Skullclamp
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Artifact — Equipment
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Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander (TDC)
Skullclamp is in 12% of Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live. When drawn, 72% of copies reach the battlefield, and decks that cast it win at 36%, a +9.4 percentage-point lift over the baseline.
Skullclamp shows up in 12% of the 3322 distinct Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live. That share reflects a card with a well-earned reputation: a 1-mana equipment that converts creature deaths into card draw, and that reputation earned it a ban in Legacy, Modern, and the Two-Player Commander variant.
The play pattern is direct. Equip a small creature, watch it die to the -1 toughness trigger or in combat, draw two cards immediately. The data reflects this: median first cast lands on turn 4.0, and 68% of drawn copies are cast on the same turn they are drawn. Players do not sit on this card. Of 148 drawn copies in tracked games, 72% were cast before the game ended.
The commander distribution tells the archetype story clearly. Token and creature-flood strategies top the list: Edgar Markov, Krenko Mob Boss, and Chatterfang Squirrel General all feature heavily. Skullclamp is colour-identity free, so it slots into any deck that produces cheap creatures willing to die. That breadth explains how it reaches 12% inclusion across a dataset of 3322 decks spanning 512 tracked games.
- 12% of tracked Commander decks include Skullclamp
- 72% of drawn Skullclamps are cast before the game ends
- T4.0 median first-cast turn
- 68% of drawn copies cast on the same turn they were drawn
- 72% battlefield stickiness once cast
- 303 distinct players have brought Skullclamp to a tracked game
First-cast turn
n=106The "good card" funnel
613 brought · 303 playersOf 613 Skullclamps brought to games, 148 were drawn, 106 of those were cast, and 72% of cast copies remained on the battlefield at game's end.
Players who cast this card win 36% of the time (n=106) , vs 27% when it never left the library (n=414).
When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 25% (n=42) — 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.
95% confidence interval +0.1pp to +18.7pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.
Final zone distribution
164 instancesMost Skullclamps end games on the battlefield, a sharp contrast with the library-heavy final-zone distributions typical of singleton cards that rarely get drawn.
Commanders that played this card
in tracked games-
1
Edgar Markov
12 decks
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2
Silverquill, the Disputant
10 decks
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3
Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER
9 decks
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4
Zurgo Stormrender
9 decks
-
5
Caesar, Legion's Emperor
8 decks
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6
Teysa Karlov
8 decks
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7
Chatterfang, Squirrel General
7 decks
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8
Krenko, Mob Boss
7 decks
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9
Zada, Hedron Grinder
7 decks
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10
Darien, King of Kjeldor
5 decks
Token and creature-flood commanders dominate the list, from Edgar Markov to Krenko and Chatterfang, confirming that Skullclamp flows toward any strategy that produces cheap, expendable creatures.
How often is Skullclamp drawn in a Commander game? ▾
Across 512 tracked games where Skullclamp was in the deck, it was drawn 24% of the time. That is consistent with what you expect from a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 148 instances that reached a player's hand, 72% were cast before the game concluded.
What turn does Skullclamp typically get cast? ▾
Median first-cast turn is 4.0, with a mode of turn 1. The distribution has a clear early cluster: players who draw it in the opening hand cast it immediately, while the remaining casts spread across the mid-game. The p25 is turn 1 and the p75 is turn 6, showing a wide spread that reflects how randomly it is drawn across varying game lengths.
Does casting Skullclamp actually improve your win rate? ▾
In 106 tracked participations where Skullclamp reached the battlefield, the normalized win rate was 36%. Participations where it stayed in the library show 27%. That is a +9.4 percentage-point gap. Both sample sizes are large enough to treat this as a directional signal, though Playgroup Live's dataset is still growing and the effect should not be read as statistically definitive.
Is Skullclamp banned in Commander? ▾
No. Skullclamp is legal and unrestricted in Commander (including multiplayer) and in Oathbreaker and Vintage. It is banned in Legacy, Modern, and the Two-Player Commander (Duel Commander) format. Duel Commander's banned list is stricter than the multiplayer rules committee list, and Skullclamp's raw efficiency makes it too oppressive in the faster 1v1 environment.
Which commanders most often run Skullclamp? ▾
The top commanders in the Playgroup Live dataset are creature-token and go-wide strategies: Edgar Markov, Silverquill the Disputant, Cloud Ex-SOLDIER, and Zurgo Stormrender lead the multiplayer list. Krenko Mob Boss and Edgar Markov top the Duel Commander list. The pattern is consistent: any commander that produces small, expendable creatures benefits from turning those deaths into two cards at 1 mana.
How spread is the Skullclamp data across players? ▾
303 distinct players have brought Skullclamp to a tracked game on Playgroup Live, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for only 2% of all instances. That is well under the 15% threshold where concentration becomes a concern, so the data reflects a genuinely broad sample of how real Commander players use this card rather than one prolific player's habits.