Pointed Discussion

A Drudge Skeleton with flying, for 2, in Black. Very good!

I once defeated Nicol Bolas singlehandedly with a Fog of Gnats. No joke.

This card is astounding. Flying, Regeneration, and immune to many removal cards such as Doom Blade or Terror, as well as Tremor. If this card was in Standard I would splash for it in almost every deck I use!

Fog of Gnats made me cry yesterday.

Fog of Gnats + Corrosive Mentor + Kulrath Knight = Fun Time

Almost always better than Drudge Skeletons.
Less splashable, but who the hell's splashing for Drudgie?

Will-o'-the-Wisp was always fun. One more black mana for some hitting power... yeah ok. I love these guys.

It took me many years to realize that this is essentially a mono-black, virtually superior version of Drudge Skeletons... and it's common? I'll take four, please.

I hate this card. My friend just HAD to put 4 copies of it in his mono-black deck.

Will-o'-the-Wisp will almost always be better than these guys, except in two situations:
1) You need a creature with some offensive power (or a 1/1 in particular, e.g. Pendelhaven)
2) You'd rather pay 50¢ apiece for these versus ~$3 each for the Wisps

That being said, the Gnats are still a phenomenal creature for anybody playing black beyond just a light splashing. The Wisps are literally the best Black creature WotC has ever produced, or in the top 3 at the very least; another creature not quite being equal to that says almost nothing about the card.

Also as a bonus, these guys work with Swarmyard... though that's sort of pointless when you get down to it.

These guys were the -backbone- of my terrible first ever deck. Amazing blockers and hard to get rid of - the regen really helped me get value out of my Unholy Strengths back in the day.
Just right.

One of the best, and most underrated, black creatures there is. For one additional Swamp you can have a Will-O'-The-Wisp that can actually inflict damage. The gnats are great as a blocker, being they have regen and are also fantastic if you have the opportunity to pump it up and attack your opponent. Even if you don't pump them up, you can still repeatedly attack your opponent into submission.