All 55 Griffin Cards in Magic Ranked

Goldmane Griffin | Illustration by Paul Scott Canavan

While Magic has never been shy about inventing its own fantasy races—kithkin and vedalken come to mind—it’s equally happy to borrow beasts from the menagerie of classic folktales and fantasies. Dragons, angels, demons, and more all come from outside the game, as do griffins.

Griffins, a (typically) lion-bird hybrid, appear infrequently in Magic as great flying beasts a step below white’s angels. While they’re often French vanilla creatures, a couple have exciting abilities to explore. Let’s check out the best of them!

What Are Griffins in MTG?

Courier Griffin | Illustration by Kieran Yanner

Griffins are a white creature type characterized primarily by flying. They’re often mid-cost white creatures, a step below angels in both size in power; expect to see them in the 3-5 cost range (though there are always exceptions).

Most griffins are Limited fodder; nearly half of the offerings are just French vanilla creatures (creatures that only have keyword abilities), though some griffins have meaningful abilities.

Vanilla Griffins

This bulleted list includes griffins that only have keyword abilities or—somehow even worse—griffins with abilities that only give them keyword abilities. These are universally unplayable.

• Abbey Griffin
• Armored Griffin
• Assault Griffin
• Azorius First-Wing
• Boreal Griffin
• Diving Griffin
• Ekundu Griffin
• Enforcer Griffin
• Fledgling Griffin
• Griffin Sentinel
• Makindi Griffin
• Peregrine Griffin
• Prized Griffin
• Razorfoot Griffin
• Silverbeak Griffin
• Silverclaw Griffin
• Spotted Griffin
• Sunspire Griffin
• Teremko Griffin
• Wild Griffin

#35. Charmed Griffin

Charmed Griffin could be meaningful card if it were a very, very large flying creature, like a 4-mana 8/8 or something, but a 4-mana 3/3 needs upside to be playable.

#34. Charging Griffin

Charging Griffin is only technically better than a French vanilla creature. This was at best an okay playable in the super vanilla Magic Origins Limited environment.

#33. Resplendent Griffin

Resplendent Griffin is a step up from Charging Griffin with its lower cost and permanent buff, but I still don’t see a reason to run it.

#32. Senate Griffin

I’d take a scry 1 over a power buff on Senate Griffin, especially with that hybrid cost. If you ditch an unnecessary land, you can even pretend it’s card draw!

#31. Screeching Griffin

Screeching Griffin’s activated ability is rather bewildering. Why give the creature with evasion a falter ability?

#30. Steelgaze Griffin

While rewarding yourself for card draw is nice, you can do better than Steelgaze Griffin, which was barely useful in its Limited format.

#29. Goldmane Griffin

Goldmane Griffin is a funny card; replacing itself provides a tangible advantage, more so than most griffins around this ranking. But it only replaces itself with Ajani, Inspiring Leader, a Planeswalker Deck face card. These cards are only useful together but are so weak that your deck would be better off not running either.

#28. Tethered Griffin

Tethered Griffin has impressive stats, though the need to control an enchantment fouls the thing. A big 1-mana creature matters when played on turn 1 to pressure your opponent; waiting to play an enchantment defeats the purpose.

#27. Setessan Griffin

Setessan Griffin’s pump ability provides a clock, but at a rate that doesn’t escape Limited.

#26. Decorated Griffin

Preventing combat damage is a fancy term for gaining life. In fact, it’s much weaker than that because it can’t trigger lifegain synergies and does nothing if you aren’t actively getting attacked. It’s weird to think Decorated Griffin would be better if it let you pay mana to gain life since that theoretical card would still rank pretty low.

#25. Harrier Griffin

Harrier Griffin is almost good. Tapping creatures on your upkeep enables aggression and even synergy with cards like Verity Circle. But 6 mana is far too much.

#24. Garrison Griffin

Garrison Griffin’s typal restriction keeps it from greatness, which is honestly a shame; giving creatures flying in combat provides decent pressure, especially for this cost.

#23. Mtenda Griffin

I guess if you were in griffin typal you’d play Mtenda Griffin as one of the few payoffs for the archetype, though the need to recast it makes it dreadfully slow. A 5-mana Raise Dead is something.

#22. Balshan Griffin

Balshan Griffin honestly comes close to greatness; there are a few ways to utilize self-bouncing creatures. But Shrieking Drake this is not; at 7 mana a loop, you’ll never get this thing off the ground. Unless you need a hyper-jank infinite mana outlet, and have a way to recoup the cards lost.

#21. Courier Griffin

Courier Griffin being this high on the list should tell you everything you need to know about the competitive potential of this creature type.

#20. Dutiful Griffin

Dutiful Griffin was cute in the enchantment-heavy Wilds of Eldraine Limited format, and I could see a super casual, jank deck using it in conjunction with cards like Reality Acid and Hatching Plans for a weird control deck.

#19. Sentry of the Underworld

Sentry of the Underworld isn’t winning awards for mana efficiency, but a 3/3 that doesn’t die could be useful, especially if you care about losing life.

#18. Gale Swooper

Gale Swooper applies decent pressure, though you’ll be hard-pressed to find a format where the cost is worthwhile. It’s like a Starter Deck card, but not an embarrassing one.

#17. Aurora Griffin

Aurora Griffin is hyper-niche but not unplayable with cards that care about color. It could enable vivid or make anything into a target for hate cards like Flourishing Grapple.

#16. Skystreamer

Skystreamer dares to ask the age-old question: What if Courier Griffin gained slightly more life? Well, it would be slightly better. It’s worth noting that many lifegain payoffs, like The Gaffer and Griffin Aerie (a card that’s arguably better than any of Magic’s actual griffins), care about gaining 3+ life. This enables payoffs the Courier doesn’t.

#15. Wanted Griffin

Wanted Griffin dying into a mercenary token provides more board impact than most griffins. Two bodies can be something for aristocrats, I suppose.

#14. Griffin Protector

A good token engine can make Griffin Protector into a solid threat since it grows pretty large. Make three tokens, hit for 5 damage, and it keeps scaling.

#13. Zuberi, Golden Feather

Lords are fairly strong in Magic, but a support card can only be as good as the cards it supports. I can’t pretend to be impressed by Zuberi, Golden Feather when playing it requires running the other, much worse griffins.

#12. Divebomber Griffin

Divebomber Griffin impacts the board, but it’s still terribly slow and only picks off small creatures. Still, I can see this in a deck with Malakir Rebirth-style effects.

#11. Unyaro Griffin

Unyaro Griffin is pretty cool, and I like that it doesn’t need to tap. You can use its ability the turn it enters or after attacking. That said, it’s still a very costly counterspell and awfully restrictive.

#10. Griffin Dreamfinder

Griffin Dreamfinder has a genuinely useful ability attached to a body that’s slightly too expensive. Still, I could see this in a mono-white deck with cards like Teleportation Circle and no access to Eternal Witness.

#9. Retaliator Griffin

Retaliator Griffin’s ability makes it interesting in a race. Your opponents can hit you, but then the Griffin turns that around and throws the damage back. It’s a shame you can’t grow this yourself, but it actually does something.

#8. Fearless Fledgling

Fearless Fledgling was a nasty threat in its Limited format and can still have teeth (beak?) in Cubes. It grows and hits hard when you drop it turn 2. Once you have three or four counters on it, it tussles well on the ground, too.

#7. Daraja Griffin

Daraja Griffin has meaningful impact. It’s still restrictive, but it trades well and you can activate the ability whenever you like at no cost. Throw in a little recursion, maybe a Painter's Servant for color shenanigans, and rock the Commander table like it’s 1999.

#6. Mistmoon Griffin

Mistmoon Griffin has a pretty odd but handy recursion ability. It’s not unplayable, which is the threshold on a list like this. Currently, it’s most notable for enabling combos with Hofri Ghostforge, a niche Boros commander.

#5. Zeriam, Golden Wind

Though Zeriam, Golden Wind is one of the few griffin payoffs, it’s stands taller than Zuberi because it’s self-sufficient. It triggers when itself or the tokens it makes deal combat damage, so it applies meaningful, if slow pressure.

#4. Bladegriff Prototype

Bladegriff Prototype walks a fine line between being strong but unlikely the most threatening thing at the Commander table, especially if you convince your opponents that you’re only removing big threats. It’s more of a budget card than a staple, but I wouldn’t be embarrassed by this in my Bracket 2, maybe even 3, deck.

#3. Misthollow Griffin

Misthollow Griffin has approximately one use: Going infinite with Food Chain. That’s enough to make it the backbone of some cEDH decks.

#2. Herald of Amity

Casting a spell for free with Herald of Amity makes it better than an unfortunate number of griffins. That’s genuinely strong, especially with top-deck manipulation to make sure you hit something like Super State or Eldrazi Conscription. The attack trigger plays nicely with Voltron decks because it diversifies your threats.

#1. Transcendent Envoy

This is it, folks: The pinnacle of the griffin subtype. A niche cost reducer. But, like many niche cards, it’s superb in the right home. This is a must-play in white aura decks, and being an enchantment itself works with enchantment support like Sythis, Harvest's Hand and Sanctum Weaver.

Best Griffin Payoffs

Griffin payoffs are few and far between, and generally lackluster because they can only be as good as the cards they support. A lord like Zuberi, Golden Feather or recursion spell like Mtenda Griffin is okay, but not when reaching the critical mass of creatures requires playing Razorfoot Griffin.

A less direct payoff is Griffin Rider, which becomes a 4/4 flier with a griffin in play. That’s almost a decent threat, except you need to play bad cards. Griffin Canyon is in a similar place.

Zeriam, Golden Wind is the only decent griffin payoff, in large part because it works solo. If this said “other griffins”, it would belong even further in the bulk box than it already does.

Are Griffins Good in MTG?

No. I wish it wasn’t so, but as long as griffins are designed as Limited fodder, good griffins will be the exception rather than the rule. Unfortunately, I doubt that changes anytime soon as angels have the market cornered as far as flashy white flying creatures goes.

Are There Any Griffin Commanders?

There are two legendary griffins in Magic: Zuberi, Golden Feather and Zeriam, Golden Wind.

Zuberi is utter trash you can safely ignore. But I could get behind Zeriam in the command zone if you focus on its token making potential and don’t lean too hard into the typal aspect. Zeriam, some haste enablers, and plenty of protection could grow into something.

Wrap Up

Herald of Amity | Illustration by Xabi Gaztelua

And that’s a rather disappointing wrap on griffins. As cool as the mythological creature is, Magic’s current design ethos has them slotted firmly into the Limited fodder category with few splashy or exciting cards. I’d like to see this creature type take off, but it’s hard when your competition is angels.

What do you think of griffins in Magic? Would you like to see Wizards give the creature type more love, or should they look elsewhere? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord! And for more from us, check out our newsletter, The Daily Upkeep.

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