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Merchant of Venom

· Creature — Cat Warlock · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

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Times Brought

281

Decks Running

162

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

Merchant of Venom

Creature — Cat Warlock

Menace When this creature enters, each player sacrifices a creature of their choice. Whenever a player sacrifices a permanent, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature.

1 / 1

Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC) · Rare · Illustrated by Diana Franco

Final zone distribution

61 instances

36.1%

Battlefield

36.1%

Graveyard

27.9%

Hand

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Dina, Essence Brewer 141 decks
2 Gorma, the Gullet 4 decks
3 Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER // Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel 2 decks
4 Sheoldred, Whispering One 2 decks
5 Torgaar, Famine Incarnate 2 decks
6 Arahbo, the First Fang 1 decks
7 Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder 1 decks
8 Joel, Resolute Survivor 1 decks
9 Korvold, Fae-Cursed King 1 decks
10 Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest 1 decks

The "good card" funnel

282 brought · 159 players

Brought to game

282

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 46% 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.

≥ -7.5pp

Players who cast this card win 23% of the time (n=39) , vs 22% when it never left the library (n=134).

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 +1.4pp; 95% confidence interval -7.5pp to +10.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=48

17%

10%

56%

T6-9

15%

T10+

Median 7.0 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 21

On curve 19% (8 / 48 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 29%

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 730,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.