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Steelbane Hydra

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

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Times Brought

307

Decks Running

163

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

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

67 instances

3.0%

Library

25.4%

Battlefield

20.9%

Graveyard

4.5%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Zimone, Infinite Analyst 64 decks
2 Leonardo, the Balance 23 decks
3 Zaxara, the Exemplary 19 decks
4 Heroes in a Half Shell 14 decks
5 Gargos, Vicious Watcher 5 decks
6 Agatha of the Vile Cauldron 4 decks
7 Polukranos Reborn // Polukranos, Engine of Ruin 2 decks
8 Primo, the Unbounded 2 decks
9 Progenitus 2 decks
10 The Wise Mothman 2 decks

The "good card" funnel

308 brought · 159 players

Brought to game

308

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 68% 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.

≥ -14.0pp

Players who cast this card win 26% of the time (n=21) , vs 29% when it never left the library (n=193).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 30% (n=28) — 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 -2.6pp; 95% confidence interval -14.0pp to +8.9pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=25

12%

16%

52%

T6-9

T10+

Median 6 P25 5 · P75 7 · max 13

Cast same turn as drawn 36%

25 of 100 times cast 25%

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.