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Essence Warden

· Creature — Elf Shaman · Commander Anthology (CMA)

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Times Brought

491

Decks Running

219

In Decks

—

Decklist Inclusion

—

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Showing 1v1 (duel) data only. 1v1 is a different format from multiplayer Commander, so these numbers are not comparable.

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

96 instances

1.0%

Library

51.0%

Battlefield

29.2%

Graveyard

6.3%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Frodo, Adventurous Hobbit 28 decks
2 Blech, Loafing Pest 24 decks
3 Trostani, Selesnya's Voice 14 decks
4 Betor, Ancestor's Voice 11 decks
5 Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant 11 decks
6 The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 10 decks
7 High Perfect Morcant 9 decks
8 Sam, Loyal Attendant 9 decks
9 Witherbloom, the Balancer 9 decks
10 Chatterfang, Squirrel General 8 decks

The "good card" funnel

491 brought · 230 players

Brought to game

491

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 64% 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.

≥ +0.3pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=71) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=315).

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 +6.6pp; 95% confidence interval +0.3pp to +12.9pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=77

27%

13%

10%

26%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4 P25 1 · P75 6 · max 14

On curve 27% (21 / 77 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 74%

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.