Live Play Data

Academy Ruins

Legendary Land · Double Masters (2XM)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

977

Decks Running

477

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

72%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Found in 6% of tracked Commander pods, Academy Ruins is cast 72% of the time it's drawn, with a median first activation landing on turn 4. That's a strong usage signal for a utility land.

Academy Ruins appears in 477 of the 8244 distinct Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, a 6% inclusion rate that reflects a deliberately narrow but committed player base. Blue artifact commanders consistently reach for it.

The draw-to-play rate tells the clearest story: 72% of drawn copies reach the battlefield. Since this is a land with a colorless activation built in, players almost never sit on it. The {1}{U} recursion ability requires mana investment, so the median first meaningful use lands on turn 4. Battlefield stickiness sits at 93%, consistent with a land that opponents rarely have clean answers to. Win rate when cast is 29% across 175 participations, versus 23% when it never leaves the library. That gap is directional but carries wide margins on the current sample, so treat it as early signal rather than a firm verdict.

The commander distribution is well-spread across 405 distinct players, and no single contributor accounts for more than a small share of the data. Artifact-heavy commanders like Tony Stark // The Invincible Iron Man, Urza, Lord High Artificer, and Breya, Etherium Shaper claim the top slots, exactly the pods where returning key artifacts from the graveyard to the top of the library is a genuine engine piece rather than a luxury.

At a glance

6% of tracked Commander decks include Academy Ruins
72% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
T4 median first-cast turn
93% battlefield stickiness once played
405 distinct players have brought Academy Ruins to a tracked game
477 tracked decks run Academy Ruins across 8244 total decks

First-cast turn

n=185

11%

15%

12%

16%

10%

31%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4 P25 2 · P75 6 · max 17

Cast same turn as drawn 43%

The "good card" funnel

978 brought · 405 players

Brought to game

978

Ever drawn

256

Reached battlefield

185

Still on board at game end

172

72%

Of 978 copies brought to tracked games, 256 were drawn and 185 of those were played to the battlefield, a clean majority flowing through the full chain.

≥ -1.4pp

Players who cast this card win 29% of the time (n=175) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=606).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 44% (n=67) — about the same as leaving it in the library. Those players survived long enough to draw it, so the gap above is about the card resolving, not just about surviving.

Observed gap +5.5pp; 95% confidence interval -1.4pp to +12.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

291 instances

3.8%

Library

59.1%

Battlefield

13.7%

Graveyard

5.5%

Exile

The overwhelming majority of Academy Ruins copies finish the game on the battlefield, a sharp contrast to most 100-card singleton cards. Lands are almost always played on sight, and opponents rarely exile them.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Tony Stark // The Invincible Iron Man 23 decks
2 Dr. Eggman 18 decks
3 Urza, Lord High Artificer 16 decks
4 Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom 14 decks
5 Saheeli, Radiant Creator 13 decks
6 Shorikai, Genesis Engine 13 decks
7 Aloy, Savior of Meridian 12 decks
8 Breya, Etherium Shaper 12 decks
9 Mendicant Core, Guidelight 12 decks
10 Kilo, Apogee Mind 10 decks

The top-commander list skews heavily toward blue artifact strategies, with Tony Stark, Urza, and Breya leading. The spread across 405 unique players suggests broad genuine adoption rather than a single group skewing the numbers.

Card text

Academy Ruins

Legendary Land

: Add

: Put target artifact card from your graveyard on top of your library.

Double Masters (2XM) · Rare · Illustrated by Zoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai

Frequently Asked

How often is Academy Ruins drawn in a Commander game?

Across 929 tracked games where Academy Ruins was in the deck, it was drawn 26% of the time. That is a normal draw rate for a singleton land in a 100-card deck. Of 256 drawn instances, 72% were played before the game concluded.

What turn does Academy Ruins usually get played?

The median first-cast (first-played) turn is 4, with the middle 50% of activations falling between turns 3 and 6. The recursion ability costs {1}{U} on top of a tap, so actual artifact returns typically happen a turn or two after the land enters. The distribution is fairly even across turns 1 through 6, meaning it shows up early when kept in an opening hand and mid-game when drawn later.

Does casting Academy Ruins correlate with winning?

In 175 participations where Academy Ruins reached the battlefield, the normalized win rate is 29%. In 606 participations where it stayed in the library, the rate is 23%. The gap is directional and consistent with the card contributing to wins, but the confidence interval includes zero on the current sample size. Read it as an early signal rather than a definitive finding.

Which commanders run Academy Ruins most often?

Tony Stark // The Invincible Iron Man leads with the most decks in the tracked dataset, followed by Dr. Eggman, Breya Etherium Shaper, Saheeli Radiant Creator, and Urza Lord High Artificer. The common thread is blue artifact strategies where recurring a key artifact from the graveyard functions as a late-game engine or combo enabler. The commander spread is wide, with 405 distinct players represented and no single contributor dominating the data.

Is Academy Ruins legal in Commander?

Yes. Academy Ruins is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Duel Commander, and Oathbreaker. It is not legal in Standard, Pioneer, Alchemy, Historic, Pauper, or Brawl. It has no Commander-specific ban or restriction, so it slots freely into any blue or artifact-themed deck.

Why does Academy Ruins see play mainly in artifact decks?

The card's recursion ability puts an artifact from your graveyard on top of your library for {1}{U}. That activation is low-impact in non-artifact decks that might only have a handful of artifact targets. In dedicated artifact commanders like Urza or Breya, the ability repeatedly recovers high-value pieces like combo components or mana rocks, functioning as repeatable insurance against removal. The colorless mana tap ability also means it is never a true dead card even when the recursion is irrelevant.