Live Play Data

Darkwater Catacombs

Land · Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander (TDC)

18%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

563

Decks Running

348

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

79%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

18% of tracked multiplayer Commander decks run Darkwater Catacombs, and 79% of drawn copies are played before the game ends, with a median first-cast turn of 5.

Darkwater Catacombs shows up in 18% of the 1984 Commander decks that have played a tracked game on Playgroup Live. That figure reflects live play rather than decklist scrapes, so it captures only decks that have actually sat down at a table.

The draw-to-play rate of 79% is the most telling number here. Most lands that enter a hand get played quickly, and Darkwater Catacombs is no exception. The median first-cast turn of 5 is consistent with players tapping it out as soon as they need the blue-black color fixing rather than holding it strategically. 92% stickiness once it resolves reflects what you'd expect from a land: barring mass land destruction or sacrifice effects, it stays in play.

The card sits firmly in Dimir and three-color-or-more shells. Its restriction to blue-black color identities keeps it out of mono-colored and off-color decks entirely, which makes its 18% share across the full tracked pool a solid signal of demand within that color slice. Darkwater Catacombs is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, and several other formats, but its natural home is Commander, where consistent dual-color fixing in the early turns earns a slot.

At a glance

18% of tracked Commander decks include Darkwater Catacombs
79% of drawn copies are played before the game ends
T5 median first-cast turn across tracked games
92% battlefield stickiness once the land enters play
309 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game
25% draw rate, typical for a singleton in a 100-card deck

First-cast turn

n=111

13%

16%

12%

32%

T6-9

10%

T10+

Median 5 P25 2 · P75 7 · max 15

Cast same turn as drawn 42%

The "good card" funnel

566 brought · 309 players

Brought to game

566

Ever drawn

141

Reached battlefield

111

Still on board at game end

102

79%

Of 566 copies brought to tracked games, 141 were drawn, 111 of those were played, and 92% of resolved copies remained on the battlefield through end of game.

≥ -1.5pp

Players who cast this card win 24% of the time (n=109) , vs 17% when it never left the library (n=374).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 28% (n=31) — 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 +6.4pp; 95% confidence interval -1.5pp to +14.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

162 instances

2.5%

Library

63.0%

Battlefield

19.1%

Graveyard

3.1%

Exile

The vast majority of Darkwater Catacombs copies never leave the library in a given game, a structural feature of 100-card singleton rather than a reflection of the card's impact when it does appear.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The commander distribution is wide, spanning pure Dimir builds like Wilhelt and Captain N'ghathrod through three and four-color shells, confirming the card's role as a general blue-black color-fixer rather than a commander-specific include.

Frequently Asked

How often is Darkwater Catacombs drawn in a Commander game?

Across 535 tracked multiplayer games where the card was in the deck, Darkwater Catacombs was drawn 25% of the time. That is a normal draw rate for a singleton in a 100-card Commander deck. Of the 141 copies that reached a player's hand, 79% were played before the game ended. The remainder mostly reflects games that concluded before the player found a reason to tap it.

What turn does Darkwater Catacombs typically enter the battlefield?

The median first-cast turn in multiplayer games is 5, with the distribution running from turn 1 through the mid-game. The mode lands on turn 2, consistent with players playing it as their second land drop when they need to fix colors early. The interquartile range spans turns 2 through 7, so late draws are common but players still get value from the color fixing when they do find it.

Does casting Darkwater Catacombs correlate with winning?

In 109 participations where the land reached the battlefield, the normalized win rate was 24%, compared to 17% in 374 participations where it stayed in the library. That is a +6.4 percentage-point gap, which is a directional positive signal. Both sample sizes are meaningful, but the dataset is still growing, so treat this as an early trend rather than a definitive finding.

Is Darkwater Catacombs banned anywhere relevant?

Darkwater Catacombs is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Duel Commander, Premodern, and Oathbreaker. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Pauper, Alchemy, or Brawl. In Commander it is unrestricted, which is the format where it sees the vast majority of its play.

Which commanders most commonly run Darkwater Catacombs?

Among tracked decks, Y'shtola, Night's Blessed leads the list with the highest raw deck count, followed by Teval, the Balanced Scale and Captain N'ghathrod. The spread is wide: the top commander accounts for a meaningful share but the card appears across more than a dozen distinct commander identities, reflecting its role as a general Dimir and Esper color-fixer rather than a build-around piece.

How concentrated is the Darkwater Catacombs data among players?

309 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game on Playgroup Live. The single heaviest contributor accounts for just 4% of all instances, well below the 15% threshold where concentration becomes a concern. That spread across many players strengthens the reliability of the play patterns observed so far.