Live Play Data

Embrace the Paradox

· Instant · Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

294

Decks Running

112

Median Cast Turn

6.0

Drawn → Played

56%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=48

15%

17%

52%

T6-9

15%

T10+

Median 6.0 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 13

On curve 33% (8 / 48 cast on T5) Cast same turn as drawn 21%

The "good card" funnel

294 brought · 108 players

Brought to game

294

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -11.5pp

Players who cast this card win 29% of the time (n=45) , vs 27% when it never left the library (n=178).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 35% (n=36).

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 +2.4pp; 95% confidence interval -11.5pp to +16.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

96 instances

4.2%

Library

2.1%

Battlefield

52.1%

Graveyard

7.3%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Quandrix, the Proof 19 decks
2 Codie, Vociferous Codex 7 decks
3 Cosmic Spider-Man 5 decks
4 Tatyova, Benthic Druid 5 decks
5 Bruce Banner // The Incredible Hulk 4 decks
6 Zimone, Infinite Analyst 4 decks
7 Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait 3 decks
8 Arzakon 3 decks
9 Gandalf, Westward Voyager 3 decks
10 Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm 3 decks

Card text

Embrace the Paradox

Instant

Draw three cards. You may put a land card from your hand onto the battlefield tapped.

Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS) · Common · Illustrated by Julian Kok Joon Wen

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 740,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.