Karn's Bastion
75% of drawn Karn's Bastion copies are cast before the game ends, and decks that resolve it win 25% of the time versus 22% when it stays buried in the library.
Karn's Bastion is a colorless proliferate land that slots into any counter-based Commander deck. Across 1305 tracked multiplayer games on Playgroup Live, it sits in 701 of 15835 decks, an inclusion rate of 4%. That number is narrow by design: the card rewards strategies that already generate counters, so it self-selects into a specific corner of the format.
The cast pattern tells the real story. 75% of drawn copies reach the battlefield, a high conversion rate for a tap-land with a five-mana activated ability. Median first cast lands on turn 5, consistent with players treating it as a mid-game engine piece rather than an early ramp land. Once it resolves, 91% stickiness confirms opponents rarely bother removing a land, even one that proliferates.
The win-rate delta is a directional early signal. Decks that cast Karn's Bastion finish at 25%, compared to 22% when it never leaves the library. That is a +2.7 percentage-point gap across 213 cast observations and 917 library observations. The confidence interval for that delta still crosses zero on this sample size, so treat it as consistent directional signal rather than a proven edge. The commander distribution is well-spread across 572 distinct players, with no single contributor driving more than 2% of tracked instances.
- 4% of tracked Commander decks include Karn's Bastion
- 75% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
- T5 median first-cast turn, fitting it as a mid-game engine piece
- 91% battlefield stickiness once it resolves, lands rarely get removed
- +2.7pp directional win-rate lift when cast versus sitting in the library
- 572 distinct players have brought Karn's Bastion to a tracked game
First-cast turn
n=231The "good card" funnel
1381 brought · 572 playersOf 1381 copies brought to games, 306 were drawn, 231 of those were cast, and the vast majority stayed on the battlefield through the end of the game.
Players who cast this card win 25% of the time (n=213) , vs 22% when it never left the library (n=917).
When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 28% (n=65) — about the same as leaving it in the library. Those players survived long enough to draw it, so the gap above is about the card resolving, not just about surviving.
Observed gap +2.7pp; 95% confidence interval -3.2pp to +8.6pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.
Final zone distribution
348 instancesMost Karn's Bastion copies finish on the battlefield or in hand, a direct consequence of it being a land. The small number in the graveyard reflects the handful of cases where it was destroyed or sacrificed.
Commanders that played this card
in tracked games-
1
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice
47 decks
-
2
Hakbal of the Surging Soul
40 decks
-
3
Kilo, Apogee Mind
36 decks
-
4
Inspirit, Flagship Vessel
31 decks
-
5
Kratos, Stoic Father
18 decks
-
6
The Wise Mothman
17 decks
-
7
The Serpent Society
16 decks
-
8
Commodore Guff
13 decks
-
9
Fynn, the Fangbearer
12 decks
-
10
Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos
10 decks
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice leads with 24 decks, but the list spreads across more than ten commanders, showing that Karn's Bastion is a format-wide counter-strategy staple rather than a single-commander pet card.