Live Play Data

Gaea's Cradle

Legendary Land · Urza's Saga (USG)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

599

Decks Running

261

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

90%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

90% of drawn Gaea's Cradles reach the battlefield, and it stays there 90% of the time once cast. Median first cast lands on turn 4.

Gaea's Cradle is one of the most powerful mana engines in Commander, and Playgroup Live's tracked games reflect that reputation in concrete terms. Drawn copies reach the battlefield 90% of the time, a figure that sits well above most non-land permanents in the format.

The cast win rate of 37% against a library baseline of 24% represents a +13.1 percentage-point lift when the card resolves. With 161 cast observations and 358 library observations, the sample is large enough to treat this as a directional signal rather than noise. The data is well-spread across 190 distinct players, and no single contributor accounts for more than 7% of tracked instances, which strengthens that signal.

Gaea's Cradle is legal in Commander but banned in Duel Commander. It appears most often under creature-heavy green commanders that can tap it for large bursts of mana as early as turn 2 or 3. Its niche is narrow but its payoff is steep: once on the battlefield, it survives 90% of the time through the end of the game.

At a glance

5% of tracked Commander decks include Gaea's Cradle
90% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
T4 median first-cast turn
90% battlefield stickiness once the land enters play
+13.1pp win-rate lift when cast versus sitting in the library
190 distinct players have brought it to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=173

12%

17%

24%

28%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4 P25 3 · P75 6 · max 12

Cast same turn as drawn 47%

The "good card" funnel

599 brought · 190 players

Brought to game

599

Ever drawn

193

Reached battlefield

173

Still on board at game end

156

90%

Of 599 Gaea's Cradles brought to tracked games, 193 were drawn, 173 of those were cast, and the vast majority stayed on the battlefield through end of game.

≥ +5.4pp

Players who cast this card win 37% of the time (n=161) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=358).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 35% (n=17) — 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 +13.1pp; 95% confidence interval +5.4pp to +20.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

202 instances

3.0%

Library

77.2%

Battlefield

7.4%

Graveyard

2.5%

Exile

The overwhelming majority of Gaea's Cradles end games on the battlefield rather than the library, the reverse of most singleton cards. That reflects both how aggressively players cast it and how rarely opponents manage to remove a land.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy 8 decks
2 Kenrith, the Returned King 7 decks
3 Lumra, Bellow of the Woods 6 decks
4 The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 6 decks
5 Baylen, the Haymaker 5 decks
6 Shroofus Sproutsire 5 decks
7 Tovolar, Dire Overlord // Tovolar, the Midnight Scourge 5 decks
8 Witherbloom, the Balancer 5 decks
9 Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait 4 decks
10 Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness 4 decks

The commander list spans mono-green, Simic, and five-color shells, showing Gaea's Cradle is not locked to one strategy. Any creature-dense green deck in the dataset is a potential home.

Frequently Asked

How often is Gaea's Cradle drawn in a Commander game?

Across 495 tracked multiplayer games where the card was in a deck, it was drawn 32% of the time. That is consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 193 drawn copies, 90% were cast before the game ended. The remainder is primarily a game-length effect: copies drawn very late often never reach the battlefield before the pod concludes.

What turn does Gaea's Cradle usually enter the battlefield?

Median first cast lands on turn 4, but the distribution is wide. The 25th percentile is turn 3 and the 90th percentile is turn 8, reflecting the difference between an opening-hand draw and a mid-game topdeck. Early casts are clustered around turns 2 through 4, which is exactly when creature-heavy green decks want it most.

Does casting Gaea's Cradle actually improve your win rate?

The data shows a +13.1 percentage-point lift between games where the card was cast (37% win rate, n=161) and games where it stayed in the library (24% win rate, n=358). Both buckets are well-sampled, so this is a consistent directional signal. It is not proof of causation, but it does track with the card's reputation as a game-warping mana source.

Is Gaea's Cradle banned in Commander?

Gaea's Cradle is legal and unrestricted in Commander (multiplayer). It is banned in Duel Commander, the two-player variant, where its power level was judged too high. It is also legal in Legacy, Vintage, Premodern, and Oathbreaker, but not in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, or any rotating format.

How sticky is Gaea's Cradle once it hits the battlefield?

Once cast, Gaea's Cradle survives to end-of-game 90% of the time across our tracked games. Lands are harder to remove than most permanents, but Cradle is a named target for land destruction and strip effects. That 90% figure reflects real tables where opponents do sometimes have answers, not a vacuum assumption.

Which commanders most often pair with Gaea's Cradle?

The top commanders in the Playgroup Live dataset skew heavily green and creature-focused: Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy, Lumra, Bellow of the Woods, and Kenrith, the Returned King lead the multiplayer list. That spread across both mono-green and multicolor commanders shows the card is not tied to one archetype. Any deck that routinely controls three or more creatures has a strong reason to run it.