Keeping on the lines of our budget Commander cards theme with our lists this week, it’s time to talk about Black cards.
There are a lot of different ways to play Black in Commander, but you’re more likely than not going to be messing around with the graveyard and punishing your enemies for having the audacity to stand up to you. So, we found ten Black Commander cards for under a dollar that you can pick up right now.
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10 amazing Black Commander cards for under a dollar
Our shoutout this time around goes to Ghastly Conscription. This is a seven mana Sorcery that exiles all Creature cards from a target player’s graveyard in a face-down pile, and then lets you manifest those cards.
This makes each of them a 2/2 Creature, but you can also pay the cards mana cost to turn them face up at any point in time. It’s a very Yu-Gi-Oh move, but it’s also a lot of fun to do.
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10 – Syr Konrad, the Grim
“Whenever another Creature dies, or a Creature card is put into a graveyard from anywhere other than the battlefield, or a Creature card leaves your graveyard, Syr Konrad, the Grim deals 1 damage to each opponent.” Basically, get some mill and discard in your deck and you can ping everyone to death.
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9 – Dark Impostor
For six mana, you can exile another Creature and put a +1/+1 counter on it. On top of that, Dark Impostor gains all activated abilities of all the Creature cards it has exiled. This allows you to slowly make him stronger, remove threats, and even gain some fancy new abilities on the way.
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8 – Zulaport Cutthroat
The key thing though, is that whenever it or another Creature you control dies, each opponent loses one life, and you then gain one life. All you really need is a sacrifice outlet and some Creature recursion and you’ll likely win the same turn this lands on the battlefield.
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7 – The Elderspell
Black is pretty well-renowned for being very good at killing things. Well, The Elderspell is one of the bits of removal going, but it’s also very specific.
For two mana, The Elderspell lets you destroy any number of Planeswalkers, and then put two loyalty counters on one of your own for each one destroyed. It’s absurdly powerful, but also very specific. It’s still worth having if you’re running Planeswalkers though, just in case.
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6 – In Garruk’s Wake
Do you want board wipes? Well, we’ve got ’em, and none are more potent than In Garruk’s Wake. The only downside with this card is that it costs nine mana, which isn’t cheap at all.
However, it destroys every Creature and Planeswalker on the board, so that’s nice. No, wait. It actually only destroys the ones you don’t control, which means you can play it even in a deck filled with permanents and not worry about it at all.
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5 – Geth, Lord of the Vault
Why is Geth so cheap, it’s such a great Commander card? Well, whatever. Geth, Lord of the Vault, is a six mana 5/5 with intimidate, so it can only be blocked by Black Creatures or Artifact Creatures.
It also has an ability that costs X and one Black, which reads, “Put target Artifact or Creature card with mana value X from an opponent’s graveyard onto the battlefield under your control tapped. Then that player mills X cards.” You get to not only mill someone out, but also take their coolest stuff.
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4 – Massacre Girl
When they enter the battlefield, every other Creature gets -1/-1 until the end of turn, then, if any other Creature dies in that turn, every other Creature gets -1/-1 until the end of the turn. Massacre Girl is basically a board wipe, and if you’re into killing your own Creatures anyway, they might just be the best Commander for you.
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3 – Gonti, Lord of Luxury
The long if it is, “When Gonti, Lord of Luxury enters the battlefield, look at the top four cards of target opponent’s library, exile one of them face down, then put the rest on the bottom of that library in a random order. You may look at and cast that card for as long as it remains exiled, and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast that spell.” Getting your pick of the top four cards of the best player’s deck is always a good thing, and because you can cast it even if Gonti dies, it makes the whole thing highly profitable.
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2 – Victimize
We’ve mentioned recursion already in this article, but it’s good to know about cards that do it well. Well, Victimize is a three mana Sorcery that is one of the best cards in existence for it.
You see, you get to choose two Creature cards in your graveyard, then sacrifice a Creature you control to return those two Creatures to the battlefield tapped. This is good for literally anything, but especially if you combine it with cards like Gonti, Lord of Luxury, and even Massacre Girl in a pinch. Or, you know, our final pick…
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1 – Gray Merchant of Asphodel
Look, we don’t make the rules here, but Gray Merchant of Asphodel is basically one of the best Black Commander cards ever made, and it also happens to be under a dollar to buy. On the face of it, it’s a five mana 2/4.
However, when it enters the battlefield, “each opponent loses X life, where X is your devotion to black. You gain life equal to the life lost this way.” That means you’ll regularly be draining your opponents for most of their life, and then suddenly become healthier than even the most undead of Creatures.
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