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Godless Shrine card art
Live Play Data

Godless Shrine

Land — Plains Swamp · Star Trek (TRK)
38%
Live Inclusion
Times Brought
1429
Decks Running
798
Median Cast Turn
3
Drawn → Played
76%
Format

Godless Shrine appears in 38% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, drawn 32% of the time and cast in 76% of those drawn instances, with a median first-play turn of 3.

Godless Shrine sits in 38% of the 2094 distinct Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, making it one of the most-played dual lands in the black-white slice of the format. Across 1246 tracked games it has been brought to a pod 1430 times, drawn 459 times, and played 349 times.

When a copy reaches a player's hand, 76% of those instances are played before the game ends. The median first-play turn is 3, and the distribution is front-loaded: the single most common turn to play Godless Shrine is turn 1, reflecting how often it shows up in opening hands and gets played immediately for the 2-life payment. Concentration is healthy across 577 distinct players, with no single contributor driving more than about 2% of all tracked instances.

As a Ravnica shock land, Godless Shrine is the go-to white-black fixing for any Commander deck whose color identity touches both colors. Its ability to enter untapped for 2 life keeps it a strict upgrade over basic Plains or Swamp in multicolor shells, which explains the broad adoption across Mardu, Esper, Orzhov, and five-color commanders alike.

At a glance
  • 38% of tracked Commander decks include Godless Shrine
  • 32% draw rate across tracked games
  • 76% of drawn copies are played before the game ends
  • T3 median first-play turn, with turn 1 being the single most common
  • 93% battlefield stickiness once played
  • 577 distinct players have brought this land to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=349
27%
T1
15%
T2
13%
T3
9%
T4
7%
T5
23%
T6-9
5%
T10+
Median 3 P25 1 · P75 6 · max 16
Cast same turn as drawn 58%

The "good card" funnel

1430 brought · 577 players
Brought to game
1430
Ever drawn
459
Reached battlefield
349
Still on board at game end
326
76%

Of 1430 Godless Shrines brought to games, 459 were drawn, 349 of those were played, and 93% of played copies remained on the battlefield through the end of the game.

≥ -2.5pp

Players who cast this card win 28% of the time (n=341) , vs 26% when it never left the library (n=864).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 37% (n=101) — 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 +2.6pp; 95% confidence interval -2.5pp to +7.7pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

500 instances
2.4%
Library
65.2%
Battlefield
14.2%
Graveyard
3.6%
Exile

The vast majority of Godless Shrine copies finish the game on the battlefield or in hand, consistent with a land that gets played early and then sits in play for the duration. The small graveyard count reflects sacrifice effects and land destruction rather than normal use.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The commander list spans Orzhov, Esper, Mardu, and five-color builds, confirming that Godless Shrine is format-wide fixing rather than a card tied to any single archetype or commander.

Frequently Asked

How often is Godless Shrine drawn in a Commander game?
Across 1246 tracked games, Godless Shrine was drawn 32% of the time when it was in the deck. That is somewhat higher than the baseline expectation for a singleton in a 100-card deck, likely because many pilots keep opening hands that contain it. Of 459 instances drawn, 76% were played before the game ended.
What turn does Godless Shrine typically hit the battlefield?
Median first-play turn is 3. The distribution is heavily front-loaded: turn 1 is the single most common play turn, driven by players choosing to pay 2 life and drop it untapped in their opening sequence. The interquartile range runs from turn 1 to turn 6, so late-game copies do appear but are not the norm.
Does playing Godless Shrine correlate with winning?
In 341 participations where Godless Shrine was played, the normalized win rate is 28%. In 864 participations where it stayed in the library, the rate is 26%. The delta between those two buckets is small and the standard error is wide relative to it, so treat this as a directional signal rather than a conclusion. Godless Shrine is fixing infrastructure: its value shows up in enabling the deck's plan, not in a standalone win-rate lift.
Is Godless Shrine legal in Commander?
Yes. Godless Shrine is legal in Commander, as well as Legacy, Vintage, Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Historic, and most other major formats. It is not legal in Pauper (rare) or Old School. In Commander its color identity is white-black, so it can only go into decks whose commanders share both of those colors, or a superset such as Mardu, Esper, or five-color.
Which commanders run Godless Shrine most often in tracked games?
The top commanders by raw deck count in the Playgroup Live dataset are Y'shtola, Night's Blessed and Edgar Markov, followed by Mr. House, President and CEO and Kaalia of the Vast. The spread across Orzhov, Esper, Mardu, and five-color commanders reflects how Godless Shrine fits into any shell that touches white and black, rather than being a card that belongs to a single archetype.
How concentrated is the Godless Shrine data among a small group of players?
The data is well-spread. 577 distinct players have brought Godless Shrine to a tracked game, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for roughly 2% of all instances. That low concentration means the draw and play-rate figures are not being skewed by one or two prolific players running the same deck repeatedly, which adds confidence to the directional signals we see.