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Cauldron of Essence

· Artifact · Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS)

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Times Brought

319

Decks Running

158

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

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

Final zone distribution

79 instances

54.4%

Battlefield

21.5%

Graveyard

24.1%

Hand

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Blech, Loafing Pest 23 decks
2 Chatterfang, Squirrel General 15 decks
3 Dina, Essence Brewer 10 decks
4 The Serpent Society 10 decks
5 Witherbloom, the Balancer 10 decks
6 Teval, the Balanced Scale 8 decks
7 The Necrobloom 6 decks
8 Hazel of the Rootbloom 4 decks
9 Slimefoot, the Stowaway 4 decks
10 Uugguu, the Omniplasm 4 decks

The "good card" funnel

319 brought · 155 players

Brought to game

319

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

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.

≥ -6.8pp

Players who cast this card win 23% of the time (n=43) , vs 21% when it never left the library (n=180).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 10% (n=15) — 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 +1.3pp; 95% confidence interval -6.8pp to +9.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=53

21%

45%

T6-9

T10+

Median 6 P25 4 · P75 7 · max 13

On curve 17% (3 / 53 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 27%

53 of 100 times cast 53%

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 650,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.