Lethal Scheme
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Instant
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Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC)
Lethal Scheme appears in 5% of tracked Commander decks, and 62% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends, with a median first-cast turn of 7.
Lethal Scheme is a convoke-powered instant that destroys a creature or planeswalker and rewards each tapping creature with a connive trigger. Across 820 tracked multiplayer Commander games on Playgroup Live, it sits in 5% of the 8560 distinct decks in the dataset, carried by 454 lists.
The card resolves late: median first cast lands on turn 7, with the bulk of casts clustered between turns 6 and 9. That timing reflects how convoke actually plays out in Commander pods. Players need a board of creatures before Lethal Scheme becomes efficient, so early-game hands often hold it until the midgame develops. Of 198 drawn copies, 62% reached resolution. Because it is an instant, the remaining gap largely reflects copies drawn near game's end rather than deliberate choice to hold up the card.
The concentration picture is healthy. 400 distinct players have brought Lethal Scheme to a tracked game, and no single player accounts for more than a small slice of the total instances. That spread means the stats reflect genuine breadth of play rather than one prolific contributor skewing the numbers.
- 5% of tracked Commander decks include Lethal Scheme
- 23% draw rate across participations where it was in the deck
- 62% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended
- T7 median first-cast turn, deep in the midgame
- 400 distinct players have brought it to a tracked game, showing broad adoption
First-cast turn
n=123The "good card" funnel
844 brought · 400 playersOf 844 Lethal Scheme copies brought to games, 198 were drawn, and 123 of those resolved, with nearly all landing in the graveyard as expected for an instant removal spell.
Players who cast this card win 29% of the time (n=108) , vs 22% when it never left the library (n=484).
When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 24% (n=66) — 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 +7.1pp; 95% confidence interval -1.8pp to +15.9pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.
Final zone distribution
243 instancesMost Lethal Scheme copies finish in the graveyard after resolving, which is expected for an instant. The small count ending in hand or exile reflects copies drawn late or countered rather than ones that never saw play.
Commanders that played this card
in tracked games-
1
Doctor Doom, King of Latveria
123 decks
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2
Y'shtola, Night's Blessed
104 decks
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3
Teval, the Balanced Scale
48 decks
-
4
Caesar, Legion's Emperor
29 decks
-
5
Admiral Brass, Unsinkable
21 decks
-
6
Loki, the Deceiver
9 decks
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7
Edgar Markov
7 decks
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8
Baron Helmut Zemo
6 decks
-
9
Kuja, Genome Sorcerer // Trance Kuja, Fate Defied
6 decks
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10
Kamiz, Obscura Oculus
5 decks
Doctor Doom, King of Latveria dominates the top slot by raw deck count, but the list fans out across ten different commanders spanning Grixis, Esper, Sultai, and mono-black, showing Lethal Scheme earns its spot in many creature-heavy black strategies.
Lethal Scheme
or one mana of that creature's color.)
Destroy target creature or planeswalker. Each creature that convoked this spell connives. (Draw a card, then discard a card. If you discarded a nonland card, put a +1/+1 counter on that creature.)