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Savage Lands card art
Live Play Data

Savage Lands

Land · Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC)
22%
Live Inclusion
Times Brought
691
Decks Running
365
Median Cast Turn
3
Drawn → Played
83%
Format

Savage Lands appears in 22% of tracked Commander decks that can run it, and 83% of drawn copies reach the battlefield, with a median first-cast turn of 3.

Savage Lands is the go-to tri-land for Jund (black, red, green) Commander builds on Playgroup Live. It sits in 22% of tracked decks across 670 games, and the 83% draw-to-play rate tells a consistent story: when players see it, it goes down.

The median first-cast turn is 3, but the distribution skews early. Turn 1 is the single most common cast turn, driven by players who keep it in the opening hand and lead with it before any other land. After that, casts spread across the mid-game as players draw into it later. Once it resolves, it stays: 90% stickiness reflects the simple reality that opponents rarely spend removal on a tapped tri-land.

The data spans 314 distinct players, with no single contributor accounting for more than a small slice of instances. That spread makes the early signal here more representative than it would be from a narrower player pool. Savage Lands fills its role quietly. It produces no card advantage, no enters-the-battlefield effect, and no surprise. It just fixes mana in three colors, every game.

At a glance
  • 22% of tracked Commander decks with BGr identity include Savage Lands
  • 83% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
  • T3 median first-cast turn, with turn 1 as the single most common
  • 90% battlefield stickiness once Savage Lands resolves
  • 314 distinct players contributed data, a well-spread sample for this dataset

First-cast turn

n=157
35%
T1
10%
T2
8%
T3
4%
T4
8%
T5
22%
T6-9
12%
T10+
Median 3 P25 1 · P75 7 · max 14
Cast same turn as drawn 71%

The "good card" funnel

692 brought · 314 players
Brought to game
692
Ever drawn
190
Reached battlefield
157
Still on board at game end
141
83%

Of 692 Savage Lands brought to tracked games, 190 were drawn, 157 of those were cast, and the large majority remained on the battlefield through the end of the game.

≥ -8.6pp

Players who cast this card win 21% of the time (n=141) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=420).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 27% (n=30) — 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 -1.6pp; 95% confidence interval -8.6pp to +5.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

203 instances
4.4%
Library
69.5%
Battlefield
10.3%
Graveyard
3.0%
Exile

The vast majority of Savage Lands copies finish in the library, a normal artifact of 100-card singleton where most cards simply never get drawn. Among observed copies, the battlefield is the dominant final destination by a wide margin.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Ashling, the Limitless and Auntie Ool, Cursewretch dominate the top-commanders list, consistent with Savage Lands being a default inclusion in BGr and five-color builds. The spread across many commanders reflects how broadly the BGr color combination is played.

Frequently Asked

How often is Savage Lands drawn in a Commander game?
Across 670 tracked games where Savage Lands was in the deck, it was drawn 27% of the time. That is a normal range for a singleton land in a 100-card deck. Of the 190 copies that reached a hand, 83% were cast before the game ended. The remainder mostly reflects games that concluded before the player had a chance to play it.
What turn does Savage Lands usually hit the battlefield?
The median first-cast turn is 3, but the distribution is front-loaded. Turn 1 is the most common single turn, accounting for a meaningful cluster of casts from players who kept Savage Lands in their opening hand and led with it. Casts then spread through the mid-game as players draw into it. The mean sits higher than the median, pulled up by occasional late-game draws.
Does casting Savage Lands correlate with winning?
In 141 participations where Savage Lands reached the battlefield, the normalized win rate is 21%. In 420 participations where it stayed in the library, the rate is 23%. The cast-vs-library delta for the multiplayer dataset is slightly negative at -1.6 percentage points, which is directional noise rather than a meaningful signal. Both buckets are sampled from decks that already chose to run Savage Lands, so the delta reflects deck composition and game variance more than the land's individual contribution.
Is Savage Lands legal in Commander?
Yes. Savage Lands is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Historic, and several other formats. It is not legal in Standard, Pioneer, Pauper, or Pauper Commander. Its color identity is black, red, and green, so it can only be included in Commander decks whose commander covers all three of those colors.
Which commanders most often run Savage Lands?
In the Playgroup Live dataset, Ashling, the Limitless and Auntie Ool, Cursewretch lead the top-commander list. Both have color identities that include black, red, and green, which is the core requirement for Savage Lands. A number of five-color commanders also appear, since their identity covers BGr as a subset. The spread across 314 unique players suggests the pattern is not driven by one or two prolific users.
How does Savage Lands compare to other tri-lands in the same color identity?
Savage Lands is one of several Alara-block tri-lands that tap for black, red, and green. Its only meaningful downside is entering tapped, which costs tempo on turn 1. In Commander, where games run long and mana fixing is often more valuable than early speed, that drawback is accepted widely. The 22% inclusion rate across Playgroup Live decks with the right color identity is consistent with it being a default include for three-color Jund builds rather than a deliberate choice to optimize.