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Scalding Tarn card art
Live Play Data

Scalding Tarn

Land · Modern Horizons 2 (MH2)
8%
Live Inclusion
Buy on TCGplayer
Times Brought
1556
Decks Running
796
Median Cast Turn
3.0
Drawn → Played
68%
Format
Multiplayer 1v1

Scalding Tarn appears in 8% of tracked multiplayer Commander decks on Playgroup Live, with a median activation turn of 3.0 and 68% of drawn copies activated before the game ends.

Scalding Tarn sits in 8% of the 9600 tracked multiplayer Commander decks on Playgroup Live, making it one of the more common fetchlands in the dataset. Its colorless identity gives it a home in any deck that touches blue or red, and those are among the format's most-played color pairs.

As a land, Scalding Tarn never "resolves" the way a spell does, but we can still track when players activate it. Median first activation lands on turn 3.0, with heavy clustering on turn 1 for players who keep it in their opening hand. Of 389 instances drawn, 68% were activated before the game ended. The remainder reflects games that concluded before the player found a reason to crack it, or hands where the tarn served as a placeholder that never got used.

The commander distribution is notably wide. 486 distinct players have brought Scalding Tarn to a tracked game, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for just 4% of all instances. That spread gives the numbers here more cross-table breadth than most cards in the dataset.

At a glance
  • 8% of tracked multiplayer Commander decks include Scalding Tarn
  • T3.0 median first activation turn
  • 68% of drawn copies were activated before game end
  • 486 distinct players have brought Scalding Tarn to a tracked game
  • 1557 total instances brought across all tracked games
  • 25% draw rate, consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck

First-cast turn

n=266
30%
T1
8%
T2
14%
T3
10%
T4
12%
T5
23%
T6-9
4%
T10+
Median 3.0 P25 1 · P75 6 · max 14
Cast same turn as drawn 64%

The "good card" funnel

1557 brought · 486 players
Brought to game
1557
Ever drawn
389
Reached battlefield
266
Still on board at game end
14
68%

Of 1557 Scalding Tarns brought to games, 389 were drawn, and 266 of those were activated. Because activation is a sacrifice, almost none remain on the battlefield at game end.

≥ -0.9pp

Players who cast this card win 32% of the time (n=261) , vs 27% when it never left the library (n=1038).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 34% (n=118) — 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 +4.7pp; 95% confidence interval -0.9pp to +10.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

448 instances
4.2%
Library
3.1%
Battlefield
66.7%
Graveyard
9.8%
Exile

Graveyard is Scalding Tarn's expected final zone because the land sacrifices itself on activation. The small fraction ending in library represents games where the card was never activated at all.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The Ur-Dragon leads by a clear margin, but the list fans out across five-color, Grixis, and Izzet commanders, showing how broadly blue-red fixing is valued across the format.

Frequently Asked

How often is Scalding Tarn drawn in a Commander game?
In 1191 tracked multiplayer games where Scalding Tarn was in the deck, it was drawn 25% of the time. That is typical for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 389 drawn copies, 68% were activated before the game ended. The unactivated remainder is largely a function of game length rather than players choosing to hold the land.
What turn does Scalding Tarn usually get activated?
Median first activation is turn 3.0. The distribution skews early: the mode is turn 1, driven by players who keep Scalding Tarn in their opening hand and crack it immediately for a dual land. A long tail stretches to turn 14 in the data, reflecting games where the fetchland sat idle until a specific land was needed late. The 25th percentile is turn 1 and the 75th is turn 6, so most activations happen in the first six turns.
Is Scalding Tarn legal in Commander?
Yes. Scalding Tarn is legal and unrestricted in Commander. It is also legal in Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Duel Commander, Timeless, and Oathbreaker. It is banned in Historic and not legal in Standard, Pioneer, Pauper, or Pauper Commander. Its colorless identity means it can slot into any Commander deck that contains blue or red in its color identity.
Does activating Scalding Tarn correlate with winning?
Games where Scalding Tarn was activated show a win rate of 32% across 261 tracked participations. Games where it stayed in the library show 27% across 1038 participations. The gap is directional but the lower bound of the confidence interval sits near zero on the current sample, so treat it as an early signal rather than a proven edge. Decks that run fetchlands tend to be more optimized overall, which complicates any simple causal read.
Which commanders most often run Scalding Tarn?
The Ur-Dragon leads the tracked dataset by raw deck count, which makes sense given its five-color identity and heavy demand for precise mana. Grixis commanders like Sauron the Dark Lord and Nekusar the Mindrazer also appear near the top, reflecting how central blue-red fixing is to that color combination. The list is spread across multiple color identities, confirming that Scalding Tarn's appeal is broad rather than concentrated in a single archetype.
How concentrated is the Scalding Tarn data among individual players?
486 distinct players have brought Scalding Tarn to a tracked multiplayer game on Playgroup Live. The single heaviest contributor accounts for 4% of all instances, well below the 15% threshold where concentration becomes a concern. That spread means the data reflects a genuine cross-section of the player base rather than one prolific user skewing the numbers.