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Baleful Mastery

· Instant · Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander (OTC)

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Times Brought

599

Decks Running

335

In Decks

—

Decklist Inclusion

—

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Showing 1v1 (duel) data only. 1v1 is a different format from multiplayer Commander, so these numbers are not comparable.

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

143 instances

4.2%

Library

4.9%

Battlefield

60.1%

Graveyard

7.7%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse 55 decks
2 Gonti, Canny Acquisitor 33 decks
3 Nekusar, the Mindrazer 28 decks
4 Y'shtola, Night's Blessed 25 decks
5 Umbris, Fear Manifest 10 decks
6 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth 9 decks
7 Glarb, Calamity's Augur 6 decks
8 Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls 5 decks
9 Zenos yae Galvus // Shinryu, Transcendent Rival 5 decks
10 Lord of the Nazgûl 4 decks

The "good card" funnel

599 brought · 316 players

Brought to game

599

Ever drawn

130

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ +0.8pp

Players who cast this card win 29% of the time (n=75) , vs 22% when it never left the library (n=323).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 29% (n=31).

Read this as correlation, not as the card's contribution. Casting a card means you lived long enough to cast it, so this gap widens with mana value across every card we track.

Observed gap +7.1pp; 95% confidence interval +0.8pp to +13.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=88

18%

13%

45%

T6-9

10%

T10+

Median 6.0 P25 4 · P75 8 · max 14

On curve 32% (16 / 88 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 22%

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games, and the full charts need a sample of at least 25 observed games that is not dominated by a single pilot. 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 760,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.