Skullclamp
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Artifact — Equipment
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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander (TDC)
Skullclamp is in 10.5% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live. When drawn, it's cast 63% of the time, with a 41.9% win rate in games where it hits the battlefield.
Skullclamp sits in 10.5% of the 1,700 distinct Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, appearing in 178 decklists across 226 tracked games. That number is deliberately selective: Skullclamp's colorless identity makes it legal in any deck, yet players reserve it for strategies built to feed it creatures.
The cast win rate of 41.9% against a baseline of 38.6% for participations where it stayed in the library yields a +3.2 percentage-point delta. Both buckets are reasonably sized (43 cast, 189 library), so the signal is directional. Getting Skullclamp onto the table correlates with winning more often, though the gap is modest, suggesting the decks running it are already tuned. When it does reach a player's hand, 71% of copies are cast on the same turn they were drawn, the clearest sign that players consider it an immediate priority.
Skullclamp is banned in Legacy, Modern, and the Tiny Leaders ruleset, and is not legal in Standard, Pioneer, or Pauper. Commander remains its primary home, where low-toughness token producers, sacrifice outlets, and creature-flood strategies turn every equip into a draw-two engine.
- 10.5% inclusion rate across 1,700 tracked Commander decks
- 63% of drawn Skullclamps are cast before the game ends
- 71% of drawn-and-cast copies are played the same turn they were drawn
- T4 median first-cast turn, ranging from turn 1 to turn 10
- +3.2pp win-rate lift when cast vs. when it stays in the library
- 79% battlefield stickiness once it resolves
First-cast turn
n=53The "good card" funnel
358 brought259 Skullclamps were brought to games, 65 were drawn, 43 of those were cast, and 34 were still on the battlefield when the game ended, a 79% stickiness rate for a card that survives by constantly generating value rather than by being hard to remove.
Players who cast this card win 42% of the time (n=53) , vs 39% when it never left the library (n=269).
Final zone distribution
358 instances189 of 259 Skullclamps never left the library, a structural baseline for a 10.5%-inclusion singleton, not an indictment of the card. The 34 copies still on the battlefield at game end point to its durability once it sticks.
Top commanders running this card
by deck count-
1
Rin and Seri, Inseparable
11 decks
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2
Edgar Markov
9 decks
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3
Ragost, Deft Gastronaut
9 decks
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4
Meren of Clan Nel Toth
8 decks
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5
Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER // Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel
8 decks
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6
Breya, Etherium Shaper
7 decks
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7
Elesh Norn // The Argent Etchings
7 decks
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8
High Perfect Morcant
7 decks
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9
Sméagol, Helpful Guide
7 decks
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10
Urza, Chief Artificer
7 decks
No single commander dominates the list. The top entry has just 8 decks, and the top ten span mono-black, mono-white, mono-red, and four-color builds, showing how broadly Skullclamp is distributed across creature-heavy strategies.
How often is Skullclamp drawn in a Commander game? ▾
Across 259 deck-participations where Skullclamp was in the deck, it was drawn in 25.1% of instances. That is roughly in line with what you would expect for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 65 instances we observed in hand, 43 were cast before the game ended, a draw-to-play rate of 63%.
Does casting Skullclamp actually help you win? ▾
In the current Playgroup Live dataset, participations where Skullclamp was cast show a 41.9% win rate (18 wins in 43 casts). Participations where it sat in the library the whole game show a 38.6% win rate (73 wins in 189 instances). The delta is +3.2 percentage points. With 43 cast observations this is an early directional signal rather than a statistically conclusive finding, but the direction is consistent with Skullclamp's widely understood power level.
What turn does Skullclamp usually get cast? ▾
Median first-cast turn is 4, with a 25th-percentile of turn 2 and a 75th-percentile of turn 7. The distribution is fairly spread: 8 casts on turn 1 (drawn in the opening hand), another 6 on turn 2, and a second cluster from turns 4 through 7. The wide spread reflects how deck archetype affects timing. Token and weenie strategies land it early; midrange and artifact builds tend to equip it mid-game.
Why does Skullclamp have such a low on-curve rate? ▾
Only 8 of 43 casts (18.6%) landed on turn 1, the natural curve turn for a 1-mana card, and 0 casts came ahead of curve. The remaining 35 casts came on later turns. This is almost entirely a hand-composition effect. A 1-mana card in a 100-card deck is simply not in the opening hand most games. The same-turn cast rate of 71% confirms that when players do draw it, they are not holding it, they are playing it immediately.
Is Skullclamp banned in Commander? ▾
No. Skullclamp is legal and unrestricted in Commander, as well as in Vintage, Duel Commander, and Oathbreaker. It is banned in Legacy, Modern, and the Tiny Leaders (TLR) format. It is not legal in Standard, Pioneer, Pauper, Brawl, or Historic. Commander is effectively its only major competitive-adjacent home.
Which commanders run Skullclamp most in tracked games? ▾
Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER leads with 8 decks, followed by Elesh Norn // The Argent Etchings and Rin and Seri, Inseparable at 7 each. Herigast, Erupting Nullkite, High Perfect Morcant, Sméagol, Helpful Guide, and Urza, Chief Artificer each appear in 6 decks. The spread across black token strategies, white go-wide builds, and artifact commanders reflects that Skullclamp fits any deck generating a steady stream of low-toughness creatures.