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Kaervek the Merciless

· Legendary Creature — Human Shaman · Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander (DSC)

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Times Brought

426

Decks Running

232

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

Kaervek the Merciless

Legendary Creature — Human Shaman

Whenever an opponent casts a spell, Kaervek deals damage equal to that spell's mana value to any target.

5 / 4

Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander (DSC) · Rare · Illustrated by Heonhwa

Final zone distribution

89 instances

3.4%

Library

29.2%

Battlefield

21.3%

Graveyard

12.4%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls 116 decks
2 Kardur, Doomscourge 22 decks
3 Rakdos, Lord of Riots 13 decks
4 Yurlok of Scorch Thrash 12 decks
5 The Lord of Pain 10 decks
6 Mogis, God of Slaughter 7 decks
7 The Infamous Cruelclaw 7 decks
8 Dihada, Binder of Wills 3 decks
9 Nekusar, the Mindrazer 3 decks
10 Sauron, the Dark Lord 3 decks

The "good card" funnel

428 brought · 221 players

Brought to game

428

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 59% 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.

≥ -0.7pp

Players who cast this card win 31% of the time (n=34) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=231).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 14% (n=23).

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 +8.2pp; 95% confidence interval -0.7pp to +17.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=58

21%

57%

T6-9

T10+

Median 6.0 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 15

On curve 62% (5 / 58 cast on T7) Cast same turn as drawn 28%

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 760,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.