The Best Mono-Black Commanders In Magic: The Gathering

Summary

• Black offers versatile commanders like Horobi, Erebos, and Toshiro, enabling graveyard play, lifegain hate, and efficient spells.
• Some top black commanders include Anowon, focusing on vampire synergies, and Chainer, excelling in creature recursion.
• Powerful black commanders like Vito, Gisa, and Ayara maximize life-gain effects, zombie hordes, and aristocrat strategies.

Black is quite possibly the most varied and multifarious mono color in Magic: The Gathering. Between its myriad tribes, mechanics, and available strategies, black possesses a sizable roster of viable commanders in the Commander format. Whether it be through graveyard-based decks, Zombies, Vampires, or even Voltron, black has the upper hand when it comes to available deck options when comparing it to some of its mono-colored counterparts.

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So here today, we're going to talk about the best that black has to offer in regard to the frontrunners of its possible Commander decks.

Updated April 28, 2025, by Ryan Hay: Picking a single Commander is a bit of a pain, especially when you're locked into just one color like Black. With all sorts of powerful options ready to choose from you might be a bit overwhelmed with all the cards at your disposal. Thankfully, we gathered a bunch of the best you can find all in one place. This time around we're adding Imotekh the Stormlord, Massacre Girl, Known Killer, and Valgavoth, Terror Eater, three very strong cards that all do different things depending on how you build your deck.

21 Horobi, Death's Wail

Destroy Everything

Horobi, Death's Wail was printed in Champions of Kamigawa and is among the most underrated mono-black commanders in the entirety of Magic.

A 4/4 with flying, Horobi states that whenever a creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, that creature is immediately destroyed. Not only does this prevent opponents from making use of effects that buff their creatures, but it converts previously innocuous cards such as Liquimetal Torque, which are used to target a creature for a minor effect, into cheap and repeatable sources of removal.

When playing a Horobi deck, it's important to note that as this effect is universal, meaning opponents can use this effect to target your creatures as well. As this effect only affects creatures, one easy way around this is to primarily use card types such as artifacts and Planeswalkers that are capable of targeting your opponents' permanents, rather than using creatures that can be more easily removed than ever.

20 Erebos, God Of The Dead

Stop Lifegain

One of black's biggest strengths as a color is its versatility. Black has, in some capacity, dabbled in many of the game's different mechanics across Magic's history, but if there's something that's always been present in black, it's the ability to slowly drain your opponent's life. One of the original gods from Theros, Erebos, God of Death is one of the more open-ended of the original Gods, though his abilities greatly benefit the god's controller.

Firstly, Erebos shuts down your opponent's capability to gain life. This means that any losses of life become more and more crucial, and any life that you can gain is even more of an advantage. Additionally, by simply paying two mana and two life, you can draw a card at any time, preventing you from ever simply running out of plays.

19 Toshiro Umezawa

Free Spells

A unique and underrated commander, Toshiro Umezawa has the ability to provide instants in your graveyard with flashback whenever a creature an opponent controls dies.

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This allows a Toshiro Umezawa player to often get twice the value out of their kill spells, as they can use them to take out a threatening creature, and then immediately cast the same spell again thanks to their commander's ability.

18 Anowon, The Ruin Sage

Only Vampires Remain

Many commanders such as Anowon, The Ruin Sage benefit from creating an all-universal effect that greatly hinders your opponents while being harmless to their controller.

Anowon only possesses one ability, one which causes each player to sacrifice a non-Vampire creature during each of your upkeeps. While this ability can easily throw off many creature-light decks, and can even deal with resilient creatures possessing hexproof or indestructible, Anowon can lead a vampire-themed deck that will have no problem with such an ability.

17 Chainer, Dementia Master

A Nightmare Champion

Black has been long known for its ability to resurrect creatures from the graveyard, and when it comes to mono-black recursion commanders, few are as effective as Chainer, Dementia Master. By paying three black mana and three life, Chainer allows you to return any creature from your graveyard to the battlefield, making that creature a Nightmare in addition to its other types.

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With the ability being both affordable and repeatable, you'll be capable of generating huge threats through your graveyard. Unfortunately, Chainer possesses a drawback, making a player exile all nightmares they control when Chainer leaves the battlefield. Luckily, there are means of circumventing this drawback, such as the card Conjurer's Closet, which allows you to blink any of your creatures, washing them of their Nightmare typing before they'd be exiled from Chainer's death.

16 Braids, Arisen Nightmare

Take Away Choices

A reworked take on the classic and infamous banned mono-black commander Braids, Cabal Minion; Braids, Arisen Nightmare is a commander that sacrifices permanents in order to put opponents in lose-lose scenarios.

For the low cost of three mana, Braids states that at the beginning of your end step, you may sacrifice an artifact, creature, enchantment, land, or Planeswalker you control. If you do, each opponent can choose to sacrifice a permanent that shares a card type with the permanent you sacrificed. For each player who doesn't, that player loses two life and you draw a card.

This means you can pressure opponents into sacrificing cards key to their strategy by targeting specific card types, otherwise drawing a substantial number of cards throughout a game.

Due to her ability to sacrifice creatures, Braids can make for a powerful mono-black Aristocrats option that blends the use of several card types to adapt to whatever types of decks your opponents may be playing.

15 Syr Konrad, The Grim

While milling strategies are often associated with blue, Syr Konrad the Grim serves as one of the strongest milling commanders in the game, while also being versatile enough that he can be utilized with other strategies.

Dealing one damage to each opponent each time a creature dies, a card is put into a graveyard from a library, or even when a card leaves your graveyard, Syr Konrad is capable of dealing a great deal of damage over the course of the game, triggering his ability off of numerous instances. Pairing well with everything from basic removal, mill, and even recursion-based strategies, Syr Konrad can suddenly accumulate large sums of damage seemingly out of nowhere.

14 Skithiryx, The Blight Dragon

Infection Is Only The Beginning

In a format in which players start with forty life, a frequently discussed topic between players is whether or not Infect should be adjusted. An ability that causes damage to be dealt via poison counters, effectively reducing a player's life total to ten, some tend to view Infect as a sort of boogeyman, while others view it as a cornerstone of agro. Either way, Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon is the only legendary creature with infect.

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Skithiryx allows for very aggressive decks that tend to utilize either infect-focused strategies or Voltron strategies that bolster the effectiveness of Skithiryx itself. Costing five mana to play, with additional investments of mana, Skithiryx is capable of regenerating itself as well as giving itself haste.

13 Vito, Thorn Of The Dusk Rose

Punishing Life Gains

A Vampire Cleric for three mana, Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose is a commander capable of converting life-gaining effects into damaging effects.

A 1/3, Vito states that whenever its controller gains life, they can have target opponent lose that much life. In addition to weaponizing various life-gaining effects, this effectively causes creatures with lifelink to deal twice as much damage to players.

This is quite great, as Vito features an activated ability for the cost of five mana that provides lifelink to each creature under its owner's control, meaning a Vito player will consistently have access to some form of life-gain.

12 Gisa, Glorious Resurrector

Zombies Reborn

The most recent iteration of one of the most iconic necromancers in Magic, Gisa, Glorious Resurrector serves as graveyard hate while augmenting its controller's removal spells.

A 4/4 for four mana, Gisa states that when a creature under an opponent's control would die, those cards are exiled instead. Not only does this shut off many graveyard synergies opponents may be utilizing, but Gisa also returns all creatures exiled with it to the battlefield under its owner's control at the beginning of that player's upkeep.

While the cards Gisa returns from exile gain decayed, making it so they can only attack once before sacrificing themselves, this ability essentially allows a Gisa player to steal an opponent's creature through the use of removal spells.