Live Play Data

Dread Return

· Sorcery · Commander Masters (CMM)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

2122

Decks Running

1022

Median Cast Turn

7.0

Drawn → Played

50%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=230

65%

T6-9

20%

T10+

Median 7.0 P25 6 · P75 9 · max 17

On curve 7% (11 / 230 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 22%

The "good card" funnel

2127 brought · 880 players

Brought to game

2127

Ever drawn

456

Reached battlefield

230

Still on board at game end

≥ +8.2pp

Players who cast this card win 36% of the time (n=215) , vs 21% when it never left the library (n=1290).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 17% (n=203).

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 +14.4pp; 95% confidence interval +8.2pp to +20.7pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

622 instances

3.9%

Library

2.1%

Battlefield

52.1%

Graveyard

14.8%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Szarekh, the Silent King 91 decks
2 Teval, the Balanced Scale 81 decks
3 Imotekh the Stormlord 51 decks
4 Sauron, the Dark Lord 24 decks
5 The Necrobloom 21 decks
6 Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER // Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel 19 decks
7 Uugguu, the Omniplasm 18 decks
8 Meren of Clan Nel Toth 16 decks
9 Grist, the Hunger Tide 15 decks
10 The Mycotyrant 15 decks

Card text

Dread Return

Sorcery

Return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Flashback—Sacrifice three creatures. (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. Then exile it.)

Commander Masters (CMM) · Common · Illustrated by Kev Walker

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 750,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.