Live Play Data

Sapphire Medallion

· Artifact · Modern Horizons 3 (MH3)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

649

Decks Running

333

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

79%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

79% of drawn Sapphire Medallions are cast before the game ends, and decks that resolved it show a +12.1 percentage-point win-rate lift over decks where it stayed in the library.

Sapphire Medallion sits in 3% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, a niche number that reflects its hard requirement: your deck must be heavily blue to extract value from a blanket {1} cost reduction. Among those blue-heavy builds, it lands in 333 of the 12009 decks in the dataset.

The cast rate tells a clear story. Of the 210 times Sapphire Medallion reached a player's hand, 79% of those copies were cast before the game concluded. Median first cast lands on turn 4, though the distribution is wide: a cluster of turn-1 and turn-2 casts from opening hands, and a long tail stretching into the mid-game for late draws. Once it resolves, it sticks: 87% of cast copies remain on the battlefield through end of game, which is consistent with a cheap artifact that opponents rarely prioritize for removal.

The commander spread confirms the expected homes. Mono-blue and blue-heavy commanders dominate the top slots, with spell-slinger and artifact-matters strategies appearing most often. The card's colorless color identity means it is technically available to any Commander deck, but the cost reduction only fires on blue spells, so it is a functional inclusion only for blue-heavy lists.

At a glance

3% of tracked Commander decks include Sapphire Medallion
79% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends
T4 median first-cast turn across all tracked games
87% battlefield stickiness once cast
278 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game
+12.1pp win-rate lift when cast versus when it stays in the library

First-cast turn

n=165

10%

21%

12%

31%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4 P25 2 · P75 7 · max 15

On curve 31% (34 / 165 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 56%

The "good card" funnel

649 brought · 278 players

Brought to game

649

Ever drawn

210

Reached battlefield

165

Still on board at game end

144

79%

Of 649 Sapphire Medallions brought to games, 210 were drawn, 165 of those were cast, and the large majority remained on the battlefield through end of game, a tight cast-to-stick conversion for a 2-mana artifact.

≥ +4.8pp

Players who cast this card win 31% of the time (n=156) , vs 19% when it never left the library (n=391).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 43% (n=42) — 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 +12.1pp; 95% confidence interval +4.8pp to +19.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

228 instances

2.6%

Library

63.2%

Battlefield

16.2%

Graveyard

2.6%

Exile

Most Sapphire Medallions never leave the library, a structural feature of 100-card singleton rather than a sign of weakness. The copies that do reach play stay on the battlefield at a high rate, consistent with opponents deprioritizing a 2-mana cost-reducer for removal.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Mono-blue commanders take the top spots, and nearly every commander in the list carries blue in their color identity. The spread across more than a dozen different commanders suggests the card is a broad role-player in blue rather than a build-around for one specific strategy.

Frequently Asked

How often is Sapphire Medallion drawn in a Commander game?

Across 608 tracked games where Sapphire Medallion was in a deck, it was drawn 32% of the time. That draw rate is typical for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 210 copies that reached a hand, 79% were cast before the game ended. The remainder were largely cases where the game concluded before the player had a window to cast it.

What turn does Sapphire Medallion usually hit the battlefield?

The median first-cast turn is 4. The distribution is bimodal: a meaningful cluster of casts on turns 1 and 2, representing copies found in opening hands and cast immediately, and a second concentration spanning turns 5 through 8 for copies drawn in the mid-game. At 2 mana, it curves out early when it shows up early, but late draws often arrive after the mana-intensive turns where the discount matters most.

Does casting Sapphire Medallion actually improve your win rate?

In 156 tracked participations where Sapphire Medallion was cast, the normalized win rate was 31%. In the 391 participations where it never left the library, the rate was 19%. The +12.1 percentage-point gap is a directional positive signal. Both sample sizes are above 15, which moves this from anecdote toward a consistent early signal, though the dataset is not large enough to call it conclusive.

Why does Sapphire Medallion show up mostly in mono-blue or heavily blue decks?

The card reduces the cost of blue spells only. A deck with 30 blue spells gets many opportunities to recoup the initial 2-mana investment in a single game. A deck with only a handful of blue spells may never break even on the mana spent to cast the Medallion. This is why the top commanders on Playgroup Live are dominated by mono-blue and blue-heavy identities like Urza, Bruvac, and Vnwxt.

Is Sapphire Medallion legal in Commander?

Yes. Sapphire Medallion is legal in Commander and has no restrictions in that format. It is also legal in Legacy, Modern, Vintage, and several other formats. It is not legal in Standard, Pioneer, Pauper, or Pauper Commander.

How concentrated is the Sapphire Medallion data across players?

The data is well-spread. 278 distinct players have brought Sapphire Medallion to a tracked game on Playgroup Live, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for only 4% of all instances. That low concentration means the stats reflect a broad player base rather than one prolific pilot skewing the numbers.