Zhang Fei, Fierce Warrior
Legendary Creature — Human Soldier Warrior
Vigilance; horsemanship (This creature can't be blocked except by creatures with horsemanship.)
- CMC
- 6
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- W
- Rarity
- rare
- Set
- Portal Three Kingdoms
- Price
- $166.27
- EDHREC rank
- #24587
Zhang Fei, Fierce Warrior hits the board as a 4/4 vigilance that forces your opponents' creatures to attack him — a permanent, repeatable rattlesnake that warps combat without you lifting a finger. The cost is a five-mana investment in a creature that dies to any removal spell, but the threat he represents often does the work before the card ever gets killed.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | not legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Zhang Fei, Fierce Warrior is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but realistically this is a Commander card through and through. In Legacy and Vintage, five mana for a creature with no immediate impact on the stack or board state is unplayable against the format's speed. In Commander, the forced-attack ability is genuinely powerful — it redirects aggression away from your other permanents, depletes opponents' combat resources, and punishes go-wide creature strategies all at once. Oathbreaker is the one fringe case where a vigilant blocker that controls combat math could find a home, but the card's ceiling is in 100-card multiplayer where it gets to dominate the table's attack step for multiple turns.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Budget Alternatives
Cheaper options that do most of the same work
Zhang Fei, Fierce Warrior's core function — taxing or redirecting attackers — can be approximated by Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs, which discourages attacks through a mana tax rather than forced redirection, at a fraction of the price. Gahiji, Honored One pulls attacks toward opponents instead of you entirely, which is a different political angle but achieves similar board control in multiplayer for well under $5.
Price Context
Current price
$166.27 premium tier
At $166.27, Zhang Fei, Fierce Warrior sits in premium collector territory — this is a Portal Three Kingdoms card, and the price reflects scarcity more than raw power. It holds value because supply is essentially fixed, but you are paying a massive premium over the card's functional impact, and any reprint would crater that price overnight.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.