Live Play Data

Kess, Dissident Mage

· Legendary Creature — Human Wizard · New Capenna Commander (NCC)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

131

Decks Running

Median Cast Turn

5.0

Drawn → Played

56%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=22

36%

41%

T6-9

T10+

Median 5.0 P25 5 · P75 7 · max 9

On curve 23% (2 / 22 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 20%

The "good card" funnel

131 brought · 68 players

Brought to game

131

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

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.

≥ -2.3pp

Players who cast this card win 45% of the time (n=20) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=71).

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 +20.4pp; 95% confidence interval -2.3pp to +43.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

49 instances

2.0%

Library

26.5%

Battlefield

28.6%

Graveyard

4.1%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Nekusar, the Mindrazer 13 decks
2 Fire Lord Azula 10 decks
3 Anhelo, the Painter 7 decks
4 Inalla, Archmage Ritualist 7 decks
5 Sauron, the Dark Lord 6 decks
6 Kess, Dissident Mage 5 decks
7 Saruman, the White Hand 4 decks
8 Doctor Doom, King of Latveria 2 decks
9 Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler of Ruin 2 decks
10 Marchesa, Dealer of Death 2 decks

Card text

Kess, Dissident Mage

Legendary Creature — Human Wizard

Flying Once during each of your turns, you may cast an instant or sorcery spell from your graveyard. If a spell cast this way would be put into your graveyard, exile it instead.

3 / 4

New Capenna Commander (NCC) · Mythic · Illustrated by Izzy

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 680,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.