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Smuggler's Surprise

· Instant · Outlaws of Thunder Junction (OTJ)

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Times Brought

292

Decks Running

164

In Decks

—

Decklist Inclusion

—

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Showing 1v1 (duel) data only. 1v1 is a different format from multiplayer Commander, so these numbers are not comparable.

Card text

Smuggler's Surprise

Instant

Spree (Choose one or more additional costs.) + {2}

— Mill four cards. You may put up to two creature and/or land cards from among the milled cards into your hand. + {4}

— You may put up to two creature cards from your hand onto the battlefield. + {1}

— Creatures you control with power 4 or greater gain hexproof and indestructible until end of turn.

Outlaws of Thunder Junction (OTJ) · Rare · Illustrated by Jonas De Ro

Final zone distribution

64 instances

1.6%

Library

7.8%

Battlefield

50.0%

Graveyard

9.4%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 The Ur-Dragon 34 decks
2 Ureni of the Unwritten 13 decks
3 The Wise Mothman 8 decks
4 Pantlaza, Sun-Favored 7 decks
5 Atla Palani, Nest Tender 5 decks
6 Beorn the Fierce 5 decks
7 Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm 5 decks
8 Eshki, Temur's Roar 4 decks
9 Ghalta, Primal Hunger 3 decks
10 Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma 3 decks

The "good card" funnel

296 brought · 152 players

Brought to game

296

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -12.6pp

Players who cast this card win 22% of the time (n=29) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=173).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 33% (n=18) — 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 -2.7pp; 95% confidence interval -12.6pp to +7.2pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=34

12%

59%

T6-9

12%

T10+

Median 7.0 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 11

On curve 0% (0 / 34 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 25%

34 of 100 times cast 34%

Full analysis unlocks as more games are tracked. Stats refresh nightly.

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Basic play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games; the full deep-dive page needs a larger, more diverse sample (at least 300 tracked games played by 10 or more different pilots, with no single pilot over 40 percent of the copies). Until this card clears those bars you're seeing only the basic counts. Stats refresh nightly.

How is Playgroup Live card data collected?

Players using Playgroup Live import their decklists before a game and log card actions as they play. Each cast, zone change, and resolution is recorded as a real game event. Stats on this site are computed from those events, not from decklist scrapes or theorycrafting. Playgroup has recorded 650,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.