Black Game Changers — All 10 on the MTG List (September 2026)

Black has ten Game Changers, tied with blue for the largest coloured group — but black got there a different way. Blue has ten because it lost four and still had ten left. Black has ten because black has never lost a single card from the list. Every black card that has ever been a Game Changer still is.

All 10 Black Game Changers

Verified against Scryfall's is:gamechanger query on 2026-09-06. Prices are USD market prices from the same snapshot; a dash means no market price was available for a non-foil printing.

A deck with even one of these cards is Bracket 3 at minimum. Brackets 1 and 2 allow zero Game Changers, Bracket 3 allows up to three, and Brackets 4 and 5 have no cap.

What each one actually does

• Ad Nauseam — Reveals and draws the entire deck in one cast at the cost of life equal to mana value. In low-curve combo decks, frequently draws 20+ cards and chains directly into a kill.
• Bolas's Citadel — Casts spells off the top of the library for life. With life-gain or low-curve support, chains a full hand worth of free spells into a one-turn-kill loop.
• Braids, Cabal Minion — Forces every player to sacrifice a permanent each turn. The controller plays around it; opponents lose lands, mana rocks, and creatures every cycle until the board is empty.
• Demonic Tutor — Search the library for any card and put it in hand for two mana. The tutor by which all other tutors are measured — finds any combo piece, answer, or threat in the deck.
• Imperial Seal — One-mana sorcery-speed tutor for any card. Slower than Vampiric Tutor (delivers next turn rather than draw step) but identically efficient.
• Necropotence — Trades life for any number of cards each turn. In storm and combo decks, transforms a starting life total into 30+ cards across a few turns.
• Opposition Agent — Steals the cards from any opponent's tutor or fetch land at flash speed. Punishes the format's most common acceleration and search effects with a single 3-mana creature.
• Orcish Bowmasters — Pings any target on entry and on every extra opponent draw, scaling with format-staple draw engines like Rhystic Study and Mystic Remora to clear opposing utility creatures and planeswalkers.
• Tergrid, God of Fright — Whenever an opponent discards a nontoken permanent card or sacrifices a nontoken permanent, puts that card onto the battlefield under your control. Combined with mass-discard or edict effects, drains opponents of their boards within a turn.
• Vampiric Tutor — Tutors any card to the top of the library at instant speed for one mana and 2 life. Delivers in the next draw step, making it the fastest unconditional tutor in the format.

Which black Game Changers to keep at Bracket 3

Bracket 3 allows three Game Changers. Black's list is unusually lopsided: five of the ten are tutors or tutor-equivalents, which makes the choice easier than the raw count suggests.

• Necropotence. Black's engine, and the card the colour's entire resource philosophy is built on. Life is a resource in a 40-life format, and Necropotence converts it into cards at a rate nothing else on the list matches.
• Demonic Tutor. One tutor, not three. Demonic Tutor is the one to keep because it puts the card in your hand rather than on top of your library, which means it can find an answer on the turn you need it.
• Orcish Bowmasters. The only black Game Changer that affects the board the turn it lands and keeps affecting it afterwards. It also scales against exactly the cards the rest of a Bracket 3 pod is running — every extra draw from a Rhystic Study or a Mystic Remora is another ping.

Black's other seven are worth passing on, and mostly for one of two reasons: price, or play pattern.

• Imperial Seal. It is Vampiric Tutor, one turn slower, at several times the price. If you already kept Demonic Tutor, a second unconditional tutor is buying you less than a card that does something.
• Ad Nauseam and Bolas's Citadel. Both are storm turns. A deck that casts either one is playing "draw most of my deck and win this turn", and that game plan is a Bracket 4 description before you count a single Game Changer.
• Tergrid, God of Fright. It needs a mass-discard or edict shell to do anything, and when it does work it takes opponents' permanents onto your side of the board. That is a play pattern most Bracket 3 tables do not enjoy sitting through.
• Braids, Cabal Minion. A sacrifice lock. It ends casual games slowly rather than quickly, which is worse.
• Opposition Agent. A hoser aimed at tutors — and at Bracket 3, the tutors it steals from are usually the one or two your opponents were allowed to run.

Black has never lost a Game Changer

Black is the only colour with ten entries and zero removals. The October 21, 2025 update cut ten cards; we checked the colour identity of every one of them in Scryfall's bulk oracle data and none is black. The breakdown was four blue, three multicoloured, two green, one red.

The April 22, 2025 update removed two cards — Trouble in Pairs (white) and Trinisphere (colourless). Neither is black either.

The October removals had a clear shape: high-cost spells that only matter in decks that are already fast, and command-zone legends. Black's ten are neither. They are cheap, unconditional, maindeck cards — a one-mana tutor for anything, a three-mana engine that turns life into cards, a two-mana creature that punishes the format's most-played draw engines. Those are the effects the bracket system exists to sort, and Wizards has not softened on any of them across four update cycles.

Black is also the colour most likely to gain from an unban. Five cards on the current list — Biorhythm, Braids Cabal Minion, Coalition Victory, Gifts Ungiven and Panoptic Mirror — arrived by being unbanned and immediately added, and black's Braids is one of them.

Budget alternatives in black

Black is the easiest colour to de-escalate, because black's tutors have a well-known ladder of slower versions and none of the rungs below the top is on the list.

Opposition Agent is the one black effect with no black substitute. Tutor-hating at instant speed is a white and red effect elsewhere on the colour pie — Aven Mindcensor and Leonin Arbiter in white, Stranglehold in red — and none of those three is a Game Changer.

Every card in the middle column was checked against Scryfall's bulk oracle data and none of them carries the Game Changer flag, so all of them are legal in Bracket 2.

Game Changers by colour

The full 53-card list split by colour identity. Each colour has its own page:

• White (7)
• Blue (10)
• Black (10)
• Red (3)
• Green (7)
• Multicolor (4)
• Colorless (12)

Related

• The complete Game Changers list — all 53 cards, the update history, and the budget tiers
• Commander Brackets Explained — what each of the five brackets actually means
• Commander Bracket Calculator — paste a decklist and every Game Changer is flagged automatically
• The Commander banned list — a separate list, with no overlap

Frequently Asked Questions

How many black Game Changers are there?

Ten, as of the February 9, 2026 update. Black is tied with blue for the largest coloured group on the 53-card list.

Which black cards were removed from the Game Changers list?

None. Black is the only colour that has never lost a card. All ten cards cut on October 21, 2025 were blue, green, red, or multicoloured, and the two cut in April 2025 were white and colourless.

Is Demonic Tutor a Game Changer?

Yes. Demonic Tutor is on the official list. Diabolic Tutor, which does the same thing for four mana, is not — that is the standard swap for a deck trying to stay in Bracket 2.

Is Dockside Extortionist a black Game Changer?

No. Dockside Extortionist is red, and it is banned rather than restricted. Banned cards and Game Changers are separate lists with no overlap.