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Kess, Dissident Mage

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

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Times Brought

248

Decks Running

125

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

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

Final zone distribution

67 instances

23.9%

Battlefield

34.3%

Graveyard

10.4%

Exile

31.3%

Hand

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Nekusar, the Mindrazer 30 decks
2 Sauron, the Dark Lord 17 decks
3 Fire Lord Azula 15 decks
4 Inalla, Archmage Ritualist 9 decks
5 Saruman, the White Hand 9 decks
6 Anhelo, the Painter 8 decks
7 Lord Xander, the Collector 4 decks
8 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen 4 decks
9 Cecily, Haunted Mage 2 decks
10 Doctor Doom, King of Latveria 2 decks

The "good card" funnel

248 brought · 114 players

Brought to game

248

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.

≥ -10.6pp

Players who cast this card win 19% of the time (n=26) , vs 19% when it never left the library (n=140).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 26% (n=22).

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 -0.2pp; 95% confidence interval -10.6pp to +10.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=60

17%

18%

13%

42%

T6-9

T10+

Median 5.0 P25 4 · P75 8 · max 12

On curve 38% (11 / 60 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 17%

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.