Live Play Data

Skullclamp

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

13%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

1878

Decks Running

1066

Median Cast Turn

4.0

Drawn → Played

76%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

13% of tracked Commander decks run Skullclamp. When drawn, 76% of copies reach the battlefield, and decks that cast it win 31% of games versus 26% when it stays buried in the library.

Skullclamp sits in 13% of the 8378 Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, appearing across 1066 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. 76% of drawn copies reach the battlefield, and 77% of those stay there through the end of the game. The median first-cast turn is 4.0, 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 +5.0 percentage points, an early directional signal across a well-sampled pool of 326 cast observations and 1283 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
76% of drawn Skullclamps reach the battlefield
T4.0 median first-cast turn
77% battlefield stickiness once cast
738 distinct players have brought Skullclamp to a tracked game
+5.0pp win-rate lift when cast versus when left in the library

First-cast turn

n=332

23%

11%

10%

11%

30%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4.0 P25 2 · P75 7 · max 15

On curve 23% (78 / 332 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 59%

The "good card" funnel

1886 brought · 738 players

Brought to game

1886

Ever drawn

439

Reached battlefield

332

Still on board at game end

256

76%

Of 1886 Skullclamps brought to games, 439 were drawn, 332 of those were cast, and 77% of cast copies remained on the battlefield through end of game.

≥ -0.1pp

Players who cast this card win 31% of the time (n=326) , vs 26% when it never left the library (n=1283).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 28% (n=103) — 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 +5.0pp; 95% confidence interval -0.1pp to +10.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

488 instances

2.7%

Library

52.5%

Battlefield

22.7%

Graveyard

6.4%

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 40 decks
2 Edgar Markov 31 decks
3 Krenko, Mob Boss 30 decks
4 Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER 27 decks
5 Chatterfang, Squirrel General 21 decks
6 Hazel of the Rootbloom 21 decks
7 Teysa Karlov 19 decks
8 Caesar, Legion's Emperor 18 decks
9 Rin and Seri, Inseparable 18 decks
10 Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER // Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel 17 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 1580 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 439 drawn instances, 76% were cast before the game ended.

What turn does Skullclamp typically hit the battlefield?

The median first-cast turn is 4.0, 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: 59% 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 326 observations) versus 26% when it stays in the library (across 1283 observations). That is a +5.0 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 738 distinct players, which makes the distribution robust to individual playstyle bias.

How sticky is Skullclamp once it resolves?

77% 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.