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 your deck can often lay the foundation for powerful strategies. While large and splashy spells may be fun to cast, you won't be able to use them unless you survive the earliest stages of a game.
The cheapest and smallest cards in your deck are often some of the most important, as they can set up a promising mid and late-game. No color demonstrates this facet of the game better than black. So today, we're going to examine the ten strongest and most worthwhile black one-drops from across Magic's history!
Updated by Chris Stomberg on May 11, 2023: Due to black's ability to pay alternative costs, such as life, for especially devious effects, it's easy to argue that black's one-drops are the most notorious in all of Magic. Turn one discard spells, tutors, and, strangely enough, mana ramp available in black can all make life a living hell for opponents right off the jump. Newly printed creatures with alternative casting costs found in Modern Horizons have further exacerbated this issue in recent years, turning one-mana black spells found at common rarity into some of the most gruesome value generating machines in the game. All that being said, let's dive into the most feared and, often, arguably unfair color in Magic.
13 Gravecrawler
Gravecrawler is a powerful and synergistic Zombie staple. 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, Gravecrawler can be cast from its owner's graveyard as long as you control another Zombie. This allows you to take advantage of potent sacrifice outlets, as Gravecrawler can simply be cast again and again after its sacrificed.
12 Inquisition Of Kozilek
While this discard spell doesn't see nearly as much play as it used to, there was a time when many considered it a better discard spell in Modern than the almighty Thoughtseize. This was thanks to most decks containing cards that cost 3 mana or less, effectively allowing Inquisition to function as a Thoughtseize without the life cost.
However, the Modern metagame has changed much thanks to the release of Modern Horizons. As a result, now there are all kinds of decks chock full of spells that cost much more than three mana. Inquisition has found itself relegated to the sidelines for now, but there's no doubt that it may make a powerful return in future metagames.
11 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 comparably cheap removal spell in the form of Fatal Push.
An instant capable of destroying any target creature with mana value two or less, Fatal Push can also destroy a creature with a mana value 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.
10 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 your end steps, as long as any player lost four or more life, it gains a +1/+1 counter, allowing it to grow in size. Notably, the card's activated ability allows the Knight to deal enough damage to gain counters all on its own.
9 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 an opponent's deck for the remainder of a game. Upon being cast, you can exile any card (besides a basic land) from a player's graveyard.
You can then 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 an opponent's deck, this spell allows you 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.
8 Duress
Currently a staple in Standard, Duress is the downsized version of the Modern staple Thoughtseize. While this card was long relegated to the sideboard in previous Standard metagames, Duress has recently been promoted to the mainboards of many decks due to the overwhelming share of midrange decks in Standard at the moment.
While it might seem like being unable to select a creature card is a huge downside, the majority of Standard decks are filled with incredibly impactful spells that aren't creatures at the moment. Some examples include Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Invoke Despair, and planeswalkers like The Wandering Emperor. It's unlikely that Duress will remain as good as it is right now for long, but it will always be a sideboard staple against Control decks.
7 Feign Death and Undying Malice
These rather innocuous common rarity spells aren't much on their own, however, in combination with a creature that has a powerful enter the battlefield trigger, they become an absolute nightmare. This goes doubly so if the card in question can be cheated into play early such as the likes of Fury and Grief. This combination of cards is so powerful that it spawned an entirely new deck archetype in Modern known as Rakdos Scam.
The deck is so named for scamming opponents by cheating these elementals into play in the first turns of the game. When an opponent goes to remove them, they are cheated into play a second time using Feign Death or Undying Malice. Due to the powerful enter the battlefield triggers attached to these Elementals, it usually feels like your opponent has scammed the game out from under you.
6 Entomb
As a color, black is often regarded for its ability to "tutor," searching your library and putting any card into your hand. Entomb is a powerful tutor spell that can search your library for any card and put it into your graveyard
While nearly every other color in the game would prefer to put cards into your hand instead, black is also the color of necromancy and graveyard shenanigans. This means that black decks can access spells and abilities that put cards from your 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 you to return a creature from the graveyard to the battlefield for an incredibly low price. Notably, Reanimate can target creatures in any player's graveyard as opposed to simply your own.
As an additional cost to casting Reanimate, you lose life equal to the recurred creature's mana value. 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 well before your opponent has the tools to deal with them.
4 Dark Ritual
Dating back to the very first Magic set, Dark Ritual is a useful instant that allows you to cast an impactful spell ahead of schedule. While Dark Ritual costs one mana, it adds three black mana to your mana pool.
While this mana must be used the turn the spell is cast, Dark Ritual is a surefire way to accelerate your earliest turns, allowing spells like Liliana of the Veil to be cast on turn one. More importantly, his is a key card for many combo decks that need access to more mana in order to win the game on the spot.
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 you can cast for a single mana. A mammoth 13/13 for one mana, Death's Shadow gets -X/-X where X is equal to your life total.
This means that the more damage you sustain, the more potent it will be. Luckily, black just so happens to be the color of mana that most frequently allows you to pay life to access a myriad of strong abilities. Paying life to increase the size of your creatures isn't such a bad deal.
2 Thoughtseize
Few spells are as universally met with a groan as the Modern staple: Thoughtseize. A single mana sorcery, Thoughtseize allows you to look at an opponent's hand and force them to discard any non-land card.
Thoughtseize can instantly ruin an opponent's seemingly perfect starting hand while simultaneously providing you 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 effects greatly outclass the cons against all but the most aggressive decks.
1 Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal
Two spells with nearly identical abilities, Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal are the two strongest tutors that you can cast for a single mana. An instant and sorcery respectively, both of these cards allow you to search your library for any card, shuffling your library, and putting that card on top of it.
Like Thoughtseize, these spells each cause their caster to lose two life. However, the downside is greatly outweighed by the ability to find the exact card you need on the following turn, no matter if it's a creature, planeswalker, instant, sorcery, enchantment, or other card type. After all, why limit yourself?
