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Scavenger Grounds card art
Live Play Data

Scavenger Grounds

Land — Desert · Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC)
6%
Live Inclusion
Buy on TCGplayer
Times Brought
982
Decks Running
523
Median Cast Turn
5
Drawn → Played
72%
Format
Multiplayer 1v1

Scavenger Grounds appears in 6% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, drawn 24% of the time, with 72% of drawn copies reaching activation before the game ends.

Scavenger Grounds is colorless graveyard hate that any Commander deck can slot in for free. Across 832 tracked multiplayer games, it sits in 6% of the decks in the dataset, appearing in 523 of 8378 distinct tracked builds.

As a land, it enters every game the moment a player taps it for mana, so the cast funnel works differently here than for spells. Players activate the exile ability by sacrificing a Desert, which means the card sometimes doubles as a colorless mana source for much of the game before ever firing its hate effect. The median first activation lands on turn 5, and 72% of drawn copies are eventually played. The hand-to-play delay matters: players hold it an average of 1.62 turns after drawing it before activating, suggesting they wait for the right moment rather than using it the instant it arrives.

The commander distribution is notably spread. No single archetype dominates the inclusion list. Colorless-identity commanders like Zhulodok and Molecule Man appear alongside five-color and Esper builds, which is consistent with the card's appeal as a zero-color-identity utility land that any deck can run without restriction.

At a glance
  • 6% of tracked Commander decks include Scavenger Grounds
  • 24% draw rate across tracked participations
  • 72% of drawn copies are played before the game ends
  • T5 median first activation turn
  • 77% battlefield stickiness once the land enters play
  • 406 unique players have brought Scavenger Grounds to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=169
6%
T1
10%
T2
15%
T3
13%
T4
8%
T5
38%
T6-9
9%
T10+
Median 5 P25 3 · P75 7 · max 14
Cast same turn as drawn 40%

The "good card" funnel

982 brought · 406 players
Brought to game
982
Ever drawn
234
Reached battlefield
169
Still on board at game end
130
72%

Of 982 Scavenger Grounds brought to games, 234 were drawn, 169 of those were activated, and the majority remained on the battlefield through end of game.

≥ -6.5pp

Players who cast this card win 25% of the time (n=162) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=665).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 33% (n=61) — 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 +0.4pp; 95% confidence interval -6.5pp to +7.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

265 instances
2.3%
Library
49.1%
Battlefield
19.2%
Graveyard
10.9%
Exile

Most Scavenger Grounds copies end the game on the battlefield, which is expected for a land that enters and stays in play. The exile and graveyard buckets reflect copies that were sacrificed to activate the exile-all-graveyards ability, which is exactly the card doing its job.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The commander list is spread across four different color identities with no single build claiming a dominant share, consistent with a zero-color-identity land that any deck can run freely.

Frequently Asked

How often is Scavenger Grounds drawn in a Commander game?
In 832 tracked multiplayer games where Scavenger Grounds was in the deck, it was drawn 24% of the time, which is typical for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 234 copies that reached a player's hand, 72% were eventually activated. Players held it for a median of 1 turn after drawing before acting, with an average delay of 1.62 turns, suggesting deliberate timing rather than immediate use.
What turn does Scavenger Grounds typically get activated?
The median first activation turn is 5, with the distribution running from turn 1 (opened in hand) out to turn 14 in the longest observed games. The 25th percentile lands on turn 3 and the 75th on turn 8, so activations are genuinely spread across the mid-game rather than clustering tightly. A turn-1 or turn-2 activation almost always means the player kept it in their opening hand and found an early reason to fire the exile effect.
Does casting Scavenger Grounds improve your win rate?
In the current dataset, the cast-vs-library win rate delta is very close to zero and the confidence interval crosses zero, so we cannot draw a directional conclusion here. The sample covers 162 participations where the card was activated. This is an early signal only. Scavenger Grounds is primarily a reactive answer to graveyard strategies, so its impact is likely highest in specific metas rather than in an aggregate win-rate figure.
Is Scavenger Grounds legal in Commander?
Yes. Scavenger Grounds is legal in Commander, as well as in Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Historic, and several other formats. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, or Pauper Commander. Its colorless identity means it can slot into any Commander deck regardless of the commander's colors, which is a significant part of its appeal as graveyard hate.
Which commanders most commonly run Scavenger Grounds?
Across 832 tracked games, Y'shtola, Night's Blessed leads the multiplayer top-commanders list with the most decks including the card, followed by Captain America, Team Leader and Doctor Doom, King of Latveria. The spread across multiple color identities reinforces that Scavenger Grounds is not tied to any single archetype. Its colorless identity makes it a universal include for pilots who want graveyard disruption without committing a colored slot.
How concentrated is the Scavenger Grounds data across players?
The data comes from 406 unique players, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for only 5% of all tracked instances. That is well below the threshold where individual player behavior meaningfully skews aggregate numbers, so the draw and activation rates reflect a genuinely broad sample of play patterns rather than one or two prolific pilots.