Live Play Data

Opal Palace

Land · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

910

Decks Running

491

Median Cast Turn

5.0

Drawn → Played

78%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Opal Palace appears in 3% of tracked multiplayer Commander decks, drawn 25% of the time and cast 78% of the time when it reaches a player's hand, with a median first-cast turn of 5.0.

Opal Palace is a niche utility land that trades raw mana efficiency for a commander-scaling bonus. It sits in 3% of tracked multiplayer Commander decks on Playgroup Live, appearing in 491 of 17176 distinct tracked decks. That low inclusion figure reflects its narrow role: the card only pays off in strategies built around recasting a commander with +1/+1 counters.

When Opal Palace does land in a player's hand, it reaches play 78% of the time. Median first-cast turn is 5.0, which fits its identity as a turn-one or turn-two land drop that sits and waits until the commander is ready to re-enter. The 89% battlefield stickiness is expected for a land: it rarely leaves play once it resolves.

The commander distribution tells the real story. Zimone, Infinite Analyst leads the top commanders list by a wide margin, which makes sense. Commanders that expect to be cast multiple times, or that scale hard with +1/+1 counters, are exactly where Opal Palace earns its slot. The data from 414 unique players, with the single heaviest contributor accounting for just 25% of instances, gives reasonable confidence the signal is spread across a real population.

At a glance

3% of tracked multiplayer Commander decks include Opal Palace
78% of drawn copies reach play before the game ends
T5.0 median first-cast turn across all observed games
89% battlefield stickiness once played, as expected for a land
414 unique players have brought Opal Palace to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=178

11%

10%

14%

13%

33%

T6-9

11%

T10+

Median 5.0 P25 3 · P75 7 · max 18

Cast same turn as drawn 49%

The "good card" funnel

914 brought · 414 players

Brought to game

914

Ever drawn

227

Reached battlefield

178

Still on board at game end

159

78%

Of 914 Opal Palace copies brought to multiplayer games, 227 were drawn, 178 of those were played, and the overwhelming majority stayed on the battlefield through the end of the game.

≥ -3.6pp

Players who cast this card win 26% of the time (n=161) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=576).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 22% (n=44) — 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 +3.2pp; 95% confidence interval -3.6pp to +10.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

247 instances

5.7%

Library

64.4%

Battlefield

11.7%

Graveyard

2.4%

Exile

The vast majority of Opal Palace copies finish on the battlefield, which is normal for a utility land. Only a small fraction end up in the graveyard or exile, typically from mass land destruction or sacrifice effects.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Zimone, Infinite Analyst dominates the top-commanders list by raw deck count, but the spread across very different color identities and archetypes shows Opal Palace is not locked to a single strategy.

Card text

Opal Palace

Land

: Add

: Add one mana of any color in your commander's color identity. If you spend this mana to cast your commander, it enters with a number of additional +1/+1 counters on it equal to the number of times it's been cast from the command zone this game.

Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC) · Common · Illustrated by John Avon

Frequently Asked

How often is Opal Palace drawn in a Commander game?

Across 882 tracked multiplayer games where Opal Palace was in the deck, it was drawn 25% of the time. That is consistent with a single land in a 100-card singleton deck. Of 227 drawn copies, 78% were played before the game ended. The remainder mostly reflects games that concluded before the land was cast, not deliberate choice to hold it.

What turn does Opal Palace typically enter play?

Median first-cast turn is 5.0 in multiplayer games. The distribution is fairly spread: some copies land early as a turn-one or turn-two mana source, while others come down mid-game when a player is setting up for a commander re-cast. The mean sits a bit above the median, pulled up by late-game draws.

Is Opal Palace legal in Commander?

Yes. Opal Palace is legal in Commander, Duel Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Oathbreaker, and Pauper Commander. It is not legal in Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Historic, Brawl, or Alchemy. Being a common-rarity card, it also shows up in Pauper Commander pods.

Which commanders use Opal Palace most?

Zimone, Infinite Analyst leads the Playgroup Live dataset by a substantial margin, followed by Ashling, the Limitless and Ulalek, Fused Atrocity. The common thread is commanders that benefit from re-entry or that scale with +1/+1 counters. Opal Palace's bonus only triggers when you spend its mana to cast your commander, so decks expecting multiple commander casts get the most value.

Does casting Opal Palace improve your win rate?

In 161 participations where Opal Palace was cast, the normalized win rate was 26%. In participations where it stayed in the library, the rate was 23%. The delta is a small positive signal, but both sample sizes are modest and the confidence interval crosses zero, so treat this as directional rather than conclusive.

Why does Opal Palace see low overall inclusion if it is so synergistic?

Low inclusion reflects genuine selectivity, not obscurity. Opal Palace only adds a +1/+1 counter if you use its colored mana to cast your commander, and only when that commander has already been cast from the command zone at least once before. In decks where the commander dies or gets tucked rarely, the land is essentially a colorless Wastes. Players building around counter-scaling or high-recurrence commanders find it worthwhile. Everyone else correctly skips it.