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Bayou card art
Live Play Data

Bayou

Land — Swamp Forest · Vintage Masters (VMA)
12%
Live Inclusion
Buy on TCGplayer
Times Brought
963
Decks Running
433
Median Cast Turn
3
Drawn → Played
91%
Format
Multiplayer 1v1

Bayou appears in 12% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, and 91% of drawn copies are played before the game ends, the highest land-execution rate in the Golgari mana base.

Bayou is a Dual Land that taps for Black or Green without entering the battlefield tapped, making it a foundational mana piece for any deck running both colors. Across 850 tracked multiplayer Commander games on Playgroup Live, it sits in 433 of 3542 distinct decks at a 12% inclusion rate. That rate reflects its cost and scarcity as an original Revised-era dual land rather than a lack of demand.

The standout figure is draw-to-play: 91% of drawn Bayous are played before the game ends. Because lands enter without being cast as spells, Bayou is nearly always deployed the same turn it enters a hand. The median first-play turn is 3, and 72% of instances are played on the same turn they are drawn. That speed is exactly what untapped dual lands are in the format for.

The data is spread across 314 unique players, with the single heaviest contributor accounting for 3% of tracked instances. That breadth gives the numbers reasonable directional weight even given Playgroup Live's current sample size.

At a glance
  • 12% of tracked Commander decks include Bayou
  • 91% of drawn copies are played before the game ends
  • T3 median first-play turn
  • 72% of Bayous are played the same turn they are drawn
  • 93% battlefield stickiness once played
  • 314 unique players have brought Bayou to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=337
30%
T1
15%
T2
13%
T3
10%
T4
10%
T5
18%
T6-9
2%
T10+
Median 3 P25 1 · P75 5 · max 13
Cast same turn as drawn 72%

The "good card" funnel

963 brought · 314 players
Brought to game
963
Ever drawn
370
Reached battlefield
337
Still on board at game end
312
91%

Of 963 Bayous brought to tracked games, 370 were drawn, 337 of those were played, and 93% remained on the battlefield through end of game.

≥ +2.9pp

Players who cast this card win 31% of the time (n=303) , vs 22% when it never left the library (n=481).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 38% (n=25) — 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 +8.7pp; 95% confidence interval +2.9pp to +14.5pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

394 instances
2.5%
Library
79.2%
Battlefield
8.9%
Graveyard
2.8%
Exile

Most Bayous that enter a game end up on the battlefield at game end, a direct result of it being an untapped land that players deploy immediately rather than holding.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Five-color good-stuff commanders dominate the list, but dedicated Golgari commanders like The Gitrog Monster confirm that Bayou earns its slot across both broad and focused archetypes.

Card text
Bayou card

Bayou

Land — Swamp Forest
({T}: Add {B} or {G}.)
Vintage Masters (VMA) · Rare · Illustrated by Karl Kopinski

Frequently Asked

How often is Bayou drawn in a Commander game?
In 850 tracked multiplayer games where Bayou was in the deck, it was drawn 38% of the time. That is a normal draw rate for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 370 drawn copies, 91% were played before the game ended. The gap between drawn and played is among the smallest of any land we track, consistent with players treating it as an immediate drop.
What turn does Bayou typically hit the battlefield?
Median first-play turn is 3. The distribution clusters hard at turn 1, which is the mode, reflecting opening-hand keeps. A second cluster runs through turns 5 and 6 for copies drawn mid-game. 72% of instances are played the same turn they are drawn, confirming that players do not hold untapped duals in hand for strategic reasons.
Is Bayou legal in Commander?
Yes. Bayou is legal and unrestricted in Commander, as well as in Legacy, Vintage, Duel Commander, Oathbreaker, and PreDH. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, or any other non-Eternal format. Its price and Reserved List status are the only practical limits on its inclusion.
Does casting Bayou correlate with winning?
Win rate when cast sits at 31% across 303 observations, compared to 22% when it remained in the library across 481 observations. The delta is +8.7 percentage points. Both sample buckets are reasonably sized, but the confidence interval for this delta still crosses zero, so treat it as an early directional signal rather than a firm conclusion. Bayou's value is mana consistency, which shows up in overall deck performance rather than a single win-rate lift.
Which commanders use Bayou most?
The Ur-Dragon leads the top-commanders list, consistent with five-color good-stuff decks that want every untapped dual available. Esika, God of the Tree and Kenrith, the Returned King round out the top three. Golgari-specific commanders like The Gitrog Monster and Ygra, Eater of All also appear, where Bayou is a structural piece rather than an upgrade slot.
How concentrated is the Bayou data across players?
314 unique players have brought Bayou to at least one tracked game on Playgroup Live. The single heaviest contributor accounts for 3% of all instances, well below the 30% threshold that would flag a concentration concern. The spread gives the numbers reasonable directional credibility across the current dataset of 850 games.