Live Play Data

Tainted Field

Land · Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander (DSC)

11%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

880

Decks Running

488

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

86%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

86% of drawn Tainted Fields are played before the game ends, one of the highest land-to-battlefield conversion rates on Playgroup Live, with a median first-cast turn of 4.

Tainted Field converts drawn copies into played lands at an 86% rate across 851 tracked multiplayer Commander games on Playgroup Live. That figure is among the clearest early signals the dataset surfaces for any utility land: when players draw it, it hits the table.

The card's appeal is structural. It enters untapped and taps for colorless unconditionally, but inside any deck that already runs Swamps it becomes a dual land for White and Black at zero mana cost. The conditional clause rarely fails to fire in the Orzhov and Mardu shells that dominate its commander list. 95% battlefield stickiness reflects that lands are almost never removed once down.

At 11% of tracked decks, Tainted Field sits in a niche slice of the metagame, mostly Black-White shells and three-color builds that include Black. The commander distribution is notably spread: 443 distinct players have brought it to a tracked game, and no single player accounts for more than a small fraction of observations, lending the data reasonable breadth for its sample size.

At a glance

11% of tracked Commander decks include Tainted Field
86% of drawn copies reached the battlefield before the game ended
T4 median turn Tainted Field first hit play
95% battlefield stickiness once the land is played
443 distinct players have brought Tainted Field to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=187

16%

18%

14%

10%

11%

22%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4 P25 2 · P75 6 · max 16

Cast same turn as drawn 49%

The "good card" funnel

887 brought · 443 players

Brought to game

887

Ever drawn

217

Reached battlefield

187

Still on board at game end

177

86%

Of 887 Tainted Fields brought to games, 217 were drawn, 187 of those were played, and nearly all stayed on the battlefield through the end of the game.

≥ -0.7pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=170) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=558).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 22% (n=25) — 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 +6.7pp; 95% confidence interval -0.7pp to +14.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

241 instances

1.2%

Library

73.4%

Battlefield

12.4%

Graveyard

5.0%

Exile

The vast majority of Tainted Field copies finish on the battlefield, a sharp contrast to most singleton cards that spend entire games buried in the library without being found.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Caesar, Legion's Emperor 36 decks
2 Teysa Karlov 27 decks
3 Aminatou, Veil Piercer 25 decks
4 Edgar Markov 21 decks
5 Mr. House, President and CEO 16 decks
6 Clavileño, First of the Blessed 15 decks
7 Athreos, God of Passage 13 decks
8 Breena, the Demagogue 12 decks
9 Eriette of the Charmed Apple 11 decks
10 Astarion, the Decadent 10 decks

The commander list spans Orzhov, Mardu, and Esper builds, with no single commander dominating, reflecting how broadly any Black-White shell can slot in a free conditional dual.

Card text

Tainted Field

Land

: Add

: Add

. Activate only if you control a Swamp.

Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander (DSC) · Uncommon · Illustrated by Alayna Danner

Frequently Asked

How often is Tainted Field drawn in a Commander game?

Across 851 tracked games where Tainted Field was in the deck, it was drawn 24% of the time. That is consistent with a singleton land in a 100-card deck. Of 217 drawn instances, 86% were played before the game concluded, a strong conversion rate for a conditional dual land.

What turn does Tainted Field usually enter play?

Median first entry is turn 4, with a 25th-percentile of turn 2 and a 75th-percentile of turn 6. The mode in the distribution sits at turn 2, suggesting a meaningful cluster of opening-hand keeps. Most players who draw it early drop it immediately: 49% of drawn-and-played instances were played the same turn they were drawn.

Does casting Tainted Field correlate with winning?

In the 170 participations where Tainted Field entered the battlefield, the normalized win rate was 30%. In the 558 participations where it stayed in the library, the rate was 24%. The +6.7 percentage-point gap is a directional positive signal, but the confidence interval crosses zero on this sample size. Read it as encouraging, not conclusive.

Which commanders run Tainted Field most often?

Caesar, Legion's Emperor leads the tracked list, followed by Teysa Karlov, Aminatou Veil Piercer, Edgar Markov, and Clavileño, First of the Blessed. The spread covers Orzhov, Mardu, and Esper builds. Any commander whose color identity includes Black and White and that leans on Swamps as a land base is a natural home for the card.

Is Tainted Field legal in Commander?

Yes. Tainted Field is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Duel Commander, Premodern, and Oathbreaker. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Pauper, Historic, or Brawl. Its color identity is Black-White, so it can only slot into decks whose commander covers both those colors.

How concentrated is the Tainted Field data across players?

The dataset is well-spread. 443 distinct players have brought Tainted Field to at least one tracked game, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for only 1% of all instances. That breadth is a meaningful data-quality signal: the numbers reflect a wide range of play styles and metas rather than one group's preferences.