Live Play Data

Grim Monolith

· Artifact · Urza's Legacy (ULG)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

880

Decks Running

386

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

78%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

78% of drawn Grim Monoliths are cast before the game ends, and decks that resolve it win 33% of the time on a normalized 4-player baseline.

Grim Monolith sits in 2% of the 19725 Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live. That niche footprint is expected for a card that costs real money and belongs in a specific style of high-ramp strategy. The 386 decks that do run it bring it to games at a consistent clip.

When a copy reaches a player's hand, 78% of the time it gets cast. Median first-cast turn is 4, but the distribution is notably bimodal: a cluster of early casts in turns 1 and 2 (players who drew it in the opener) and a second wave around turns 4 to 6. The untap cost of 4 mana is real, but once the Monolith is on the battlefield it sticks 82% of the time, meaning opponents rarely bother to answer it directly.

The commander spread is wide. Colorless identity makes Grim Monolith legal in every deck, and the top-commander list reflects that breadth. Zhulodok, Kinnan, Etali, Urza, and K'rrik all appear in the top ten, spanning green ramp, blue artifact synergy, and black acceleration strategies. The data here covers 721 tracked multiplayer Commander games with 260 distinct players contributing instances, and no single player accounts for more than 7% of the sample.

At a glance

2% of tracked Commander decks include Grim Monolith
78% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends
T4 median first-cast turn
82% battlefield stickiness once cast
33% win rate in games where Grim Monolith resolved
260 distinct players have brought Grim Monolith to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=159

14%

19%

10%

16%

11%

25%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4 P25 2 · P75 6 · max 14

On curve 33% (31 / 159 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 54%

The "good card" funnel

880 brought · 260 players

Brought to game

880

Ever drawn

205

Reached battlefield

159

Still on board at game end

131

78%

Of 880 Grim Monoliths brought to games, 205 were drawn, 159 of those were cast, and the large majority finished the game on the battlefield.

≥ -3.2pp

Players who cast this card win 33% of the time (n=147) , vs 28% when it never left the library (n=562).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 14% (n=40) — 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 +4.5pp; 95% confidence interval -3.2pp to +12.2pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

240 instances

6.7%

Library

54.6%

Battlefield

19.6%

Graveyard

7.1%

Exile

Most Grim Monoliths that enter play finish there: 82% stickiness reflects opponents prioritizing other threats over a mana rock. The library bucket is small because most instances that stay in the deck are simply never drawn.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy 19 decks
2 Zhulodok, Void Gorger 19 decks
3 Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness 12 decks
4 Lumra, Bellow of the Woods 12 decks
5 Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh 10 decks
6 Molecule Man 9 decks
7 Kozilek, the Great Distortion 7 decks
8 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth 7 decks
9 Urza, Lord High Artificer 7 decks
10 Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler of Ruin 6 decks

Zhulodok, Kinnan, and Etali lead the list, but the spread across colorless, green-blue, green-red, mono-blue, and mono-black commanders shows that Grim Monolith finds a home wherever three mana on turn 2 accelerates the plan.

Card text

Grim Monolith

Artifact

This artifact doesn't untap during your untap step. {T}

: Add

: Untap this artifact.

Urza's Legacy (ULG) · Rare · Illustrated by Chippy

Frequently Asked

How often is Grim Monolith drawn in a Commander game?

Across 721 tracked multiplayer Commander games where Grim Monolith was in the deck, it was drawn 23% of the time. That is in line with a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 205 copies that reached a hand, 78% were cast before the game ended.

What turn does Grim Monolith typically hit the battlefield?

The median first-cast turn is 4. The cast-turn distribution is bimodal. Copies drawn in the opening hand tend to land on turns 1 or 2, while copies drawn mid-game arrive around turns 4 through 6. The mode in the dataset is turn 2, which matches the card's 2-mana cost, but many casts come later because players did not draw it early.

Does casting Grim Monolith actually improve your chances of winning?

In Playgroup Live data, decks win 33% of games when Grim Monolith resolves, compared to 28% when it stays in the library untouched. That is a +4.5 percentage-point gap. Both sample sizes are solid (147 cast instances, 562 library instances), but the delta's confidence interval crosses zero, so treat this as a directional positive signal rather than a definitive verdict.

Is Grim Monolith banned anywhere?

Yes. Grim Monolith is banned in Duel Commander and Premodern. It is legal in Commander (multiplayer), Legacy, Vintage, Oathbreaker, and a handful of other formats. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Pauper, or Brawl. The Duel Commander ban reflects how punishing it is in a two-player game where the tempo advantage of three mana on turn 2 is even more decisive.

Which commanders most commonly run Grim Monolith?

Across tracked decks, Zhulodok, Void Gorger leads with the most Grim Monolith builds, followed closely by Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy and Etali, Primal Conqueror. The colorless identity means the card is available to every commander, and the list extends across green ramp, blue artifact, red big-mana, and black acceleration strategies. That spread is consistent with a generalist mana rock rather than a combo-specific piece.

How concentrated is the Grim Monolith data across players?

260 distinct players have brought Grim Monolith to at least one tracked game. The single heaviest contributor accounts for 7% of all tracked instances, well under the 30% threshold where data concentration becomes a concern. The sample is spread broadly enough that the numbers reflect a genuine cross-section of players rather than one person's results.