Live Play Data

Darkwater Catacombs

Land · Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander (TDC)

16%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

1702

Decks Running

895

Median Cast Turn

4.0

Drawn → Played

79%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

16% of tracked Dimir-compatible Commander decks on Playgroup Live run Darkwater Catacombs, and when drawn it reaches the battlefield 79% of the time with a median first-cast turn of 4.0.

Darkwater Catacombs shows up in 16% of tracked Commander decks that can run it, appearing in 895 of the 5478 distinct decks that have played a recorded game on Playgroup Live. For a tap-land requiring an additional {1} to activate, that penetration is a consistent signal of demand for affordable blue-black fixing.

When the card is drawn, 79% of copies are cast before the game ends. Median first cast lands on turn 4.0, with the distribution spread across the early and middle game. Players who draw it later in the game sometimes never get to deploy it before a winner is declared, which naturally pulls that rate below 100%. Once it resolves, it sticks: 92% stickiness reflects how rarely lands get removed in Commander.

The data is well-spread across the player base. 758 distinct players have brought Darkwater Catacombs to a tracked game, and no single contributor accounts for more than 25% of the sample. That breadth makes the directional patterns here more trustworthy than data concentrated in a handful of players.

At a glance

16% of tracked Commander decks include Darkwater Catacombs
79% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
T4.0 median first-cast turn
92% battlefield stickiness once the land enters play
758 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game
27% win rate in games where this land was cast

First-cast turn

n=330

11%

15%

12%

14%

31%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4.0 P25 2 · P75 7 · max 17

Cast same turn as drawn 45%

The "good card" funnel

1705 brought · 758 players

Brought to game

1705

Ever drawn

418

Reached battlefield

330

Still on board at game end

302

79%

Of 1705 copies brought to games, 418 were drawn, 330 of those were cast, and 92% of cast copies remained on the battlefield through end of game.

≥ +2.6pp

Players who cast this card win 27% of the time (n=294) , vs 19% when it never left the library (n=1030).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 27% (n=77) — 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 +7.7pp; 95% confidence interval +2.6pp to +12.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

485 instances

3.1%

Library

62.3%

Battlefield

19.2%

Graveyard

3.1%

Exile

Most copies of Darkwater Catacombs that were never drawn remain in the library at game end, a structural feature of 100-card singleton rather than a weakness of the card itself.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Y'shtola, Night's Blessed 133 decks
2 Teval, the Balanced Scale 60 decks
3 The Wise Mothman 58 decks
4 Captain N'ghathrod 49 decks
5 Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver 32 decks
6 Inquisitor Greyfax 20 decks
7 Fire Lord Azula 19 decks
8 Gonti, Canny Acquisitor 19 decks
9 Marneus Calgar 18 decks
10 Satoru Umezawa 18 decks

The commander list spans Dimir, Sultai, Esper, and Grixis builds, showing Darkwater Catacombs earns its slot broadly across blue-black archetypes rather than clustering in one shell.

Card text

Darkwater Catacombs

Land

: Add

Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander (TDC) · Rare · Illustrated by Monte Michael Moore

Frequently Asked

How often is Darkwater Catacombs drawn in a Commander game?

Across 1595 tracked games where Darkwater Catacombs was in the deck, it was drawn 25% of the time. That is typical for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 418 copies that reached a player's hand, 79% were cast before the game concluded.

What turn does Darkwater Catacombs usually come down?

Median first-cast turn is 4.0. The distribution runs wide, from turn 1 through mid-game and beyond. The card's activation cost of {1} means players sometimes wait for mana to free up, and copies drawn in the late game often go uncast simply because the game ends first.

Does casting Darkwater Catacombs correlate with winning?

In 294 tracked participations where the land was cast, the win rate was 27%. In participations where it stayed in the library, the win rate was 19%. That is a +7.7 percentage-point gap. The sample is large enough to treat this as a directional positive signal, though it partly reflects deck quality rather than this card alone.

Where does Darkwater Catacombs end up at the end of a game?

Lands in Commander mostly stay on the battlefield or get shuffled back into the library. Most copies of Darkwater Catacombs that were cast are still on the battlefield at game end, consistent with 92% stickiness. A meaningful share ends up in the graveyard through sacrifice effects, board wipes that hit lands, or fetch interactions.

Which commanders most commonly run Darkwater Catacombs?

Y'shtola, Night's Blessed leads the pack, followed by Teval, the Balanced Scale and The Wise Mothman. All three have blue-black in their color identity, which is the hard requirement for this land. The list spans Dimir, Sultai, Esper, and Grixis commanders, showing the card earns its slot across several archetypes rather than being a single-deck staple.

Is Darkwater Catacombs legal in Commander?

Yes. Darkwater Catacombs is legal in Commander, as well as Legacy, Vintage, Duel Commander, Premodern, and Oathbreaker. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Pauper, Brawl, or Alchemy. Its color identity is blue-black, so it can only go into decks whose commander has both U and B in their color identity, or only one of the two if the other is not present.