BlackLegendary Creature — Human WizardThe Destined Black Mage
Mana value3Rank#10,862
The Commander
Deathtouch
, 
: Another target creature you control gains deathtouch until end of turn.
Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, The Destined Black Mage deals 1 damage to each opponent. If you have a full party, it deals 3 damage to each opponent instead.
Guide
Gameplan
Cast a torrent of cheap noncreature spells while The Destined Black Mage drains each opponent for 1 (or 3 with a full party of Cleric/Rogue/Warrior/Wizard), turning every cantrip, removal spell, and ramp rock into reach. Use the deathtouch-granting ability to make any creature a brutal blocker or attacker that trades up, while you grind the board with mono-black interaction. You close games through cumulative spell-cast pings, often backed by extra-damage doublers.
Strengths
- Inevitability against the whole table—every noncreature spell drains all opponents simultaneously
- Deathtouch sharing makes a small creature an excellent attacker and a fortress on defense, enabling pseudo-Voltron pressure
- Mono-black gives access to elite tutors, removal, and recursion to assemble its pieces consistently
- Low mana value (3) means quick recasts and easy command-zone access
Weaknesses
- The ping ability lives on the commander, so removal-heavy tables can repeatedly shut off your damage engine
- Full party is hard to assemble and maintain reliably, capping your per-spell damage at 1 most of the time
- Mono-black struggles with enchantment/artifact removal and lacks card-draw efficiency of blue spellslinger
- Damage is spread to each opponent rather than focused, so it's slow to actually kill three players
Key Cards
- Aetherflux Reservoir — Converts your high spell count into life gain and a 50-damage finisher that doesn't rely on the commander surviving.
- Sign in Blood — Cheap repeatable card advantage that also triggers a ping, the kind of value spell this deck wants dozens of.
- Bontu's Last Reckoning — A black board wipe that doubles as a ping; mono-black removal both protects you and adds damage.
- Torment of Hailfire — A scalable X-spell finisher that drains the table and triggers the commander on cast.
- Bolas's Citadel — Lets you cast a stream of noncreature spells off the top of your library, multiplying ping triggers.
- Liliana of the Veil — A premier black planeswalker that fits the party/Wizard plan while providing repeatable disruption and a noncreature trigger.
Upgrade Path
Lean harder into cheap noncreature density—add fast mana (Dark Ritual, Sol Ring, Jet Medallion) and cantrips so each turn fires multiple pings, and include tutors (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor) to find Aetherflux Reservoir or a finisher. Add commander protection (Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Imp's Mischief) so the ping engine stays online, and prioritize creatures that hit all four party slots to keep damage at 3. For the top end, fold in Torment of Hailfire, Exsanguinate, and Bolas's Citadel to convert your spell volume into a hard kill.
Core Cards
The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.
Win Conditions
- ▸Cumulative spell-cast ping damage, accelerated to 3 per spell with a full party
- ▸Aetherflux Reservoir or Torment of Hailfire as a burst finisher
- ▸Beating down with a deathtouch-equipped evasive creature
- ▸Symmetrical/asymmetrical drain effects like Exsanguinate and Gray Merchant of Asphodel
Archetypes
- Spellslinger — Every noncreature spell deals damage to each opponent, rewarding a deck packed with cheap instants, sorceries, and artifacts.
- Party / Tribal — Assembling a Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, and Wizard upgrades each ping from 1 to 3 damage, a major payoff worth building toward.
- Voltron / Deathtouch Aggro — The repeatable deathtouch grant turns a single evasive attacker into a must-block threat that trades with anything.
- Control — Mono-black removal and discard let you stall the board while pinging opponents to death over time.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (B), by popularity.
