Card Preview

Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker

· Legendary Planeswalker — Bolas · Archenemy: Nicol Bolas (E01)

Decklist Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

Decks Running

In Decks

251

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Card text

Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker

Legendary Planeswalker — Bolas

+3: Destroy target noncreature permanent. −2: Gain control of target creature. −9: Nicol Bolas deals 7 damage to target player or planeswalker. That player or that planeswalker's controller discards seven cards, then sacrifices seven permanents of their choice.

Loyalty 5

Archenemy: Nicol Bolas (E01) · Mythic · Illustrated by Chris Rahn

Final zone distribution

27 instances

Not enough tracked games yet to show a reliable final-zone breakdown.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen 9 decks
2 Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge 6 decks
3 Sauron, the Dark Lord 2 decks
4 Be'lakor, the Dark Master 1 decks
5 Cecily, Haunted Mage 1 decks
6 Codie, Vociferous Codex 1 decks
7 Edward Kenway 1 decks
8 Jared Carthalion 1 decks
9 Nicol Bolas 1 decks
10 Niv-Mizzet, Guildpact 1 decks

The "good card" funnel

70 brought · 28 players

Brought to game

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ +5.1pp

Players who cast this card win 43% of the time (n=16) , vs 15% when it never left the library (n=34).

Observed gap +28.3pp; 95% confidence interval +5.1pp to +51.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

18 of 100 times cast 18%

Full analysis unlocks as more games are tracked. Stats refresh nightly.

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Basic play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games; the full deep-dive page needs a larger, more diverse sample (at least 300 tracked games played by 10 or more different pilots, with no single pilot over 40 percent of the copies). 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 670,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.