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Looking to explore the darker side of Magic: the Gathering this Halloween season (or anytime)? Using black cards is one of the easiest ways to craft a shadowy deck with.
And throughout Magic’s lengthy history, the power of black has been consistently strong. You definitely won’t need to be concerned about a lack of choices here, especially if you’re playing an eternal format like EDH.
In this post, we’re going to take you on a grisly exploration of the dark side by looking at the best MTG sets for black. We’ll also be discussing some of the best black cards in the game’s history.
Why Go Black?
Ask just about any MTG expert what the weakest colors in the game are, and we can virtually guarantee you they won’t say black. Why?
Traditionally, black’s niche in MTG’s mana color “pie” is that it can access pretty much all the abilities of the other colors…at a cost. It’s basically like making a deal with the devil. In fact, there’s a whole archetype called “suicide black,” which is one of the oldest archetypes in the game.
If you’re playing suicide black, you’re tapping into your life as a resource. The only life point that matters is your final one – and sometimes, not even that.
Throughout Magic’s history, you can find egregious examples of Wizards of the Coast overlooking how overpowered paying with life can be. Later on in this article, when we discuss single cards under Honorable Mentions, you’ll see exactly what we mean with cards like Yawgmoth’s Bargain.
Furthermore, black is great at eliminating creatures and controlling the board. It’s packed with kill spells, which it does better than any other color in the game.
As if that weren’t enough, playing black means you have access to some of the stronger tribes in the game. Some examples include zombies, vampires, and rats.
Best MTG Sets for Black
Innistrad
Innistrad might just be one of the most beloved sets in Magic’s history. It’s certainly one of our favorites, and has made an appearance on our best MTG sets for vampires list.
This set was the very first one to have a specific horror theme. As such, it’s packed with horrifyingly powerful black cards, many of which were vampires.
The story of the set mirrors the dark theme. It takes place on the plane of Innistrad, which is essentially a whole world dedicated to gothic horror. What’s not to love?
Pros:
- Includes an abundance of powerful black cards.
- Has a lot of support for various tribes, such as vampires and humans.
- One of the most popular MTG sets.
- Has held its value extremely well.
- Fun gothic horror theme.
Cons:
- The curse cards in the set, although a neat idea, are really weak.
- If you’re drafting from it, you basically have to pick a tribe and stick with it.
- Can be expensive.
Most Notable Black Card: Liliana of the Veil
M10
Magic 2010 is a core set. Core sets tend to be particularly good for beginners, because they are usually an introduction to the game, including a range of decent cards.
But M10 was kind of unique even among core sets, which in some ways makes it historically important. For one thing, it was the very first core set to have planeswalkers in it. Additionally, it was the first core set since Beta to have brand-new cards.
Pros:
- Introduced Doom Blade, an important black kill spell.
- First core set to have planeswalkers and Mythic Rare cards.
- Also the first core set to have new cards in it (since Beta, anyway).
Cons:
- Can be pretty expensive and difficult to find.
Most Notable Black Card: Vampire Nocturnus
Zendikar
Zendikar is another set that we have a soft spot for. Like Innistrad, it’s pretty safe to say it’s one of our favorites, and it’s also appeared in a few of our posts.
This set focused heavily on land. It had gorgeous full-art land cards and the Landfall mechanic.
However, it also had tons of good black cards. In fact, it has so many, that it’s hard for us to pick one black card over all the others from this set for our notable section below. So if you’re looking for a way to expand your collection of black cards in one fell swoop, you can’t go wrong with this set.
Pros:
- You might pull rare and valuable fetch lands from packs.
- Filled with so many good black cards, we seriously had a hard time choosing our favorites.
- Had a massive impact on the state of all formats at the time of its release with its abundance of powerful mechanics like Landfall.
- Has held its value extremely well.
Cons:
- Can also be expensive and hard to find.
- It’s a faster set that’s not suitable for slow games.
Most Notable Black Card: Bloodchief Ascension
Read Next: Best MTG Sets for Elves
New Phyrexia
Looking for a set with a bleak, dark theme to draft or collect? New Phyrexia is great, both in flavor and in power level.
New Phyrexia picks up where the story left off in Scars of Mirrodin. The twisted and terrifying Phyrexians have defeated the Mirrans and overrun their home plane. Fittingly, the set is balanced in favor of Phyrexian cards, featuring mechanics like Infect and Proliferate.
Pros:
- Had tons of powerful cards, including all the Praetors.
- Used some incredibly strong mechanics, such as Proliferate.
- Introduced Karn Liberated, the first-ever colorless planeswalker.
Cons:
- Phyrexian mana, which allows you pay a cost with either life or mana, was strong to the point of being broken.
- Can be expensive.
Most Notable Black Card: Phyrexian Obliterator
Ultimate Masters
Okay, so we’re honestly cheating a little bit by including Ultimate Masters. Masters sets are sets specifically designed to be stronger than the average set by reprinting some of the best cards from Magic’s history.
Ultimate Masters is no exception. It’s a strong set. However, we chose it over any of the other potential Masters sets because it had an abundance of powerful black cards.
Of course, if you go with Ultimate Masters, you’re also likely to get stronger cards in general from each pack. Additionally, you get a box topper with each booster box you purchase.
Pros:
- An overall powerful set, due to it being a Masters set.
- Includes a box topper with each booster box.
- Tons of good black cards in it.
Cons:
- Will generally be more expensive than getting other booster boxes.
- It didn’t end up being quite as popular as it could have been, since it did not include fetch lands as some players hoped.
Most Notable Black Card: Demonic Tutor
Urza’s Saga
Urza’s block in general – consisting of Urza’s Saga, Urza’s Legacy, and Urza’s Destiny – was just crazily powerful. We ended up choosing Urza’s Saga in particular, though, because even among the whole block, it stands out.
In fact, Urza’s Saga is so ridiculously overpowered that it caused a Magic standstill that was known as the Combo Winter at the time. The abundance of “broken” cards in Urza’s Saga was so staggering, it wrecked tournaments.
You’re not likely to find a whole box of it these days. In fact, we’re only able to link to a booster pack. Nonetheless, getting your hands on cards from this set will drastically enhance your collection.
Pros:
- Contains one of the most powerful cards ever printed in Magic: Yawgmoth’s Will.
- Overall just an amazingly strong set that broke formats across the board.
- Historically a significant set in Magic’s past.
- Extremely valuable.
Cons:
- Can be very expensive and difficult to find.
- The set was massively overpowered, to the point that players largely came to a consensus that it was “broken.”
Most Notable Black Card: Yawgmoth’s Will
Odyssey
Odyssey is an older set that really focused on graveyard interactions. Although it allowed all colors to interact with their graveyards, green and black are naturally better at it, so those colors stood out.
Following up with Odyssey right after mentioning Urza’s Saga might be unfair. It’s not nearly as powerful as the sets from Urza’s block, but it’s still a reasonably strong set.
It’s an especially appropriate mention here because of its prevalent graveyard interactions theme.
Pros:
- A pretty strong set overall.
- Because of its graveyard matters theme, green and black are naturally good here.
- It could be said that this set taught players to view their graveyards as a resource, which is now a popular strategy.
Cons:
- It pushed the graveyard mechanic so hard, players were forced to focus on theirs and opponents’ graveyards whether or not they wanted to play that way.
Most Notable Black Card: Entomb
Honorable Mentions
The following cards are extremely powerful black cards that aren’t necessarily in the aforementioned sets. Even if some of them were in the above sets, we felt they needed specific sections where we could talk about them in more detail. We couldn’t write an article about black in Magic: the Gathering without discussing these cards.
Here they are:
- Necropotence
- Demonic Tutor
- Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
- Reanimate
- Dark Ritual
- Dark Confidant
- Ad Nauseam
- Bitterblossom
- Animate Dead
- Yawgmoth’s Bargain
Necropotence
With Necropotence, players get to ask the question, “who needs life when you can have cards?” Oftentimes, when this card hits the board, people will draw 15-20 cards in a single turn just to out-value opponents and find that combo they need to finish off the game.
Demonic Tutor
A tutor card is one that lets you search your library for a card you can hopefully combo with. There are a few of them, but Demonic Tutor is arguably the best one of all time. It’s only two mana, and it puts the card you’re searching for directly into your hand with no downside. Only a demon could pull that off.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth works best as a combo with Cabal Coffers, as it gets you a ton of black mana. It also helps with mana fixing, turning all your land into swamps on top of their other land type. Use this newfound excess of mana to cast a big nightmare while playing a multicolor deck.
Technically, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth isn’t black, because land cards are colorless. However, most still consider it an iconic black card because of its ability.
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
By itself, undying just screams “break me!” Applying it to all of your creatures, then, is just extremely powerful. This is a perfect piece to any aristocrat strategy (creatures that sacrifice other creatures for beneficial effects) and is also a great way to protect your team.
Can anyone say, “zombies?” (Or maybe just, “BRAAAAAAIIIIINNNNSSS!”)
Reanimate
With Reanimate, you don’t need life when you can just reanimate your biggest creature as early as your second turn. Often paired with Entomb or Buried Alive, this is the cheapest reanimation spell ever printed.
Plus, if you don’t want to shell out the cash for Reanimate, Exhume is a good alternative.
Dark Ritual
Dark Ritual is quintessential black ramp. It’s a classic card that lets you cast your horrors turns ahead of when you should be able to, making it possible for you to smash face early.
Dark Confidant
Dark Confidant is a prime example of Wizards of the Coast underestimating how powerful it is when you can trade your life for card advantage. When it was legal in Standard, it was included in a lot of decks.
Remember, in black, life is just another resource. Dark Confidant lets you tap into it easily.
Ad Nauseam
Ad Nauseam is a card that might leave beginners scratching their heads. It is very easy for an inexperienced player to kill themselves unwittingly with it.
However, it’s such a powerful card in the right hands, that it has become its own archetype. What you do is have some sort of effect that prevents you from losing the game like Platinum Angel, then cast Ad Nauseam and draw your entire deck. With your entire deck in your hands, you should have a combo that allows you to win the game.
Bitterblossom
Bitterblossom is yet another example of how good paying life is for an advantage. In this case, however, it’s not card advantage – it’s board advantage.
With Bitterblossom, it won’t be long until your board is teeming with a whole army of faeries. Additionally, since you’re creating faeries, you can use one for Mistbind Clique, or use Mistbind Clique to get rid of Bitterblossom if the life cost gets to be too great.
Either way, Bitterblossom puts a lot of pressure on your opponents each turn.
Animate Dead
Animate Dead is functionally the same as Reanimate. You use it to resurrect a powerful creature without having to pay its mana cost, because you’re pulling it back out of your graveyard.
Yawgmoth’s Bargain
Want the ultimate example of how broken being able to pay life in exchange for card advantage is? Look no further than Yawgmoth’s Bargain. It’s arguably even more powerful than Necropotence, because it allows you to pay one life at any time to draw a card.
Another example of the same concept is Griselbrand, which is a demon that allows you to pay seven life to draw seven cards. Even at that much steeper mana and life cost, it’s still a broken mechanic. Paying life for cards is just so good, Griselbrand was even banned in Commander.
Wrap Up
As one of the more powerful colors in Magic, there’s no shortage of black sets and cards to choose from. When we set out to make this list, even with the intent of keeping it brief, we struggled to narrow down our list to several choices.
Asking us to pick just one set from the ones we mentioned would be incredibly difficult. What we can do, however, is reduce it to three sets for you: Ultimate Masters, Zendikar, or Innistrad.
With Ultimate Masters, you get an overall powerful set. Then with Innistrad, you get a popular set with a nice gothic horror flavor you just can’t go wrong with. Zendikar, on the other hand, is another strong set that has held its value extremely well.