Live Play Data

Steelbane Hydra

· Creature — Turtle Hydra · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1012

Decks Running

453

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

54%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=117

10%

15%

55%

T6-9

19%

T10+

Median 7 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 15

Cast same turn as drawn 31%

The "good card" funnel

1012 brought · 413 players

Brought to game

1012

Ever drawn

218

Reached battlefield

117

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 44% of this card is still on the battlefield at game end. This reflects how often it survives removal, not just whether it's a permanent.

≥ -2.5pp

Players who cast this card win 24% of the time (n=112) , vs 18% when it never left the library (n=689).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 22% (n=96).

Read this as correlation, not as the card's contribution. Casting a card means you lived long enough to cast it, so this gap widens with mana value across every card we track.

Observed gap +5.5pp; 95% confidence interval -2.5pp to +13.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

239 instances

3.8%

Library

21.8%

Battlefield

33.5%

Graveyard

6.7%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Zimone, Infinite Analyst 145 decks
2 Leonardo, the Balance 80 decks
3 Zaxara, the Exemplary 44 decks
4 Heroes in a Half Shell 39 decks
5 Gargos, Vicious Watcher 20 decks
6 Magus Lucea Kane 9 decks
7 Primo, the Unbounded 9 decks
8 Michelangelo, the Heart 7 decks
9 Polukranos Reborn // Polukranos, Engine of Ruin 7 decks
10 Agatha of the Vile Cauldron 6 decks

Card text

Steelbane Hydra

Creature — Turtle Hydra

This creature enters with X +1/+1 counters on it. {2}

, Remove a +1/+1 counter from this creature: Destroy target artifact or enchantment.

0 / 0

Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC) · Rare · Illustrated by Nicholas Gregory

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games, and the full charts need a sample of at least 25 observed games that is not dominated by a single pilot. 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 710,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.