Magic: The Gathering – The 14 Best Black Sorceries
By Chris Guest
The color black in Magic: The Gathering is known for dastardly cards that generally cause your opponent to have a bad time. Black is the color in MTG that specializes in discard spells, creature-killing spells, reanimation spells and cards that are generally oppressive to play against (and some cards that are actually Oppression in cardboard form).
When it comes to sorcery spells, MTG has a bevy of game-breaking and eminently powerful sorceries that are hugely impactful on the game, and they can often win you the game if you’re able to cast them successfully.
From discard to creature destruction, and life loss to library-searching, these 14 black sorceries are sure to deliver delightfully devious plays for mages, whether they be in Commander decks, for casual play or competitively. Read on to explore Magic’s darker side.
14. Imperial Seal
One-Mana Utility Search Spell
A strictly weaker version of Vampiric Tutor, that card doesn’t qualify for this list since it’s an instant. Instead, this card, which has only been printed in English in two sets, features on this list at sorcery speed.
Despite being weaker than one of the best search spells of all time, that doesn’t mean it’s subpar by any means – being able to search your library for any card for only one black mana and two life is a pretty incredible deal. And one that mages who play black will be happy to fork over. Also, due to this card’s scarcity, it’s actually way more expensive than it’s vampiric counterpart.
13. Damnation
Black’s Best Board Wipe? Probably
For a while, mass board wipes were quite rare – and were more or less limited to the color white in MTG. Enter Damnation from 2007’s Planar Chaos set. Damnation provided a “color-shifted” black version of Wrath of God, the original white board wipe from Magic’s first-ever set, Alpha.
Being able to destroy all creatures on the board for only four mana is still a tremendous bargain, especially considering that all four-mana board wipes these days have a caveat that could serve as a minor downside (an opponent drawing a card or getting a Clue token, for instance). Not so with Damnation. All creatures will die upon the resolution of this card, and your foes don’t even get the chance to regenerate them.
12. Rise of the Dark Realms
It Costs Nine Mana, But It’s Worth It
A nine-mana sorcery-speed spell better be utterly devastating when it resolves, and in the case of this card originally printed in the Magic 2014 core set, it certainly is. Being able to put all creature cards from all graveyards into play under your control is hugely powerful, though it will certainly take you a while to play it – even if you successfully mana ramp.
Where this card really shines is in Commander, where you’ll be able to steal all creature cards in all three of your opponents’ graveyards with a single, hugely powerful (and hugely expensive) sorcery spell – as well as get back your own creatures that have been killed over the course of the match.