collections_bookmark Part of Tales of Middle-earth
The Gaffer card art
Live Play Data

The Gaffer

{2} {W} · Legendary Creature — Halfling Peasant · Tales of Middle-earth Commander (LTC)
2%
Live Inclusion
Times Brought
780
Decks Running
384
Median Cast Turn
6.0
Drawn → Played
69%
Format

First-cast turn

n=132
2%
T1
3%
T2
16%
T3
17%
T4
9%
T5
42%
T6-9
11%
T10+
Median 6.0 P25 4 · P75 8 · max 16
On curve 21% (21 / 132 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 27%

The "good card" funnel

780 brought · 363 players
Brought to game
780
Ever drawn
178
Reached battlefield
122
Still on board at game end
76

Once cast, 62% 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.

≥ -2.1pp

Players who cast this card win 34% of the time (n=115) , vs 27% when it never left the library (n=521).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 27% (n=49).

Read this as correlation, not as the card's contribution. Casting a card means you lived long enough to cast it, so this gap widens with mana value across every card we track.

Observed gap +6.9pp; 95% confidence interval -2.1pp to +15.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

198 instances
2.5%
Library
38.4%
Battlefield
28.8%
Graveyard
6.1%
Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games
Card text
The Gaffer card

The Gaffer

{2} {W}
Legendary Creature — Halfling Peasant
At the beginning of each end step, if you gained 3 or more life this turn, draw a card.
2 / 3
Tales of Middle-earth Commander (LTC) · Rare · Illustrated by Tomas Duchek

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?
Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games, and the full charts need a sample of at least 25 observed games that is not dominated by a single pilot. 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 710,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.