as 'Gary' by the community. Gray Merchant of Asphodel forces your opponents to lose X life, equal to your devotion to black, and then you gain the total amount of life lost.
Gary loves big board states, where you've filled your board with lots of black cards and have a high devotion, but that isn't completely necessary for him. With a sacrifice outlet and graveyard reanimation, you can sap your opponents down to zero life with just the two devotion the Gray Merchant himself brings, making him a frightfully easy win for the right deck.
2 Viscera Seer
Sacrificing your own creatures is one of the core strategies of black decks, and nothing is as good at doing it as Viscera Seer. Costing just one mana, you can sacrifice a creature to scry one card. Sounds simple, but it's actually very, very good.
The scry is actually secondary. It's a nice extra way to ensure you're stacking up your best cards, but it isn't why people love Viscera Seer so much. The fact you can sacrifice as many creatures as you want at instant speed is what makes it so powerful. Somebody targeting your creature with removal and you have no way to counter it? Sacrifice it to the Viscera Seer instead to get an extra scry. Playing Aristocrats and need a way to get those death triggers? Viscera Seer is what you need. You can even sacrifice Viscera Seer to itself.
The low mana cost and useful Vampire creature type make Viscera Seer one of the all-time greats for Black in Commander, but there is one card that beats it out.
1 Zulaport Cutthroat
Zulaport Cutthroat is the ultimate threat on a table. Whenever any creature dies, you gain one life and every opponent loses one – be that your own creatures you feed to a Viscera Seer, or your opponents' that die for any reason. If Zulaport Cutthroat is on the battlefield and you can't get rid of it, the game is likely already decided.
A mainstay in everything from Aristocrats to Zombie Tribal, Lifegain to Extort, Zulaport Cutthroat not specifying they have to be your own creatures to trigger makes it a total nightmare for the table to deal with. As it costs just two mana, you could likely keep bringing this thing from your Graveyard with a Phyrexian Reclamation or other reanimation to keep the problems going.
The scariest thing is that Zulaport Cutthroat is actually one of two creatures who could've made the top spot, with Blood Artist doing the exact same thing for the same cost. The only reason Zulaport Cutthroat beat out Blood Artist is that it is a 1/1 rather than a 0/1, and has three creature types that can all work well in black Commander decks, over Blood Artist's lone Vampire typing. But there's nothing saying you can't put both of them in your deck at the same time for maximum punishment.