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Baleful Mastery

· Instant · Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander (OTC)

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

333

Decks Running

172

In Decks

1333

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Card text

Baleful Mastery

Instant

You may pay {1}

rather than pay this spell's mana cost. If the {1}

cost was paid, an opponent draws a card. Exile target creature or planeswalker.

Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander (OTC) · Rare · Illustrated by Chris Cold

Final zone distribution

88 instances

2.3%

Library

63.6%

Graveyard

10.2%

Exile

23.9%

Hand

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse 23 decks
2 Y'shtola, Night's Blessed 22 decks
3 Nekusar, the Mindrazer 20 decks
4 Gonti, Canny Acquisitor 12 decks
5 Umbris, Fear Manifest 4 decks
6 Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow 4 decks
7 Zenos yae Galvus // Shinryu, Transcendent Rival 4 decks
8 Marrow-Gnawer 3 decks
9 Tinybones, Bauble Burglar 3 decks
10 Alela, Cunning Conqueror 2 decks

The "good card" funnel

334 brought · 160 players

Brought to game

334

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -2.3pp

Players who cast this card win 35% of the time (n=52) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=223).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 17% (n=22) — 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 +11.0pp; 95% confidence interval -2.3pp to +24.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=54

13%

15%

50%

T6-9

20%

T10+

Median 7.0 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 13

On curve 15% (7 / 54 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 28%

54 of 100 times cast 54%

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.