Live Play Data

Temple of Malice

Land · Foundations (FDN)

12%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

660

Decks Running

375

Median Cast Turn

4.0

Drawn → Played

74%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Temple of Malice appears in 12% of tracked Rakdos-accessible Commander decks on Playgroup Live, and when drawn it reaches the battlefield 74% of the time, with a median first-cast turn of 4.0.

Temple of Malice is a consistent fixture in Rakdos and Mardu Commander builds tracked on Playgroup Live. It sits in 12% of decks in the dataset and has been brought to 670 tracked game participations across 639 games, spread across 337 distinct players. The single heaviest contributor accounts for just 2% of all instances, a sign of genuinely broad representation in the data.

The headline behavior is straightforward: Temple enters tapped and smooths the early hand with a scry 1. Players cast it 74% of the time once it lands in hand, and the median first drop lands on turn 4.0. Once on the battlefield, it stays there at a rate of 90%, exactly what you expect from a basic-land-adjacent permanent. The cast win rate sits at 31%, running +11.0 percentage points above the rate seen in games where the card never left the library. With 126 cast observations and 420 library observations, that gap clears its standard-error threshold and reads as a directional positive signal rather than noise.

Temple of Malice is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Standard, and most other constructed formats. It is not legal in Pauper or Pauper Commander, where its rare printing bars it. In Commander specifically, it competes with a deep bench of Rakdos dual lands, but the free scry gives it a consistent edge over strictly enters-tapped options in decks that value hand quality over speed.

At a glance

12% of tracked decks include Temple of Malice
74% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
T4.0 median first-cast turn
90% battlefield stickiness once played
+11.0pp win-rate lift when cast vs. when it stays in the library
337 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=132

27%

10%

12%

30%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4.0 P25 1 · P75 7 · max 15

Cast same turn as drawn 63%

The "good card" funnel

670 brought · 337 players

Brought to game

670

Ever drawn

179

Reached battlefield

132

Still on board at game end

119

74%

Of 670 Temple of Malice copies brought to games, 179 were drawn, 132 of those were played onto the battlefield, and 90% of cast copies remained there through the end of the game.

≥ +3.1pp

Players who cast this card win 31% of the time (n=126) , vs 20% when it never left the library (n=420).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 35% (n=38) — 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 +11.0pp; 95% confidence interval +3.1pp to +19.0pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

193 instances

1.6%

Library

61.7%

Battlefield

13.0%

Graveyard

5.2%

Exile

The vast majority of Temple of Malice copies never leave the library in any given game, a structural reality of 100-card singleton decks where most cards go unseen. The share that does surface tends to stick on the battlefield.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls 51 decks
2 Caesar, Legion's Emperor 18 decks
3 Mr. House, President and CEO 18 decks
4 Kardur, Doomscourge 15 decks
5 Davros, Dalek Creator 11 decks
6 Strefan, Maurer Progenitor 11 decks
7 Judith, Carnage Connoisseur 10 decks
8 Kuja, Genome Sorcerer // Trance Kuja, Fate Defied 9 decks
9 Shadow the Hedgehog 9 decks
10 The Lord of Pain 9 decks

Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls leads the commander distribution by a significant margin, but the list spans ten distinct commanders across Rakdos and Mardu builds, showing that Temple of Malice is a format-wide B/R staple rather than a card tied to one strategy.

Frequently Asked

How often is Temple of Malice drawn in a Commander game?

Across 639 tracked games where Temple of Malice was in the deck, it was drawn 27% of the time. That is typical for a singleton land in a 100-card deck. Of the 179 copies that reached a player's hand, 74% were played before the game ended.

What turn does Temple of Malice usually enter the battlefield?

The median first-cast turn is 4.0, but the distribution is front-loaded. A large cluster drops on turn 1 from the opening hand, with the rest spread across the mid-game. The p75 lands on turn 6, and only a small tail extends beyond turn 8. The mode is turn 1, reflecting how often players keep hands containing this land.

Does casting Temple of Malice correlate with winning?

In 126 participations where Temple of Malice was cast, the normalized win rate is 31%. In 420 participations where it stayed in the library, it is 20%. That is a +11.0 percentage-point gap. The lower bound of that estimate is above zero, so it reads as a directional positive, though the sample is not large enough to treat it as a settled finding.

Is Temple of Malice banned in any format?

Temple of Malice is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Historic, Timeless, Alchemy, Brawl, and Oathbreaker. It is not legal in Pauper or Pauper Commander due to its rare rarity. It is also not legal in Old School or Premodern, which restrict cards to older print runs.

Which commanders most commonly run Temple of Malice?

On Playgroup Live, Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls leads by a wide margin, followed by Caesar, Legion's Emperor and Mr. House, President and CEO. The list spans both strict Rakdos (B/R) commanders and three-color Mardu (B/R/W) builds, reflecting that the Temple fits any deck touching black and red regardless of the third color.

How reliable is this data given the sample size?

The multiplayer stats cover 639 tracked games and 670 deck participations, drawn from 337 distinct players. The heaviest single contributor accounts for only 2% of all instances, which indicates the data is well-spread and not dominated by one player's habits. Win-rate deltas and cast-turn figures are directional rather than statistically definitive at this scale, but the broad player base adds confidence to the inclusion and play-pattern numbers.