Live Play Data

Guardian Project

· Enchantment · Ravnica Remastered (RVR)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1494

Decks Running

745

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

56%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Guardian Project is in 8% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, with a median first-cast turn of 5 and 56% of drawn copies reaching the battlefield.

Guardian Project sits in 8% of the 9443 Commander decks tracked in live play on Playgroup.gg, appearing across 745 distinct lists. That spread is backed by 592 unique players, with no single contributor accounting for more than a small slice of the dataset, a healthy sign for the reliability of these early numbers.

The card costs 4 mana and earns its slot by converting a stream of nontoken creatures into card draw, one card per unique creature name. Decks that go wide with tribes or tutor creatures repeatedly get the most out of it. Median first cast lands on turn 5, which is close to curve for a 4-mana enchantment but reflects how often players wait for a safer window before committing. Of the copies that hit a player's hand, 56% reached the battlefield before the game ended. That gap is partly a timing effect: copies drawn late in long games sometimes never find a window to resolve.

Guardian Project is legal in Commander, Duel Commander, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Historic, Timeless, and several other formats. It is not legal in Standard or Pauper. Its strongest home remains Commander, where singleton creature-heavy strategies can chain triggers across an entire game.

At a glance

8% of tracked Commander decks include Guardian Project
T5 median first-cast turn, close to its 4-mana cost
56% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended
71% battlefield stickiness once the enchantment resolves
592 unique players have brought Guardian Project to a tracked game
30% normalized win rate in games where Guardian Project was cast

First-cast turn

n=197

21%

14%

39%

T6-9

10%

T10+

Median 5 P25 4 · P75 7 · max 13

On curve 38% (41 / 197 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 31%

The "good card" funnel

1499 brought · 592 players

Brought to game

1499

Ever drawn

350

Reached battlefield

197

Still on board at game end

140

56%

Of 1499 Guardian Project copies brought to games, 350 were drawn, 197 of those were cast, and the majority of resolved copies remained on the battlefield through the end of the game.

≥ +1.5pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=183) , vs 22% when it never left the library (n=972).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 25% (n=132) — 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 +8.0pp; 95% confidence interval +1.5pp to +14.5pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

390 instances

4.6%

Library

35.9%

Battlefield

22.1%

Graveyard

5.9%

Exile

Most tracked Guardian Project copies finish in the hand or graveyard rather than the battlefield, which is expected for a 4-mana enchantment that needs creatures to follow it. The copies that do resolve stay in play 71% of the time.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The commander list skews heavily toward tribal and creature-flood strategies, with The Wise Mothman at the top and a spread of multi-color creature commanders filling out the rest, consistent with the card's trigger requiring a constant stream of unique creature names.

Card text

Guardian Project

Enchantment

Whenever a nontoken creature you control enters, if it doesn't have the same name as another creature you control or a creature card in your graveyard, draw a card.

Ravnica Remastered (RVR) · Mythic · Illustrated by Chris Rallis

Frequently Asked

How often is Guardian Project drawn in a Commander game?

Across 1411 tracked multiplayer Commander games where Guardian Project was in the deck, it was drawn 23% of the time. That is consistent with what you would expect for a single copy in a 100-card deck. Of 350 instances that reached a player's hand, 56% were cast before the game concluded. Copies drawn in the late game often go uncast simply because the game ends first.

What turn does Guardian Project typically hit the battlefield?

Median first cast is turn 5, with the 25th percentile at turn 4 and the 75th at turn 7. The distribution shows a concentration of early casts around turns 3 to 5, suggesting players who draw it in the opening hand or ramp into it cast it promptly. Players who draw it later tend to hold it a turn or two before finding the right moment, with a median hand-to-cast delay of 31% same-turn casts and a median hold time of roughly 1 to 2 turns across the observed sample.

Does casting Guardian Project actually help you win?

In 183 tracked participations where Guardian Project was cast, the normalized win rate is 30%, compared to 22% in 972 participations where it stayed in the library. That is a +8.0 percentage-point gap in the direction of casting helping. Both buckets are well-sampled, but the confidence interval is wide enough that this is best read as a directional early signal rather than a conclusive verdict. The card's value compounds over multiple turns, so short games will naturally dilute the signal.

Which commanders most often run Guardian Project?

The Wise Mothman leads the tracked dataset by deck count, followed by Bello, Bard of the Brambles and a cluster of tribal commanders including The First Sliver, Lathril Blade of the Elves, and Gishath, Sun's Avatar. The pattern is clear: commanders that create or encourage a parade of distinct nontoken creatures get the most out of Guardian Project's trigger condition. Creature-type synergy decks and goodstuff piles with Green access are the primary homes.

Is Guardian Project legal in Commander?

Yes. Guardian Project is legal and unrestricted in Commander, as well as in Duel Commander, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Historic, Timeless, Gladiator, and Oathbreaker. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, Pauper Commander, or PreModern. Its primary competitive home is Commander, where the singleton rule and creature-heavy strategies align perfectly with its design.

How concentrated is the Guardian Project data among a few players?

The dataset draws from 592 unique players, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for under 5% of all tracked instances. That spread is a genuine strength of this dataset. The numbers are not skewed by one or two players running the card obsessively, so the inclusion and performance figures reflect a broad cross-section of the Playgroup Live community rather than a single outlier.