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Cauldron of Essence

· Artifact · Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS)

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

351

Decks Running

174

In Decks

915

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Final zone distribution

110 instances

2.7%

Library

40.9%

Battlefield

25.5%

Graveyard

4.5%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Dina, Essence Brewer 21 decks
2 Blech, Loafing Pest 16 decks
3 The Serpent Society 15 decks
4 Chatterfang, Squirrel General 12 decks
5 Witherbloom, the Balancer 10 decks
6 Teval, the Balanced Scale 8 decks
7 Meren of Clan Nel Toth 7 decks
8 Ygra, Eater of All 6 decks
9 Dina, Soul Steeper 5 decks
10 Jenova, Ancient Calamity 5 decks

The "good card" funnel

351 brought · 166 players

Brought to game

351

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 71% 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.

≥ -2.3pp

Players who cast this card win 38% of the time (n=62) , vs 29% when it never left the library (n=227).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 22% (n=28) — 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 +9.7pp; 95% confidence interval -2.3pp to +21.7pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=63

16%

21%

41%

T6-9

14%

T10+

Median 6 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 16

On curve 8% (3 / 63 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 39%

63 of 100 times cast 63%

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 630,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.