Live Play Data

Mystic Forge

· Artifact · Commander Masters (CMM)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1108

Decks Running

566

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

69%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

30% of games where Mystic Forge resolved ended in a win for the caster, a +5.9 percentage-point lift over the 24% baseline when it stays in the library.

Mystic Forge sits in 3% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, a focused niche reflecting its true home: artifact-dense, colorless-heavy builds that want a repeatable stream of free casts off the top of the library. The 566 decks running it span 460 distinct players, with no single player accounting for more than a small slice of the data, which makes the signal unusually clean for a card at this inclusion level.

When Mystic Forge reaches the battlefield, 30% of those games convert to a win. Games where it never leaves the library close at 24%. That +5.9 percentage-point gap is directional and sits just above the lower confidence bound, so treat it as an early positive signal rather than a hard conclusion. The median first-cast turn is 6, consistent with a 4-mana permanent that typically needs a few turns of setup before it can be deployed and exploited.

The top-commander distribution tells the clearest story: Zhulodok, Szarekh, Ulalek, and a cluster of colorless or artifact-themed commanders dominate the inclusion list. Mystic Forge is not a generic good-stuff card. It earns its slot in decks that can reliably feed it artifact spells and colorless spells to chain off the top.

At a glance

3% of tracked Commander decks include Mystic Forge
69% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended
T6 median first-cast turn, one above its mana value
79% battlefield stickiness once Mystic Forge resolves
460 distinct players have brought Mystic Forge to a tracked game
+5.9 percentage-point win-rate lift over the library baseline (directional)

First-cast turn

n=181

17%

15%

47%

T6-9

10%

T10+

Median 6 P25 4 · P75 8 · max 13

On curve 27% (31 / 181 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 36%

The "good card" funnel

1108 brought · 460 players

Brought to game

1108

Ever drawn

261

Reached battlefield

181

Still on board at game end

143

69%

Of 1108 Mystic Forges brought to games, 261 were drawn, 181 of those were cast, and 79% of resolved copies remained on the battlefield through the end of the game.

≥ -1.2pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=167) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=703).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 20% (n=72) — 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 +5.9pp; 95% confidence interval -1.2pp to +13.0pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

301 instances

1.7%

Library

47.5%

Battlefield

22.3%

Graveyard

9.0%

Exile

The vast majority of Mystic Forge copies never leave the library, the expected structural result of a singleton in a 100-card deck. Among observed copies, the battlefield is the most common final resting place, consistent with the card's high stickiness once resolved.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Zhulodok, Void Gorger 54 decks
2 Szarekh, the Silent King 42 decks
3 Ulalek, Fused Atrocity 36 decks
4 Ultron, Artificial Malevolence 22 decks
5 Molecule Man 20 decks
6 Imotekh the Stormlord 19 decks
7 Dr. Madison Li 16 decks
8 Urza, Lord High Artificer 14 decks
9 T'Challa, the Black Panther 12 decks
10 Mendicant Core, Guidelight 11 decks

The commander list skews heavily toward colorless and artifact-tribal strategies. Szarekh, Zhulodok, and Ulalek each clear 20 decks, signaling that Mystic Forge is a specialist inclusion rather than a broadly adopted staple.

Card text

Mystic Forge

Artifact

You may look at the top card of your library any time. You may cast artifact spells and colorless spells from the top of your library. {T}

, Pay 1 life: Exile the top card of your library.

Commander Masters (CMM) · Rare · Illustrated by Titus Lunter

Frequently Asked

How often is Mystic Forge drawn and cast in a tracked Commander game?

Across 1064 tracked multiplayer Commander games where Mystic Forge was in the deck, it was drawn 24% of the time. Of the 261 instances that reached a hand, 69% were cast before the game ended. The remainder were mostly a game-length effect: cards drawn in the late game often never resolve before the table reaches a conclusion.

What turn does Mystic Forge usually land on the battlefield?

Median first-cast turn is 6, with the 25th–75th percentile band running from turn 5 to turn 8. A handful of copies (3 in the distribution) hit on turn 1 via aggressive ramp, but the bulk of casts cluster in the mid-game. The card's 4-mana cost means most players need at least a turn of ramp or a lucky opening hand to deploy it ahead of curve.

Does casting Mystic Forge actually improve your odds of winning?

In 167 participations where Mystic Forge reached the battlefield, the caster won 30% of games. In 703 participations where it stayed in the library, the win rate was 24%. The +5.9 percentage-point gap is a positive directional signal. The sample size is sufficient to report, but the confidence interval just grazes zero on the low end, so read this as encouraging rather than conclusive.

Which commanders most commonly run Mystic Forge?

The top of the Playgroup Live list is led by Szarekh the Silent King, Zhulodok Void Gorger, and Ulalek Fused Atrocity, each with 20 or more decks in the tracked set. That pattern reflects Mystic Forge's core use case: commanders that generate large numbers of colorless or artifact spells and want the card-advantage engine the Forge provides. Commanders with restricted color identities that limit access to blue card draw are especially strong adopters.

Is Mystic Forge legal in Commander? What about other formats?

Mystic Forge is legal and unrestricted in Commander, which is the format this page focuses on. It is also legal in Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Historic, Timeless, and Gladiator. It is restricted in Vintage, meaning only one copy is permitted in that format's decks. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, or Pauper Commander.

How concentrated is the Mystic Forge data across players?

460 distinct players have brought Mystic Forge to at least one tracked game, and the heaviest single contributor accounts for only 24% of all instances. That spread is a strength of the dataset: no single player's preferences are skewing the numbers materially. You can read the win-rate and cast-turn figures as a reasonably cross-player signal rather than one pilot's results.