Traditionally associated with black mana, Vampires are one of the most popular creature types in Magic: The Gathering. Often characterized by their ability to siphon life from other players, Vampires have appeared in various forms across Magic’s planes, from the black/red Rakdos vampires of Innistrad to the white/black Orzhov conquistadors of Ixalan.
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Along with most appearances of Vampires in Magic, powerful legendary Vampires have also been printed. As legendary creatures can distinctly be used to spearhead Commander decks, they are quite popular. Let’s examine the strongest legendary Vampires from Magic’s history.
Updated March 11, 2025 by Ryan Hay: A new year, and a new round of Vampires popping up in Magic:: The Gathering. There are some very strong creatures to add to this list, which is no surprise given the creature type’s popularity. This time around, we’re tossing in Clavileno, First of the Blessed, Astarion, the Decadent, and the planeswalker and creature combo of Sorin of House Markov. These creatures are all solid powerhouses and gives your Vampire deck some character and uniqueness as opponses to simply being the absolute best of the best.
Timothar, Baron Of Bats
Feed The Swarm
A card that appears within one of the Crimson Vow Commander Decks, Timothar, Baron of Bats evokes the iconic transformation from a Vampire into a bat. A mono-black Vampire for six mana, Timothar is a 4/4 with a ward cost of discarding a card, making him quite troublesome for opponents to remove.
Whenever a nontoken Vampire under your control dies, you can pay one mana to create a 1/1 Bat token with flying, exiling the Vampire in question. Whenever one of these Bat tokens deals combat damage, it is sacrificed in exchange for returning the exiled Vampire to play. This makes permanently dealing with a Timothar player’s Vampires a huge headache, as they can effectively transform into bats instead of dying.
Felisa, Fang Of Silverquill
Take Your Lessons To Heart
Released as part of the Silverquill preconstructed Commander deck alongside Strixhaven, Felisa, Fang of Silverquill is a legendary Vampire capable of making great use of +1/+1 counters.
An Orzhov (white/black) 3/2 with flying and mentor for four mana, whenever another creature under your control dies, you create an amount of 2/1 flying Inkling tokens equal to the number of +1/+1 counters on that creature. Felisa’s mentor ability allows her to put counters on other creatures, making her a solid commander choice for those looking to play an aristocrats deck that utilizes counters.
Clavileno, First Of The Blessed
Upgrade Those Vampires
A rather unique Vampire kindred commander in that it doesn’t keep Vampires on the battlefield for very long, Clavileno, First of the Blessed rewards a more aggressive deck strategy with a good attack trigger. Any time you attack with any creature, you can take an attacking Vampire you control and make it a Demon as well as being a Vampire.
Should the worst come to pass for that Demon Vampire, you get to draw a card and then replace it with a tapped 4/3 Vampire Demon creature token that also has flying. You don’t have to exile that creature or jump through any hoops. This type of upgrade helps you fight through board wipes with ease.
Licia, Sanguine Tribune
Blood, More Blood
Costing a staggering eight mana might make Licia, Sanguine Tribune unplayable for some, but with a little dedication, you can turn her into a powerful life gain and possibly a strong way to take out your opponents through commander damage.
Licia costs one less generic mana for each life you gained each turn, potentially even reducing its costs down to her three colored mana. This cost reduction even gets around Commander Tax, so if you need to recast her you can just gain some life and cast her again. She let’s you put that life to good use with her ability to pay five life and put three +1/+1 counters on her.
Vona, Butcher Of Magan
What Lies Beyond The Horizon? Blood.
Orzhov is often regarded for its powerful options when it comes to removal. Vona, Butcher of Magan is a legendary Vampire that encapsulates this sentiment.
A 4/4 for five mana with both vigilance and lifelink, Vona can tap itself at the cost of seven life, destroying any nonland permanent. As this ability can be activated each turn, Vona can remove many problematic permanents. Thanks to her combination of vigilance and lifelink, she can also help mitigate the required life payment.
Don Andres, The Renegade
Use Your Opponent’s Cards Against Them
This is a very fun, albeit underwhelming, commander to play with. Don Andres rewards you for playing your opponent’s cards and stealing their creatures. While it’s both hilarious and enjoyable to beat your opponent with their own deck, you’re also relying on the synergy of your opponent’s deck to gain the upper hand.
To put it more simply, stealing your opponent’s cards isn’t a strategy that affords your deck any kind of synergy. The buff Don Andres gives to stolen creatures as well as the Treasure tokens he generates when you cast noncreature spells that don’t belong to you are nice, but they’re far from enough to make stealing cards worthwhile (especially because the treasures enter tapped).
Anowon, The Ruin Sage
Discovering New Ways To Consume
A mono-black Vampire for five mana, Anowon, the Ruin Sage provides a universal effect that, while a detriment to most players, has little to no effect on Vampire players.
This is because, at the beginning of Anowon’s controller’s upkeep, each player sacrifices a non-Vampire creature. While this can be taxing for many decks, especially those with few creatures, Anowon’s controller will often only control Vampires.
Astarion, The Decadent
A Temptation To Be Sure
This guy knows exactly how seductive the life of a Vampire is and as a commander, Astarion, the Decadent helps keep your life total high by drinking deep in the carnage of the battlefield. Astarion has a some solid stats, boasting both deathtouch and lifeline, and then two abilities you can pick from at the end of your turn. You can choose to either:
- Have an opponent lose life equal to the amount of life they already lost this turn
- You gain life equal to the amount of life you gained this turn
Either one of these abilities are pretty darn good, and with the amount of lifegain and damage Vampires can dish out, you’ll likely be triggering the effect every turn.
Edgar, Charmed Groom / Edgar Markov’s Coffin
Not Even A Stake In The Heart Can Stop Him
Commanders that can’t be killed are notoriously good in Magic and Edgar soaks up at least two removal spells if your opponents want to deal with him. On his front side, he pumps up your Vampires and has some decent stats.
Once your opponents move to destroy him, he flips over to Edgar Markov’s Coffin, an artifact that gains a counter at the start of your turn and then makes you a 1/1 Vampire token with lifelink. Once it hits three counters Edgar rises from his coffin and turns all your little 1/1s into 2/2s.
Cormela, Glamour Thief
Showing Up Fabulously Late For Dinner
Unlike many of the Vampires on this list, Cormela doesn’t lend herself towards a Vampire strategy. Instead, she comboes with a Grixis (blue/black/red) instants and sorceries deck by providing additional mana.
Three mana is a lot to generate every turn, and Cormela’s access to the haste keyword allows her to provide it the same turn she comes down as long as you have an extra generic mana lying around. It should be noted that Cormela nets you an additional two mana every turn as her ability costs one generic mana to activate, but this is a still a huge boon.
The icing on top is that she allows you to return an instant or sorcery from your graveyard to your hand if your opponent decides to remove her, so you’re likely getting value here no matter what. That’s what we want out of our Magic cards.
Anje Falkenrath
The Bood Madness Got Her
Released in Commander 2019, Anje Falkenrath is the perfect Commander for those seeking to play a madness deck. Madness is a unique mechanic that allows you to play spells as they are discarded, often for a discounted cost.
Anje is an affordable Rakdos (red/black) commander for three mana that can tap and discard a card to draw a card. Then, if the discarded card had madness, Anje untaps, even if the card wasn’t cast. This allows Anje to reliably cycle out unwanted and dead cards from your hand and replace them with new draws.
Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher
Sacrifice your way to a graveyard recursion engine
Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher isn’t your typical Vampire commander, as she doesn’t necessarily play well with other Vampires. Instead, Carmen rewards you for sacrificing permanents by growing in size and gaining you life. If you manage to attack with Carmen, you unlock her powerful ability to recur your best permanent cards from your graveyard.
There’s a lot of sacrificing going on among Vampire cards already, so it’s not too difficult to find cards that play well with Carmen. The big problem with this commander is that she doesn’t offer you anything immediately upon casting her aside from life gain, and that’s assuming you have permanents to sacrifice. Furthermore, it’s very easy for opponents to lock you out of your graveyard.
Mathas, Fiend Seeker
Give Your Opponents Their Pick Of Torture Techniques
Mathas, Fiend Seeker is a three-mana legendary Mardu (black/red/white) Vampire that perfectly fits Commander players who enjoy playing politically.
A 3/3 with menace, during each of your end steps, you can put a bounty counter on any creature. When that creature dies, every player besides its controller gains two life and draws a card. This allows Mathas’s controller to incentivize other players to use their removal spells while you conserve your resources, making for fun and unique political negotiations at the Commander table.
Drana, Liberator Of Malakir
Swing In Every Chance You Get
Drana is much easier to cast than most of the Vampires on this list thanks to only costing double black, and she comes with an incredibly aggressive ability to boot. Providing +1/+1 counters to your entire board can get out of hand very quickly, especially if you’ve got a board with three creatures or more.
The counters Drana drops also apply to herself which allows her to present a threatening presence even in the worst-case scenario where she’s the only creature on your side of the battlefield. Lastly, the combination of flying and first strike makes blocking Drana an absolute pain for the opposition.
It’s not often that flying creatures have a high amount of toughness to begin with, so it’s usually the case that opponents are forced to spend removal on this relatively low cost creature. In other words, Drana is perfect for clearing the way for bigger and badder Vampires on this list.
Anje, Maid Of Dishonor
You Don’t Want Her To Catch The Bouquet
This Vampire loves draining life and provides a pretty easy way to take your opponent’s life totals for your own. Anytime Anje, Maid of Dishonor or another Vampire enters the battlefield you get to make a Blood token, though this ability only triggers once each turn.
Then, you can pay two mana and sacrifice either a token or a creature to drain each opponent of two life and you gain two life in return. Any effect that increases the amount of damage dealt works wonders with her, including cards like Blood Artist, Bloodletter of Aclazotz, and Mirkwood Bats to trigger off of your creatures dying or to amplify the damage dealt.
Evelyn, The Covetous
Recruit Your Opponents Deck For Your Cause
Printed as part of the Grixis (black, blue, and red) Maestros faction of Streets of New Capenna, Evelyn, the Covetous is a creature that puts a unique spin on the Vampire archetype due to her many colors. A 2/5 for five mana with flash, whenever Evelyn or another of your Vampires enters the battlefield, you exile the top card of each player’s library with a collection counter on it.
As Evelyn allows you to play lands and cast spells from among these exiled cards, this creature effectively turns each Vampire you cast into an alternate form of card advantage that grows proportionally in power based on the number of players within a given game. This makes Evelyn a highly underrated Vampire commander who lets you use Vampires to steal your opponents’ spells.
Anhelo, The Painter
Lots Of Shades Of Red Here
Another Grixis Vampire printed as part of the Maestros faction, Anhelo, the Painter headlined the Maestros Massacre preconstructed Commander deck. An efficient 1/3 with deathtouch for three mana, while Anhelo’s ability may not synergize with other Vampires, it can provide you with serious value.
This is because the first instant or sorcery you cast gains Casualty 2, meaning you may sacrifice a creature with power two or greater as you cast it, copying it in the process.
Anhelo’s effect allows you to reliably copy the most impactful spells in the game as long as you have expendable creatures at your disposal, making it a great option for those looking to play a spell-slinging Aristocrats deck.
Anowon, The Ruin Thief
Attack From Two Angles
This is the second iteration of the character of Anowon. While Anowon, the Ruin Thief is a Vampire, this card is the premier commander for Dimir (blue/black) Rogue decks. For four mana, this Vampire Rogue provides each of its controller’s Rogues with +1/+1, also causing them to mill opponents equal to the damage they deal.
Anowon also draws you cards when creatures are milled in this manner. Seeing as Rogues tend to come alongside some form of evasion, Anowon can easily convert the damage dealt by these hard-to-block creatures into card advantage.
Verrak, Warped Sengir
Double Up On Your Painful Abilities
Printed in Dominaria United, Verrak, Warped Sengir is an efficient Orzhov Vampire that allows many of your already powerful activated abilities to pack even more of a punch. A respectable 2/2 with flying, deathtouch, and lifelink for three mana, Verrak’s ability states that if you’d pay life to activate an ability, you may pay twice that much life to copy the ability at hand.
There is a wide range of great cards with useful activated abilities that require you to pay life, such as the previously mentioned Vona and the ever-excellent Yawgmoth, Thran Physician. However, one of the most notable appeals of Verrak is its ability to double the value of each of your fetch lands, as these lands require you to pay one life to search your library for lands to put into play.
Henrika Domnathi
Three Ways To Gain Advantage
Henrika may not be the flashiest or most powerful Vampire on this list, but she does provide fairly consistent value thanks to one of her three abilities triggering at the beginning of combat on your turn. Unless an opponent is holding up instant speed removal, Henrika is either going to immediately replace herself by drawing you a card or double as removal by forcing an opponent to sacrifice a creature.
In the best cases, Henrika can do both and then also transform into a considerably sized lifelink, deathtouch, flying creature that provides a mana sink to buff herself and, potentially, other creatures on your side of the battlefield. That’s a whole lot of action for four mana value.