Selfless Spirit
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Creature — Spirit Cleric
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Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)
5% of tracked Commander decks run Selfless Spirit. When drawn, 75% of copies reach the battlefield, with a median first-cast turn of 6.
Selfless Spirit earns its slot across a wide spread of white decks on Playgroup Live. It sits in 5% of tracked Commander decks, brought to 772 game participations across 743 tracked games. Those numbers come from 362 distinct players, with the single heaviest contributor accounting for just 2% of all instances. That spread gives the data reasonable breadth for a card of its niche.
The core promise of Selfless Spirit is reactive: hold it open, sacrifice it when a board wipe lands, save your team. That timing reality is visible in the cast-turn distribution, which fans out broadly from turn 2 through turn 8. The median first cast lands on turn 6, well past its 2-mana curve, consistent with players waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger. Of drawn copies, 75% are cast before the game ends. The remainder reflects games that concluded before the window opened.
Selfless Spirit is a white singleton staple in creature-heavy strategies. It fits naturally into go-wide token builds, aristocrats lists that want a sacrifice outlet with upside, and Spirit tribal decks. Its color restriction to white keeps it out of many piles, which explains its selective but enthusiastic inclusion rate among white-aligned commanders tracked on Playgroup Live.
- 5% of tracked Commander decks include Selfless Spirit
- 75% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
- T6 median first-cast turn, reflecting its hold-open reactive role
- 43% battlefield stickiness once cast, low by design as sacrifice is the whole point
- 362 distinct players have brought it to a tracked game, a well-spread sample
- 34% win rate in games where Selfless Spirit was cast
First-cast turn
n=135The "good card" funnel
772 brought · 362 playersOf 772 Selfless Spirits brought to tracked games, 180 were drawn, 135 of those were cast, and roughly four in ten remained on the battlefield at game's end, with the rest sacrificed to protect their owner's team.
Players who cast this card win 34% of the time (n=128) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=502).
When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 34% (n=40) — 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 +10.2pp; 95% confidence interval +1.9pp to +18.6pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.
Final zone distribution
198 instancesMost Selfless Spirits end up in the graveyard, the expected destination for a creature that sacrifices itself. A substantial share finish on the battlefield in games where the ability was never needed.
Commanders that played this card
in tracked games-
1
Quintorius, History Chaser
67 decks
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2
Zinnia, Valley's Voice
41 decks
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3
Betor, Ancestor's Voice
17 decks
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4
Terra, Herald of Hope
17 decks
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5
Arabella, Abandoned Doll
16 decks
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6
Millicent, Restless Revenant
14 decks
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7
Zurgo Stormrender
14 decks
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8
Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer
13 decks
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9
Squall, SeeD Mercenary
11 decks
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10
The Destined Warrior
9 decks
Quintorius, History Chaser dominates the top slot by a wide margin, but the list spans a healthy range of Boros, Mardu, and Azorious commanders, showing Selfless Spirit pulls weight across several white-inclusive strategies rather than belonging to a single deck archetype.
Selfless Spirit