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Part of Tales of Middle-earth
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The Black Gate
Legendary Land — Gate
·
The Hobbit Eternal (HOC)
1%
Decklist Inclusion
Times Brought
310
Decks Running
162
In Decks
1241
Decklist Inclusion
1%
Format
Final zone distribution
84 instances1.2%
Library
70.2%
Battlefield
14.3%
Graveyard
3.6%
Exile
Commanders that played this card
in tracked games-
1
Sauron, the Dark Lord
31 decks
-
2
Sauron, Lord of the Rings
23 decks
-
3
Betor, Ancestor's Voice
8 decks
-
4
Lord of the Nazgûl
8 decks
-
5
Saruman, the White Hand
7 decks
-
6
Child of Alara
5 decks
-
7
Jin Sakai, Ghost of Tsushima
4 decks
-
8
Ardbert, Warrior of Darkness
3 decks
-
9
Nine-Fingers Keene
3 decks
-
10
Shelob, Child of Ungoliant
3 decks
The "good card" funnel
311 brought · 143 playersBrought to game
311
Ever drawn
76
Reached battlefield
63
Still on board at game end
59
Once cast, 94% 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.
≥ +1.8pp
Players who cast this card win 34% of the time (n=57) , vs 20% when it never left the library (n=210).
Observed gap +14.2pp; 95% confidence interval +1.8pp to +26.6pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.
First-cast turn
n=63
22%
T1
11%
T2
13%
T3
5%
T4
10%
T5
33%
T6-9
6%
T10+
Median
4
P25
2
· P75
8
· max
16
Cast same turn as drawn
63%
63 of 100 times cast
63%
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.