Live Play Data

Flooded Strand

Land · Modern Horizons 3 (MH3)

10%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

1626

Decks Running

853

Median Cast Turn

4.0

Drawn → Played

69%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Flooded Strand sits in 10% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, with 69% of drawn copies activated before game's end and a median first activation landing on turn 4.0.

Flooded Strand appears in 853 of the 8540 distinct decks that have played a tracked multiplayer Commander game on Playgroup Live, a 10% inclusion rate driven almost entirely by decks running blue, white, or both. When it does reach a hand, 69% of those copies are cracked before the game ends.

The median first activation lands on turn 4.0, with a strong cluster on turn 1 reflecting opening-hand keeps. Flooded Strand is a fetchland: it enters, gets cracked immediately, and goes to the graveyard. That lifecycle means the low battlefield stickiness figure on this page is expected behavior, not a sign the card underperforms. The real output is the land it finds, the shuffle effect, and the mana base consistency it provides over the course of the game.

The top commanders running this card are predominantly five-color and Azorius shells, exactly the color identities that need access to both Plains and Island types. The data is well-spread across 507 distinct players, with the single heaviest contributor accounting for just 4% of tracked instances, which lends weight to the patterns visible so far.

At a glance

10% of tracked Commander decks include Flooded Strand
69% of drawn copies are activated before the game ends
T4.0 median first-activation turn
507 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game
25% draw rate per game participation, typical for a singleton land
29% normalized win rate in games where Flooded Strand was activated

First-cast turn

n=280

26%

11%

13%

10%

25%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4.0 P25 1 · P75 6 · max 16

Cast same turn as drawn 59%

The "good card" funnel

1627 brought · 507 players

Brought to game

1627

Ever drawn

405

Reached battlefield

280

Still on board at game end

69%

Of 1627 Flooded Strands brought to games, 405 were drawn, 280 of those were activated, and nearly all resolved straight to the graveyard as intended.

≥ -1.9pp

Players who cast this card win 29% of the time (n=275) , vs 26% when it never left the library (n=1089).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 34% (n=122) — about the same as leaving it in the library. Those players survived long enough to draw it, so the gap above is about the card resolving, not just about surviving.

Observed gap +3.4pp; 95% confidence interval -1.9pp to +8.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

467 instances

3.6%

Library

6.0%

Battlefield

63.2%

Graveyard

9.0%

Exile

Most Flooded Strands end in the graveyard after being cracked, which is exactly how the card is meant to work. The library bucket reflects copies never drawn across 1627 game participations.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 The Ur-Dragon 31 decks
2 Y'shtola, Night's Blessed 15 decks
3 Ms. Bumbleflower 13 decks
4 Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge 12 decks
5 Jin Sakai, Ghost of Tsushima 12 decks
6 Aragorn, the Uniter 11 decks
7 Jodah, the Unifier 11 decks
8 Helga, Skittish Seer 10 decks
9 Marneus Calgar 10 decks
10 The First Sliver 10 decks

Five-color commanders dominate the list, led by The Ur-Dragon at 28 decks, with a cluster of blue-white and Esper commanders following. The spread across 507 unique players makes this distribution a reliable read on where the card actually gets played.

Frequently Asked

How often is Flooded Strand drawn in a Commander game?

Across 1245 tracked multiplayer games where Flooded Strand was in the deck, it was drawn 25% of the time. That figure is consistent with what you would expect from a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 405 instances that reached a player's hand, 69% were activated before the game concluded.

What turn does Flooded Strand usually get cracked?

The median first-activation turn is 4.0. The distribution skews early: the mode is turn 1, reflecting players who keep it in their opening hand and crack it immediately for a blue or white dual land. The mean sits higher at 4.26 because some copies are drawn late in longer games, pulling the average up.

Is Flooded Strand banned anywhere?

Flooded Strand is banned in Pioneer and Historic. It is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Duel Commander, and several other formats. Its absence in Pioneer was a deliberate format-construction decision to limit the power of fetchland-plus-dual mana bases.

Why does Flooded Strand have such low battlefield stickiness?

Flooded Strand is a fetchland. Its entire function is to enter the battlefield, tap and sacrifice itself to find a Plains or Island, and go to the graveyard. A stickiness figure near zero is the correct outcome for a card that is designed to leave play immediately. The graveyard is its expected final zone, not a sign it was countered or destroyed.

Which commanders run Flooded Strand most often in the tracked data?

The top commander by raw deck count is The Ur-Dragon, a five-color commander that benefits from the widest possible fetch coverage. Blue-white and Esper (blue-white-black) commanders like Y'shtola, Night's Blessed and Jin Sakai, Ghost of Tsushima also appear near the top. This matches the card's functional profile: it only fetches Plains and Island types, so it belongs in color identities that include white or blue.

Does activating Flooded Strand correlate with winning?

In 275 participations where Flooded Strand was activated, the normalized win rate was 29%, compared to 26% in participations where it sat uninteracted in the library. The gap is +3.4 percentage points. Both sample sizes are large enough to treat this as a directional signal, though the confidence interval overlaps zero, so read it as encouraging early data rather than a settled conclusion.