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Benevolent Hydra

· Creature — Hydra · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

397

Decks Running

197

In Decks

1014

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Card text

Benevolent Hydra

Creature — Hydra

This creature enters with X +1/+1 counters on it. If one or more +1/+1 counters would be put on another creature you control, that many plus one +1/+1 counters are put on it instead. {T}

, Remove a +1/+1 counter from this creature: Put a +1/+1 counter on another target creature you control.

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Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC) · Rare · Illustrated by Vincent Christiaens

Final zone distribution

111 instances

4.5%

Library

24.3%

Battlefield

31.5%

Graveyard

9.9%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The "good card" funnel

397 brought · 184 players

Brought to game

397

Ever drawn

101

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 49% 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.

≥ -11.7pp

Players who cast this card win 25% of the time (n=50) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=262).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 20% (n=44) — 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 +-0.0pp; 95% confidence interval -11.7pp to +11.6pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=55

11%

16%

53%

T6-9

15%

T10+

Median 6 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 15

Cast same turn as drawn 24%

55 of 100 times cast 55%

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 650,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.