Live Play Data

Skullclamp

· Artifact — Equipment · Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC)

13%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

3306

Decks Running

1832

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

77%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

13% of tracked Commander decks run Skullclamp. When drawn, 77% of copies reach the battlefield, and decks that cast it win 31% of games versus 25% when it stays buried in the library.

Skullclamp sits in 13% of the 14231 Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, appearing across 1832 distinct lists. That breadth is the first headline: a colorless 1-mana Equipment that draws two cards on creature death belongs in almost every deck that floods the board with small creatures, and the data confirms players across a wide range of archetypes act on that instinct.

The second headline is what happens once it resolves. 77% of drawn copies reach the battlefield, and 76% of those stay there through the end of the game. The median first-cast turn is 4, consistent with a low-cost card that players deploy as soon as a creature is available to equip. The cast-vs-library win-rate delta is +6.3 percentage points, an early directional signal across a well-sampled pool of 530 cast observations and 2182 library observations.

The commander distribution is notably diverse. No single commander type dominates the list. Token strategies, aristocrats, and go-wide creature builds all appear at the top, reflecting Skullclamp's near-universal applicability whenever creatures are dying regularly. Its colorless identity means it fits any deck without restriction.

At a glance

13% of tracked Commander decks include Skullclamp
77% of drawn Skullclamps reach the battlefield
T4 median first-cast turn
76% battlefield stickiness once cast
1246 distinct players have brought Skullclamp to a tracked game
+6.3pp win-rate lift when cast versus when left in the library

First-cast turn

n=575

21%

12%

10%

30%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4 P25 2 · P75 7 · max 15

On curve 21% (123 / 575 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 60%

The "good card" funnel

3314 brought · 1246 players

Brought to game

3314

Ever drawn

748

Reached battlefield

575

Still on board at game end

439

77%

Of 3314 Skullclamps brought to games, 748 were drawn, 575 of those were cast, and 76% of cast copies remained on the battlefield through end of game.

≥ +2.3pp

Players who cast this card win 31% of the time (n=530) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=2182).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 27% (n=164) — 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 +6.3pp; 95% confidence interval +2.3pp to +10.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

827 instances

3.3%

Library

53.1%

Battlefield

23.2%

Graveyard

5.9%

Exile

Most Skullclamps never leave the library, the expected result for any singleton in a 100-card deck, but the battlefield share is notably high relative to the draw rate, reflecting how quickly players deploy it once it reaches their hand.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Doctor Doom, King of Latveria 79 decks
2 Krenko, Mob Boss 59 decks
3 Edgar Markov 56 decks
4 Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER 52 decks
5 Caesar, Legion's Emperor 39 decks
6 Chatterfang, Squirrel General 39 decks
7 Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER // Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel 37 decks
8 Rin and Seri, Inseparable 35 decks
9 Hazel of the Rootbloom 29 decks
10 Teysa Karlov 29 decks

The commander list spans red token strategies, aristocrats, and multicolor go-wide builds, with no single commander dominating, a sign of Skullclamp's colorless flexibility across the format.

Frequently Asked

How often is Skullclamp drawn in a Commander game?

Across 2799 tracked games where Skullclamp was in the deck, it was drawn 23% of the time. That draw rate is on the higher end for a singleton in a 100-card deck, partly because low-mana cards tend to be kept when seen in opening hands and players often tutor for them. Of 748 drawn instances, 77% were cast before the game ended.

What turn does Skullclamp typically hit the battlefield?

The median first-cast turn is 4, with a strong early cluster driven by opening-hand keeps. The mode of the cast-turn distribution is turn 1. The p25 is turn 2 and p75 is turn 7, so half of all casts land between those turns. The mean is pulled higher by occasional late draws. Players who have a creature ready tend to equip and fire immediately: 60% of cast instances were played on the same turn they were drawn.

Is Skullclamp banned in Commander?

No, Skullclamp is legal and unrestricted in Commander. It is banned in Legacy, Modern, and the Tournament Legend Rules (TLR) format. It is also not legal in Standard, Pioneer, Alchemy, Historic, Brawl, Pauper, or most other constructed formats. Commander is the primary competitive home for the card, which is why its data on Playgroup Live skews so heavily toward that format.

Does casting Skullclamp actually improve your win rate?

The directional signal is positive. Decks that cast Skullclamp win 31% of games (across 530 observations) versus 25% when it stays in the library (across 2182 observations). That is a +6.3 percentage-point lift. The sample sizes are large enough to treat this as a reliable directional trend on Playgroup Live's dataset, though the confidence interval grazes zero at its lower bound, so read it as a consistent signal rather than a proven causal effect.

Which commanders run Skullclamp most often?

The top commanders by raw deck count on Playgroup Live are Doctor Doom, Edgar Markov, Krenko, Cloud, and Chatterfang. The spread is broad across colors and archetypes: token strategies, aristocrats, and creature-heavy midrange all appear. No single commander represents more than a small slice of the total, and the data comes from 1246 distinct players, which makes the distribution robust to individual playstyle bias.

How sticky is Skullclamp once it resolves?

76% of cast Skullclamps are still on the battlefield at the end of the game. Artifacts without activated sacrifice outlets are hard to remove outside of dedicated artifact removal, and most opponents prioritize disrupting the equipped creature rather than the Equipment itself. The graveyard and exile counts in the final-zone distribution mostly reflect games where board wipes or targeted removal cleared the whole board rather than Skullclamp being specifically answered.