Live Play Data

Balin, Loremaster

· Legendary Creature — Dwarf Bard · The Hobbit (HOB)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

442

Decks Running

179

Median Cast Turn

7.0

Drawn → Played

60%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=68

13%

62%

T6-9

15%

T10+

Median 7.0 P25 6 · P75 8 · max 14

On curve 24% (9 / 68 cast on T5) Cast same turn as drawn 21%

The "good card" funnel

442 brought · 152 players

Brought to game

442

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 48% of this card is still on the battlefield at game end. This reflects how often it survives removal, not just whether it's a permanent.

≥ +0.5pp

Players who cast this card win 34% of the time (n=41) , vs 18% when it never left the library (n=288).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 13% (n=30).

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 +15.3pp; 95% confidence interval +0.5pp to +30.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

92 instances

5.4%

Library

26.1%

Battlefield

33.7%

Graveyard

6.5%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Thorin, King of Durin's Folk 93 decks
2 Dáin of the Ancient Halls 38 decks
3 Bifur, Melodic Rider 6 decks
4 Thorin Oakenshield 4 decks
5 Cadric, Soul Kindler 3 decks
6 Dwalin, Weaponmaster 3 decks
7 Clive, Ifrit's Dominant // Ifrit, Warden of Inferno 2 decks
8 Fíli and Kíli, Joyous 2 decks
9 Gimli, Counter of Kills 2 decks
10 Magda, Brazen Outlaw 2 decks

Card text

Balin, Loremaster

Legendary Creature — Dwarf Bard

Storied (If you control three or more artifacts, legendaries, and/or Sagas, you have an enduring story for the rest of the game.) Whenever Balin or another Dwarf you control enters, you may discard your hand. Draw X cards, where X is the number of cards discarded this way. If you have an enduring story, Balin deals X damage to each opponent.

4 / 4

The Hobbit (HOB) · Rare · Illustrated by Colin Boyer

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 730,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.