Live Play Data

Minamo, School at Water's Edge

Legendary Land · Champions of Kamigawa (CHK)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

735

Decks Running

344

Median Cast Turn

4.0

Drawn → Played

73%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Minamo, School at Water's Edge lands on the battlefield and stays there: 96% stickiness across 146 tracked casts, with a median first-cast turn of 4.0 and a cast win rate of 40%.

Minamo, School at Water's Edge is a legendary land from Champions of Kamigawa that produces blue mana and, for {U}, untaps any legendary permanent. On Playgroup Live, it appears in 4% of tracked Commander decks, a focused but consistent niche defined almost entirely by blue legendary-permanent strategies.

The card's most striking number is battlefield stickiness: 96% of cast copies remain in play through end of game. That is the natural resilience of lands. It takes targeted land destruction, not just a removal spell, to dislodge Minamo once it resolves. When it does reach the battlefield, the caster's win rate is 40%, a +12.5 percentage-point lift over the 27% baseline for games where Minamo never left the library. With 135 observations in the cast bucket and 458 in the library bucket, this is a meaningful early signal rather than a settled fact, but the direction is consistent.

The untap ability scales best with commanders that tap for large effects. Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy, Urza, Lord High Artificer, and Sauron, the Dark Lord all appear near the top of the commander distribution, reflecting Minamo's home in tap-heavy blue artifact or legendary-matters builds.

At a glance

4% of tracked Commander decks include Minamo
96% battlefield stickiness once Minamo resolves
T4.0 median turn Minamo first hits play
73% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
40% win rate in games where Minamo was cast
291 distinct players have brought Minamo to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=146

14%

16%

12%

13%

11%

29%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4.0 P25 2 · P75 6 · max 18

Cast same turn as drawn 59%

The "good card" funnel

735 brought · 291 players

Brought to game

735

Ever drawn

200

Reached battlefield

146

Still on board at game end

140

73%

Of 735 Minamos brought to games, 200 were drawn, 146 were cast, and 96% of those cast copies remained on the battlefield through the game's end.

≥ +4.0pp

Players who cast this card win 40% of the time (n=135) , vs 27% when it never left the library (n=458).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 46% (n=52) — 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 +12.5pp; 95% confidence interval +4.0pp to +20.9pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

223 instances

1.3%

Library

62.8%

Battlefield

13.9%

Graveyard

3.1%

Exile

The overwhelming majority of Minamo copies end the game on the battlefield, an expected pattern for a land that dodges most removal, while only a small fraction reach the library because the card is almost always observed.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Sauron, the Dark Lord 12 decks
2 Jin Sakai, Ghost of Tsushima 11 decks
3 Thranduil, the Elvenking 10 decks
4 Helga, Skittish Seer 9 decks
5 Shorikai, Genesis Engine 9 decks
6 Y'shtola, Night's Blessed 7 decks
7 Jodah, the Unifier 6 decks
8 Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait 5 decks
9 Aragorn, the Uniter 5 decks
10 Bruce Banner // The Incredible Hulk 5 decks

The commander spread is wide, with no single commander dominating the list, though blue artifact and legendary-matters builds cluster near the top.

Card text

Minamo, School at Water's Edge

Legendary Land

: Add

: Untap target legendary permanent.

Champions of Kamigawa (CHK) · Rare · Illustrated by Jeremy Jarvis

Frequently Asked

How often is Minamo drawn in a Commander game?

Across 708 tracked games where Minamo was in the deck, it was drawn 27% of the time. That is typical for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 200 instances that reached a player's hand, 73% were cast before the game ended. The remainder reflects games that ended before the player found a window to play it, not deliberate holding.

What turn does Minamo usually enter play?

Median first-cast turn is 4.0, with the distribution spread from turn 1 through the mid-game. The 25th percentile lands on turn 2 and the 75th on turn 6, so roughly half of all Minamo casts happen in the first five turns. Because Minamo is a land with no mana cost, early casts often come off a land drop rather than a spell cast, which compresses the curve downward.

Does casting Minamo actually correlate with winning?

In 135 tracked participations where Minamo was cast, the normalized win rate is 40%. In 458 participations where it stayed in the library, the rate is 27%. That is a +12.5 percentage-point gap. Both sample sizes are large enough to treat this as a directional signal. The effect likely reflects deck quality as much as Minamo's direct impact, since the decks that include and play Minamo efficiently tend to be tuned blue builds.

Is Minamo legal in Commander?

Yes. Minamo, School at Water's Edge is legal and unrestricted in Commander, as well as in Legacy, Vintage, Modern, Duel Commander, and Oathbreaker. It is not legal in Standard, Pioneer, Historic, Brawl, or Pauper. Its color identity is mono-blue, so it fits into any Commander deck whose commander is blue or colorless.

Which commanders most commonly pair with Minamo?

On Playgroup Live, the top pairings in multiplayer games include Sauron, the Dark Lord, Helga, Skittish Seer, and Shorikai, Genesis Engine, each appearing in several tracked decks. The common thread is blue access and commanders that benefit from repeated untapping or generate value by tapping. Minamo is weakest in decks whose commander taps for nothing or rarely enters the battlefield.