Choked Estuary
22% of tracked Commander decks include Choked Estuary. When drawn, 74% of copies reach the battlefield, with a median first cast landing on turn 3.0.
Choked Estuary is in 22% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, appearing in 730 of the 3335 distinct decks that have played a tracked game. That number reflects a narrower audience than most format staples: Choked Estuary only fits in blue-black and three-color combinations that include both colors, so its inclusion ceiling is structurally limited.
The play data tells a clean story for a dual land. 74% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended, and the median first cast lands on turn 3.0. Battlefield stickiness is 92%, which is exactly what you expect from a land: once it enters, almost nothing removes it. The data is well-spread across 603 unique players, with no single contributor accounting for more than 2% of tracked instances, so the signal is not driven by a handful of repeat players.
Choked Estuary sits comfortably in the "dual land that usually enters untapped" tier for blue-black Commander decks. Its condition asks you to reveal an Island or Swamp already in hand, which is almost always met in the early game when both those basic types tend to cluster in opening hands. It slots naturally into Dimir, Grixis, and Esper shells as reliable fixing below the price floor of original dual lands.
- 22% of tracked Commander decks include Choked Estuary
- 74% of drawn copies reached the battlefield before the game ended
- T3.0 median first-cast turn across all tracked games
- 92% battlefield stickiness once played, typical for a land
- 603 unique players have brought this card to a tracked game
- 27% draw rate, consistent with singleton in a 100-card deck
First-cast turn
n=262The "good card" funnel
1319 brought · 603 playersOf 1319 Choked Estuaries brought to tracked games, 352 were drawn, 262 of those were cast, and the vast majority remained on the battlefield through the end of the game.
Players who cast this card win 18% of the time (n=230) , vs 19% when it never left the library (n=776).
When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 29% (n=75) — 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 -1.4pp; 95% confidence interval -6.7pp to +3.9pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.
Final zone distribution
396 instancesMost of the library bucket here is structural: Choked Estuary copies that were never drawn in 1235 tracked games, a normal outcome for any singleton land in a 100-card deck. The 92% stickiness among cast copies is the more meaningful number.
Commanders that played this card
in tracked games-
1
Doctor Doom, King of Latveria
96 decks
-
2
Y'shtola, Night's Blessed
95 decks
-
3
Sauron, Lord of the Rings
37 decks
-
4
Captain N'ghathrod
34 decks
-
5
Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver
25 decks
-
6
Sauron, the Dark Lord
22 decks
-
7
Admiral Brass, Unsinkable
18 decks
-
8
Alela, Cunning Conqueror
17 decks
-
9
Inquisitor Greyfax
16 decks
-
10
Satoru Umezawa
16 decks
The commander list spans at least three distinct color identities sharing blue and black, which confirms that Choked Estuary functions as format-wide Dimir fixing rather than a card tied to any single strategy or deck shell.