Card Preview

Howling Mine

· Artifact · Commander 2016 (C16)

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

933

Decks Running

502

In Decks

—

Decklist Inclusion

—

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Showing 1v1 (duel) data only. 1v1 is a different format from multiplayer Commander, so these numbers are not comparable.

Card text

Howling Mine

Artifact

At the beginning of each player's draw step, if this artifact is untapped, that player draws an additional card.

Commander 2016 (C16) · Rare · Illustrated by Ralph Horsley

Final zone distribution

252 instances

0.8%

Library

61.9%

Battlefield

13.1%

Graveyard

3.2%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Nekusar, the Mindrazer 70 decks
2 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse 65 decks
3 Xyris, the Writhing Storm 28 decks
4 Urza, Lord High Artificer 23 decks
5 Ms. Bumbleflower 17 decks
6 Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis 16 decks
7 Whtz, the Bibliophile 13 decks
8 Kwain, Itinerant Meddler 9 decks
9 Zedruu the Greathearted 9 decks
10 King T'Challa // Black Panther, Hope Enduring 6 decks

The "good card" funnel

933 brought · 436 players

Brought to game

933

Ever drawn

235

Reached battlefield

178

Still on board at game end

156

Once cast, 88% of this card is still on the battlefield at game end. This reflects how often it survives removal, not just whether it's a permanent.

≥ -5.2pp

Players who cast this card win 22% of the time (n=135) , vs 22% when it never left the library (n=477).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 22% (n=47).

Read this as correlation, not as the card's contribution. Casting a card means you lived long enough to cast it, so this gap widens with mana value across every card we track.

Observed gap -0.5pp; 95% confidence interval -5.2pp to +4.2pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=178

22%

18%

12%

13%

24%

T6-9

T10+

Median 3.0 P25 2 · P75 6 · max 17

On curve 40% (32 / 178 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 58%

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games, and the full charts need a sample of at least 25 observed games that is not dominated by a single pilot. Until this card clears those bars you're seeing only the basic counts. Stats refresh nightly.

How is Playgroup Live card data collected?

Players using Playgroup Live import their decklists before a game and log card actions as they play. Each cast, zone change, and resolution is recorded as a real game event. Stats on this site are computed from those events, not from decklist scrapes or theorycrafting. Playgroup has recorded 740,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.