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Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen

Legendary Creature — Elder Dragon // Legendary Planeswalker — Bolas · Core Set 2019 (M19)

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

130

Decks Running

In Decks

388

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Card text

Nicol Bolas, the Ravager

Legendary Creature — Elder Dragon

Flying When Nicol Bolas enters, each opponent discards a card. {4}

: Exile Nicol Bolas, then return him to the battlefield transformed under his owner's control. Activate only as a sorcery.

4 / 4

Nicol Bolas, the Arisen

Legendary Planeswalker — Bolas

+2: Draw two cards. −3: Nicol Bolas deals 10 damage to target creature or planeswalker. −4: Put target creature or planeswalker card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. −12: Exile all but the bottom card of target player's library.

Loyalty 7

Core Set 2019 (M19) · Mythic · Illustrated by Svetlin Velinov

Final zone distribution

68 instances

1.5%

Library

32.4%

Battlefield

14.7%

Graveyard

4.4%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen 13 decks
2 The Ur-Dragon 13 decks
3 Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge 8 decks
4 Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler of Ruin 4 decks
5 Marchesa, the Black Rose 3 decks
6 Sauron, the Dark Lord 3 decks
7 Jared Carthalion 2 decks
8 Child of Alara 1 decks
9 Doctor Doom, King of Latveria 1 decks
10 Lord Xander, the Collector 1 decks

The "good card" funnel

130 brought · 51 players

Brought to game

130

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ +11.7pp

Players who cast this card win 53% of the time (n=18) , vs 19% when it never left the library (n=68).

Observed gap +34.2pp; 95% confidence interval +11.7pp to +56.7pp. 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 650,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.