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Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire card art
Live Play Data

Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire

Instant // Land · Zendikar Rising (ZNR)
10%
Live Inclusion
Buy on TCGplayer
Times Brought
1556
Decks Running
855
Median Cast Turn
6
Drawn → Played
59%
Format
Multiplayer 1v1

Malakir Rebirth shows up in 10% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, with a median first-cast turn of 6 and 59% of drawn copies reaching the stack before the game ends.

Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire sits in 10% of the 8560 Commander decks that have played a tracked game on Playgroup Live. That places it as a selective but meaningful pickup across black strategies, prized for the flexibility of entering as a land when the instant is irrelevant.

The draw-to-play figure of 59% is notably lower than you'd expect from a cheap, efficient spell. That gap is at least partly structural: as a modal double-faced card, it often enters the battlefield as a land rather than being cast as an instant, and games that end before the card is needed also suppress the cast count. Median first cast lands on turn 6, consistent with the card being held for the right protective window rather than slammed early.

The card appears broadly across the black Commander meta. 614 distinct players have brought it to a tracked game, and no single player accounts for more than a small fraction of instances, which gives the dataset reasonable breadth for an uncommon from a 2020 set.

At a glance
  • 10% of tracked Commander decks include Malakir Rebirth
  • 23% draw rate per game when in the deck
  • 59% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended
  • T6 median first-cast turn
  • 614 distinct players have brought it to a tracked game
  • 28% win rate in games where it was cast (normalized to 4-player baseline)

First-cast turn

n=215
9%
T1
2%
T2
10%
T3
9%
T4
13%
T5
49%
T6-9
7%
T10+
Median 6 P25 4 · P75 8 · max 17
On curve 9% (20 / 215 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 33%

The "good card" funnel

1556 brought · 614 players
Brought to game
1556
Ever drawn
365
Reached battlefield
215
Still on board at game end
95
59%

Of 1556 copies brought to games, 365 were drawn, 215 of those were cast as the instant, and the rest either entered as a land face or went unused before the game ended.

≥ -2.6pp

Players who cast this card win 28% of the time (n=201) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=990).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 26% (n=138) — 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 +3.9pp; 95% confidence interval -2.6pp to +10.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

424 instances
4.2%
Library
22.4%
Battlefield
35.6%
Graveyard
11.6%
Exile

Most Malakir Rebirths that never leave the library were likely played as land drops instead, making the library bucket smaller than for a pure instant, and the graveyard zone reflects resolved instant casts that did their job.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The commander spread runs from mono-black to three-color shells, with no single commander dominating the list, which reflects how broadly useful a flexible protection spell is across black strategies.

Card text
Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire card Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire back face

Malakir Rebirth

{B}
Instant
Choose target creature. You lose 2 life. Until end of turn, that creature gains "When this creature dies, return it to the battlefield tapped under its owner's control."

Malakir Mire

Land
This land enters tapped. {T}: Add {B}.
Zendikar Rising (ZNR) · Uncommon · Illustrated by Marta Nael

Frequently Asked

How often is Malakir Rebirth drawn in a Commander game?
Across 1438 tracked games where Malakir Rebirth was in the deck, it was drawn 23% of the time. That is consistent with singleton probability in a 100-card deck. Of the 365 instances that reached a hand, 59% were cast before the game ended. The rest went uncast, either because the game concluded first or because the card entered the battlefield as its land face instead.
What turn does Malakir Rebirth typically get cast?
Median first-cast turn is 6, with a mean around 5.86. The distribution is spread fairly evenly from turns 1 through 9, with a small cluster of early casts likely from opening hands. The 1-mana cost means it can be deployed reactively at almost any point in the game, so late casts are not unusual. The on-curve rate is low, which mostly reflects the card being drawn after turn 1 rather than players choosing to delay.
Does casting Malakir Rebirth actually correlate with winning?
In 201 tracked games where Malakir Rebirth was cast, the win rate was 28% (normalized to a 4-player baseline of 25%). Games where the card stayed in the library showed a win rate of 24%. The cast-vs-library delta is positive but the confidence interval on this sample crosses zero, so treat it as an early directional signal rather than a firm conclusion.
Is Malakir Rebirth legal in Commander?
Yes. Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire is legal in Commander with no restrictions. It is also legal in Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Historic, and several other formats. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, or Pauper Commander.
Why do players run Malakir Rebirth in Commander?
The card does two different things depending on when you draw it. Early, you can play it as a tapped Swamp that does not cost you a spell slot. Late, or in response to a removal spell, it gives a creature you control a death trigger that causes it to return to the battlefield after dying. That flexibility, one card doing the job of both a land drop and a protection spell, is the core appeal in black Commander decks that run tight 100-card lists and need every slot to pull weight.
Which commanders most commonly run Malakir Rebirth?
On Playgroup Live, Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER tops the list by raw deck count, followed by Deadpool, Trading Card, Kuja, Genome Sorcerer, and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. The spread across mono-black, Rakdos, Sultai, and other black-inclusive color identities confirms the card is valued wherever black has key creatures worth protecting rather than in any single niche archetype.