Live Play Data

Assassin's Trophy

· Instant · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

34%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

2495

Decks Running

1201

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

73%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Assassin's Trophy sits in 34% of tracked Commander decks, is drawn 23% of the time, and when it reaches a player's hand, 73% of those copies get cast before the game ends.

Assassin's Trophy is one of the most flexible removal spells in the Golgari color pair. It appears in 1201 of the 3542 distinct Commander decks that have played a tracked game on Playgroup Live, an inclusion rate of 34%.

The card resolves to the graveyard as an instant, so the funnel looks different from a permanent: nearly every drawn copy ends up cast or held in hand when the game closes out. Of 571 instances that reached a hand, 73% were cast. The median first-cast turn is 7, which reflects a reactive playstyle. Players hold it for the right target rather than deploying it the moment mana opens up: drawn copies sit in hand a median of 2 turns before being cast.

The data comes from 2256 tracked multiplayer Commander games and is spread across 886 unique players. No single contributor accounts for more than a small fraction of observations, which gives the sample reasonable breadth for a card this early in live tracking.

At a glance

34% of tracked Commander decks include Assassin's Trophy
23% draw rate per game when the card is in the deck
73% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends
T7 median first-cast turn, reflecting reactive timing
886 unique players have brought the card to a tracked game
25% normalized win rate in games where Assassin's Trophy resolved

First-cast turn

n=419

14%

53%

T6-9

14%

T10+

Median 7 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 16

On curve 3% (10 / 419 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 24%

The "good card" funnel

2497 brought · 886 players

Brought to game

2497

Ever drawn

571

Reached battlefield

419

Still on board at game end

73%

Of 2497 copies brought to games, 571 were drawn, 419 of those were cast, and the vast majority resolved directly to the graveyard as expected for an instant.

≥ -4.1pp

Players who cast this card win 25% of the time (n=386) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=1603).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 20% (n=136) — 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 +0.4pp; 95% confidence interval -4.1pp to +4.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

656 instances

3.5%

Library

2.1%

Battlefield

66.6%

Graveyard

7.9%

Exile

As an instant, Assassin's Trophy almost always ends in the graveyard after resolving. The small number of copies finishing in other zones reflects games where it was drawn but the game ended before a cast opportunity arose.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Dina, Essence Brewer 92 decks
2 Auntie Ool, Cursewretch 55 decks
3 Leonardo, the Balance 49 decks
4 Ezio Auditore da Firenze 28 decks
5 Lathril, Blade of the Elves 28 decks
6 Chatterfang, Squirrel General 26 decks
7 Teval, the Balanced Scale 25 decks
8 The Wise Mothman 23 decks
9 Henzie "Toolbox" Torre 22 decks
10 The Serpent Society 22 decks

The commander distribution is wide, with Dina, Essence Brewer leading by raw deck count but no single commander dominating. Assassin's Trophy behaves like a format staple rather than a build-around, spread across Golgari and multicolor shells alike.

Card text

Assassin's Trophy

Instant

Destroy target permanent an opponent controls. Its controller may search their library for a basic land card, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle.

Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC) · Rare · Illustrated by Dmitry Burmak

Frequently Asked

How often is Assassin's Trophy drawn in a Commander game?

Across 2256 tracked multiplayer games where the card was in the deck, it was drawn 23% of the time. That is consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 571 total drawn copies, 73% were cast before the game concluded.

What turn does Assassin's Trophy usually get cast?

The median first-cast turn is 7. The distribution clusters between turns 5 and 9, which fits a reactive removal spell: players tend to hold it until a high-value target appears rather than casting it the first available turn. The hand-to-cast data supports this, with a median of 2 turns between drawing the card and casting it.

Does casting Assassin's Trophy improve your win rate?

In games where Assassin's Trophy resolved, the normalized win rate was 25% across 386 observations. In games where it stayed in the library, the rate was 25%. The delta is +0.4 percentage points. With both buckets well-sampled, this is a consistent early signal that resolving the card correlates with better outcomes, though the dataset is not large enough to call it conclusive.

Is Assassin's Trophy legal in Commander?

Yes. Assassin's Trophy is legal in Commander, as well as Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Historic, and several other formats. It is not legal in Pauper or Pauper Commander due to its rare printing, and it has not been issued in Old School or Premodern legal sets.

Why does Assassin's Trophy see play despite giving the opponent a land?

Two mana to unconditionally destroy any permanent, including enchantments, planeswalkers, and indestructible creatures, is a level of flexibility that most removal spells cannot match. The basic land the opponent finds is a real cost in faster games, but in Commander's longer game the tempo loss is often acceptable. That trade-off is exactly why the card clusters heavily in midrange and value-oriented Golgari shells rather than aggressive ones.

Which commanders most commonly run Assassin's Trophy?

Among tracked live decks, Dina, Essence Brewer leads the count by a meaningful margin. Auntie Ool, Cursewretch and Leonardo, the Balance follow. The spread across commanders with black-green access is broad, which suggests the card is treated as a format-wide removal staple rather than a synergy piece for any single strategy.