Flooded Strand
Flooded Strand appears in 10% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, spread across 337 distinct players, with a median first activation on turn 4.
Flooded Strand is a fetch land with colorless identity, meaning it slots into any Commander deck that runs Plains or Islands. Across Playgroup Live's tracked games, it sits in 10% of decks. That's a selective number: most decks either lack white or blue entirely, or simply opt for budget alternatives.
The data is well-distributed. 337 distinct players have brought Flooded Strand to a tracked game, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for just 5% of all instances. That spread lends the numbers credibility. When drawn, it reaches the battlefield 69% of the time. The remainder is largely a game-length effect: copies drawn late often have no time to resolve before the game ends. Median first activation lands on turn 4, consistent with early-game mana fixing rather than a mid-game value play.
Fetch lands in Commander function as mana-base glue. Flooded Strand finds any Plains or Island, making it a staple in Azorius, Esper, Bant, and five-color builds. Its zero color identity means no commander restricts it. The top commanders in the tracked dataset reflect that reality: The Ur-Dragon and other multicolor commanders headline the list.
- 10% of tracked Commander decks include Flooded Strand
- 23% draw rate, expected for a singleton in a 100-card deck
- 69% of drawn copies were activated before the game ended
- T4 median first-activation turn
- 337 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game
First-cast turn
n=157The "good card" funnel
968 brought · 337 playersOf 968 copies brought to games, 227 were drawn, and 157 of those were activated. Battlefield stickiness is intentionally low because the card sacrifices itself on resolution.
Players who cast this card win 28% of the time (n=157) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=676).
When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 35% (n=69) — 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 +3.2pp; 95% confidence interval -3.7pp to +10.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.
Final zone distribution
263 instancesThe vast majority of Flooded Strand copies never leave the library, a structural reality of 100-card singleton decks where even staples go unseen most games. The graveyard entries represent activated copies, which sacrifice themselves as part of their effect.
Commanders that played this card
in tracked games-
1
The Ur-Dragon
21 decks
-
2
Ms. Bumbleflower
10 decks
-
3
Aragorn, the Uniter
8 decks
-
4
Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
8 decks
-
5
Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge
7 decks
-
6
Jin Sakai, Ghost of Tsushima
7 decks
-
7
Jodah, the Unifier
7 decks
-
8
Kenrith, the Returned King
7 decks
-
9
Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy
6 decks
-
10
Kratos, Stoic Father
6 decks
The top commanders skew heavily toward blue-white and multicolor identities, which is exactly the structural constraint Flooded Strand imposes. Any deck lacking both Plains and Island types has no reason to include it.