Live Play Data

Rakdos Carnarium

Land · Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander (ECC)

10%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

796

Decks Running

394

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

71%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

10% of tracked Rakdos-color Commander decks run Rakdos Carnarium. When it reaches a player's hand, 71% of copies are played before the game ends, with a median first-play turn of 4.

Rakdos Carnarium is a reliable budget dual for Black-Red Commander decks, and the Playgroup Live dataset backs that up. It appears in 394 of the 3886 distinct decks tracked, an 10% inclusion rate that reflects its role as a free source of both colors in a format where fixing matters.

The card enters tapped and bounces a land on arrival, which is a real cost. Even so, 71% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends. Median first play lands on turn 4, with a cluster in turns 1-3 when it shows up in opening hands. Players who draw it later average about a one-turn hold before playing it. That short delay is consistent with the card being played as soon as it won't cost too much tempo, not held strategically.

Data is spread across 347 distinct players, with no single contributor representing more than a small share of observations. That breadth is a signal that the numbers here reflect real population behavior rather than one player's preferences skewing the sample.

At a glance

10% of tracked Rakdos-color Commander decks include Rakdos Carnarium
25% draw rate per game, expected for a singleton land in a 100-card deck
71% of drawn copies are played before the game ends
T4 median first-play turn across all tracked games
91% battlefield stickiness once the land resolves
347 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=141

11%

18%

16%

24%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4 P25 2 · P75 6 · max 18

Cast same turn as drawn 39%

The "good card" funnel

796 brought · 347 players

Brought to game

796

Ever drawn

200

Reached battlefield

141

Still on board at game end

129

71%

Of 796 Rakdos Carnariums brought to tracked games, 200 were drawn, 141 of those were played, and 91% of resolved copies remained on the battlefield at game end.

≥ -2.2pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=133) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=520).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 26% (n=55) — 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 +6.0pp; 95% confidence interval -2.2pp to +14.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

217 instances

2.3%

Library

59.4%

Battlefield

16.1%

Graveyard

5.1%

Exile

The large majority of Rakdos Carnarium copies end games on the battlefield after resolving. The small graveyard count reflects land destruction and sacrifice effects rather than any inherent fragility.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Auntie Ool, Cursewretch 47 decks
2 Edgar Markov 21 decks
3 Deadpool, Trading Card 14 decks
4 Kaalia of the Vast 14 decks
5 Judith, Carnage Connoisseur 11 decks
6 Nekusar, the Mindrazer 11 decks
7 Shadow the Hedgehog 11 decks
8 Kuja, Genome Sorcerer // Trance Kuja, Fate Defied 10 decks
9 Strefan, Maurer Progenitor 9 decks
10 Kardur, Doomscourge 8 decks

Auntie Ool, Cursewretch dominates the top-commanders list by raw deck count, but the table spans a wide range of Black-Red and Mardu commanders, showing Rakdos Carnarium is broadly adopted rather than commander-specific.

Frequently Asked

How often is Rakdos Carnarium drawn in a Commander game?

Across 765 tracked multiplayer games where Rakdos Carnarium was in the deck, it was drawn 25% of the time. That is a normal draw rate for a singleton land in a 100-card deck. Of the 200 copies that reached a hand, 71% were played before the game ended.

What turn does Rakdos Carnarium usually hit the battlefield?

Median first-play turn is 4. The distribution spreads across turns 1-6 for the bulk of casts, with a notable cluster in the first three turns when the card appears in an opening hand. The mode is turn 2 in the multiplayer dataset. A meaningful tail extends into the mid-to-late game, which reflects copies drawn after ramp is no longer a priority.

Does playing Rakdos Carnarium actually improve win rate?

Games where Rakdos Carnarium reached the battlefield show a 30% win rate versus 24% when it stayed in the library. That is a +6.0 percentage-point gap. The sample size is reasonable but the confidence interval crosses zero, so treat this as an early directional signal rather than a proven effect. The lift likely reflects deck-building quality as much as the card itself.

Is Rakdos Carnarium legal in Commander?

Yes. Rakdos Carnarium is legal in Commander, Duel Commander, Pauper Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Oathbreaker, and Premodern (listed as predh). It is not legal in Standard, Pioneer, Alchemy, Historic, or Brawl. In Commander it fills a straightforward role as a no-cost, budget-accessible Black-Red dual land.

Which commanders most often run Rakdos Carnarium?

Auntie Ool, Cursewretch leads the tracked dataset by a wide margin. Edgar Markov, Judith, Carnage Connoisseur, Kaalia of the Vast, and Shadow the Hedgehog follow. Most are straightforward Black-Red or Mardu color identities where consistent two-color fixing early matters more than speed. The spread across over a dozen commanders suggests the card is a format-wide include rather than tied to any single strategy.

What is the downside of running Rakdos Carnarium?

Rakdos Carnarium enters tapped and requires bouncing a land you control when it does. That is a two-turn tempo penalty in the worst case: you pay an extra turn for the tapped entry, and you set back your land count by one if you have nothing cheap to return. In practice, players often return a basic they can replay, but early turns are where the cost bites most. The median play on turn 4 suggests most players accept the trade for the color fixing it provides.