Live Play Data

Glacial Fortress

Land · Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC)

38%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

4148

Decks Running

2013

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

79%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Glacial Fortress sits in 38% of tracked multiplayer Commander decks on Playgroup Live, with 79% of drawn copies reaching the battlefield and a median first-cast turn of 4.

Glacial Fortress is one of the most-played Blue-White dual lands in tracked Commander games on Playgroup Live. It appears in 2013 of the 5267 distinct decks that have played a tracked game, an inclusion rate of 38%. The data spans 1516 unique players, with no single contributor accounting for more than 1% of all tracked instances, which gives the numbers a solid cross-table foundation.

The card's draw-to-play rate of 79% is high for a land. Lands drawn late in a game can go unplayed simply because the game ends before a player needs another mana source, so the fraction that does reach the battlefield reflects both demand and timing luck. Once Glacial Fortress does hit play, it stays: 93% stickiness is expected for a non-interactive land, but it confirms the card is rarely removed or bounced. Median first-cast turn is 4, consistent with early-game mana development.

Glacial Fortress fits most naturally in any deck with White and Blue in its color identity. Its enters-tapped condition is trivially avoided once a Plains or Island is already in play, which is the norm by turn two or three in well-built mana bases. That makes it a functional untapped dual for most of the game, which explains its strong presence across archetypes from aggro to control.

At a glance

38% of tracked Commander decks include Glacial Fortress
25% draw rate per game where the card is in the deck
79% of drawn copies reach the battlefield
T4 median first-cast turn across observed games
93% battlefield stickiness once the land enters play
1516 unique players contributing to the dataset, a well-spread sample

First-cast turn

n=819

14%

17%

13%

10%

29%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4 P25 2 · P75 7 · max 16

Cast same turn as drawn 52%

The "good card" funnel

4153 brought · 1516 players

Brought to game

4153

Ever drawn

1033

Reached battlefield

819

Still on board at game end

760

79%

Of 4153 copies brought to games, 1033 were drawn, 819 of those reached the battlefield, and the vast majority stayed in play through the end of the game.

≥ -0.3pp

Players who cast this card win 26% of the time (n=764) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=2689).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 31% (n=183) — 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 +3.0pp; 95% confidence interval -0.3pp to +6.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

1123 instances

3.5%

Library

67.7%

Battlefield

10.9%

Graveyard

3.2%

Exile

The large library bucket is structural: most copies of any singleton land never surface in a given game, so the battlefield and graveyard counts represent the subset of games where Glacial Fortress actually mattered.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Y'shtola, Night's Blessed 184 decks
2 Captain America, Team Leader 148 decks
3 Ms. Bumbleflower 123 decks
4 Tidus, Yuna's Guardian 87 decks
5 Éowyn, Shieldmaiden 61 decks
6 Kilo, Apogee Mind 57 decks
7 Zinnia, Valley's Voice 52 decks
8 Inspirit, Flagship Vessel 43 decks
9 Mister Fantastic 34 decks
10 Jin Sakai, Ghost of Tsushima 28 decks

The commander list spans Esper, Jeskai, Bant, and four-color identities, showing Glacial Fortress is a cross-archetype staple rather than a card concentrated in one deck style.

Card text

Glacial Fortress

Land

This land enters tapped unless you control a Plains or an Island. {T}

: Add

Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC) · Rare · Illustrated by Eugene Maslovski

Frequently Asked

How often is Glacial Fortress drawn in a Commander game?

Across 3627 tracked multiplayer games where Glacial Fortress was in the deck, it was drawn 25% of the time. That is typical for a singleton land in a 100-card deck. Of 1033 copies that reached a player's hand, 79% were played before the game ended. A portion of unplayed copies reflect games that concluded before the player needed another land rather than a deliberate decision to hold it.

What turn does Glacial Fortress typically enter the battlefield?

The median first-cast turn is 4, with a mean of 4.74. The distribution shows a healthy cluster in turns 1 through 3, indicating it frequently appears in opening hands and is played immediately. The p75 sits at turn 7, so a meaningful share of copies are drawn later in the game when the mana base is already established.

Does casting Glacial Fortress correlate with winning?

In 764 participations where Glacial Fortress reached the battlefield, the caster won at a 26% normalized rate. In 2689 participations where it stayed in the library, the win rate was 23%. The delta of +3.0 percentage points is a directional positive signal, but both sample sizes are large enough to treat this as an early, consistent pattern rather than noise.

Is Glacial Fortress legal in Commander?

Yes. Glacial Fortress is legal in Commander, as well as in Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Historic, and several other formats. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, or Pauper Commander. Its Blue-White color identity means it can only be included in Commander decks whose commander has White and Blue (or a superset of those colors) in their color identity.

What commanders most commonly run Glacial Fortress?

On Playgroup Live, the top multiplayer pairings are Y'shtola, Night's Blessed (Esper), Captain America, Team Leader (Jeskai), Ms. Bumbleflower (Bant), and Tidus, Yuna's Guardian (Bant). The spread across Blue-White-adjacent archetypes confirms the card is not a niche pick but a reliable mana-base staple wherever White and Blue overlap.

How reliable is this data?

The dataset covers 3627 tracked multiplayer Commander games across 1516 unique players, with the single heaviest contributor accounting for only 1% of all instances. That spread is strong for a community-tracked dataset. The numbers are directional and representative of real table play, though Playgroup Live's sample is distinct from large decklist-scrape databases. Read the stats as a play-behavior signal, not a global census.