Live Play Data

Alchemist's Refuge

Land · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

694

Decks Running

327

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

75%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

37% of games where Alchemist's Refuge resolved ended in a win for its controller, a +10.3 percentage-point lift over the 26% baseline when the card never left the library.

Alchemist's Refuge lands in 7% of the tracked Commander decks in its color identity on Playgroup Live. It appears in 327 of 4369 distinct decks that have played a tracked game, a focused but consistent presence across Simic and Sultai pods.

The card's value proposition is tempo and surprise: for {G}{U} and a tap, every spell in your hand gains flash for the turn. That ability keeps opponents honest on every opponent's end step. When a copy reaches a player's hand, 75% of those copies are cast before the game ends, and 84% of cast copies survive to end of game. The median first cast lands on turn 5, with a flat distribution that stretches from turn 1 to turn 14, reflecting how players drop it whenever the mana opens up rather than saving it for a specific moment.

Data is spread across 298 distinct players, with no single contributor accounting for more than a small fraction of observations. That breadth gives the numbers here reasonable cross-table validity, even at this dataset size.

At a glance

7% of tracked Commander decks in color include Alchemist's Refuge
75% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends
T5 median first-cast turn, spread evenly from turns 1–14
37% win rate in games where the Refuge resolved
84% battlefield stickiness once cast
298 distinct players in the dataset, indicating broad cross-table coverage

First-cast turn

n=141

11%

14%

15%

11%

35%

T6-9

T10+

Median 5 P25 3 · P75 7 · max 16

Cast same turn as drawn 49%

The "good card" funnel

697 brought · 298 players

Brought to game

697

Ever drawn

189

Reached battlefield

141

Still on board at game end

119

75%

Of 697 copies brought to games, 189 were drawn, 141 of those were cast, and the vast majority stayed on the battlefield through end of game, showing a clean and efficient journey from deck to table.

≥ +2.0pp

Players who cast this card win 37% of the time (n=137) , vs 26% when it never left the library (n=440).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 40% (n=45) — 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 +10.3pp; 95% confidence interval +2.0pp to +18.6pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

204 instances

2.5%

Library

58.3%

Battlefield

17.2%

Graveyard

4.4%

Exile

The overwhelming majority of Alchemist's Refuge copies end the game on the battlefield rather than the library, a direct reflection of how readily players cast it once drawn and how rarely opponents remove lands.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Zimone, Infinite Analyst dominates the commander distribution by a wide margin, with the rest of the list spreading across a diverse range of Simic and Sultai commanders, suggesting Alchemist's Refuge is a role-player in multiple archetypes rather than a card that belongs to one deck.

Card text

Alchemist's Refuge

Land

: Add

: You may cast spells this turn as though they had flash.

Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC) · Rare · Illustrated by Dan Murayama Scott

Frequently Asked

How often is Alchemist's Refuge drawn and cast in a Commander game?

Across 683 tracked games where the card was in the deck, it was drawn 27% of the time. That rate is normal for a singleton land in a 100-card deck. Of 189 copies that reached a player's hand, 75% were cast before the game ended. Players who do draw it tend to deploy it promptly: the median hand-to-cast delay is just 5 turns, and 49% of drawn-and-cast copies hit the battlefield on the same turn they were drawn.

What is the win-rate lift when Alchemist's Refuge is cast?

In 137 tracked participations where the Refuge reached the battlefield, the controller won 37% of the time (normalized to a 4-player baseline). In 440 participations where the card never left the library, the win rate was 26%. That is a +10.3 percentage-point gap. Both sample sizes comfortably exceed 15 observations, so this is a real directional signal, though the dataset remains small enough that we describe it as consistent rather than conclusive.

Which commanders most often run Alchemist's Refuge?

Zimone, Infinite Analyst leads by a wide margin across tracked live decks, followed by Hakbal of the Surging Soul, Ms. Bumbleflower, and a cluster of other Simic and Sultai commanders. Nearly every commander pairing in the top 10 sits in green-blue, which makes sense: the card's flash-granting ability costs {G}{U} and rewards having a full hand of interaction or combo pieces to hold up.

Is Alchemist's Refuge legal in Commander?

Yes. Alchemist's Refuge is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Oathbreaker, and Duel Commander. It is not legal in Standard, Pioneer, Alchemy, Historic, Timeless, Pauper, or Brawl. Its color identity is green-blue, restricting it to decks whose commander includes at least one of those colors in their identity.

How sticky is Alchemist's Refuge once it hits the battlefield?

84% of cast copies remained on the battlefield at end of game in the tracked dataset. Lands are naturally resilient compared to artifacts or enchantments since they require targeted removal or mass land destruction rather than just a single Naturalize. That stickiness means when the Refuge resolves, players can rely on it being available for multiple turns of flash activation.

Is the Alchemist's Refuge data concentrated among a small group of players?

No. The tracked instances span 298 distinct players, and no single contributor exceeds a modest share of total observations. That spread is a genuine strength of this dataset. Results are not skewed by one dedicated pilot running the card in dozens of games, which makes the draw rate, cast rate, and win-rate figures more representative of how the broader Commander community uses the card.