Savannah card art
Live Play Data

Savannah

Land — Forest Plains · Vintage Masters (VMA)
11%
Live Inclusion
Times Brought
500
Decks Running
229
Median Cast Turn
3
Drawn → Played
93%
Format

Savannah is in 11% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live. When drawn, it reaches the battlefield 93% of the time, with a median first play on turn 3.

Savannah sits in 11% of the 2018 Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, appearing across 229 distinct lists. As one of the original dual lands, it taps for either green or white with no downside, making it an automatic consideration for any deck whose color identity includes both colors.

The draw-to-play figure tells the clearest story: 93% of drawn copies are played before the game ends. That rate is among the highest you will see for any card in the format. Lands are played the moment they are needed, and Savannah is almost never a dead card in hand. Median first play lands on turn 3, though the mode is turn 1, reflecting how often it anchors an opening hand.

The commander distribution is notably broad. The top slot is The Ur-Dragon with 21 decks, followed by five-color and Naya shells throughout the list. That spread reflects Savannah's role as a colorless-efficiency staple for any green-white deck, regardless of strategy. Data comes from 447 tracked multiplayer games, with 175 unique players contributing, and the single heaviest contributor accounting for just 4% of all instances. That spread is a strength of this dataset.

At a glance
  • 11% of tracked Commander decks include Savannah
  • 93% of drawn copies are played before the game ends
  • T3 median first-play turn, with mode at turn 1
  • 92% battlefield stickiness once played
  • 175 unique players in the dataset, a well-spread sample

First-cast turn

n=167
25%
T1
16%
T2
16%
T3
11%
T4
8%
T5
19%
T6-9
5%
T10+
Median 3 P25 1 · P75 5 · max 13
Cast same turn as drawn 57%

The "good card" funnel

500 brought · 175 players
Brought to game
500
Ever drawn
180
Reached battlefield
167
Still on board at game end
154
93%

Of 500 Savannahs brought to games, 180 were drawn, 167 of those were played, and the vast majority remained on the battlefield through end of game.

≥ -5.3pp

Players who cast this card win 27% of the time (n=160) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=295).

Observed gap +2.2pp; 95% confidence interval -5.3pp to +9.7pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

189 instances
3.7%
Library
81.5%
Battlefield
6.3%
Graveyard
1.6%
Exile

The overwhelming majority of Savannah copies resolve to the battlefield and stay there through end of game, reflecting the low-interaction profile typical of lands in Commander.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The Ur-Dragon leads with 21 decks and five-color commanders fill most of the top ten, but Naya and green-white builds are a consistent second tier, showing Savannah's reach across the entire green-white color slice.

Frequently Asked

How often is Savannah drawn in a Commander game?
In 447 tracked games where Savannah was in the deck, it was drawn 36% of the time. That figure is typical for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 180 instances that reached a hand, 93% were played before the game ended. The near-universal play rate reflects the basic land subtype: unlike most cards, a dual land is almost never a dead draw.
What turn does Savannah typically hit the battlefield?
Median first play is turn 3, but the distribution is not symmetric. The single most common turn is turn 1, capturing games where Savannah is in the opening hand. The interquartile range runs from turn 1 to turn 5, meaning most copies that are drawn and played land in the first five turns. Late-game draws occasionally stretch the distribution out to double digits, but those are a small minority.
Is Savannah legal in Commander?
Yes. Savannah is legal and unrestricted in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Duel Commander, and Oathbreaker. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Pauper, or Brawl. In Commander, its Forest and Plains subtypes mean it can be fetched by any basic-land-fetching effect, which is a meaningful advantage over generic dual lands.
Does playing Savannah correlate with winning?
Win rate when this card was played is 27%, compared to 25% when it stayed in the library. The difference is +2.2 percentage points. Both sample sizes are reasonable, but the gap is small and the standard error is wide. Treat this as a directional early signal rather than a conclusive finding. Savannah's value is structural: it smooths mana on turns 1 through 3, which shows up in game outcomes indirectly.
Which commanders most often run Savannah on Playgroup Live?
The Ur-Dragon leads with 21 decks, followed by Esika, God of the Tree with 13 and Kenrith, the Returned King with 10. Five-color commanders dominate the top of the list because they need the most fixing. Below them, Naya commanders such as Gishath, Pantlaza, and Rin and Seri show that green-white-red shells are heavy users. Any deck touching both green and white at a competitive level is a candidate.
How concentrated is the Savannah data among individual players?
The dataset covers 175 unique players, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for 4% of all tracked instances. That is well below the 15% threshold where concentration becomes a concern. The data is broadly spread across the player base, which adds confidence to the directional trends visible in the numbers.