Live Play Data

Herald's Horn

· Artifact · The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander (LCC)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1673

Decks Running

946

Median Cast Turn

5.0

Drawn → Played

73%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

7% of tracked Commander decks run Herald's Horn. When drawn, 73% of copies reach the battlefield, and 81% of those stay in play through end of game.

Herald's Horn sits in 946 of the 13667 distinct Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, an 7% inclusion rate that reflects its narrow but deep appeal: tribal decks that want it tend to run it every time.

The card's value proposition is tied directly to how early it lands. Median first cast falls on turn 5.0, meaning most players are already deploying tribal threats by the time the Horn arrives. Of drawn copies, 73% reach the battlefield before the game ends. Once it resolves, 81% of copies survive to end of game, a strong retention number for a three-mana artifact with no protection built in.

The commander distribution tells the real story: no single creature type dominates the Horn's home. Dragon decks (The Ur-Dragon), Angel decks (Giada, Font of Hope), Vampire decks (Edgar Markov), Rat decks (Marrow-Gnawer), Sliver decks (The First Sliver), and Human-tribal builds all show up across the top commanders list. Herald's Horn is a colorless tribal engine that fits wherever the creature-type density is high enough to make both abilities consistently relevant.

At a glance

7% of tracked Commander decks include Herald's Horn
73% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before game end
T5.0 median first-cast turn across tracked games
81% battlefield stickiness once the Horn resolves
746 distinct players have brought Herald's Horn to a tracked game
28% win rate in games where Herald's Horn was cast

First-cast turn

n=278

11%

24%

13%

30%

T6-9

T10+

Median 5.0 P25 3 · P75 7 · max 14

On curve 37% (67 / 278 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 33%

The "good card" funnel

1673 brought · 746 players

Brought to game

1673

Ever drawn

381

Reached battlefield

278

Still on board at game end

226

73%

Of 1673 Horns brought to tracked games, 381 were drawn, 278 of those were cast, and 81% of cast copies stayed on the battlefield through end of game.

≥ +1.5pp

Players who cast this card win 28% of the time (n=252) , vs 21% when it never left the library (n=1081).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 18% (n=94) — 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 +6.9pp; 95% confidence interval +1.5pp to +12.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

420 instances

2.1%

Library

53.8%

Battlefield

21.0%

Graveyard

3.6%

Exile

The overwhelming majority of Herald's Horn copies never leave the library, a structural reality of 100-card singleton rather than a reflection of the card's power level in the decks that do run it.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Captain America, Team Leader 83 decks
2 Éowyn, Shieldmaiden 40 decks
3 The Ur-Dragon 36 decks
4 Giada, Font of Hope 35 decks
5 Ulalek, Fused Atrocity 31 decks
6 Captain N'ghathrod 29 decks
7 Rin and Seri, Inseparable 24 decks
8 Cosmic Spider-Man 20 decks
9 Edgar Markov 20 decks
10 The First Sliver 20 decks

The top-commander list spans Dragons, Angels, Vampires, Rats, Slivers, and Humans, confirming that Herald's Horn attaches to tribal identity rather than to any single creature type or color.

Frequently Asked

How often is Herald's Horn drawn in a Commander game?

Across 1526 tracked multiplayer games where Herald's Horn was in the deck, it was drawn 23% of the time. That rate is typical for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 381 instances that reached a hand, 73% were cast before the game ended. The remainder mostly reflects games that concluded before the player found a window to cast it.

What turn does Herald's Horn typically hit the battlefield?

Median first cast is turn 5.0, with the interquartile range running from turn 3 to turn 8. The mode is turn 3, meaning a meaningful cluster of players cast it a full turn ahead of the median, likely off early ramp. The on-curve rate is 37%, which is low, but that mostly reflects the card being drawn mid-to-late game rather than players choosing to delay it. Of drawn-and-cast copies, only 33% are cast the same turn they're drawn, suggesting players usually hold it one turn to set up mana or a follow-up threat.

Does casting Herald's Horn actually improve your chances of winning?

In games where Herald's Horn was cast, the win rate is 28% across 252 observations. In games where it stayed in the library the entire time, the win rate is 21% across 1081 observations. The delta is +6.9 percentage points. Both sample sizes are large enough to treat this as a directional signal, but the confidence interval crosses zero, so we cannot call it conclusive. The pattern is consistent with what you'd expect from a card that rewards being cast early in tribal decks built around it.

Which commanders most often run Herald's Horn?

Captain America, Team Leader leads the tracked dataset, followed by The Ur-Dragon, Giada Font of Hope, Éowyn Shieldmaiden, Edgar Markov, The First Sliver, Marrow-Gnawer, and Ulalek, Fused Atrocity. The spread across wildly different creature types confirms Herald's Horn is format-agnostic within tribal: any commander that fields a high density of creatures sharing one type is a candidate. The data comes from 746 distinct players, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for only 1% of all tracked instances, so the dataset is well-distributed.

Is Herald's Horn legal in Commander?

Yes. Herald's Horn is legal and unrestricted in Commander, as well as in Legacy, Vintage, Historic, Timeless, Oathbreaker, and several Brawl variants. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Pauper, or Pauper Commander. It first appeared in Commander 2017 and has since been reprinted in multiple Commander precon sets, which keeps its paper price accessible.

How sticky is Herald's Horn once it lands?

81% of cast Horns survive to the game's final zone snapshot. That is a strong retention number for a non-threatening, three-mana artifact with no protective ability. It suggests opponents generally deprioritize removing it in favor of more immediate threats, which gives tribal decks substantial cumulative value from both the cost-reduction and the upkeep draw trigger over a long game.