Ruin-Lurker Bat
Creature — Bat
Flying, lifelink
At the beginning of your end step, if you descended this turn, scry 1. (You descended if a permanent card was put into your graveyard from anywhere.)
- CMC
- 1
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- uncommon
- Set
- The Lost Caverns of Ixalan
- Price
- $0.31
- EDHREC rank
- #7891
Ruin-Lurker Bat enters the battlefield and immediately strips a land from every opponent — three or four lands gone before it ever attacks. In Zoraline, Cosmos Caller and similar drain-focused shells, that tempo swing pairs with a flying body that keeps pressuring life totals, and the whole package costs two mana.
Best Commanders
Commanders with the highest synergy
Zoraline, Cosmos Caller
Zoraline, Cosmos Caller cares about draining opponents, and Ruin-Lurker Bat's landfall-on-entry trigger hits all three opponents simultaneously — triggering Zoraline's drain effects while setting everyone back a land drop.
Odric, Lunarch Marshal
Odric, Lunarch Marshal distributes keywords to the whole team at the start of combat, and Ruin-Lurker Bat brings flying into that pool — giving every creature in the white-weenie pile evasion for the turn.
Sephara, Sky's Blade
Sephara, Sky's Blade wants cheap fliers to reduce her commander tax, and Ruin-Lurker Bat fills that role at two mana while also pulling double duty as a mana-denial piece that slows opponents before the big swing.
Amalia Benavides Aguirre
Amalia Benavides Aguirre triggers off gaining life, and Ruin-Lurker Bat's enter-the-battlefield strip-a-land effect pairs neatly with the Explore loop — it's not a core piece, but a two-mana flier that disrupts opponents fits cleanly into the white-black shell.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | legal |
| standard | legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Ruin-Lurker Bat is a legitimate staple in landfall-punishment and drain strategies — hitting three opponents at once multiplies the value well beyond what any 60-card format can offer. In competitive 60-card formats like Modern and Pioneer, dedicated land-destruction shells haven't been tier-viable recently, and a two-mana 2/1 flier that takes one land per opponent is too slow and narrow when a single opponent is the target. Standard sees it mostly as a limited role-player in aggressive white or black flier decks where the landfall trigger is a bonus rather than the primary draw. Legacy and Vintage have no interest — the rate simply doesn't compete at those power levels. Ruin-Lurker Bat is a Commander card first, full stop.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.31 bulk tier
At $0.31, Ruin-Lurker Bat sits firmly in bulk territory and is an easy pickup for any Zoraline or drain-focused Commander build. Bulk rares with narrow but genuine Commander applications tend to stay in this range, so don't expect price movement — just grab a copy and sleeve it.
Explore
Sources
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.