Drana, Liberator of Malakir
Legendary Creature — Vampire Ally
Flying, first strike
Whenever Drana deals combat damage to a player, put a +1/+1 counter on each attacking creature you control.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- mythic
- Set
- Battle for Zendikar
- Price
- $1.51
- EDHREC rank
- #1426
Drana, Liberator of Malakir hits the board and immediately starts pumping your entire attacking squad — every creature you swing with gets a +1/+1 counter after Drana's first-strike damage resolves, meaning your team grows before regular combat damage lands. The ask is three mana for a 2/3 flier with flying and first strike, which is a real rate, and she slots cleanly into any black aggro shell, but she's at her best under Clavileño, First of the Blessed where her counter-spreading triggers the vampire death-draw engine at scale.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Clavileño, First of the Blessed
Clavileño, First of the Blessed draws a card whenever a vampire with a +1/+1 counter on it dies, and Drana, Liberator of Malakir distributes those counters across every attacker for free — swing wide, draw cards, repeat. The overlap is so direct that Clavileño decks include Drana at a 70% rate.
Cleopatra, Exiled Pharaoh
Cleopatra, Exiled Pharaoh cares about counters and value accrual across multiple bodies, and Drana, Liberator of Malakir delivers both in a single combat step without spending additional resources. That passive counter-spreading is exactly the kind of free effect Cleopatra shells want stacked on curve.
Rev, Tithe Extractor
Rev, Tithe Extractor rewards aggressive attacks, and Drana, Liberator of Malakir turns each of those attacks into a board-wide pump that compounds over subsequent turns. The first-strike trigger means the counters land before blockers die, so your team gets bigger while removing threats simultaneously.
Felix Five-Boots
Felix Five-Boots copies triggered abilities from creatures you control, which means Drana, Liberator of Malakir's first-strike counter trigger can fire twice in a single combat — every attacker picks up two +1/+1 counters instead of one. That snowballs a wide board into a lethal threat within two or three attack steps.
Edgar Markov
Edgar Markov floods the board with vampire tokens on the cheap, and Drana, Liberator of Malakir turns that swarm into a scaling threat by handing out +1/+1 counters across every attacker each combat. At 55% inclusion across nearly 46,000 Edgar decks, she's one of the format's most reliable vampire payoffs.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Commander is where Drana, Liberator of Malakir does her best work — multiplayer combat means wider attack swings, which means more bodies collecting free +1/+1 counters every time she connects. In Modern and Pioneer she's legal but sees almost no competitive play; three mana for a fragile 2/3 that requires an attack step to generate value is too slow against the removal density in those formats. Legacy and Vintage are similarly open to her on paper, but those formats have no reason to reach for her when faster, more resilient options exist. Oathbreaker is a viable home if you're building around her as a signature spell target, though the format's lower card counts compress her window to matter.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$1.51 cheap tier
At $1.51, Drana, Liberator of Malakir sits in the bulk-rare tier — cheap enough to include speculatively and easy to justify as a firm auto-include in vampire and counter-based Commander builds. The price reflects wide reprint availability rather than low demand, so it's unlikely to fall further.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.