Live Play Data

Anguished Unmaking

· Instant · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

26%

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1934

Decks Running

982

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

67%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

26% of tracked Commander decks in Orzhov-or-wider color identities run Anguished Unmaking, and 67% of drawn copies reach the stack before the game ends, with a median first-cast turn of 7.

Anguished Unmaking shows up in 26% of the 3790 decks tracked on Playgroup Live, appearing across 982 distinct lists that have played a recorded game. For a color-restricted instant, that is a consistent presence across the Orzhov-adjacent meta.

When a copy reaches a player's hand, 67% of those copies are cast before the game closes. Median first cast lands on turn 7, later than a pure mana-cost reading would suggest, which reflects how players treat this card: held in hand as reactive removal until a high-value target appears rather than deployed at the first opportunity. The hand-to-cast data reinforces this. Of observed cast instances, the median copy sat in hand for 2 turns before being fired.

The card is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, and Historic, but sees its most meaningful play in Commander, where unconditional exile of any nonland permanent is hardest to replicate. The 3 life payment is real but rarely punishing at 40 life, which keeps Anguished Unmaking a default inclusion for most black-white builds.

At a glance

26% of tracked Commander decks include Anguished Unmaking
23% draw rate across tracked game participations
67% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends
T7 median first-cast turn, reflecting its role as reactive removal
789 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=291

12%

55%

T6-9

20%

T10+

Median 7 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 20

On curve 6% (15 / 291 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 23%

The "good card" funnel

1935 brought · 789 players

Brought to game

1935

Ever drawn

437

Reached battlefield

291

Still on board at game end

67%

Of 1935 copies brought to games, 437 were drawn, 291 of those resolved, and nearly all resolved copies went to the graveyard as expected for an instant, reflecting a clean cast-and-done pattern with minimal interaction disruption.

≥ +0.4pp

Players who cast this card win 31% of the time (n=263) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=1269).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 26% (n=139) — 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 +6.0pp; 95% confidence interval +0.4pp to +11.6pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

491 instances

4.1%

Library

2.4%

Battlefield

56.2%

Graveyard

11.2%

Exile

The graveyard is the dominant final zone for Anguished Unmaking, as expected for a resolved instant. Most copies that never leave the library simply were not drawn, a structural fact of 100-card singleton play rather than a commentary on the card's strength.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The commander list spans Orzhov, Esper, Abzan, and Mardu builds, with no single commander dominating, which signals that Anguished Unmaking earns its slot on the card's own merits rather than synergizing with one specific strategy.

Card text

Anguished Unmaking

Instant

Exile target nonland permanent. You lose 3 life.

Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC) · Rare · Illustrated by Wesley Burt

Frequently Asked

How often is Anguished Unmaking drawn in a Commander game?

Across 1791 tracked games where Anguished Unmaking was in the deck, it was drawn 23% of the time. That is a normal draw rate for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 437 copies that reached a hand, 67% were eventually cast. The remainder stayed in hand as the game ended around them, a common outcome for reactive spells held for the right moment.

What turn does Anguished Unmaking typically resolve?

The median first-cast turn is 7, with the interquartile range running from turn 6 to turn 9. That late-game clustering is consistent with players treating the card as a reactive answer rather than a proactive play. When it does arrive in the opening hand it can hit as early as turn 3, but the modal cast happens well into the mid-game.

Does casting Anguished Unmaking actually improve your win rate?

In 263 participations where a copy was cast, the normalized win rate was 31%. In 1269 participations where the card stayed in the library untouched, the win rate was 25%. The gap is a directional early signal, but the confidence interval overlaps zero at this sample size, so treat it as suggestive rather than conclusive.

Is Anguished Unmaking banned anywhere relevant?

Anguished Unmaking is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Historic, Timeless, and several other formats. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, Pauper Commander, or Old School. There is no ban in Commander, which is where the card sees its heaviest real-play volume according to Playgroup Live data.

How concentrated is the Anguished Unmaking data across players?

The data is well spread. 789 distinct players have brought Anguished Unmaking to a tracked game, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for only 23% of instances. That breadth makes the draw and cast rates more reliable as format-wide signals rather than artifacts of one or two prolific players.

Which commanders most often run Anguished Unmaking?

On Playgroup Live, Killian, Decisive Mentor leads with the most tracked decks including this card, followed by Y'shtola, Night's Blessed and Felothar the Steadfast. The spread across Orzhov, Esper, Abzan, and Mardu commanders reflects how broadly useful unconditional exile removal is. Any commander with white and black in its color identity is a potential home.