Blackblade Reforged
75% of drawn Blackblade Reforged copies are cast before the game ends, and 81% of those resolved copies survive to the final zone on the battlefield.
Blackblade Reforged sits in 541 of the 16624 tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, an 3% inclusion rate that reflects its narrow but committed niche: legendary-creature voltron strategies that want a land-scaling pump engine.
When the card reaches a player's hand, it goes to work. 75% of drawn copies are cast, and the median first cast lands on turn 5.0. That turn is meaningfully later than the card's 2-mana face value suggests. Only 15% of casts land on curve. The pattern points to a card that gets played primarily through the discounted Equip for legendary creatures rather than being deployed the moment it is drawn. 48% of drawn-and-cast copies are cast on the same turn they are drawn, confirming that players often hold it a turn or two before the right legendary target is available.
The data is spread across 423 distinct players, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for just 3% of tracked instances, a sign that the signal is not dominated by one prolific pilot. Colorless identity means Blackblade Reforged slots into any Commander deck that runs a legendary creature worth growing, and the top-commander list reflects exactly that breadth.
- 3% of tracked Commander decks include Blackblade Reforged
- T5.0 median first-cast turn, well past its 2-mana sticker price
- 75% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
- 81% battlefield stickiness once the Equipment resolves
- 15% on-curve cast rate, reflecting deliberate hold-and-equip play patterns
- 423 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game
First-cast turn
n=194The "good card" funnel
1103 brought · 423 playersOf 1103 Blackblade Reforged copies brought to games, 257 were drawn, 194 of those were cast, and 81% of resolved copies survived to end the game on the battlefield.
Players who cast this card win 28% of the time (n=179) , vs 26% when it never left the library (n=718).
When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 19% (n=51) — 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 +1.6pp; 95% confidence interval -5.1pp to +8.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.
Final zone distribution
286 instancesThe vast majority of Blackblade Reforged copies never leave the library, a structural consequence of singleton deckbuilding in 100-card Commander rather than a commentary on the card's power once drawn.
Commanders that played this card
in tracked games-
1
Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER
35 decks
-
2
Tifa Lockhart
18 decks
-
3
Lightning, Army of One
16 decks
-
4
Kotis, the Fangkeeper
15 decks
-
5
The Mindskinner
13 decks
-
6
Alexios, Deimos of Kosmos
9 decks
-
7
Cloud, Midgar Mercenary
9 decks
-
8
Squall, SeeD Mercenary
9 decks
-
9
Amy Rose
7 decks
-
10
Baeloth Barrityl, Entertainer
7 decks
Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER leads with 17 decks, but the list spans Gruul, Mono-Red, Mono-Green, and even colorless commanders, reflecting how broadly the discounted legendary equip cost applies across the format.