The 27 Best Bats in Magic Ranked

Last updated on July 31, 2025

Temple of the Dead | Illustration by Viko Menezes

Bats have been around Magic for a while, although in small numbers. Bloomburrow brought them back in a big way with dozens of fresh designs! For the first time, bats are an officially supported theme.

With the huge influx of bats, primarily in white and black, bat-typal is gets its time in the sun (or moon?). The top-tier bats are strong enough to make an impact in MTG formats like Standard, Commander, and beyond.

What Are Bats in MTG?

Starlit Soothsayer | Illustration by Kaitlyn McCulley

Bat is a creature type that’s been around since Homelands, and they're usually small black creatures with flying.

Unlike their “close relatives,” the vampires, bats are scarce in MTG with 40+ designs and much weaker cards overall. They share common themes of evasion, draining small chunks of life from your opponents, and getting stronger when you gain life. In Bloomburrow, bats are present as white and black Orzhov cards, and they share the “whenever you gain life, lose life, or both” theme.

Honorable Mention: Surgeon General Commander

Surgeon General Commander is a 5-color commander () that incentivizes you to run augment and host creatures, ways to enchant creatures, or even mutate creatures. It’s a silver-border commander from the Unsanctioned, for fun un-set, so you can only run it if your playgroup is OK with it. But it is a bat creature for the purposes of this list.

#27 Moonrise Cleric

Moonrise Cleric is a fine way to gain life each turn, and if your deck needs more ways to grant that steady stream of lifegain, you can do worse than play a 2/3 flier with hybrid mana.

#26. Gurmag Swiftwing

Gurmag Swiftwing isn’t the worst as a 1/2 with flying and haste. With three good keywords, it works well with cards like Soulflayer, as well as equipment and auras.

#25. Ghastly Gloomhunter

Having lifelink on a flier makes it much better. Ghastly Gloomhunter can even be kicked so it turns into a 3/3 flying lifelinker.

#24. Starlit Soothsayer

Getting to surveil constantly is good, even if you have to jump through a few hoops. Starlit Soothsayer does exactly that, provided that you’re losing or gaining life, and it fits many different archetypes.

#23. Basilica Screecher

The best feature of Basilica Screecher is the extort ability. Extort is extra good in multiplayer formats because each opponents loses a life and you gain 3. Otherwise, it’s just a boring 1/2 flier.

#22. Grimclaw Bats

Grimclaw Bats’s best use is that you can activate its ability as many times as you want, provided you have black mana. This way, you’ll have a flying shade-like creature. It’s also a way to lose life on demand for many other applications like Death's Shadow. Seeing as bats care about losing and/or gaining life, don’t sleep on this card.

#21. Courier Bat

Courier Bat is a well-rounded creature, offering us a Wind Drake while being a gravedigger if you gained life. It can be a better Cadaver Imp in lifegain decks.

#20. Screeching Bat / Stalking Vampire

This awesome double-faced design blends the 2/2 flying side of Screeching Bat with a 5/5 Stalking Vampire, and you can transform it into whatever side is best on any given upkeep.

#19. Starseer Mentor

Starseer Mentor is a good-sized bat as a 3/5 flying and vigilance for 5 mana. When you lose or gain life, it gives one of your opponents the Torment of Venom choice, and it’s fairly trivial to trigger it often with cards like Soul's Attendant and Wall of Blood.

#18. Glidedive Duo + Bloodhunter Bat

Glidedive Duo and Bloodhunter Bat are very similar bats. They’re okay-stated fliers and you drain opponents for 2 on ETB. The main difference is whether you want a 2/2 for 4 mana or a 3/3 for 5 mana. Due to the scarcity of good bats, plan to play both and upgrade them later on the release schedule.

#17. Blind Hunter

Blind Hunter is a little better than the two previous bats because it triggers when it enters the battlefield and when the haunted creature dies. You can even trigger haunt by haunting sacrifice fodder.  

#16. Ruin-Lurker Bat

Ruin-Lurker Bat approaches Constructed playability, at least in Standard. Having a Healer's Hawk-like creature is good, and you can use it to convoke, attack in the air, gain life, and sometimes scry 1.

#15. Moonstone Harbinger

A 1/3 deathtouch and flying creature attacks and blocks really well. Moonstone Harbinger has the gain or lose life theme from bats; giving +1/+0 to all bats you control is nice, especially with cards like Bat Colony or Sanguine Evangelist that generate Bat tokens. 

#14. Lifecreed Duo

Gaining a life each time a creature enters is good, as often-played cards like Prosperous Innkeeper and Soul Warden demonstrate. Lifecreed Duo is also a relevant creature with a relevant creature type for that ability since bats want to steadily gain life. 

#13. Star Charter

Star Charter can easily be a two-for-one if you’re gaining life constantly, either because of your engine or because you’ve attacked with a lifelink creature. Getting this effect each turn is strong, and opponents will have to spend something to deal with this bat cleric.

#12. Starscape Cleric

Starscape Cleric works best when you offspring it for 5 mana, and you get two creatures that have the “you gain life, they lose life ability.” It can be two bats in one card, and double the amount of life draining. This is one of the best uncommons to pick up in a Bloomburrow Draft.

#11. Screeching Scorchbeast

Fallout‘s Screeching Scorchbeast is one of the biggest creatures on this bat-list. It spreads rad counters to all players and once they start milling cards due to the radiation, you make some 2/2 mutant zombies. If Screeching Scorchbeast survives, it can raise an army of zombies by itself.

#10. Eyetwitch

Eyetwitch has had its time in Standard due to the learn and lesson mechanic. A 1/1 flying is annoying, but a 1/1 flying that dies into a relevant spell is something that you'd rather let live than try to kill. It’s playability is dependent on the lessons you can get.

#9. Dirge Bat

Dirge Bat is an exciting card for mutate-matters commanders, as getting free Murder effects is very powerful. In Commander decks like Brokkos, Apex of Forever, or Otrimi, the Ever-Playful, you can chain this bat into a commander mutation and get both benefits quickly.

#8. Voidwing Hybrid

Voidwing Hybrid sees play in proliferate tempo / control decks in Standard. You want to poison opponents with toxic creatures and steadily proliferate. Voidwing Hybrid plays a huge part in this as a flying attacker that can return to your hand from the graveyard when you proliferate.

#7. Deep-Cavern Bat

The Lost Caverns of Ixalan‘s Deep-Cavern Bat is one of the best black cards in many formats including Standard and Pioneer, and even showed up in MTG Arena‘s Starter Deck Duel event for a time.

Deep-Cavern Bat is a relevant creature that locks an oppnent’s card away. If they don’t have removal it’s effectively card advantage, and you also get information to plan your next steps.

#6. Essence Channeler

This 2-drop packs a punch. Essence Channeler is a twist on Voice of the Blessed or Ajani's Pridemate, a card that gets bigger with +1/+1 counters as you gain life. You can hit as a flying and vigilance bat by paying some life, which black excels at. It’s also interesting that you can move the counters to another creature when it dies, so you can mimic the Arcbound Ravager modular dynamic of attacking and transferring the counters to an unblocked creature.

#5. Mirkwood Bats

Mirkwood Bats is so good because it’s not hard to create tokens and sacrifice them these days, especially with the prevalence of treasure tokens. Each Treasure, clue token, or blood token you make drains your opponents for one. This card plays well with sacrifice outlets, token makers, the offspring mechanic, and many more.

#4. Moonstone Eulogist

Moonstone Eulogist reminds me of Sengir Vampire, a “bat-like” creature that grows when other creatures die. It’s not like that exactly, but as I said about Mirkwood Bats, it’s easy to sacrifice artifacts nowadays and make this bat warlock huge.

#3. Zoraline, Cosmos Caller

The lone bat commander among Bloomburrow‘s legendary creatures, Zoraline, Cosmos Caller is a Sun Titan-like bat for 3 mana. Reanimating your small permanents, even with finality counters, provides the deck a stream of steady value. You can keep those permanents around forever if you have a way to remove the finality counters or move them to an opponents’ permanent. Zoraline is the best bat payoff we have thus far, so it’s a perfect fit as an Orzhov commander for a bat EDH deck.

Although hard to splash in Limited, Zoraline, Cosmos Caller is a top-notch pick for your Bloomburrow Sealed or Draft deck. Zoraline is still Standard legal for the newest Standard decks in .

#2. Darkstar Augur

Darkstar Augur may very well be the next incarnation of Dark Confidant, now as a 2/3 flier. With the offspring mechanic, you get double the bats and the cards, but also double the life loss, so beware. As one of the strongest cards from Bloomburrow, I like this card as a substitute for Sorin the Mirthless, and it's a bone fide bomb in Bloomburrow Limited.

#1. Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal

Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal is a tough threat to deal with. Most decks can kill the god but dealing with the Temple of the Dead is far harder, so you see Aclazotz again. This dominates games as a massive flier with lifelink that makes opponents discard cards. Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal sees heavy Constructed play and is a Standard staple.

Best Bats Payoffs

Now that we’ve seen the best bats, here’s how to take advantage of them.

Zoraline, Cosmos Caller is the best payoff, offering us an incentive to attack with a lot of bats. The recursion works well with this creature type since bats are on the small side.

Blex, Vexing Pest, Valley Questcaller, and Spider-Ham, Peter Porker are bat-lords, although you need to work with Abzan colors () to play them all.

Moonstone Harbinger gives +1/+0 and deathtouch to all your little bat-friends.

Valley Rotcaller is a fun payoff that runs right in line with bat strats. Mudflat Village and Lupinflower Village are lands that can take advantage of the bat creature type.

Skeletal Vampire likes lots of toys to play with, so here are a couple more ways to passively create tokens that are bats in Lunar Convocation and Desecrated Tomb.

Wrap-Up

Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal | Illustration by Steve Prescott

That’s it on bats, guys. If you want some pesky, creatures that offer you life drain here and there, and draw out the flying hate, this was your list!

What are the best bats, folks? Do you have a fresh build for them in any Constructed format? Let me know with a comment. And for more on anything MTG-related, check back tomorrow on the same bat-time, same bat-website. Or the Draftsim Discord.

Thank you for reading, and have a good night.