Live Play Data

Putrefy

· Instant · Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander (ECC)

18%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

1000

Decks Running

572

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

64%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Putrefy sits in 18% of tracked Commander decks in its color identity, is drawn 20% of the time, and reaches the stack in 64% of those instances, with a median first-cast turn of 7.

Putrefy appears in 18% of the 3264 tracked Commander decks in the Playgroup Live dataset, covering 572 distinct decklists. For a Golgari removal spell competing against a deep field of options, that share reflects a consistent role across a wide range of pod styles.

The draw-to-play figure sits at 64%: when a copy enters a player's hand, roughly two in three reach the stack before the game ends. Median first-cast turn is 7, consistent with the reactive nature of the card. Players don't slam it on curve. It waits for the right target. The hand-to-cast delay averages about 2.5 turns, reinforcing that Putrefy is held as a response rather than proactively spent.

The data is well-spread. 478 distinct players have brought Putrefy to a tracked game, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for just 20% of total instances, an early signal that what we see is not driven by one or two prolific players running it repeatedly.

At a glance

18% of tracked Commander decks include Putrefy
20% draw rate across tracked games
64% of drawn copies reach the stack before game end
T7 median first-cast turn
478 distinct players have brought Putrefy to a tracked game
26% normalized win rate in games where Putrefy resolved

First-cast turn

n=131

13%

16%

50%

T6-9

17%

T10+

Median 7 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 14

On curve 4% (4 / 131 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 24%

The "good card" funnel

1000 brought · 478 players

Brought to game

1000

Ever drawn

204

Reached battlefield

131

Still on board at game end

64%

Of 1000 Putrefy copies brought to games, 204 were drawn, and 131 of those were cast, a conversion chain reflecting the held-for-value play pattern typical of reactive removal.

≥ -0.8pp

Players who cast this card win 26% of the time (n=121) , vs 19% when it never left the library (n=642).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 17% (n=65) — 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 +6.5pp; 95% confidence interval -0.8pp to +13.9pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

261 instances

3.8%

Library

3.1%

Battlefield

57.5%

Graveyard

10.0%

Exile

Putrefy is an instant, so the graveyard is its expected final home. The vast majority of cast copies end up there, while most uncast copies remain in the library, a structural artifact of 100-card singleton rather than player preference.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Hearthhull, the Worldseed 61 decks
2 Teval, the Balanced Scale 53 decks
3 The Wise Mothman 50 decks
4 Auntie Ool, Cursewretch 47 decks
5 Hazel of the Rootbloom 33 decks
6 Lathril, Blade of the Elves 22 decks
7 Chatterfang, Squirrel General 16 decks
8 Meren of Clan Nel Toth 13 decks
9 Gonti, Canny Acquisitor 12 decks
10 High Perfect Morcant 12 decks

Putrefy's commander list spreads across the full Golgari color-identity spectrum, from two-color pairs to four-color piles, with no single commander overwhelming the count, a sign it is a format-wide role-player rather than a card tied to one archetype.

Frequently Asked

How often is Putrefy drawn in a Commander game?

Across 951 tracked games where Putrefy was in the deck, it was drawn 20% of the time. That is typical for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 204 copies that reached a player's hand, 64% were cast before the game ended. The remainder largely reflects games that ended before the player found a suitable target or an opportunity to cast it.

What turn does Putrefy typically get cast?

Median first-cast turn is 7. The interquartile range runs from turn 5 to turn 9, which fits the pattern of a reactive removal spell held until a high-value target presents itself. Players sit on it an average of roughly 2.5 turns after drawing it before committing. Only about 24% of drawn copies are cast on the same turn they are drawn, confirming it is played deliberately rather than reflexively.

Does casting Putrefy correlate with winning?

Games where Putrefy resolved show a normalized win rate of 26% across 121 observed participations. Games where it stayed in the library show 19%. The delta is a directional positive signal, but the confidence interval around it overlaps zero at this sample size, so treat it as early directional data rather than a proven causal effect.

Is Putrefy banned anywhere relevant?

Putrefy is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Historic, Timeless, and several other formats. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, or Pauper Commander. No major ban or restriction applies to the formats where it sees the most play.

Why does Putrefy see play over other Golgari removal spells?

Putrefy hits both artifacts and creatures, which gives it broad applicability across metas that vary in artifact density. The 'can't regenerate' clause is largely vestigial in modern Commander but costs nothing. At three mana in black-green, it competes with Assassin's Trophy, Abrupt Decay, and Beast Within. Its presence in 18% of tracked decks suggests players still value the clean, unconditional artifact-or-creature line without the downside of giving opponents a land.

How reliable is the Putrefy data on Playgroup Live?

Putrefy has been observed in 261 meaningful game instances across 951 tracked games. Crucially, the player pool is wide: 478 distinct players have brought it to a tracked game, and no single player dominates the sample. That spread gives the directional signals here more weight than a similarly sized dataset concentrated among a handful of repeat players.