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Deadly Dispute card art
Live Play Data

Deadly Dispute

{1} {B} · Instant · Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC)
12%
Live Inclusion
Buy on TCGplayer
Times Brought
979
Decks Running
523
Median Cast Turn
6
Drawn → Played
68%
Format
Multiplayer 1v1

Deadly Dispute sits in 12% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, with a median first-cast turn of 6 and 68% of drawn copies reaching cast before the game ends.

Deadly Dispute appears in 12% of the 4221 Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, drawn 21% of the time across 889 tracked games. It is spread across 423 distinct players, with the single heaviest contributor accounting for just 3% of all instances. That breadth gives the numbers reasonable directional confidence.

The card does exactly what its text promises: you sacrifice something, you draw two, you get a Treasure. That three-part payoff explains the turn-6 median cast. Players are not holding it by choice; they are waiting for the right artifact or creature to sacrifice. 68% of drawn copies are eventually cast, a rate consistent with a spell that requires setup rather than pure mana. Of the 139 tracked casts, the plurality resolved on turn 6.

Black sacrifice and aristocrats strategies are the clear home. Mr. House, Hazel of the Rootbloom, Caesar, and Chatterfang all appear at the top of the commander distribution, each generating the expendable permanents that make Deadly Dispute costless to execute. The card is legal in Commander, Duel Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, and most other Constructed formats. It is banned in Pauper, where its raw efficiency at common proved too much.

At a glance
  • 12% of tracked Commander decks include Deadly Dispute
  • 21% draw rate across tracked games
  • 68% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended
  • T6 median first-cast turn
  • 423 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=139
0%
T1
1%
T2
6%
T3
14%
T4
14%
T5
55%
T6-9
11%
T10+
Median 6 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 16
On curve 1% (1 / 139 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 23%

The "good card" funnel

983 brought · 423 players
Brought to game
983
Ever drawn
205
Reached battlefield
139
Still on board at game end
2
68%

Of 983 copies brought to games, 205 were drawn, 139 of those were cast, confirming that draw-to-cast conversion is solid once the card reaches a hand.

≥ -8.4pp

Players who cast this card win 24% of the time (n=138) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=702).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 25% (n=64) — 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 -1.2pp; 95% confidence interval -8.4pp to +6.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

236 instances
0.8%
Library
0.8%
Battlefield
66.9%
Graveyard
11.0%
Exile

Deadly Dispute is an instant that resolves to the graveyard, so the graveyard is the expected final zone for cast copies. The handful ending in hand or exile reflect games that ended before resolution or effects like Grafdigger's Cage.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Mr. House leads by raw deck count, but the list spans sacrifice, tokens, and aristocrats strategies across multiple color identities, showing Deadly Dispute earns its slot wherever expendable permanents are plentiful.

Frequently Asked

How often is Deadly Dispute drawn in a Commander game?
Across 889 tracked games, Deadly Dispute was drawn 21% of the time when it was in the deck. That is in line with typical singleton draw rates in 100-card Commander decks. Of 205 drawn copies, 68% were cast before the game concluded. The remainder went uncast, most likely because the game ended before the player found a suitable sacrifice target or an opportune moment.
What turn does Deadly Dispute usually get cast?
The median first-cast turn is 6, with the bulk of casts concentrated between turns 5 and 8. The card costs only 2 mana, but the additional cost of sacrificing an artifact or creature means players wait for the right permanent to become available. The distribution shows essentially no casts ahead of the mana curve, confirming the bottleneck is sacrifice availability rather than mana.
Does casting Deadly Dispute correlate with winning?
In 138 tracked participations where Deadly Dispute was cast, the normalized win rate was 24%. The win rate in participations where the card stayed in the library was 25%. The cast-vs-library delta is -1.2 percentage points. With a sample this size, treat the delta as an early directional signal rather than a conclusive finding.
Is Deadly Dispute banned anywhere?
Yes. Deadly Dispute is banned in Pauper, where the combination of 2-mana draw-two plus a Treasure token at common rarity proved too efficient for that format's resource constraints. It is legal in Commander, Duel Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Historic, Timeless, Gladiator, and Oathbreaker, among others. It is not legal in Standard, Alchemy, or most formats that rotate sets.
Which commanders most often run Deadly Dispute?
The top commanders by raw deck count in the Playgroup Live dataset are Mr. House, President and CEO; Hazel of the Rootbloom; Caesar, Legion's Emperor; and Ygra, Eater of All. This spread reflects the card's natural home in sacrifice-matter and token-generator strategies, particularly those in black-green and Mardu (black-red-white) color identities that produce expendable artifacts and creatures as a matter of course.
How concentrated is the Deadly Dispute data among players?
The data is well spread. 423 distinct players have brought Deadly Dispute to a tracked game on Playgroup Live, and the single most active contributor accounts for just 3% of all instances. No single pilot is inflating or distorting the numbers, which strengthens the directional reliability of the draw, cast, and win-rate figures.