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Llanowar Elves card art
Live Play Data

Llanowar Elves

{G} · Creature — Elf Druid · Foundations (FDN)
18%
Live Inclusion
Buy on TCGplayer
Times Brought
2399
Decks Running
1250
Median Cast Turn
3
Drawn → Played
77%
Format
Multiplayer 1v1

18% of tracked Commander decks run Llanowar Elves. When drawn, 77% of copies reach the battlefield, and the median first cast lands on turn 3.

Llanowar Elves appears in 18% of the 7011 distinct Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, landing in 1250 lists across 2144 recorded games. That footprint spans more than 930 distinct players, and no single contributor accounts for more than a small fraction of the data, making this one of the better-spread samples on the site.

The draw-to-play figure is the sharpest signal here. 77% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended. Players tend to deploy it quickly: the median hand-to-cast delay is zero turns, meaning the most common outcome is casting it on the same turn it enters hand. The median first-cast turn is 3, but turn 1 is the single most frequent cast turn in the distribution, reflecting the value of an opening-hand Elf.

Llanowar Elves is a pure green mana accelerant restricted to green and green-adjacent Commander shells. It shows up most heavily under Golgari (BG) and mono-green commanders, exactly where a one-mana creature that taps for green fits cleanest. Its battlefield stickiness of 51% is lower than harder-to-remove artifacts, reflecting how often opponents prioritize killing early mana dorks.

At a glance
  • 18% of tracked Commander decks include Llanowar Elves
  • 77% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended
  • T3 median first-cast turn, with turn 1 as the most common single cast turn
  • 51% battlefield stickiness once cast, lower than artifacts due to removal pressure
  • 33% of casts landed on-curve (turn 1 for this 1-mana card)
  • 930 distinct players have brought Llanowar Elves to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=497
33%
T1
14%
T2
7%
T3
7%
T4
8%
T5
25%
T6-9
6%
T10+
Median 3 P25 1 · P75 6 · max 23
On curve 33% (163 / 497 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 71%

The "good card" funnel

2399 brought · 930 players
Brought to game
2399
Ever drawn
647
Reached battlefield
497
Still on board at game end
251
77%

Of 2399 Llanowar Elves brought to games, 647 were drawn, 497 of those were cast, and 51% of cast copies survived to the end of the game.

≥ -1.5pp

Players who cast this card win 27% of the time (n=468) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=1515).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 32% (n=132) — 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 -1.5pp to +6.9pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

693 instances
2.9%
Library
36.2%
Battlefield
39.0%
Graveyard
6.8%
Exile

Most singleton cards in a 100-card deck never leave the library, so the graveyard and battlefield counts here represent the meaningful action. Llanowar Elves ends up in the graveyard frequently, a direct result of how aggressively opponents remove early mana creatures.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The commander list spans a dozen different commanders with no single shell claiming a dominant share, reflecting how broadly green and Golgari players reach for one-mana ramp across many archetypes.

Frequently Asked

How often is Llanowar Elves drawn in a Commander game?
Across 2144 tracked Commander games where Llanowar Elves was in the deck, it was drawn 27% of the time. That is consistent with what you would expect from a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 647 instances that reached a hand, 77% were cast before the game concluded.
What turn does Llanowar Elves typically get cast?
The median first-cast turn is 3, but the distribution skews heavily early. Turn 1 is the single most frequent cast turn, reflecting players who found it in their opening hand and played it immediately. The hand-to-cast data backs this up: the median delay between drawing and casting is zero turns, and 71% of drawn-then-cast copies were cast on the same turn they were drawn.
Does casting Llanowar Elves actually improve your odds of winning?
The cast-vs-library win-rate delta is a modest positive signal, but both sample sizes and the confidence interval mean this should be read as directional only. The 468-observation cast bucket and the standard error on the delta make a strong claim premature. What we can say is that the early data does not show a negative correlation between casting the Elf and winning, which is the right baseline for a support piece.
How sticky is Llanowar Elves once it hits the battlefield?
51% of cast copies were still on the battlefield at the end of the game. That is notably lower than noncreature mana accelerants like Sol Ring, which reflects a real play pattern: opponents often kill mana dorks early to disrupt ramp before they generate meaningful value. A lower stickiness number for Llanowar Elves is expected and does not indicate a weakness unique to this card.
Which commanders run Llanowar Elves most often?
The top commanders in the dataset are Witherbloom, the Balancer and High Perfect Morcant (each appearing in over a dozen tracked decks), followed by Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy and Maralen, Fae Ascendant. Green and Golgari (BG) shells dominate the list, which tracks cleanly with the card's mono-green color identity. Kinnan is a notable fit because it synergizes directly with nonhuman mana creatures.
Is Llanowar Elves legal in Commander?
Yes. Llanowar Elves is legal in Commander, Duel Commander, Pauper Commander, Oathbreaker, and most other major formats. It is not legal in Old School. It is a common in the Foundations set, making it widely accessible and inexpensive to acquire for any green deck.