Live Play Data

Swords to Plowshares

· Instant · Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC)

58%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

6182

Decks Running

3206

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

73%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

58% of tracked Commander decks in white run Swords to Plowshares. When drawn, 73% of copies reach the graveyard as a resolved spell, with a median first-cast turn of 6.

Swords to Plowshares sits in 58% of tracked Commander decks on Playgroup Live, appearing in 3206 of the 5552 distinct decks that have logged a game. That figure covers only white-identity decks, so the effective penetration within its eligible pool is even higher than the headline number suggests.

The draw-to-play rate of 73% tells a straightforward story: players almost always resolve a copy they draw. At one mana, the barrier to casting is essentially zero once the card reaches a hand. The median first-cast turn of 6 reflects the card's reactive nature. Players hold it until a threat demands an answer rather than slamming it on curve. The 27% same-turn cast rate confirms that when players finally do pull the trigger, they typically act the moment the card arrives.

Swords to Plowshares is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Duel Commander, Timeless, and several other formats. It is banned in Historic. Across 1717 distinct players in this dataset, no single contributor accounts for more than a small sliver of the observations, making the sample among the better-spread on Playgroup Live.

At a glance

58% of tracked Commander decks include Swords to Plowshares
24% draw rate per game, consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck
73% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends
T6 median first-cast turn, reflecting its role as a reactive answer
27% of drawn-and-cast copies are cast on the very turn they are drawn
1717 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=1095

10%

17%

51%

T6-9

14%

T10+

Median 6 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 25

On curve 1% (7 / 1095 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 27%

The "good card" funnel

6202 brought · 1717 players

Brought to game

6202

Ever drawn

1505

Reached battlefield

1095

Still on board at game end

73%

Of 6202 copies brought to games, 1505 were drawn, and 1095 of those were cast, capturing a draw-to-play rate of 73% across the full dataset.

≥ +0.9pp

Players who cast this card win 28% of the time (n=1056) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=4146).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 33% (n=392) — 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 +3.6pp; 95% confidence interval +0.9pp to +6.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

1652 instances

3.0%

Library

2.3%

Battlefield

63.9%

Graveyard

10.3%

Exile

Swords to Plowshares is an instant that resolves to the graveyard, so the graveyard is its expected final home. The small fraction finishing in exile reflects countered or exiled copies of the spell itself.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The commander distribution is wide, spanning mono-white builds like Giada and five-color piles like The Ur-Dragon. No single commander dominates the list, consistent with a staple that slots into every archetype that can cast it.

Frequently Asked

How often is Swords to Plowshares drawn in a Commander game?

Across 4245 tracked games where the card was in a deck, it was drawn 24% of the time. That is in line with the baseline expectation for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 1505 instances that reached a player's hand, 73% were cast before the game concluded.

What turn does Swords to Plowshares typically get cast?

The median first-cast turn is 6. The distribution runs from turn 1 through turn 16 in this dataset, reflecting the card's role as a reactive tool: players wait until a creature warrants immediate removal rather than casting it speculatively. The mean is higher than the median, pulled up by late-game copies resolved in longer games.

Does casting Swords to Plowshares correlate with winning?

Games where Swords to Plowshares was cast show a win rate of 28% (normalized to a 4-player baseline) versus 24% for games where the card never left the library. The raw delta of +3.6 percentage points is a directional signal only. The confidence interval crosses zero, so we cannot call this effect conclusive at current sample sizes. What it does suggest is that resolving the spell does not drag down win rates, which is the minimum bar for a removal spell.

Is Swords to Plowshares banned anywhere?

Swords to Plowshares is legal in Commander, Duel Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Timeless, Gladiator, and several other formats. It is banned in Historic. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Pauper, or Alchemy, largely because those formats were designed after the card's most broken applications were already understood.

Why is Swords to Plowshares so widely played in Commander?

One white mana for unconditional exile of any creature is one of the most efficient rates in the game. The life-gain downside is negligible in Commander, where players start at 40 life and games frequently run long enough that a few extra life points rarely change the outcome. No color restriction exists beyond requiring white mana, so every white deck has access to it. That combination of efficiency, reliability, and broad accessibility explains its 58% inclusion rate in this tracked dataset.

How well-spread is this card's data across players?

1717 distinct players have brought Swords to Plowshares to a tracked game on Playgroup Live. The heaviest single contributor accounts for only a small fraction of all instances, well below the threshold where concentration bias becomes a concern. This is one of the more broadly distributed datasets on the platform, which gives the overall figures stronger cross-table signal than cards carried primarily by a handful of repeat players.