Live Play Data

Assassin's Trophy

· Instant · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

33%

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1589

Decks Running

796

Median Cast Turn

7.0

Drawn → Played

73%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Assassin's Trophy sits in 33% 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 796 of the 2387 distinct Commander decks that have played a tracked game on Playgroup Live, an inclusion rate of 33%.

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 360 instances that reached a hand, 73% were cast. The median first-cast turn is 7.0, 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 1438 tracked multiplayer Commander games and is spread across 602 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

33% 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
T7.0 median first-cast turn, reflecting reactive timing
602 unique players have brought the card to a tracked game
27% normalized win rate in games where Assassin's Trophy resolved

First-cast turn

n=262

10%

14%

52%

T6-9

16%

T10+

Median 7.0 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 16

On curve 2% (3 / 262 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 24%

The "good card" funnel

1591 brought · 602 players

Brought to game

1591

Ever drawn

360

Reached battlefield

262

Still on board at game end

73%

Of 1591 copies brought to games, 360 were drawn, 262 of those were cast, and the vast majority resolved directly to the graveyard as expected for an instant.

≥ -3.3pp

Players who cast this card win 27% of the time (n=256) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=1077).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 19% (n=96) — 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 +2.2pp; 95% confidence interval -3.3pp to +7.7pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

415 instances

3.1%

Library

1.9%

Battlefield

65.5%

Graveyard

8.7%

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 73 decks
2 Auntie Ool, Cursewretch 39 decks
3 Leonardo, the Balance 36 decks
4 Ezio Auditore da Firenze 19 decks
5 Henzie "Toolbox" Torre 19 decks
6 Lathril, Blade of the Elves 19 decks
7 Chatterfang, Squirrel General 17 decks
8 Hearthhull, the Worldseed 16 decks
9 The Serpent Society 16 decks
10 The Wise Mothman 16 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.

Frequently Asked

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

Across 1438 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 360 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 7.0. 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 27% across 256 observations. In games where it stayed in the library, the rate was 25%. The delta is +2.2 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.