Arcane Foundry › Commanders › Black Widow, Daring Operative

Black Widow, Daring Operative

Legendary Creature — Human Spy Hero · {4}{B} · Black commander

Menace (This creature can't be blocked except by two or more creatures.) When Black Widow enters, mill three cards. (Put the top three cards of your library into your graveyard.) Whenever Black Widow deals combat damage to a player, each opponent loses life equal to the number of creature cards in your graveyard.

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What Black Widow, Daring Operative actually does

Read off the card by the same engine the Forge and Analyzer use — this is the mechanical classification, not a summary.

• Triggered ability · etbWhen Black Widow enters, mill three cards.
• Triggered ability · deals_damageWhenever Black Widow deals combat damage to a player, each opponent loses life equal to the number of creature cards in your graveyard.
• Keyword · menacemenace

What a Black Widow, Daring Operative deck needs

Plays as combat trigger. What the commander asks of the other 99 — read from the card and checked by hand.

• blink and recursion aimed at the commander itself (its value is its own enter trigger)
• drain and life-loss payoffs (the damage is not combat damage)
• self-mill, discard and recursion (the graveyard is a resource its text reads)
• evasion and protection for the commander (the trigger needs its combat damage to connect)

The Black Widow, Daring Operative deck plan

The roles the Forge fills for this commander, and how many cards of each.

• 12× Life loss that is not combat damage — each opponent loses life, repeatably
• 7× Make the commander connect — a body that never deals combat damage never triggers
• 7× Exile a permanent you control and return it — the button a value-ETB deck presses
• 8× A permanent whose value is in its enter-the-battlefield trigger — the payload a blink deck reuses
• 7× Put your own cards into your graveyard as a resource
• 5× Actually remove one problem permanent — preventing its damage is not removing it
• 9× Find the exact card the plan needs
• 1× Answer a whole board at once
• 7× Refill your hand

Best cards for Black Widow, Daring Operative

Ranked by an engine that reads what each card does — its real cost, its delay and how reliably it works — rather than counting how often other people play it.

Build this deck in the Arcane Forge →

Arcane Foundry is free to join and every tool is included: the Arcane Forge deck builder, the ARCANE Analyzer that scores a deck by simulating games rather than counting staples, a card scanner, a collection vault, and live webcam Commander tables. Read the guide · Browse all commanders · Pricing