Live Play Data

In the Darkness Bind Them

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

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

937

Decks Running

349

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

63%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=135

11%

19%

50%

T6-9

16%

T10+

Median 6 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 14

On curve 35% (26 / 135 cast on T5) Cast same turn as drawn 37%

The "good card" funnel

938 brought · 298 players

Brought to game

938

Ever drawn

214

Reached battlefield

135

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 50% 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.

≥ +1.2pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=128) , vs 21% when it never left the library (n=564).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 15% (n=70).

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 +9.3pp; 95% confidence interval +1.2pp to +17.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

263 instances

3.0%

Library

25.9%

Battlefield

39.2%

Graveyard

7.6%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Sauron, the Dark Lord 166 decks
2 Sauron, Lord of the Rings 96 decks
3 Tom Bombadil 66 decks
4 Saruman, the White Hand 14 decks
5 Terra, Magical Adept // Esper Terra 2 decks
6 Cormela, Glamour Thief 1 decks
7 Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler of Ruin 1 decks
8 Morophon, the Boundless 1 decks
9 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen 1 decks
10 Omnath, Locus of All 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 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.