Live Play Data

Morbid Opportunist

· Creature — Human Rogue · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

10%

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

970

Decks Running

559

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

58%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Morbid Opportunist sits in 10% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, with a median first-cast turn of 5 and 58% of drawn copies reaching the battlefield before the game ends.

Morbid Opportunist earns its slot in black creature-death strategies by converting every board wipe and combat step into card equity. Across 913 tracked multiplayer games on Playgroup Live, 10% of decks include it, spread across 559 distinct lists out of 5812 tracked.

The median first cast lands on turn 5, two turns later than its 3-mana cost would suggest on-curve. That gap is mostly a hand-composition story: Morbid Opportunist rewards patient placement into a board state where creatures are already dying, not an opening-hand slam. Once it resolves, 40% of copies survive to end of game, a sign that opponents frequently prioritize other threats first. Of drawn copies, 58% reached the battlefield before the game ended.

The commander distribution is well-spread across 475 distinct players, with the single heaviest contributor accounting for just 2% of all tracked instances. Death-matters commanders dominate the top slots: Dina, Essence Brewer leads the pack, followed by Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls and Terra, Herald of Hope. That spread reflects the card's broad fit across Golgari, Rakdos, and Mardu sacrifice shells.

At a glance

10% of tracked Commander decks include Morbid Opportunist
T5 median first-cast turn, two turns behind its mana cost
58% of drawn copies reached the battlefield before the game ended
40% battlefield stickiness once cast
475 distinct players have brought it to a tracked game, a well-spread dataset
22% of casts landed exactly on curve at 3 mana

First-cast turn

n=131

14%

21%

33%

T6-9

15%

T10+

Median 5 P25 4 · P75 8 · max 18

On curve 22% (18 / 131 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 34%

The "good card" funnel

974 brought · 475 players

Brought to game

974

Ever drawn

226

Reached battlefield

131

Still on board at game end

58%

Of 974 copies brought to games, 226 were drawn, 131 of those were cast, and 40% of resolved copies remained on the battlefield through end of game.

≥ -3.1pp

Players who cast this card win 28% of the time (n=126) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=666).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 27% (n=87) — 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 +4.8pp; 95% confidence interval -3.1pp to +12.7pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

251 instances

2.8%

Library

20.7%

Battlefield

42.2%

Graveyard

6.8%

Exile

The graveyard is the dominant final zone for resolved copies, fitting for a creature in death-matters shells where board clears are constant. Most unresolved copies sit in hands or exile rather than the library, reflecting how often the card is actively drawn and played with.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Dina, Essence Brewer 65 decks
2 Terra, Herald of Hope 35 decks
3 Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls 33 decks
4 Caesar, Legion's Emperor 23 decks
5 Hazel of the Rootbloom 20 decks
6 Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER // Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel 18 decks
7 Deadpool, Trading Card 14 decks
8 Silverquill, the Disputant 12 decks
9 Chatterfang, Squirrel General 10 decks
10 Zurgo Stormrender 9 decks

Dina, Essence Brewer alone accounts for 53 tracked decks at the top, but the spread across sacrifice and death-matters commanders of many color identities shows this is a broadly adopted tool rather than a single-archetype card.

Frequently Asked

How often is Morbid Opportunist drawn in a Commander game?

In 913 tracked games where the card was in the deck, it was drawn 23% of the time. That is consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 226 copies that reached a player's hand, 58% were cast before the game ended. The remainder stayed uncast, most often because the game concluded before the player found a good window.

What turn does Morbid Opportunist typically hit the battlefield?

Median first cast is turn 5, with the 25th percentile at turn 4 and the 75th at turn 8. Only 22% of casts landed on curve at 3 mana, which means the card is usually arriving after a board state has developed rather than in the early game. That timing often works in its favor: more creatures on the table means more triggers on arrival.

How sticky is Morbid Opportunist once it resolves?

40% of resolved copies remained on the battlefield through end of game. For a 3-mana 1/3 with no built-in protection, that is a meaningful survival rate. Opponents tend to answer the enablers feeding the engine before they answer the draw engine itself, which lets Morbid Opportunist quietly accumulate value.

Which commanders run Morbid Opportunist most often?

Dina, Essence Brewer leads tracked decks on Playgroup Live, followed by Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls and Terra, Herald of Hope. The pattern is consistent: death-matters and sacrifice commanders that generate creature deaths every turn are the natural home. The data spans 475 unique players, so the distribution is not skewed by a single user's preference.

Is Morbid Opportunist banned or restricted anywhere?

Morbid Opportunist is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Historic, Duel Commander, and several other formats. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, or Pauper Commander. No bans or restrictions apply in Commander, where it sees the bulk of its competitive play.

Does casting Morbid Opportunist correlate with winning?

Games where Morbid Opportunist was cast show a win rate of 28% versus 24% when it stayed in the library, a raw gap of +4.8 percentage points. The sample size for cast games is 126, which is enough to call this a consistent directional signal but not a definitive proof. The lift likely reflects deck quality: players who build around creature death tend to have coherent strategies that win more often regardless of whether Morbid Opportunist specifically resolved.