Charcoal Diamond
Artifact
This artifact enters tapped.
: Add 
.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- The List
- Price
- $0.29
- EDHREC rank
- #659
Charcoal Diamond enters tapped and produces one black mana — that's the whole trade-off, and for most black commanders it's worth making. In a format where two-mana rocks are the baseline expectation, Charcoal Diamond fills the slot cleanly; Strefan, Maurer Progenitor decks running it in over a quarter of lists confirms it earns its seat.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Strefan, Maurer Progenitor
Strefan, Maurer Progenitor is a four-mana commander in a color pair that leans hard on black mana for its vampire and blood-token payoffs, and Charcoal Diamond is one of the cheapest ways to ensure that mana is available on curve.
Horobi, Death's Wail
Horobi, Death's Wail costs four black pips and demands you start targeting things immediately — Charcoal Diamond helps you hit that mana without leaning on utility lands that might slow the engine.
Vincent Valentine
Vincent Valentine builds toward transformation payoffs that need black mana reliably online early, and Charcoal Diamond shows up in a third of lists as one of the cheapest insurance pieces for that requirement.
Acererak the Archlich
Acererak the Archlich wants to bounce and recast repeatedly, which requires a steady black mana base; Charcoal Diamond is a set-it-and-forget-it piece that frees up land slots for dungeons synergies.
Massacre Girl
Massacre Girl costs five mana with a double-black pip and rewards you for having that mana ready the turn she hits the table — Charcoal Diamond covering one of those black pips while still leaving room to hold up interaction is exactly why she reaches for it.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Charcoal Diamond is a Commander card first and almost exclusively — a tapped two-mana rock that fixes color is the kind of incremental advantage that only matters across a 100-card singleton game where you can't rely on consistent land drops into the right colors. In Pauper it's legal and occasionally appears in slower black control shells, but the format's faster pace makes an enters-tapped rock a liability more often than not. Legacy and Vintage have no use for it; those formats have access to zero-mana artifacts and fetch-dual mana bases that make Charcoal Diamond obsolete before it resolves. Commander remains its home, specifically in mono-black or black-heavy two-color decks where the color fixing is redundant and you're just buying a cheap, reliable black source.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.29 bulk tier
At $0.29, Charcoal Diamond is bulk — pick it up without thinking twice. It's been reprinted enough that the price has nowhere meaningful to go, so treat it as a permanent fixture in the dollar-bin tier and move on.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
- Strefan, Maurer Progenitor
- Horobi, Death's Wail
- Vincent Valentine
- Acererak the Archlich
- Massacre Girl
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.