Live Play Data

Essence Warden

· Creature — Elf Shaman · Commander Anthology (CMA)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

672

Decks Running

285

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

87%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=149

27%

13%

33%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4 P25 1 · P75 6 · max 19

On curve 27% (40 / 149 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 78%

The "good card" funnel

673 brought · 302 players

Brought to game

673

Ever drawn

171

Reached battlefield

149

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 49% of this card is still on the battlefield at game end. This reflects how often it survives removal, not just whether it's a permanent.

≥ +1.9pp

Players who cast this card win 35% of the time (n=137) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=411).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 24% (n=19).

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 +10.2pp; 95% confidence interval +1.9pp to +18.5pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

188 instances

1.1%

Library

38.8%

Battlefield

35.1%

Graveyard

12.8%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Card text

Essence Warden

Creature — Elf Shaman

Whenever another creature enters, you gain 1 life.

1 / 1

Commander Anthology (CMA) · Common · Illustrated by Terese Nielsen

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 680,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.