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Clifftop Retreat card art
Live Play Data

Clifftop Retreat

Land · Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC)
43%
Live Inclusion
Buy on TCGplayer
Times Brought
3640
Decks Running
1837
Median Cast Turn
4
Drawn → Played
81%
Format
Multiplayer 1v1

Clifftop Retreat sits in 43% of tracked Playgroup Live decks. When drawn, 81% of copies are played before the game ends, with a median first-play turn of 4.

Clifftop Retreat is one of the most-played dual lands in Boros and wider red-white Commander shells on Playgroup Live. It appears in 1837 of the 4292 distinct tracked decks, an 43% inclusion rate that reflects its reach across any strategy touching red or white.

The key number is draw-to-play rate: 81% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game concludes. That's a strong figure for a land that enters tapped under the wrong circumstances. Median first play lands on turn 4, consistent with players slotting it into the opening sequence whenever they can. The data comes from 3124 tracked games and 1355 unique players, so the spread is wide and no single contributor distorts the picture.

The card is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Historic, and most other constructed formats. It is not legal in Standard or Pauper. Its battlefield stickiness of 90% is about as high as a land can get: once it resolves, it almost never leaves play involuntarily.

At a glance
  • 43% of tracked Commander decks include Clifftop Retreat
  • 81% of drawn copies are played before the game ends
  • T4 median first-play turn
  • 90% battlefield stickiness once it resolves
  • 1355 unique players in the dataset, indicating a well-spread sample
  • 25% draw rate, typical for a singleton land in a 100-card deck

First-cast turn

n=719
15%
T1
17%
T2
14%
T3
12%
T4
8%
T5
28%
T6-9
6%
T10+
Median 4 P25 2 · P75 6 · max 24
Cast same turn as drawn 53%

The "good card" funnel

3641 brought · 1355 players
Brought to game
3641
Ever drawn
892
Reached battlefield
719
Still on board at game end
648
81%

Of 3641 copies brought to games, 892 were drawn and 719 of those were played, a draw-to-play rate of 81% that shows players almost always land it when they see it.

≥ +1.2pp

Players who cast this card win 27% of the time (n=668) , vs 22% when it never left the library (n=2274).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 32% (n=145) — 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 +4.7pp; 95% confidence interval +1.2pp to +8.2pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

985 instances
3.7%
Library
65.8%
Battlefield
14.1%
Graveyard
3.5%
Exile

The overwhelming majority of Clifftop Retreats that enter the battlefield stay there, which is expected for a basic dual land with no built-in sacrifice clause. The small graveyard share mostly reflects mass land destruction and sacrifice effects.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The commander list spans Boros, Naya, Jeskai, Mardu, and four-color shells, confirming that Clifftop Retreat is a format-wide red-white staple rather than the pet card of any single archetype.

Card text
Clifftop Retreat card

Clifftop Retreat

Land
This land enters tapped unless you control a Mountain or a Plains. {T}: Add {R} or {W}.
Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC) · Rare · Illustrated by Arthur Yuan

Frequently Asked

How often is Clifftop Retreat drawn in a Commander game?
Across 3124 tracked games where Clifftop Retreat was in the deck, it was drawn 25% of the time. That is consistent with what you would expect from a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 892 drawn instances, 81% were played before the game ended.
What turn does Clifftop Retreat usually enter the battlefield?
Median first-play turn is 4, with the distribution peaking in the first two turns for players who have it in their opening hand. The 25th percentile is turn 2 and the 75th percentile is turn 6, so early draws get it down fast while later draws bleed into the mid-game. The mode in the multiplayer data is turn 2, suggesting many players deliberately sequence it behind a Mountain or Plains to ensure it enters untapped.
Does casting Clifftop Retreat correlate with winning?
In games where Clifftop Retreat reached the battlefield, the win rate is 27% (normalized to a 4-player baseline). In games where it stayed in the library without being interacted with, the rate is 22%. The delta is directional but the confidence interval on this sample crosses zero, so treat it as an early signal rather than a firm conclusion. Lands that smooth your mana tend to matter most in the early turns before their effect shows up cleanly in win-rate splits.
Is Clifftop Retreat banned anywhere?
Clifftop Retreat is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Historic, Timeless, Alchemy, Vintage, Gladiator, Duel Commander, Brawl, and Oathbreaker. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, Pauper Commander, or Premodern. Its rarity (rare) is why it is not Pauper-legal despite being widely available.
Which commanders most commonly run Clifftop Retreat?
The top commanders by raw deck count in the Playgroup Live dataset are Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER (Naya), Pantlaza, Sun-Favored (Naya), Captain America, Team Leader (Jeskai), and Quintorius, History Chaser (Boros). The spread across color identities shows Clifftop Retreat being picked up by any commander that touches both red and white, not just pure Boros builds.
How concentrated is the Clifftop Retreat data among individual players?
The dataset covers 1355 unique players. The single heaviest contributor accounts for just 1% of all tracked instances, well below the threshold where any one player would skew the numbers. This is one of the stronger aspects of the Clifftop Retreat data: it represents real breadth across the Playgroup Live community rather than one prolific recorder.