Card Preview

Essence Warden

· Creature — Elf Shaman · Commander Anthology (CMA)

Decklist Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

431

Decks Running

191

In Decks

1822

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

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

Final zone distribution

120 instances

1.7%

Library

39.2%

Battlefield

32.5%

Graveyard

15.0%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The "good card" funnel

432 brought · 209 players

Brought to game

432

Ever drawn

111

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 48% 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.

≥ +4.8pp

Players who cast this card win 37% of the time (n=89) , vs 22% when it never left the library (n=275).

Observed gap +15.0pp; 95% confidence interval +4.8pp to +25.2pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=98

28%

17%

10%

29%

T6-9

T10+

Median 3.0 P25 1 · P75 6 · max 13

On curve 28% (27 / 98 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 72%

98 of 100 times cast 98%

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 650,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.