Live Play Data

In the Darkness Bind Them

· Enchantment — Saga · Tales of Middle-earth Commander (LTC)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

646

Decks Running

264

Median Cast Turn

6.0

Drawn → Played

68%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=96

23%

50%

T6-9

14%

T10+

Median 6.0 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 14

On curve 36% (22 / 96 cast on T5) Cast same turn as drawn 37%

The "good card" funnel

647 brought · 230 players

Brought to game

647

Ever drawn

141

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 52% 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.

≥ +1.9pp

Players who cast this card win 31% of the time (n=89) , vs 20% when it never left the library (n=395).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 23% (n=40).

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 +11.7pp; 95% confidence interval +1.9pp to +21.5pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

172 instances

3.5%

Library

29.1%

Battlefield

40.1%

Graveyard

7.0%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Sauron, the Dark Lord 127 decks
2 Sauron, Lord of the Rings 72 decks
3 Tom Bombadil 48 decks
4 Saruman, the White Hand 11 decks
5 Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler of Ruin 1 decks
6 Mishra, Artificer Prodigy 1 decks
7 Morophon, the Boundless 1 decks
8 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen 1 decks
9 Omnath, Locus of All 1 decks
10 Terra, Magical Adept // Esper Terra 1 decks

Card text

In the Darkness Bind Them

Enchantment — Saga

(As this Saga enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter. Sacrifice after IV.) I, II, III — Create a 3/3 black Wraith creature token with menace. The Ring tempts you. IV — For each opponent, gain control of up to one target creature that player controls until end of turn. Untap those creatures. They gain haste until end of turn. The Ring tempts you.

Tales of Middle-earth Commander (LTC) · Rare · Illustrated by Daarken

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 710,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.