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Saruman, the White Hand

· Legendary Creature — Avatar Wizard · Tales of Middle-earth Commander (LTC)

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

297

Decks Running

148

In Decks

855

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Card text

Saruman, the White Hand

Legendary Creature — Avatar Wizard

Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, amass Orcs X, where X is that spell's mana value. (Put X +1/+1 counters on an Army you control. It's also an Orc. If you don't control an Army, create a 0/0 black Orc Army creature token first.) Goblins and Orcs you control have ward {2}

2 / 5

Tales of Middle-earth Commander (LTC) · Mythic · Illustrated by Leonardo Borazio

Final zone distribution

107 instances

1.9%

Library

41.1%

Battlefield

26.2%

Graveyard

6.5%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Sauron, the Dark Lord 77 decks
2 Sauron, Lord of the Rings 47 decks
3 Saruman, the White Hand 18 decks
4 Anhelo, the Painter 1 decks
5 Marchesa, the Black Rose 1 decks
6 Morophon, the Boundless 1 decks
7 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen 1 decks
8 Wick, the Whorled Mind 1 decks
9 Zevlor, Elturel Exile 1 decks

The "good card" funnel

298 brought · 129 players

Brought to game

298

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 52% of this card is still on the battlefield at game end. This reflects how often it survives removal, not just whether it's a permanent.

≥ +10.0pp

Players who cast this card win 44% of the time (n=41) , vs 19% when it never left the library (n=177).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 15% (n=25) — 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 +24.6pp; 95% confidence interval +10.0pp to +39.2pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=42

14%

45%

T6-9

17%

T10+

Median 6.5 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 13

On curve 24% (6 / 42 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 30%

42 of 100 times cast 42%

Full analysis unlocks as more games are tracked. Stats refresh nightly.

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Basic play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games; the full deep-dive page needs a larger, more diverse sample (at least 300 tracked games played by 10 or more different pilots, with no single pilot over 40 percent of the copies). Until this card clears those bars you're seeing only the basic counts. Stats refresh nightly.

How is Playgroup Live card data collected?

Players using Playgroup Live import their decklists before a game and log card actions as they play. Each cast, zone change, and resolution is recorded as a real game event. Stats on this site are computed from those events, not from decklist scrapes or theorycrafting. Playgroup has recorded 650,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.