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Bolas's Citadel

· Legendary Artifact · War of the Spark (WAR)

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Times Brought

2607

Decks Running

1313

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

Bolas's Citadel

Legendary Artifact

You may look at the top card of your library any time. You may play lands and cast spells from the top of your library. If you cast a spell this way, pay life equal to its mana value rather than pay its mana cost. {T}

, Sacrifice ten nonland permanents: Each opponent loses 10 life.

War of the Spark (WAR) · Rare · Illustrated by Jonas De Ro

Final zone distribution

548 instances

2.6%

Library

38.3%

Battlefield

14.6%

Graveyard

6.9%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER // Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel 89 decks
2 Y'shtola, Night's Blessed 67 decks
3 Edgar Markov 54 decks
4 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth 48 decks
5 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse 33 decks
6 Marrow-Gnawer 31 decks
7 Oloro, Ageless Ascetic 30 decks
8 Jodah, the Unifier 23 decks
9 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen 22 decks
10 Niv-Mizzet, Ghost Counsel 20 decks

The "good card" funnel

2611 brought · 1037 players

Brought to game

2611

Ever drawn

500

Reached battlefield

258

Still on board at game end

210

Once cast, 81% 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.

≥ +6.3pp

Players who cast this card win 33% of the time (n=206) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=1521).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 25% (n=186).

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 +9.7pp; 95% confidence interval +6.3pp to +13.2pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=258

10%

16%

53%

T6-9

14%

T10+

Median 7.0 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 17

On curve 48% (40 / 258 cast on T6) Cast same turn as drawn 33%

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 750,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.