Reliquary Tower
Reliquary Tower appears in 30% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live. When drawn, players cast it 75% of the time, and 95% of cast copies are still on the battlefield when the game ends.
Reliquary Tower sits in 30% of the tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live — an inclusion rate that reflects its focused utility. The card earns its slot in decks that draw aggressively, removing the ceiling that would otherwise force painful discards.
The draw-to-play rate tells the real story: 75% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends. That number is high for a land with no mana color, and it signals that players who include this card almost always have a hand-size-relevant deck. Once it resolves, it stays. Battlefield stickiness is 95%, the highest possible signal for a land that opponents rarely bother to remove. The median first-cast turn is 5, spread broadly from turns 1 through 9, reflecting how often it enters as a mid-game insurance policy rather than an opening-hand keep.
The win-rate delta between games where the Tower was cast (39%) versus games where it sat in the library (36%) is a modest +2.9 percentage points across sizable samples of 185 and 574 participations respectively. That gap is real but modest, consistent with what you'd expect from a card that enables rather than closes games.
- 30% of tracked Commander decks include Reliquary Tower
- 75% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends
- 95% battlefield stickiness once cast — opponents almost never remove it
- T5 median first-cast turn, with a broad spread from turns 1 to 9
- +2.9pp win-rate lift when cast versus sitting in the library
- 539 distinct decks including this card across tracked games
First-cast turn
n=209The "good card" funnel
953 brought834 copies were brought to games; 235 were drawn; 185 of those were cast; and 175 were still on the battlefield when the final life total hit zero — a 95% stickiness rate that reflects how little pressure lands face in Commander.
Players who cast this card win 39% of the time (n=209) , vs 37% when it never left the library (n=659).
Final zone distribution
953 instances574 of 834 brought copies never left the library — that is the structural reality of a 100-card singleton deck, not a verdict on the card's power. Of the copies that were seen, 175 finished the game on the battlefield.
Top commanders running this card
by deck count-
1
Zimone, Infinite Analyst
46 decks
-
2
Rootha, Mastering the Moment
27 decks
-
3
Galazeth Prismari
17 decks
-
4
Ms. Bumbleflower
17 decks
-
5
Magnus the Red
13 decks
-
6
Me, the Immortal
13 decks
-
7
Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait
11 decks
-
8
Lonis, Cryptozoologist
11 decks
-
9
Bello, Bard of the Brambles
10 decks
-
10
Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph
10 decks
Zimone, Infinite Analyst leads with 42 decks, nearly double the next entry. The top 10 commanders skew heavily Blue and Simic, confirming the Tower is a draw-engine staple rather than a broadly played utility land.
How often is Reliquary Tower drawn in a Commander game? ▾
Across 590 tracked games, Reliquary Tower was drawn in 28% of deck-participations where it was included. That is slightly above the baseline expectation for a singleton in a 100-card deck, likely because draw-heavy decks — exactly the kind that want this card — naturally see more of their library. Of the 235 instances drawn, 185 were cast, giving a draw-to-play rate of 75%.
Does casting Reliquary Tower actually improve your win rate? ▾
The honest answer is: modestly, and directionally. Participations where the Tower was cast showed a 38.9% win rate across 185 observations. Participations where it stayed in the library showed a 36.1% win rate across 574 observations. The +2.9 percentage-point delta is consistent across a reasonable sample, but it's a small lift. The Tower enables, it doesn't win games on its own. Both buckets well exceed the 15-observation threshold needed to take the delta seriously.
What turn does Reliquary Tower typically hit the battlefield? ▾
The median first-cast turn is 5, with the middle 50% of casts falling between turns 3 and 7. The distribution is unusually flat: casts are spread fairly evenly from turn 1 through turn 9, with a long tail reaching as far as turn 14. That flatness reflects two distinct use cases — keeping it in an opening hand for ramp-heavy decks, and playing it mid-game once a wheel or a big draw spell demands it.
Which commanders most often run Reliquary Tower? ▾
Zimone, Infinite Analyst leads with 42 decks in the tracked sample, followed by Rootha, Mastering the Moment (24 decks) and Galazeth Prismari (17 decks). The pattern is clear: Blue-heavy and Simic commanders that draw large numbers of cards dominate the list. The card is essentially a hand-size tax waiver for storm, clones, and card-advantage engines.
Is Reliquary Tower legal in all Commander variants? ▾
Yes. Reliquary Tower is legal in Commander, Duel Commander, Oathbreaker, and Brawl, as well as Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Historic, and Timeless. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, or Pauper Commander, the latter being relevant because it is printed at uncommon rarity.
Why do players sometimes hold Reliquary Tower in hand before casting it? ▾
Of the 177 observed drawn-and-cast instances tracked, 56.5% were cast on the same turn they were drawn. The other 43.5% sat in hand for at least one turn, with an average delay of 0.84 turns and a maximum of 7. This is typical behavior for a utility land: players sometimes have more pressing plays on the turn they draw it, or they wait until they're about to exceed hand size before committing the land drop.