Live Play Data

Rakdos Charm

· Instant · Edge of Eternities Commander (EOC)

15%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

1122

Decks Running

566

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

64%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Rakdos Charm sits in 15% of tracked Commander decks and is cast on a median turn of 7, making it a mid-to-late game answer that players hold until exactly the right moment.

Rakdos Charm appears in 15% of the 3798 distinct Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live. That puts it well inside the black-red staple conversation, spread across 478 unique players with no single contributor dominating the sample.

The draw-to-play rate tells the most honest story: 64% of drawn copies reach resolution before the game ends. That figure is lower than most two-mana spells, but Rakdos Charm is a reactive instant. Players hold it for the right target. The median first-cast turn of 7 confirms it: this card spends several turns in hand waiting for a graveyard to exile, an artifact to destroy, or a token army to punish.

Three modes in two mana is an unusually high density of utility for a black-red slot. The "each creature deals 1 damage to its controller" mode is the one most likely to generate table talk, turning a wide token board into a liability in a single instant.

At a glance

15% of tracked Commander decks include Rakdos Charm
22% draw rate across tracked games
64% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended
T7 median first-cast turn, reflecting its role as a reactive hold
478 unique players have brought it to a tracked game, showing broad adoption

First-cast turn

n=157

13%

66%

T6-9

11%

T10+

Median 7 P25 6 · P75 8 · max 16

On curve 3% (3 / 157 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 22%

The "good card" funnel

1123 brought · 478 players

Brought to game

1123

Ever drawn

246

Reached battlefield

157

Still on board at game end

64%

Of 1123 Rakdos Charms brought to games, 246 were drawn, 157 of those were cast, and the low battlefield-stickiness number is expected for an instant that resolves directly to the graveyard.

≥ -5.9pp

Players who cast this card win 23% of the time (n=150) , vs 22% when it never left the library (n=764).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 28% (n=79) — 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 +0.6pp; 95% confidence interval -5.9pp to +7.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

278 instances

2.5%

Library

6.8%

Battlefield

57.6%

Graveyard

7.6%

Exile

The vast majority of Rakdos Charm copies end the game in the graveyard after resolving, with only a handful stranded in hand, confirming that when it is drawn late enough to see a target, players fire it.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls 70 decks
2 Hearthhull, the Worldseed 58 decks
3 Kuja, Genome Sorcerer // Trance Kuja, Fate Defied 25 decks
4 Queen Marchesa 19 decks
5 Admiral Brass, Unsinkable 18 decks
6 Kardur, Doomscourge 18 decks
7 Deadpool, Trading Card 17 decks
8 Prosper, Tome-Bound 13 decks
9 Strefan, Maurer Progenitor 13 decks
10 The Lord of Pain 13 decks

The top-commander list is spread across pure Rakdos, Jund, and Grixis builds, with no single commander pulling an outsized share, which reflects the card's broad utility across all three black-red archetypes.

Frequently Asked

How often is Rakdos Charm drawn and cast in a Commander game?

Across 1081 tracked multiplayer Commander games, Rakdos Charm was drawn 22% of the time when in the deck. Of 246 copies that reached a player's hand, 64% were cast before the game ended. The remainder stayed in hand, most likely because the right target never appeared or the game ended first.

What turn does Rakdos Charm typically hit the stack?

Median first cast is turn 7, with the interquartile range spanning turns 5 through 8. That late window reflects its reactive nature: players hold it through the early game looking for a graveyard recursion loop to disrupt, an artifact to answer, or an overcommitted creature board to punish. The same-turn cast rate after drawing is 22%, which is low and consistent with deliberate holding rather than immediate deployment.

Which commanders most commonly run Rakdos Charm?

Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls and Hearthhull, the Worldseed top the list in absolute deck counts on Playgroup Live. The top-ten list spans pure Rakdos (B/R) commanders as well as Jund (B/R/G) and Grixis (B/R/U) builds, which tells you the card earns its slot beyond just on-color staple inertia.

Is Rakdos Charm legal in Commander?

Yes. Rakdos Charm is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Historic, and several other formats. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, Penny Dreadful, or Premodern. In Commander it is unrestricted and singleton, meaning one copy per deck.

Does casting Rakdos Charm actually improve your win rate?

The cast-vs-library delta on Playgroup Live is +0.6 percentage points, comparing the win rate in games where the card resolved to games where it stayed in the library untouched. With 150 cast observations and 764 library observations, the direction is consistent but the magnitude is small. Treat this as an early directional signal rather than a strong causal claim.

How concentrated is the Rakdos Charm data among players?

478 distinct players have brought Rakdos Charm to a tracked game, and no single player accounts for more than a small fraction of instances. That spread is one of the healthier signals in the dataset and means the draw and cast numbers are not being skewed by one or two prolific contributors.