Live Play Data

Desolation of Smaug

· Sorcery · The Hobbit (HOB)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

325

Decks Running

146

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

50%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=33

12%

58%

T6-9

15%

T10+

Median 6 P25 5 · P75 7 · max 13

On curve 15% (4 / 33 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 33%

The "good card" funnel

325 brought · 141 players

Brought to game

325

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -6.1pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=32) , vs 21% when it never left the library (n=208).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 31% (n=29).

Read this as correlation, not as the card's contribution. Casting a card means you lived long enough to cast it, so this gap widens with mana value across every card we track.

Observed gap +9.8pp; 95% confidence interval -6.1pp to +25.7pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

77 instances

2.6%

Library

2.6%

Battlefield

49.4%

Graveyard

5.2%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Smaug the Impenetrable 27 decks
2 Smaug the Magnificent 23 decks
3 The Ur-Dragon 19 decks
4 Smaug, Wicked Worm 14 decks
5 Ureni of the Unwritten 7 decks
6 Lathliss, Dragon Queen 6 decks
7 Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm 6 decks
8 Tiamat 6 decks
9 Atarka, World Render 5 decks
10 Rivaz of the Claw 4 decks

Card text

Desolation of Smaug

Sorcery

Desolation of Smaug deals 3 damage to each non-Dragon creature. Add four mana in any combination of colors. Spend this mana only to cast Dragon spells.

The Hobbit (HOB) · Rare · Illustrated by Irvin Rodriguez

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games, and the full charts need a sample of at least 25 observed games that is not dominated by a single pilot. Until this card clears those bars you're seeing only the basic counts. Stats refresh nightly.

How is Playgroup Live card data collected?

Players using Playgroup Live import their decklists before a game and log card actions as they play. Each cast, zone change, and resolution is recorded as a real game event. Stats on this site are computed from those events, not from decklist scrapes or theorycrafting. Playgroup has recorded 730,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.