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Steelbane Hydra

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

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

478

Decks Running

229

In Decks

1398

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

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

Final zone distribution

105 instances

5.7%

Library

19.0%

Battlefield

30.5%

Graveyard

9.5%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Zimone, Infinite Analyst 83 decks
2 Leonardo, the Balance 44 decks
3 Zaxara, the Exemplary 21 decks
4 Heroes in a Half Shell 20 decks
5 Magus Lucea Kane 7 decks
6 Gargos, Vicious Watcher 6 decks
7 Polukranos Reborn // Polukranos, Engine of Ruin 4 decks
8 Agatha of the Vile Cauldron 3 decks
9 Jackal, Genius Geneticist 3 decks
10 Primo, the Unbounded 3 decks

The "good card" funnel

478 brought · 212 players

Brought to game

478

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 41% 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.

≥ -5.3pp

Players who cast this card win 28% of the time (n=44) , vs 20% when it never left the library (n=326).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 20% (n=44) — 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 +7.7pp; 95% confidence interval -5.3pp to +20.7pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=49

12%

16%

51%

T6-9

20%

T10+

Median 7 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 15

Cast same turn as drawn 28%

49 of 100 times cast 49%

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.