As much as Magic: The Gathering players like to focus on the largest and most impactful cards in their decks, the smaller and more unassuming cards within a player’s deck can often lay the foundation for powerful strategies.
While large and splashy spells may be fun to cast, a player won’t be able to use them unless they survive the earliest stages of a game. The cheapest and smallest cards in one’s deck are often some of the most important, as they can set up a promising mid and late game for a player. So today, we’re going to examine the ten strongest and most worthwhile black one-drops from across Magic’s history!
10 Gravecrawler
Gravecrawler is a powerful and synergistic zombie-tribal staple. A 2/1 zombie for a single black mana, Gravecrawler passes the “vanilla test” with flying colors, having a power that exceeds its converted mana cost.
It is ideal to attack with a Gravecrawler as frequently as possible, especially as it is incapable of blocking. While its low toughness nearly ensures that it will perish, it can be cast from its owner’s grave as long as that player controls another zombie! This allows a player to take advantage of potent sacrifice outlets, as Gravecrawler can simply be cast repeatedly after its sacrificed!
9 Fatal Push
While the iconic Lightning Bolt has long served as the gold standard for single-mana removal in red, it wasn’t until Aether Revolt that black gained access to a comparable cheap removal spell in the form of Fatal Push.
An instant capable of destroying any target creature with converted mana cost two or less, Fatal Push can even destroy a creature with a converted mana cost of four or less if a permanent owned by this spell’s caster left the battlefield that turn. While this spell can’t interact with larger threats, formats such as Modern are dominated by decks that include very few creatures with a mana cost above five.
8 Knight Of The Ebon Legion
Knight of the Ebon Legion is an aggressive and capable creature for a single mana whose usefulness often scales with a game as it progresses. While the Knight is normally a 1/2 for one mana, for three mana it can buff itself, gaining +3/+3 and deathtouch. This ability can be used to deal additional damage to a foe when unblocked, or can take out a troublesome creature if it becomes blocked.
As if this weren’t enough, at the end of each of its controller’s end steps, as long as any player lost four or more life, it gains +1/+1 counter, allowing it to grow in size!
7 Surgical Extraction
Surgical Extraction is a spell for a single Phyrexian black mana that can help to permanently remove every copy of a specified card from a player’s deck for the remainder of a game. Upon being cast, Surgical Extraction’s caster can exile any card (besides a basic land) from a players graveyard.
They then can search that player’s hand, graveyard, and library for other copies of that spell, exiling them as well! In addition to permanently removing key pieces from one’s deck, this spell notably allows its caster to look at an opponents entire deck and hand, gaining a great deal of information. As this spell costs Phyrexian Mana, it can even be cast with life rather than mana!
6 Entomb
As a color, black is often regarded for its ability to “tutor,” searching a given player’s library and putting any card into one’s hand.
For a single mana, Entomb is a powerful tutor spell that can search its controller’s library for any card and put it into that player’s graveyard. While nearly every other color in the game would prefer to put cards into one’s hand instead, black is also the color of necromancy and the graveyard. This means that black decks can access spells and abilities that put cards from one’s graveyard directly into play, often completely circumventing egregious mana costs.
5 Reanimate
Speaking of necromancy, Reanimate is one of Magic’s premier recursion spells, allowing a player to return a creature from the graveyard to the battlefield. For one mana, Reanimate is a sorcery that can put target creature from any player’s graveyard onto the battlefield under this spell’s caster’s control.
That player then loses life equal to the recurred creature’s converted mana cost. While this loss of life may appear to incentivize the recursion of cheaper creatures, when paired with Entomb, Reanimate can put deadly and high-costed creatures into play as early as turn two.
4 Dark Ritual
Dating back to the very first Magic set, Dark Ritual is a useful instant capable of allowing a player to cast an impactful spell ahead of schedule. While Dark Ritual costs one mana, it adds three black mana to its controller’s mana pool.
While this mana must be used the turn the spell is cast, Dark Ritual is a surefire way to accelerate one’s earliest turns, allowing spells like Liliana of the Veil to be cast on turn one.
3 Death’s Shadow
An incredible creature that has spawned its own namesake deck in the Modern Format, Death’s Shadow is one of the largest creatures a player can cast for a single mana. A mammoth 13/13 for one mana, Death’s Shadow gets -X/-X where X is equal to its controller’s life total.
This means that the more damage this creature’s controller sustains, the more potent it will be. Luckily, black just so happens to be the color of mana that most frequently allows players to pay life to access a myriad of strong abilities.
2 Thoughtseize
Few spells are as universally met with groans as the Modern staple, Thoughtseize. A single mana sorcery, Thoughtseize allows its caster to look at an opponent’s hand and force them to discard any non-land card.
Thoughtseize can instantly ruin a seemingly perfect starting hand while simultaneously provide its caster with a great deal of extra information. Though this spell causes its caster to sustain two damage upon being cast, the pros of Thoughtseize’s effect greatly outclass the cons.
1 Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal
Two spells with nearly identical abilities, Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal are the two strongest tutors that a player can cast with a single mana. An instant and sorcery respectively, both of these cards allow their caster to search their library for any card, shuffling their library, and putting that card on top of it.
While like Thought Seize, these spells each cause their caster to lose two life, this downside is greatly outweighed by the ability to perfectly stack one’s deck for a single mana.
NEXT: Magic: The Gathering - The 10 Most Underrated Tribal Commanders In The Game
