Ten Unusual Black Cards for Commander

Why hello again! If you have been following along, this series focuses on interesting cards for commander. Most of them are from the ancient, hoary days of Magic when cards more-or-less sucked just after the apocalyptic abominations presented in Alpha through Legends. Over time, some of these nearly useless cards acquired a use (yes, even Sorrow’s Path, the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel Magic card ever printed). This week I am taking a look at black cards – my favorite color! I love the cost-versus-reward nature of black as I am by nature a fairly bitter person. I also love board wipes and black has a bunch of them - some even exile!

Anyways, here we go:

10 - Dark Suspicions. On the surface, this may not seem all that great of a card, but in the right control shell, you can keep you hand relatively empty while making sure that cards stay in your opponent’s hands long enough to squeeze a lot of life out of them over a few turns. Even if the average difference is one or two, that could translate to ten-point life swing every time it rolls around as it hits each opponent and steals their life little by little. Still fairly cheap as it is a bulk rare.

9 - Infernal Genesis. This card is vastly underrated. First of all, it is a mill card. Secondly, it generates creatures for sacrifice effects (a few of which will be seen later in this list). Granted, it makes creatures for your opponents too, but as I always say, a good control shell takes advantage of this, with effects like Ensnaring Bridge, Portcullis, Elesh Norn, etc. At under a buck a copy, this old card may be a steal.

8 – Banshee. I was fascinated with this card back in the mid-90’s and used it in a self-damage shell with Cuombajj Witches and Erg Raiders as well as Lifelink. It was a quirky, yet effective deck with lots of cheap creatures and Banshee ran the control, as a Spirit Link generated tons of life for me when smacking a creature for only two damage (four mana, gain six life). Being a black creature, it was often hard to kill for most removal (Terror, Dark Banishing, etc.). With the abundance of ways to give this little lady lifelink and even more nasty effects with auras and equipments, a revisit to this dealer of damage to any target might be in order.

7 - Mind Slash. In the right build, this becomes a dynamo. For instance, if you combine it with Infernal Genesis, you can generate two or three tokens per turn on average, which you can then sacrifice to force opponents’ discards for a meager one mana each. There are tons of other ways to use this for pure advantage, such as Breeding Pit, Koma, Cosmos Serpent, etc. This is another bulk rare that is vastly underappreciated.

6 - No Rest for the Wicked. I used to use this in a sacrifice deck using black slivers (Mindlash Sliver, Basal Sliver, and Frenzy Sliver) to sacrifice a bunch of mana-generating creatures and return them to my hand, then do it again, and again…What I am getting at here is that is an efficient way to use this card. The fact that this is an enchantment with an instantaneous ability allows you to keep it on board to save from a board wipe as well.

5 - Blood Funnel. I love sacrificing creatures. Always have, from the moment I dropped my first Lhurgoyf way back in the day. Remember Infernal Genesis? That’s a great way to funnel out those huge non-creature spells (like Planeswalkers!) a bit sooner. Outside of straight black commander decks, you have all the token-based decks, decks with recursive creatures, graveyard matters decks, etc. Still just bigger than a bulk rare at one dollar value, this card is unlikely to be reproduced as it is not very popular or valuable.

4 - Infernal Denizen. One of two reserved list cards in my top ten, though this is not surprising as most black RL cards are bomb rares. This guy is weird because he is REALLY mana-intensive, and the upkeep is ridonkulous! Sac two swamps!?! For most people this is a hard pass, but if you recur this dude with an Animate Dead or similar effect, and he is all by himself on your board, target opponent has no choice but to take this guy and his drawbacks and you get one of that player’s dudes! And it goes on, until someone sacs two swamps, then they get to steal a dude (probably one of their own!) for a while. It might also be interesting with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Kormus Bell in play, then you could steal opponents’ lands to sacrifice.

3 - Pillar Tombs of Aku. My second reserved list card here. First, I would like to mention that this is an unusual Therese Nielsen art piece, rather unlike her usual mystic-looking pieces, this is straight gloomy! I also love sacrificing! This makes everyone do it or they have to lose life, and this goes away (sad-face). But for four mana, this is a good way to keep the creature population down, and a well-timed Forbidden Orchard keeps it on the board a bit longer.

2 – Desolation. This card is one of the most bitter cards I have ever seen (outside of Forsaken Wastes and Kaervek’s Spite). It punishes tight mana curves and, combined with Pox effects, it really hurts! Even decks with a lot of mana do not like this card. Land destruction in commander is often considered by most people to be a “dick move”. The fact is, it punishes decks with a lot of instants more, because they cast spells during other people’s turns, thereby triggering this enchantment more often. Ouch! I can only imagine the agony if you are using predominantly plains…(your wailing gives me pleasant dreams.)

1 - Infernal Darkness. Contamination has a more powerful effect and not as bad of an upkeep cost, but it is kind of expensive dollars-wise. If you want to double up on the effect in commander though, you gotta do what you gotta do. I like this one for the Phil Foglio art and that it is a lower demand Ice Age card. Unlike Contamination, this one doesn’t affect your own Lake of the Dead or Phyrexian Tower though! I usually use it to effectively shut down multicolored decks on turn four…while I get out Maralen of the Mornsong to set up my victory!

Honorable Mentions

There were a metric butt-ton of great black cards that I wanted to talk about, but the list is usually only ten cards long with a few honorable mentions. I have five of those this time, not really powerful enough to make the top ten, but definitely worthy of mention.

Ashes to Ashes. Never underestimate exiling bad guys. The drawback is not too bad, five damage is painful, but probably not as painful as getting hit by the two turds you just exiled! The quirky Drew Tucker watercolor art is worth a mention as well.

The Wretched. If you can keep this fella walking, it could potentially steal an entire enemy army. With a big butt, it is a bit hard to kill most of the time, but with a few buffs or combat tricks, it could be a major threat. The two reprints in Chronicles and Fifth Edition make it very affordable.

Ill-Gotten Gains. I think that this card is underrated in commander as it affects all players. Even that fool holding ten cards thanks to Reliquary Tower! This powers Wheel of Torture as well because it trims hand sizes to where you can force discards under three. It might bite back if an opponent digs something powerful from their yard, but a Leyline of the Void ensures that they simply discard their hands.

Yawgmoth’s Agenda. This card limits you to one spell per turn, but with multiple opponents, it means more turns! (…if you use instants and flash!). You can also power cool graveyard effects in the late game by casting stuff from the yard. Most folks pass over this Yawgmoth card, but it really has a nice, powerful effect especially in combination with dozens of other cards. For additional nonsense, use it with Mirror of Fate to get your cards back from exile!

Death Match. I feel weird adding this one to the list, it doesn’t seem to have a powerful effect at first, but if you look a bit more closely, it triggers *each* time a creature enters the battlefield. This means that when a bunch of 1/1 tokens suddenly hit the table (say, from Infernal Genesis?), it essentially board wipes. In my nearly-creatureless Maralen of the Mornsong deck, this is a nice way of clearing the board repetitively and it gives some of my opponents the ability to rid themselves of other players’ nuisance creatures if no one has other answers (such as my Maralen!).

That’s it for this week. I love looking for unusual control elements and playing cards that others may have heard of only in rumor, thus not really having answers for those types of decks. I hope you enjoyed looking at these (probably) never-to-be-seen-again cards. I say that because mostly they have so little impact on the grand metagame and are so limited in scope, unpopular, or dozens of other reasons.

There are so many ‘staples’ in commander, there is hardly room for improvement in a lot of cases, that’s why brewing is so important. This is where players stumble across advantageous effects that might translate into a tournament format such as Modern or Legacy. My secret to knowing these cards intimately is simple: I collected four of each when they were printed. This led to me to build decks around these cards because I had four of each janky rare and I didn’t have four of each staple (like Cadaverous Bloom or Cursed Scroll).

Next week, I will heat things up with red, the color of burn, dragons, and chaos! Until then, stay cool!