Scalding Tarn
Scalding Tarn appears in 8% of tracked multiplayer Commander decks on Playgroup Live, with a median activation turn of 3 and 69% of drawn copies activated before the game ends.
Scalding Tarn sits in 8% of the 8540 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, with heavy clustering on turn 1 for players who keep it in their opening hand. Of 357 instances drawn, 69% 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. 441 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.
- 8% of tracked multiplayer Commander decks include Scalding Tarn
- T3 median first activation turn
- 69% of drawn copies were activated before game end
- 441 distinct players have brought Scalding Tarn to a tracked game
- 1405 total instances brought across all tracked games
- 25% draw rate, consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck
First-cast turn
n=247The "good card" funnel
1405 brought · 441 playersOf 1405 Scalding Tarns brought to games, 357 were drawn, and 247 of those were activated. Because activation is a sacrifice, almost none remain on the battlefield at game end.
Players who cast this card win 32% of the time (n=244) , vs 27% when it never left the library (n=940).
When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 35% (n=107) — 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 +5.1pp; 95% confidence interval -0.7pp to +10.9pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.
Final zone distribution
409 instancesGraveyard 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-
1
The Ur-Dragon
34 decks
-
2
Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge
13 decks
-
3
Flubs, the Fool
12 decks
-
4
Tony Stark // The Invincible Iron Man
10 decks
-
5
Aragorn, the Uniter
9 decks
-
6
Sauron, the Dark Lord
9 decks
-
7
Vivi Ornitier
9 decks
-
8
Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler of Ruin
8 decks
-
9
Norman Osborn // Green Goblin
8 decks
-
10
Bruce Banner // The Incredible Hulk
7 decks
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.