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Desperate Ritual

· Instant — Arcane · Ultimate Masters (UMA)

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

452

Decks Running

241

In Decks

1573

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Card text

Desperate Ritual

Instant — Arcane

Add

. Splice onto Arcane {1}

(As you cast an Arcane spell, you may reveal this card from your hand and pay its splice cost. If you do, add this card's effects to that spell.)

Ultimate Masters (UMA) · Uncommon · Illustrated by Wayne Reynolds

Final zone distribution

109 instances

4.6%

Library

6.4%

Battlefield

50.5%

Graveyard

14.7%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Fire Lord Azula 27 decks
2 Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness 16 decks
3 Prismari, the Inspiration 12 decks
4 Vivi Ornitier 12 decks
5 Krark, the Thumbless 8 decks
6 Ral, Monsoon Mage // Ral, Leyline Prodigy 6 decks
7 Thor, God of Thunder 6 decks
8 Alexios, Deimos of Kosmos 5 decks
9 Electro, Assaulting Battery 5 decks
10 Krenko, Mob Boss 5 decks

The "good card" funnel

456 brought · 219 players

Brought to game

456

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -8.4pp

Players who cast this card win 33% of the time (n=59) , vs 30% when it never left the library (n=300).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 35% (n=33) — 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 +3.5pp; 95% confidence interval -8.4pp to +15.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=64

17%

11%

42%

T6-9

T10+

Median 6.0 P25 4 · P75 7 · max 15

On curve 11% (3 / 64 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 44%

64 of 100 times cast 64%

Full analysis unlocks as more games are tracked. Stats refresh nightly.

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Basic play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games; the full deep-dive page needs a larger, more diverse sample (at least 300 tracked games played by 10 or more different pilots, with no single pilot over 40 percent of the copies). 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 660,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.