Live Play Data

Cauldron of Essence

· Artifact · Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

2004

Decks Running

869

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

67%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=333

12%

11%

14%

46%

T6-9

16%

T10+

Median 6 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 17

On curve 13% (40 / 333 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 32%

The "good card" funnel

2004 brought · 784 players

Brought to game

2004

Ever drawn

496

Reached battlefield

333

Still on board at game end

254

Once cast, 76% 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.

≥ +7.5pp

Players who cast this card win 37% of the time (n=319) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=1327).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 26% (n=161).

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 +12.8pp; 95% confidence interval +7.5pp to +18.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

581 instances

3.4%

Library

43.7%

Battlefield

25.0%

Graveyard

4.1%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Blech, Loafing Pest 99 decks
2 Dina, Essence Brewer 66 decks
3 Teval, the Balanced Scale 52 decks
4 Uugguu, the Omniplasm 52 decks
5 The Serpent Society 46 decks
6 Chatterfang, Squirrel General 40 decks
7 Witherbloom, the Balancer 34 decks
8 Meren of Clan Nel Toth 30 decks
9 Ygra, Eater of All 28 decks
10 Dina, Soul Steeper 21 decks

Card text

Cauldron of Essence

Artifact

Whenever a creature you control dies, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life. {1}

, Sacrifice a creature: Return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Activate only as a sorcery.

Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS) · Rare · Illustrated by Craig J Spearing

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 780,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.