Live Play Data

Azusa, Lost but Seeking

· Legendary Creature — Human Monk · Commander Masters (CMM)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

593

Decks Running

293

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

79%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

79% of drawn Azusa copies are cast before the game ends, and games where she resolves show a +7.7 percentage-point win-rate lift over games where she stays in the library.

Azusa, Lost but Seeking sits in 5% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live. That number is deliberately narrow: Azusa is a green-only, land-drop-doubling engine whose home is dedicated landfall and big-mana shells, not generalist piles. The 293 decks that do run her bring her to games consistently, and when she shows up in hand she almost always gets cast.

79% of drawn Azusa copies reach the battlefield, a figure that reflects how little reason players have to hold her. Median first cast lands on turn 5, one turn later than her mana value might suggest. Only 22% of casts land exactly on curve. The extra turn of delay is mostly a draw-timing effect: players who do not see her in the opening hand are pulling her mid-game, past the window where she costs exactly three mana to deploy "on schedule."

Her commander spread is well-distributed across 253 distinct players, with the single heaviest contributor accounting for 25% of all tracked instances. That breadth adds credibility to the directional signals here, even on a dataset of 571 tracked games.

At a glance

5% of tracked Commander decks include Azusa
79% of drawn copies reach the battlefield
T5 median first-cast turn
58% battlefield stickiness once cast
22% of casts land on curve (turn 3)
253 distinct players have brought her to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=119

14%

17%

21%

31%

T6-9

T10+

Median 5 P25 4 · P75 7 · max 13

On curve 22% (17 / 119 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 41%

The "good card" funnel

594 brought · 253 players

Brought to game

594

Ever drawn

150

Reached battlefield

119

Still on board at game end

79%

Of 594 Azusas brought to games, 150 were drawn, 119 of those were cast, and 58% of resolved copies stayed on the battlefield through end of game.

≥ -0.9pp

Players who cast this card win 32% of the time (n=114) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=373).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 48% (n=31) — 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 +7.7pp; 95% confidence interval -0.9pp to +16.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

190 instances

2.6%

Library

42.6%

Battlefield

27.9%

Graveyard

6.8%

Exile

Most Azusa copies that never leave the library simply were not drawn, a structural fact of 100-card singleton rather than a sign of weakness. Of observed copies, the battlefield and graveyard together account for the majority of final destinations.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The commander list spans mono-green, Simic, Gruul, and five-color shells, showing Azusa is not locked to a single archetype. No single commander dominates the distribution, which spreads across 253 distinct players.

Frequently Asked

How often is Azusa drawn in a Commander game?

In 571 tracked Commander games where Azusa was in a deck, she was drawn 25% of the time. That is consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 150 instances that reached a player's hand, 79% were cast before the game ended. The remainder mostly reflects games that concluded before the player found a window to deploy her.

What turn does Azusa typically get cast?

Median first cast is turn 5. Her mana value is 3, so the on-curve window is turn 3, but only 22% of casts hit that mark. The distribution has a strong cluster around turns 3-5, with a long tail extending to turn 13 in the dataset. Players who draw her in the opening hand tend to slam her early; most mid-game draws arrive well past the on-curve turn.

Does casting Azusa actually improve your win rate?

Games where Azusa resolved show a +7.7 percentage-point win-rate lift over games where she remained in the library. The cast-side sample is 114 observations and the library-side sample is 373, so both buckets are reasonably sized. The effect is directional and consistent, though the confidence interval on this dataset just grazes zero, so treat it as an early signal rather than a proven claim.

Is Azusa banned in any format?

Azusa is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Historic, Duel Commander, and several other formats. She is not legal in Standard, Pauper, or Pauper Commander. She has never been banned in Commander, despite her reputation as a powerful engine.

Which commanders most often run Azusa?

Hearthhull, the Worldseed leads the list, followed closely by Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait and Flubs, the Fool. Azusa herself appears as a commander in 12 decks in the tracked dataset. The spread across Jund, Simic, Gruul, and mono-green commanders reflects that her ability is broadly valuable in any shell that generates extra lands or rewards land drops.

How sticky is Azusa once she hits the battlefield?

58% of cast Azusa copies survive to end of game without being removed. As a 1/2 creature with no built-in protection, she is a removal target, but opponents do not always prioritize her immediately. That stickiness number is a directional read on table threat assessment across the 571 tracked games in this dataset.