Live Play Data

Gandalf, Goblins' Bane // Flameshape

· Legendary Creature — Avatar Wizard // Sorcery — Adventure · The Hobbit (HOB)

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

427

Decks Running

219

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

78%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=107

12%

22%

19%

12%

21%

T6-9

11%

T10+

Median 4 P25 3 · P75 6 · max 15

On curve 37% (24 / 107 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 38%

The "good card" funnel

427 brought · 205 players

Brought to game

427

Ever drawn

115

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 49% 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.

≥ +4.3pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=81) , vs 15% when it never left the library (n=257).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 26% (n=23).

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 +14.6pp; 95% confidence interval +4.3pp to +24.9pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

132 instances

3.8%

Library

33.3%

Battlefield

28.0%

Graveyard

18.2%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Gandalf, Party Guest 47 decks
2 Kuja, Genome Sorcerer // Trance Kuja, Fate Defied 29 decks
3 Vivi Ornitier 21 decks
4 Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph 14 decks
5 Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might // Temple of Power 12 decks
6 Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler of Ruin 7 decks
7 Aragorn, the Uniter 5 decks
8 Inalla, Archmage Ritualist 5 decks
9 Thorin, King of Durin's Folk 5 decks
10 Saruman, the White Hand 4 decks

Card text

Gandalf, Goblins' Bane

Legendary Creature — Avatar Wizard

Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, Gandalf gets +1/+1 until end of turn and deals 1 damage to each opponent.

2 / 3

Flameshape

Sorcery — Adventure

Look at the top two cards of your library and exile them face down. For as long as they remain exiled, you may play them if you control a Wizard.

The Hobbit (HOB) · Mythic · Illustrated by Francisco Miyara

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 730,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.