Live Play Data

Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker

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

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

280

Decks Running

112

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

61%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=53

74%

T6-9

11%

T10+

Median 7 P25 6 · P75 9 · max 12

On curve 74% (7 / 53 cast on T8) Cast same turn as drawn 25%

The "good card" funnel

280 brought · 100 players

Brought to game

280

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 55% of this card is still on the battlefield at game end. This reflects how often it survives removal, not just whether it's a permanent.

≥ +13.9pp

Players who cast this card win 47% of the time (n=45) , vs 19% when it never left the library (n=147).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 25% (n=27).

Read this as correlation, not as the card's contribution. Casting a card means you lived long enough to cast it, so this gap widens with mana value across every card we track.

Observed gap +28.1pp; 95% confidence interval +13.9pp to +42.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

95 instances

4.2%

Library

30.5%

Battlefield

31.6%

Graveyard

8.4%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen 30 decks
2 Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge 20 decks
3 Tam, the Possibility 20 decks
4 Jace, Multiverse Architect 15 decks
5 Arzakon 2 decks
6 Codie, Vociferous Codex 2 decks
7 Nicol Bolas 2 decks
8 Progenitus 2 decks
9 Sauron, the Dark Lord 2 decks
10 The Ur-Dragon 2 decks

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

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games, and the full charts need a sample of at least 25 observed games that is not dominated by a single pilot. 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 730,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.