Live Play Data

Forgotten Ancient

· Creature — Elemental · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1359

Decks Running

697

Median Cast Turn

6.0

Drawn → Played

64%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

8% of tracked Commander decks run Forgotten Ancient, and when it resolves, the win rate is 32%, a +7.0 percentage-point lift over games where it never left the library.

Forgotten Ancient sits in 8% of the 8985 distinct Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live. That puts it well below staple territory, but its presence is concentrated in counter-synergy shells where every spell cast by any player becomes raw material for the board.

The median first-cast turn is 6.0, late for a 4-mana creature. Only 25% of casts land on curve, and the card spends a median of one full turn in hand before it is cast, with 33% of drawn copies played the same turn they arrive. That pattern points to a card players hold deliberately, waiting for a moment when its triggers will compound quickly. Once it resolves, 56% of copies remain on the battlefield at game's end, a sign that opponents often let it sit rather than spending removal on a creature with no immediate threat.

The top commander slots are dominated by spell-heavy Simic and Bant builds, where the density of cantrips and interaction makes the Ancient grow fast. Its presence in Atraxa, Praetors' Voice lists adds a second axis: proliferate extends the value of every counter the Ancient accumulates before moving them.

At a glance

8% of tracked Commander decks include Forgotten Ancient
T6.0 median first-cast turn, late by design in spell-dense pods
64% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
56% battlefield stickiness once cast
32% win rate in games where Forgotten Ancient resolved
610 distinct players have brought it to a tracked game, well-spread data

First-cast turn

n=218

13%

52%

T6-9

10%

T10+

Median 6.0 P25 4 · P75 8 · max 15

On curve 25% (29 / 218 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 33%

The "good card" funnel

1359 brought · 610 players

Brought to game

1359

Ever drawn

340

Reached battlefield

218

Still on board at game end

121

64%

Of 1359 copies brought to games, 340 were drawn, 218 of those were cast, and 56% of resolved copies remained on the battlefield at game's end.

≥ +0.5pp

Players who cast this card win 32% of the time (n=203) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=883).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 29% (n=114) — 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 +7.0pp; 95% confidence interval +0.5pp to +13.5pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

362 instances

3.9%

Library

33.4%

Battlefield

27.9%

Graveyard

7.5%

Exile

Most Forgotten Ancients that never left the library simply weren't drawn, a structural feature of 100-card singleton decks rather than a comment on the card's power. Among copies that were cast, a meaningful share end the game on the battlefield.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The top-commander list skews heavily toward spell-dense Simic and Bant shells, where Forgotten Ancient can trigger on every cantrip and piece of interaction cast by all four players.

Card text

Forgotten Ancient

Creature — Elemental

Whenever a player casts a spell, you may put a +1/+1 counter on this creature. At the beginning of your upkeep, you may move any number of +1/+1 counters from this creature onto other creatures.

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Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC) · Rare · Illustrated by Mark Tedin

Frequently Asked

How often is Forgotten Ancient drawn in a Commander game?

Across 1304 tracked multiplayer games where the card was in a deck, it was drawn 25% of the time. That is typical for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 340 instances that reached a player's hand, 64% were cast before the game ended. The remainder reflects copies drawn late when the game was already wrapping up, not a deliberate choice to hold the card.

What turn does Forgotten Ancient usually get cast?

The median first-cast turn is 6.0, and the interquartile range runs from turn 5 to turn 8. Only 25% of casts land exactly on turn 4, which matches its mana value. Most copies arrive in the mid-game, after players have had time to develop their mana and are casting spells at the highest frequency. That timing actually suits the card: a late cast in a spell-dense mid-game can accumulate counters faster than an on-curve cast into an empty board.

Does casting Forgotten Ancient actually improve your win rate?

The data shows a +7.0 percentage-point lift in normalized win rate when the card resolves versus when it spends the game in the library, 32% versus 25%. With 203 observations in the cast bucket, treat this as an early directional signal rather than a definitive result. The cast_vs_library_delta_lower bound crosses zero, so the effect is not conclusively established at current sample sizes.

Which commanders run Forgotten Ancient most often?

On Playgroup Live, Ms. Bumbleflower and Zimone, Infinite Analyst each lead the multiplayer top-commander list, followed by Tidus, Yuna's Guardian. All three are spell-heavy Simic or Bant builds where the Ancient triggers on nearly every action taken around the table. Atraxa, Praetors' Voice also appears, leveraging proliferate to extend the counter-accumulation beyond a single upkeep distribution window.

Is Forgotten Ancient legal in Commander?

Yes. Forgotten Ancient is legal in Commander with no restrictions. It is also legal in Legacy, Vintage, Historic, Timeless, Duel Commander, Oathbreaker, and several other formats. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Pauper, or Alchemy.

How concentrated is the Forgotten Ancient data across players?

The dataset for Forgotten Ancient is well-spread. 610 distinct players have brought the card to a tracked game on Playgroup Live, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for just 1% of all instances. That breadth adds confidence that the observed patterns reflect the card's general behavior rather than one player's specific build or run of results.