Mox Opal card art
Live Play Data

Mox Opal

{0} · Legendary Artifact · Double Masters (2XM)
3%
Live Inclusion
Times Brought
455
Decks Running
248
Median Cast Turn
4.0
Drawn → Played
83%
Format

83% of drawn Mox Opals are cast before the game ends, and the median first cast lands on turn 4.0, making it one of the fastest mana rocks tracked on Playgroup Live.

Mox Opal is a zero-mana mythic artifact that generates one mana of any color under Metalcraft, meaning it asks you to build around it rather than slot it anywhere. Across 360 tracked multiplayer Commander games, 83% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended, a figure that reflects how quickly artifact-dense decks can activate Metalcraft and put the Mox to work.

Inclusion sits at 3% across tracked decks, which is narrow by design. Mox Opal rewards dedicated artifact strategies: Urza, Kinnan, Breya, and Shorikai all appear in its top-commander list. The card is colorless, so it fits any color identity, but the Metalcraft condition means it underperforms in non-artifact builds and experienced players know it.

The data is well-spread: 162 distinct players have brought Mox Opal to a tracked game, and no single player accounts for more than 83% of the dataset. Read these numbers as a broad early signal across a real cross-section of the Playgroup Live player base, not a single pilot's result.

At a glance
  • 3% of tracked Commander decks include Mox Opal
  • 83% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended
  • T4.0 median first-cast turn
  • 87% battlefield stickiness once cast
  • 162 distinct players have brought Mox Opal to a tracked game
  • 31% win rate in games where Mox Opal resolved

First-cast turn

n=100
18%
T1
11%
T2
10%
T3
12%
T4
11%
T5
33%
T6-9
5%
T10+
Median 4.0 P25 2 · P75 7 · max 13
Cast same turn as drawn 72%

The "good card" funnel

455 brought · 162 players
Brought to game
455
Ever drawn
120
Reached battlefield
100
Still on board at game end
87
83%

Of 455 Mox Opals brought to multiplayer games, 120 were drawn, 100 of those were cast, and 87% of cast copies remained on the battlefield through end of game.

≥ -2.4pp

Players who cast this card win 31% of the time (n=99) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=305).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 37% (n=19) — 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 +6.6pp; 95% confidence interval -2.4pp to +15.6pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

134 instances
4.5%
Library
64.9%
Battlefield
11.9%
Graveyard
8.2%
Exile

The vast majority of Mox Opals finish on the battlefield once cast. Most copies that never leave the library simply were not drawn, a structural reality of 100-card singleton rather than any hesitation to play it.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Kinnan and Urza headline the commander list, confirming that Mox Opal is tightly concentrated in artifact-synergy builds rather than spread evenly across the broader meta.

Frequently Asked

How often is Mox Opal drawn in a Commander game?
In 360 tracked multiplayer games where Mox Opal was in the deck, it was drawn 26% of the time. That is consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 120 instances that reached a player's hand, 83% were cast before the game ended.
What turn does Mox Opal typically get cast?
Median first cast is turn 4.0 in multiplayer games. The distribution clusters early: the most common single cast turn is turn 1, reflecting opening-hand keeps in artifact-heavy decks. The interquartile range stretches from turn 2 to turn 7, showing that late draws do still get cast when Metalcraft is already online.
Is Mox Opal banned in Commander?
No. Mox Opal is legal in Commander (and Oathbreaker, Legacy, Vintage, and Timeless). It is banned in Duel Commander and Historic. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, or Pauper. Despite its raw speed, the Commander rules committee has left it unrestricted in the main format, partly because the Metalcraft condition creates a real deckbuilding constraint.
Does casting Mox Opal actually improve your win rate?
The multiplayer data shows a +6.6 percentage-point lift when comparing the win rate of games where Mox Opal was cast (31%) against games where it sat uninteracted with in the library (25%). Both buckets have over 99 observations, which makes this directionally meaningful, though the confidence interval crosses zero on the current sample. Treat it as a consistent positive signal rather than a proven edge.
Which commanders most often run Mox Opal?
Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy leads the multiplayer list with 6 decks, followed by Kenrith, the Returned King and Esika, God of the Tree at 4-5 decks each. Urza, Lord High Artificer, Breya, Etherium Shaper, and Shorikai, Genesis Engine also appear, which maps neatly to the card's identity: it rewards commanders who generate or care about artifacts.
How sticky is Mox Opal once it lands?
87% of cast Mox Opals were still on the battlefield at end of game. Artifacts in general attract less targeted removal than creatures, and Mox Opal's zero mana cost means it rarely gets countered on tempo. Most copies that resolve simply stay in play for the rest of the game.