Live Play Data

Seaside Citadel

Land · Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander (ECC)

28%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

993

Decks Running

502

Median Cast Turn

4.0

Drawn → Played

76%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Seaside Citadel appears in 28% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, and 76% of drawn copies are played before the game ends, with a median first-cast turn of 4.0.

Seaside Citadel is the go-to three-color tapland for Bant (Green-White-Blue) and five-color Commander decks. It shows up in 28% of the 1772 tracked decks on Playgroup Live, making it one of the more consistently represented utility lands in the dataset.

When Seaside Citadel reaches a player's hand, 76% of those copies are played out before the game ends. Median first play lands on turn 4.0, consistent with a land that frequently appears in opening hands or very early draws. The card's low opportunity cost, a single colorless "mana value" of zero, means there is almost never a reason to hold it once drawn.

The data is well-spread: 428 distinct players have brought Seaside Citadel to a tracked game, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for just 4% of all instances. That breadth adds weight to the early signals we see in the play patterns.

At a glance

28% of tracked Commander decks include Seaside Citadel
76% of drawn copies are played before the game ends
T4.0 median first-play turn
89% battlefield stickiness once played
428 distinct players have brought Seaside Citadel to a tracked game
29% draw rate per game in which the card is in the deck

First-cast turn

n=220

30%

10%

11%

10%

27%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4.0 P25 1 · P75 6 · max 16

Cast same turn as drawn 69%

The "good card" funnel

996 brought · 428 players

Brought to game

996

Ever drawn

291

Reached battlefield

220

Still on board at game end

196

76%

Of 996 Seaside Citadels brought to games, 291 were drawn, 220 of those were played, and the large majority remained on the battlefield through the end of the game.

≥ -4.0pp

Players who cast this card win 24% of the time (n=208) , vs 22% when it never left the library (n=619).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 22% (n=67) — 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 +2.1pp; 95% confidence interval -4.0pp to +8.2pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

313 instances

5.1%

Library

62.6%

Battlefield

11.8%

Graveyard

2.2%

Exile

Most Seaside Citadels never leave the library, a structural feature of 100-card singleton, not a statement about the card's value. Among observed instances, the large majority finish on the battlefield.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Ms. Bumbleflower 73 decks
2 Tidus, Yuna's Guardian 51 decks
3 Ashling, the Limitless 46 decks
4 Atraxa, Praetors' Voice 24 decks
5 Yuna, Grand Summoner 21 decks
6 Arcades, the Strategist 15 decks
7 The Ur-Dragon 14 decks
8 Choco, Seeker of Paradise 11 decks
9 The First Sliver 11 decks
10 Tom Bombadil 11 decks

Bant commanders dominate the top slots, with Ms. Bumbleflower and Tidus, Yuna's Guardian leading by deck count, but five-color generals like Ashling and Atraxa show meaningful representation too, confirming the land's cross-archetype utility.

Frequently Asked

How often is Seaside Citadel drawn in a Commander game?

Across 940 tracked multiplayer games where Seaside Citadel was in the deck, it was drawn 29% of the time. That is normal for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 291 instances that reached a player's hand, 76% were played before the game ended.

What turn does Seaside Citadel usually hit the battlefield?

Median first-play turn is 4.0, with the mode at turn 1, meaning the single most common scenario is playing it from an opening hand. The 25th-percentile is turn 1 and the 75th is turn 6, so the distribution is quite wide. Later plays typically reflect copies drawn mid-game rather than any strategic holding pattern.

Does playing Seaside Citadel correlate with winning?

In 208 tracked participations where Seaside Citadel reached the battlefield, the normalized win rate was 24%. In participations where it stayed in the library the entire game, the win rate was 22%. The gap is +2.1 percentage points. Both sample sizes are reasonably large, but the statistical confidence interval for this delta crosses zero in the current data, so treat it as a directional signal rather than a proven edge.

Which commanders most often run Seaside Citadel?

The top commanders by raw deck count are Bant and five-color generals. Ms. Bumbleflower and Tidus, Yuna's Guardian lead the multiplayer list, each appearing in over 40 decks in the tracked dataset. The spread across Bant, four-color, and five-color commanders confirms Seaside Citadel's role as a format-flexible mana fixer rather than a card tied to any single strategy.

Is Seaside Citadel legal in Commander?

Yes. Seaside Citadel is legal in Commander, Duel Commander, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Oathbreaker, and PreDH. It is not legal in Standard, Pioneer, Pauper, Historic, or Brawl. Its Green-White-Blue color identity restricts it to decks whose commander shares all three colors, or to colorless-identity commanders.

How reliable is this data given the sample size?

The multiplayer dataset behind these numbers covers 940 tracked games with 502 decks running Seaside Citadel, contributed by 428 distinct players. The single heaviest contributor accounts for just 4% of all instances, which is well below the threshold that would raise concentration concerns. That spread makes the draw and play-pattern stats directionally trustworthy, though Playgroup Live's dataset is still growing and should not be read as a definitive large-scale study.