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Tainted Wood card art
Live Play Data

Tainted Wood

Land · Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander (DSC)
14%
Live Inclusion
Buy on TCGplayer
Times Brought
837
Decks Running
443
Median Cast Turn
4.0
Drawn → Played
85%
Format
Multiplayer 1v1

14% of tracked Golgari and multicolor Commander decks run Tainted Wood, and 85% of drawn copies reach the battlefield, with a median first-cast turn of 4.0.

Tainted Wood earns its slot through reliability. Across 806 tracked multiplayer Commander games on Playgroup Live, 14% of eligible decks brought it to the table, and when a copy reached a player's hand, 85% of those copies were played before the game ended.

The card's constraint, requiring a Swamp in play to produce colored mana, is almost always satisfied in the Black-Green shells that run it. Median first cast lands on turn 4.0, consistent with early land drops. Battlefield stickiness sits at 90%, which is expected: once a land resolves, it tends to stay. 391 distinct players have brought Tainted Wood to a tracked game, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for only 4% of all instances, so the data is well spread across the player pool.

Tainted Wood sits in the same cycle as Tainted Isle, Tainted Peak, and Tainted Field, each offering dual-color production conditional on controlling a specific basic land type. In two-color Golgari decks and Swamp-heavy three-color builds, the Swamp condition is rarely a problem, making this a low-cost fixing option for Black-Green Commander strategies.

At a glance
  • 14% of tracked decks include Tainted Wood
  • 85% of drawn copies are played before the game ends
  • T4.0 median turn of first play
  • 90% battlefield stickiness once played
  • 391 distinct players have brought Tainted Wood to a tracked game
  • 26% draw rate per game, typical for a singleton land

First-cast turn

n=188
13%
T1
21%
T2
13%
T3
9%
T4
13%
T5
27%
T6-9
4%
T10+
Median 4.0 P25 2 · P75 6 · max 15
Cast same turn as drawn 48%

The "good card" funnel

838 brought · 391 players
Brought to game
838
Ever drawn
221
Reached battlefield
188
Still on board at game end
170
85%

Of 838 copies brought to games, 221 were drawn and 188 of those were played, a strong conversion rate that reflects how little reason players have to hold a land once they see it.

≥ -5.3pp

Players who cast this card win 26% of the time (n=171) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=508).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 10% (n=31) — 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 +1.6pp; 95% confidence interval -5.3pp to +8.5pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

247 instances
4.9%
Library
68.8%
Battlefield
15.4%
Graveyard
2.0%
Exile

The vast majority of Tainted Wood copies finish on the battlefield, which is the correct outcome for a land played early. The small graveyard count reflects cards destroyed or sacrificed, not a pattern of discard.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Tainted Wood's commander list spans the breadth of the Golgari color pair, from aristocrats to graveyard recursion to counters strategies, reflecting its role as generic mana fixing rather than a synergy piece for any one archetype.

Frequently Asked

How often is Tainted Wood drawn in a Commander game?
Across 806 tracked multiplayer games where Tainted Wood was in the deck, it was drawn 26% of the time. That rate is normal for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 221 copies that reached a hand, 85% were played before the game concluded.
What turn does Tainted Wood typically enter the battlefield?
Median first play is turn 4.0, with the 25th percentile at turn 2 and the 75th at turn 6. The distribution shows a cluster of early plays from opening-hand keeps, and a long tail extending to turn 15 in the tracked dataset. The mean is pulled higher by those late-game copies. Players who keep it in their opener tend to play it immediately: the same-turn play rate for drawn-and-cast copies is 48%.
Is Tainted Wood's win-rate delta meaningful?
Tainted Wood shows a small positive delta between win rate when cast and win rate when it stays in the library. However, the sample size and standard error make this directional only. Read it as a consistent early signal rather than a proven effect. The more reliable takeaway is that decks running Tainted Wood are winning at a broadly expected rate for a mana-fixing piece.
Where is Tainted Wood legal?
Tainted Wood is legal in Commander, Duel Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Oathbreaker, Premodern, and Predh. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Pauper, Brawl, Alchemy, or Historic. It is an uncommon printed in the Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander set.
How concentrated is Tainted Wood's data across players?
The data is well spread. 391 distinct players have brought Tainted Wood to at least one tracked game. The single most active contributor accounts for only 4% of all instances, well below the threshold where individual bias would skew the numbers.
Which commanders most commonly run Tainted Wood?
Hazel of the Rootbloom and The Wise Mothman each top the commander list, followed by Chatterfang, Witherbloom the Balancer, Meren of Clan Nel Toth, and Shelob, Child of Ungoliant. The spread is broad: nearly all commanders pairing Black and Green appear across the top ten, confirming Tainted Wood is a format-wide Golgari staple rather than a card tied to any single strategy.