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Ardyn, the Usurper

· Legendary Creature — Elder Human Noble · Final Fantasy (FIN)

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

294

Decks Running

110

In Decks

643

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Card text

Ardyn, the Usurper

Legendary Creature — Elder Human Noble

Demons you control have menace, lifelink, and haste. Starscourge — At the beginning of combat on your turn, exile up to one target creature card from a graveyard. If you exiled a card this way, create a token that's a copy of that card, except it's a 5/5 black Demon.

4 / 4

Final Fantasy (FIN) · Rare · Illustrated by Russell Dongjun Lu

Final zone distribution

119 instances

2.5%

Library

37.8%

Battlefield

14.3%

Graveyard

13.4%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Be'lakor, the Dark Master 18 decks
2 Ardyn, the Usurper 10 decks
3 Baron Helmut Zemo 8 decks
4 Betor, Ancestor's Voice 7 decks
5 Rakdos, Lord of Riots 5 decks
6 Raphael, Fiendish Savior 4 decks
7 Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER // Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel 4 decks
8 Gyruda, Doom of Depths 3 decks
9 Jodah, the Unifier 3 decks
10 Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler of Ruin 3 decks

The "good card" funnel

294 brought · 104 players

Brought to game

294

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 66% of this card is still on the battlefield at game end. This reflects how often it survives removal, not just whether it's a permanent.

≥ +10.4pp

Players who cast this card win 53% of the time (n=58) , vs 30% when it never left the library (n=161).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 12% (n=25) — 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 +23.1pp; 95% confidence interval +10.4pp to +35.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=61

11%

67%

T6-9

16%

T10+

Median 7 P25 6 · P75 9 · max 27

On curve 67% (7 / 61 cast on T8) Cast same turn as drawn 34%

61 of 100 times cast 61%

Full analysis unlocks as more games are tracked. Stats refresh nightly.

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Basic play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games; the full deep-dive page needs a larger, more diverse sample (at least 300 tracked games played by 10 or more different pilots, with no single pilot over 40 percent of the copies). Until this card clears those bars you're seeing only the basic counts. Stats refresh nightly.

How is Playgroup Live card data collected?

Players using Playgroup Live import their decklists before a game and log card actions as they play. Each cast, zone change, and resolution is recorded as a real game event. Stats on this site are computed from those events, not from decklist scrapes or theorycrafting. Playgroup has recorded 660,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.