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In the Darkness Bind Them

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

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

230

Decks Running

122

In Decks

734

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

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

Final zone distribution

64 instances

4.7%

Library

29.7%

Battlefield

42.2%

Graveyard

6.3%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Sauron, the Dark Lord 54 decks
2 Sauron, Lord of the Rings 39 decks
3 Tom Bombadil 24 decks
4 Saruman, the White Hand 3 decks
5 Mishra, Artificer Prodigy 1 decks
6 Terra, Magical Adept // Esper Terra 1 decks

The "good card" funnel

231 brought · 109 players

Brought to game

231

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 53% 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.

≥ +1.8pp

Players who cast this card win 33% of the time (n=30) , vs 15% when it never left the library (n=142).

Observed gap +17.6pp; 95% confidence interval +1.8pp to +33.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=36

22%

47%

T6-9

19%

T10+

Median 7.0 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 14

On curve 33% (8 / 36 cast on T5) Cast same turn as drawn 40%

36 of 100 times cast 36%

Full analysis unlocks as more games are tracked. Stats refresh nightly.

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Basic play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games; the full deep-dive page needs a larger, more diverse sample (at least 300 tracked games played by 10 or more different pilots, with no single pilot over 40 percent of the copies). 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 650,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.