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The Balrog of Moria

· Legendary Creature — Avatar Demon · Tales of Middle-earth Commander (LTC)

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

115

Decks Running

In Decks

469

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Final zone distribution

35 instances

28.6%

Battlefield

28.6%

Graveyard

20.0%

Exile

22.9%

Hand

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Sauron, Lord of the Rings 26 decks
2 Sauron, the Dark Lord 19 decks
3 Be'lakor, the Dark Master 6 decks
4 Dihada, Binder of Wills 1 decks
5 Eddie Brock // Venom, Lethal Protector 1 decks
6 Evereth, Viceroy of Plunder 1 decks
7 Kaalia of the Vast 1 decks
8 Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler of Ruin 1 decks
9 Niv-Mizzet Reborn 1 decks
10 Raphael, Fiendish Savior 1 decks

The "good card" funnel

116 brought · 52 players

Brought to game

116

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 48% 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.

≥ -9.0pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=20) , vs 19% when it never left the library (n=70).

Observed gap +11.4pp; 95% confidence interval -9.0pp to +31.9pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=21

10%

67%

T6-9

19%

T10+

Median 7 P25 7 · P75 8 · max 20

On curve 52% (7 / 21 cast on T7)

21 of 100 times cast 21%

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 620,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.