Live Play Data

Chromatic Lantern

· Artifact · Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

924

Decks Running

523

Median Cast Turn

4.5

Drawn → Played

77%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

8% of tracked Commander decks run Chromatic Lantern, and 77% of drawn copies reach the battlefield. It most commonly resolves on turn 4.5, spread across 385 distinct players.

Chromatic Lantern sits in 8% of Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live. It appears in 523 of the 6164 distinct tracked decks, making it one of the most consistent mana-fixing artifacts in the format. That number is directional, not definitive, but the signal is consistent across 794 tracked games.

The draw-to-play rate tells the core story: 77% of copies that reach a player's hand are cast before the game ends. Median first cast lands on turn 4.5, with most action clustered between turns 3 and 7. The card does not sit in hand long when it arrives. The median hand-to-cast delay is 1 turn, which reflects how quickly players move it to the battlefield once they have the mana.

Chromatic Lantern belongs almost exclusively to multicolor decks. Five-color commanders dominate the top-commander list, and the pattern makes sense: a 3-mana artifact that turns every land into a rainbow source is worth a slot the moment your commander demands three or more colors. Two-color and mono-color decks rarely bother.

At a glance

8% of tracked Commander decks include Chromatic Lantern
77% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends
T4.5 median first-cast turn
78% battlefield stickiness once cast
385 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game
38% of casts land exactly on-curve at 3 mana

First-cast turn

n=170

10%

25%

12%

10%

33%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4.5 P25 3 · P75 7 · max 14

On curve 38% (42 / 170 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 32%

The "good card" funnel

927 brought · 385 players

Brought to game

927

Ever drawn

222

Reached battlefield

170

Still on board at game end

132

77%

Of 927 copies brought to games, 222 were drawn, 170 of those were cast, and 78% of resolved copies remained on the battlefield at end of game.

≥ -4.1pp

Players who cast this card win 25% of the time (n=170) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=665).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 21% (n=49) — 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 +2.5pp; 95% confidence interval -4.1pp to +9.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

237 instances

1.7%

Library

55.7%

Battlefield

19.0%

Graveyard

6.3%

Exile

Most tracked copies of Chromatic Lantern finish on the battlefield, a sharp contrast to the typical singleton that spends the whole game buried in a 100-card deck and never surfaces.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Ashling, the Limitless 25 decks
2 The Ur-Dragon 14 decks
3 Leonardo, the Balance 13 decks
4 Tom Bombadil 13 decks
5 Toph, the First Metalbender 13 decks
6 Atraxa, Praetors' Voice 10 decks
7 Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge 10 decks
8 Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit 10 decks
9 Kenrith, the Returned King 10 decks
10 Cosmic Spider-Man 9 decks

Five-color commanders fill nearly every slot in the top-10 list, a direct reflection of Chromatic Lantern's core job: solving the hardest mana-fixing problems in the format.

Frequently Asked

How often is Chromatic Lantern drawn in a Commander game?

In 794 tracked games where Chromatic Lantern was in the deck, it was drawn 24% of the time. That is expected for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 222 copies that reached a player's hand, 77% were cast before the game ended. The remainder is largely a game-length effect: cards drawn in the final turns often never find resolution.

What turn does Chromatic Lantern usually hit the battlefield?

Median first-cast turn is 4.5. The distribution runs from turn 1 through turn 14 in the tracked data, but the bulk of casts cluster between turns 3 and 7. Mode is turn 3, which matches players who drew it in the opening hand and cast it as soon as they hit three lands. Late casts past turn 9 are present but uncommon.

Does casting Chromatic Lantern correlate with winning?

Games where Chromatic Lantern was cast show a win rate of 25%, compared to 23% in games where it stayed in the library. That is a +2.5 percentage-point lift. Both buckets have meaningful sample sizes (170 and 665 respectively), but the confidence interval on this delta is wide at current data volumes. Treat it as a directional early signal, not a proven causal effect.

Is Chromatic Lantern legal in Commander?

Yes. Chromatic Lantern is legal and unrestricted in Commander, as well as in Duel Commander, Oathbreaker, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Historic, Brawl, Timeless, and Gladiator. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, Pauper Commander, or Premodern.

Why do five-color commanders use Chromatic Lantern so heavily?

Five-color decks face the steepest mana-fixing demands in Commander. A single artifact that converts every land into any color of mana, while also tapping for a mana of any color itself, solves two problems at once: consistent access to WUBRG and a mana-neutral inclusion at 3 cost. The top commanders in the tracked data, including Ashling the Limitless, The Ur-Dragon, and Tom Bombadil, are all five-color, which explains why the inclusion rate skews toward this demographic.

How concentrated is this card among a small group of players?

The data is well-spread. 385 distinct players have brought Chromatic Lantern to at least one tracked game. The single heaviest contributor accounts for 4% of all tracked instances, which is well below the threshold where one player's habits would skew the aggregate numbers. This breadth adds confidence to the aggregate figures.