Live Play Data

Cauldron of Essence

· Artifact · Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

579

Decks Running

260

Median Cast Turn

6.0

Drawn → Played

70%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=100

16%

14%

47%

T6-9

12%

T10+

Median 6.0 P25 4 · P75 8 · max 16

On curve 11% (6 / 100 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 36%

The "good card" funnel

579 brought · 244 players

Brought to game

579

Ever drawn

143

Reached battlefield

100

Still on board at game end

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.

≥ +2.9pp

Players who cast this card win 42% of the time (n=92) , vs 29% when it never left the library (n=361).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 23% (n=38).

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 +13.0pp; 95% confidence interval +2.9pp to +23.0pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

168 instances

3.0%

Library

45.2%

Battlefield

24.4%

Graveyard

3.6%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Blech, Loafing Pest 25 decks
2 Dina, Essence Brewer 25 decks
3 The Serpent Society 22 decks
4 Chatterfang, Squirrel General 17 decks
5 Teval, the Balanced Scale 15 decks
6 Witherbloom, the Balancer 14 decks
7 Meren of Clan Nel Toth 10 decks
8 Ygra, Eater of All 10 decks
9 Uugguu, the Omniplasm 8 decks
10 Dina, Soul Steeper 7 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 680,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.