Command Tower
76% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live run Command Tower. When drawn, 85% of copies reach the battlefield, and it stays there 93% of the time once it does.
Command Tower sits in 76% of the 19725 decks that have played a tracked multiplayer game on Playgroup Live. That figure mirrors its reputation as the closest thing Commander has to a mandatory land slot for any deck running two or more colors.
The draw-to-play rate tells the clearest story: 85% of drawn copies are played before the game ends. That is one of the highest rates for any land in the dataset, consistent with players treating it as an immediate, unconditional play. Median first cast lands on turn 4.0, pulled forward by a dense cluster of opening-hand casts on turn 1. Once on the battlefield, it stays there 93% of the time, reflecting how rarely opponents choose to interact with a basic-style land that produces no immediate threat.
The concentration numbers reinforce the breadth of Command Tower's reach. Data spans 4898 unique players, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for just 0% of all tracked instances. That level of spread makes the inclusion figure one of the most reliable signals in the dataset.
- 76% of tracked Commander decks include Command Tower
- 85% of drawn copies are played before the game ends
- T4.0 median first-cast turn
- 93% battlefield stickiness once it resolves
- 4898 distinct players contributed data, one of the broadest spreads in the dataset
- 29466 total instances brought to tracked games
First-cast turn
n=6420The "good card" funnel
29466 brought · 4898 playersOf 29466 Command Towers brought to games, 7584 were drawn, 6420 of those were played, and 93% of resolved copies remained on the battlefield through end of game.
Players who cast this card win 29% of the time (n=6002) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=18681).
When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 29% (n=1045) — 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 +6.1pp; 95% confidence interval +4.9pp to +7.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.
Final zone distribution
8423 instancesThe overwhelming majority of Command Tower instances end the game on the battlefield rather than in the library, a sharp contrast to most singleton cards and a direct reflection of how quickly players cast it once drawn.
Commanders that played this card
in tracked games-
1
Y'shtola, Night's Blessed
208 decks
-
2
Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER
154 decks
-
3
Ms. Bumbleflower
153 decks
-
4
Doctor Doom, King of Latveria
152 decks
-
5
Captain America, Team Leader
131 decks
-
6
The Ur-Dragon
131 decks
-
7
Pantlaza, Sun-Favored
117 decks
-
8
Sauron, the Dark Lord
110 decks
-
9
Zimone, Infinite Analyst
107 decks
-
10
Ashling, the Limitless
103 decks
The top-commander list spans mono-color through five-color identities, showing Command Tower's inclusion is driven by multicolor demand rather than any single archetype or commander.