Angels have a hard bargain across the Blind Eternities. They’re held to be pinnacles of virtue, shackled to oaths or rung out for halo. It’s no wonder some decided to rebel — more surprising they’re such a small number. This nagging thought never left as I scrolled the scant offerings for mono-black angels. Less than a dozen among the coven and a murky origin. According to a deadlink on the mothership, they could be the result of corruption by black mana of the imposition of a horned helm that brought them into servitude.
A few have been playable, one is headlining card in Magic’s best-selling set ever, another is one of my favourite cards from a frankly disappointing art deco endeavour; factoring in the Valkyries and grave borne avengers, the kindred feel fractured.
Over the game’s history. Wizards haven’t been afraid to dream up potential kindred archetypes, leaving players hungry for a banner or commander to unite them — I’ll carry the torch for a proper skeleton commander until the end times. Not quite a demon but cast out from the oaths of their winged sisters, where do dark angels fall?
The biblical interpretation of redemption aligns the concept with something paid back, a sum settled, or a balance made even. There is a cost, though now we often hope for a clean slate with all past debts forgiven.
How do angels fair in their moral obligations? Are they born beset with complicated virtues, or do the winged guardians of the Boros Legion, never question and feel the utmost confidence in their application of the law? Surely in the multitude of planes visited over the years some are trouble by the duty they uphold.
Eleven cards in all.
I’ve been preoccupied with angels.
If consider including Orzhov, another ten are added to the cadre, but better to think of mono-black alone. There are pages of white angels, a secret lair deck and articles aplenty. With mono-black, you only get eleven.
In one set, symbiote outnumbers the corrupted angels, but this is not a thinly veiled treatise against the Marvel universe.
The first was Fallen Angel, brought to Legends by Anson Maddock’s tortured depiction of the once exalted being — known as Trine for those of us whose knees pop and crackle. Far from a triumphant Serra angel, soaring, divine righteous; the fallen turns from the viewer. Looking at the art, I can’t decide whether they are cowed or forcing me to bear witness to the severing of their wings.
You’re confronted either with a warning, or a boast.
I guess it doesn’t matter, they’re damned all the same.
Since the original printing, there have been two reimaginings, leaving Trine behind, shifting the creature’s fate and how you would receive a visit from them in the dead of night. Pity is gone and in its place is terror. This pair are more bloodthirsty, leaning into grim fantasy synonymous with the early aughts. Chrome-plated or garnished with decaying wings, we wanted angels free of ambiguity and ready for war.
In 2025, there was an update to the overall state of our air quality, which serves as an important metric for world health. 7.9 million deaths can now be attributed to the quality of the air that a person breathes, higher than tobacco worldwide. Smog, and our seeming disinterest in ending its proliferation, is killing us.
Dark angels wait above a choking earth. Crypt Angel, erupting from the grave with jagged sword in hand, wreathed in smoke. The tombstones and graves behind are obscured, more of an assumption than a certainty. Few things are more unnerving than an obscured figure in the dark, though pretty high on that short list would be glimmering red eyes peering out from the shadow.
I have only seen the card in flat, slightly faded ink, and on a digital storefront restored to an all too clean approximation of what you might spot from across the table, but the eyes hold you. I can only imagine how it looks in foil. An artist’s command of light and shadow continues through the dark angel’s history. Where most use light to herald their arrival, the shocks of brilliant light for corrupted angels only heighten their terror.
Valkyries served the whims of Odin, spiriting the worthy and slain from battlefields to find their eternal reward in Valhalla. Like much of Norse mythology, the symbol of the Valkyrie has been co-opted by far-right extremists and white supremacists to ends that are both terrifying and historically inaccurate.
Kaldheim released during one of my frequent breaks from the game. As one of the mythology sets, it’s an offshoot of design I’ve struggled to connect with. Aren’t planeswalkers, especially pre-mending, gods of a certain sort?
That said, I know the translation of our world mythologies into pantheons across the Blind Eternities is often well received. Not my thing, but I don’t sit down at a table with a unified theory of what is harmonious in the multiverse and what rings as pastiche.
I’m no authority on good taste. I adore New Capenna, a schlocky, ill-conceived plane; there’s one out there for every player.
In Kaldheim, decaying into a frostbitten draugr is one potential fate at the end of it all, or you could be spirited away on the wings of salvation. Live gloriously and your reward may be to find a familiar axe in your hands for the everafter. I’d take a bloody hall of warriors over undead servitude any day.
The colour of Starnheim’s denizens set the Valkyries apart from the dark angels of sets past. Gone are the hidden landscapes and sickly fog, murky browns and yellows that make you gag with sulfuric warning — Valkyries are brilliant and goddamn metal.
Cleaving Reaper besieges a nameless demon; teeth bared while armored in gold and brandishing a bloody axe. Their wings have an aura of indigo flame as the sky is lit up with forking lightning. Heavens shudder, horns blare, lesser hearts quake.
Everything is energized; everything is vivid.
A bloody assault is somehow contained within the illustration’s borders. Better to hold your breath and wait for the angel to make good on its name. The fiery wings of Kaldheim angels flow to fill their frames. None are cowering among their number. These are grand, epic figures suited to echo their inspirations.
Where the translations of mythology work best for me is when designers heighten the already operatic scale of the stories they draw from. I adore the quiet moments or mere handful of words in flavour text that can leave an outsized impression over the game’s more-than-thirty-year history. But angels fly through a different realm; give me drama, embrace the soaring heights. Whether they are found along the twisting branches of the world tree or the among skyscrapers.
Over the past year more than a million federal workers lost their unions protections, chief among them collective bargaining, thanks to policies enacted by the current government under U.S president Donald Trump. This has been called one of the single biggest acts of union busting in American history. Even though I am Canadian, I am furious and deeply concerned.
Streets of New Capenna had ten angels in all, the lingering pieces of an order once serving a plane wracked by the encroaching threat of Phyrexia. As the five families turned to demonic benefactors, and archdemons themselves, the angels were unseated. Kept around to extract their essence into Halo — during a treasure-happy phase in WOTC’s design philosophy — it’s no surprise they were so few in number. Despite the fact that I may be the only player pining for a ‘Legends of Old Capenna’ set, I hope to see more angels return to the city and balance the scales upended by the five families.
New Capenna is a city without angels or much of a narrative direction. Going through the world building guide, there was so much potential beyond pithy nods toward film noir robbed of its context and clunky dated mafia ‘jokes’. So often with the many missed opportunities in Magic’s multiverse, the lore behind New Capenna could have been more than pop culture riff. A city blind to its history in pursuit of fleeting pleasure until the thrall of crime-backed capitalism could have been fascinating. Instead, I’m left to mourn the potential with Angel of Suffering.
Blending the old with the new, the mono-black miller was never meant to bear down on otherworldly demons like the Valkyries, its foggy streets have been emblazoned with towering spotlights the sodium glow cutting through the gloom. Where other angels fell upon their planes with vengeance or retribution, Capenna’s lone black angel arrived to serve witness to a world where its kin were sold out for opulence. In narrative and design, the angels were often lacking — except Giada who is straight gas — but the sorrow of AoS stands out as a favourite piece among the cement shoes and dinner parties.
Thanatophobia is an overwhelming fear of death, which can either be your own or the death of a loved one. This disorder can be debilitating, though one must think a vampire or immortal would find it difficult to relate to such a condition.
Rodolf remains locked away in Jumpstart packs, not as prized as before his recent reprint, beckoning players welcome. I hope WOTC revisits the idea of Angelic Vampires again — or is he a vampiric angel? — as they feel less incongruous than an Angel Demon. All of this is only a feeling; one corruption of a holy figure works while another feels like two halves to incongruous to ever meld. Thanks to Sorin and Avacyn, angels and vampires share a connection in the multiverse, it’s a wonder the idea was not visited before.
Near immortals that are near human.
I think Rodolf’s design is mechanically serviceable rather than particularly interesting, combining life link with reanimation into an arrangement that aligns with what you could expect from a vampire angel. What he serves as though, is a potential direction for designers to take angels. What could a mono-black angel do that would feel out of step in white or even Orzhov? Maybe the answer is nothing, or not much worth exploring, but this is where I hope the design team’s minds are going with the upcoming reality fracture. I’d take a set of challenging designs, with plenty of misses and flops, over cards banking on nostalgia and affection for another world.
“Don't remain, remain in memory
Don't remain, remain in memory
Sephiroth
Sephiroth” – One-Winged Angel, an English translation to the best approximation
Fitting for a clone, three incarnations of Sephiroth arrived in Final Fantasy. Not to descend into a cataloging of grievances with Universes Beyond — half of the upcoming sets are devoted to the endeavour so there will be plenty of time — the greatest Sephiroth, the final Sephiroth is the only card representing the twisted angel hidden within the soldier. If you were unaware of the game behind the game, the rest would be humans, adding to the scores already in the set. Outside of playing limited and with a devoted commander group, I’ve been slowly picking my way through the Final Fantasy series. Eight games in and I’ve seen Sephiroth in his terrifying, polygonal glory. He wants to bring the end of all things and rule over oblivion.
As with other dark angels, he heralds the end.
But there is no reason to think that Sephiroth will be the final mono-black angel to arrive in Magic, anymore than Eradicator Valkyrie would conclude the disparate collection in 2021. New designs are always coming down the pipeline, and even though the near-constant previews rarely include a dark angel, there will be others.
Recent cards like Rodolf and the Angel of Suffering provide a sense of where designers could take this small enclave within their greater kin. They could be angels of mill or discard, providing the necessary fuel for the grave to recur time and time again. Orzhov angels are another matter entirely, though playing with the gamut of black and white angels allow for reanimator approach that break from the diminutive numbers of other aristocratic strategies. Or a dark angel could be a clever nod to an outside property, if Wizards is willing to continue plumbing the depths of other IP until they run out of profitable material. No matter the future, mono-black angels exist as a case of disparate kindred. They are little gems of flavour and design throughout Magic’s history without a principle or ethos to bring them together. Pretty fitting for angels cast out and in want of a home.
Next Week: Secrets of Strixhaven and what we want for younger generations
Extra Credit: Omens of Chaos Review