Malakir Familiar
Creature — Bat
Flying, deathtouch
Whenever you gain life, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- B
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- Jumpstart
- Price
- $0.21
- EDHREC rank
- #12913
Malakir Familiar enters as a 2/1 flyer with deathtouch and a lifegain-on-death trigger — real board presence for three mana. The catch is that the trigger only fires when your opponent's creatures die, which keeps it out of most black goodstuff piles but makes it a lock for Zoraline, Cosmos Caller builds that are already engineering constant combat trades.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Zoraline, Cosmos Caller
Zoraline, Cosmos Caller's engine rewards draining life totals, and Malakir Familiar turns every opponent's creature death in combat into a lifegain trigger — the deathtouch body guarantees those trades happen on Malakir Familiar's terms.
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 |
Malakir Familiar is a Commander card through and through — the triggered ability only pays off at a table where multiple opponents are losing creatures, and the lifegain matters more when you need to stabilize against three people at once. In competitive 1v1 formats like Modern or Legacy, a 2/1 deathtouch flyer for three is fine but the drain trigger is too conditional to build around, and there are strictly more efficient threats at that slot. Pioneer has the same problem: the rate is acceptable, the trigger is nearly irrelevant in a format where combat is less central. Malakir Familiar is legal in Oathbreaker, where the same Commander-style multiplayer dynamics apply and it can slot into the same life-matters shells.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.21 bulk tier
At $0.21, Malakir Familiar sits firmly in bulk territory — easy to pick up as a four-of if you need it, trivially cheap to slot into any Commander build that wants it. Bulk rares at this price point don't move unless they get a tournament breakout, and Malakir Familiar is too niche for that, so treat it as a stable cheap pickup rather than a card with upside.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.