Live Play Data

Dig Through Time

· Instant · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

816

Decks Running

412

Median Cast Turn

8.0

Drawn → Played

58%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

5% of tracked Commander decks run Dig Through Time, and when it resolves, the caster wins 38% of those games compared to 25% when it stays buried in the library.

Dig Through Time sits in 5% of the 7993 Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live. That's a selective include by Commander standards, fitting for a blue instant that demands a stocked graveyard before it becomes affordable.

The headline is the cast-versus-library win-rate gap. Games where Dig Through Time resolved show a 38% win rate against 25% for games where the card never left the library. That's a +13.3 percentage-point lift across 107 cast observations and 502 library observations, a well-sampled gap with a positive lower confidence bound. The signal is consistent: resolving this spell in the mid-to-late game meaningfully correlates with winning.

Delve makes the nominal 8-mana cost largely theoretical. 67% of first casts land ahead of or on the printed mana value, and the median first-cast turn is 8.0. The card is banned in Legacy, Modern, and Duel Commander, and restricted in Vintage. Those restrictions exist precisely because digging seven deep for two cards at instant speed scales brutally with a full graveyard.

At a glance

5% of tracked Commander decks include Dig Through Time
58% of drawn copies reach the cast step before the game ends
T8.0 median first-cast turn, reflecting delve cost reduction in action
38% win rate in games where Dig Through Time resolved
+13.3pp win-rate lift over games where the card stayed in the library
358 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=116

72%

T6-9

19%

T10+

Median 8.0 P25 6 · P75 9 · max 19

On curve 67% (22 / 116 cast on T8) Cast same turn as drawn 35%

The "good card" funnel

819 brought · 358 players

Brought to game

819

Ever drawn

200

Reached battlefield

116

Still on board at game end

58%

Of 819 copies brought to tracked games, 200 were drawn, 116 of those were cast, and the spell resolved into the graveyard in the vast majority of cases, as expected for an instant with no battlefield presence.

≥ +4.1pp

Players who cast this card win 38% of the time (n=107) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=502).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 30% (n=71) — 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 +13.3pp; 95% confidence interval +4.1pp to +22.5pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

224 instances

7.1%

Library

4.5%

Battlefield

50.0%

Graveyard

11.6%

Exile

Most Dig Through Time copies end the game in the graveyard, exactly where you'd expect for an instant that resolves once and goes to the bin, with only a sliver stranded in the library.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The commander list skews heavily toward blue spell-storm and spellslinger builds, consistent with a card that rewards filling the graveyard with instants and sorceries before it becomes castable.

Card text

Dig Through Time

Instant

Delve (Each card you exile from your graveyard while casting this spell pays for {1}

.) Look at the top seven cards of your library. Put two of them into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.

Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC) · Rare · Illustrated by Ryan Yee

Frequently Asked

How often is Dig Through Time drawn and cast in a Commander game?

Across 787 tracked multiplayer games, Dig Through Time was drawn 24% of the time. Of those drawn copies, 58% were cast before the game concluded. That draw-to-play rate reflects a mix of factors: games that end before the card can be cast, and situations where a player simply hasn't filled the graveyard enough to make delve worthwhile yet.

What turn does Dig Through Time typically resolve?

The median first-cast turn is 8.0, with the middle 50% of casts falling between turns 6 and 9. The nominal mana cost is 8, but delve compresses that heavily. 67% of observed first casts landed on or ahead of the curve, which is a direct measure of how much graveyard fuel players accumulate before firing the spell.

Does casting Dig Through Time actually correlate with winning?

Yes, and the sample is large enough to treat this as more than a directional signal. In 107 participations where Dig Through Time resolved, the caster won 38% of the time. In 502 participations where it stayed in the library, the win rate was 25%. The +13.3 percentage-point gap has a positive lower confidence bound, meaning the effect is unlikely to be a statistical artifact of deck quality alone.

Is Dig Through Time banned in Commander?

Dig Through Time is legal and unrestricted in multiplayer Commander. It is banned in Legacy, Modern, and Duel Commander, and restricted to one copy in Vintage. Its absence from the multiplayer Commander ban list is the main reason it shows up in 412 tracked decks on Playgroup Live. The card's power is real but more manageable in a four-player pod where opponents can interact at instant speed.

Which commanders most often run Dig Through Time?

Y'shtola, Night's Blessed leads the tracked list, followed by Rootha, Mastering the Moment and Ovika, Enigma Goliath. The common thread is blue-based spell-heavy strategies that naturally fill the graveyard with instants and sorceries, lowering Dig Through Time's effective cost while also benefiting most from the two cards it puts into hand.

How concentrated is the Dig Through Time data across players?

The data is well-spread. 358 distinct players have brought Dig Through Time to a tracked game, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for only 3% of all instances. That breadth means the numbers reflect genuine format-wide play patterns rather than one prolific user skewing the dataset.