Secluded Courtyard
7% of tracked Commander decks run Secluded Courtyard, and when it reaches a hand, 77% of copies get played before the game ends, with a median first-cast turn of 3.
Secluded Courtyard is the go-to tribal fixer for any Commander deck that commits hard to a creature type. Tracked across 1753 multiplayer games on Playgroup Live, it sits in 1050 of 15835 distinct decks in the dataset, an 7% inclusion rate that reflects its narrower tribal niche rather than any weakness.
The draw-to-play figure tells the real story: 77% of drawn copies reach the battlefield. That is a high rate for a land in a format where games can end before players cycle through their deck. Once it resolves, 92% of copies survive to end of game. The data across 838 distinct tracked players shows no concentration concerns, with the single heaviest contributor accounting for just 2% of all instances.
The top-commander list is a snapshot of the tribal metagame: Heroes, Humans, Slivers, Merfolk, Vampires, and Dragons all appear. Secluded Courtyard earns its slot by offering any-color mana with zero deckbuilding constraint beyond picking a type on entry.
- 7% of tracked Commander decks include Secluded Courtyard
- 77% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
- T3 median turn the land first enters play
- 92% battlefield stickiness, lands rarely get removed
- 838 distinct tracked players have brought this card to a game
- 24% draw rate, consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck
First-cast turn
n=365The "good card" funnel
1950 brought · 838 playersOf 1950 copies brought to tracked games, 474 were drawn, 365 of those were played, and the large majority remained on the battlefield through end of game.
Players who cast this card win 24% of the time (n=334) , vs 20% when it never left the library (n=1261).
When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 30% (n=98) — 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 +3.8pp; 95% confidence interval -0.9pp to +8.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.
Final zone distribution
512 instancesMost Secluded Courtyards brought to a game end on the battlefield, a sharp contrast to non-land cards, because lands are rarely removed and stay in play once dropped.
Commanders that played this card
in tracked games-
1
Doctor Doom, King of Latveria
106 decks
-
2
Captain America, Team Leader
98 decks
-
3
Ashling, the Limitless
72 decks
-
4
Pantlaza, Sun-Favored
63 decks
-
5
Éowyn, Shieldmaiden
44 decks
-
6
Edgar Markov
42 decks
-
7
Hakbal of the Surging Soul
42 decks
-
8
Ulalek, Fused Atrocity
41 decks
-
9
The First Sliver
32 decks
-
10
The Ur-Dragon
25 decks
The commander list spans at least six distinct creature types, confirming that Secluded Courtyard earns its slot broadly across the tribal metagame rather than clustering in one archetype.