Live Play Data

Thought Vessel

· Artifact · Mystery Booster Commander Edition (MBC)

19%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

4789

Decks Running

2564

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

76%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

19% of tracked Commander decks run Thought Vessel. When drawn, 76% of copies are cast, with a median first-cast turn of 4.

Thought Vessel earns its slot in two ways: it ramps and it removes your maximum hand size. 19% of tracked decks include it, across 2564 distinct decklists in Playgroup Live's dataset of 13667 registered decks.

The draw-to-play rate sits at 76%, meaning roughly three out of four drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends. Median first cast lands on turn 4, consistent with a 2-mana ramp piece picked up after an early land drop. 81% of cast Thought Vessels survive to end of game, a sign that opponents rarely prioritize removing a mana rock at this price point.

Colorless identity means Thought Vessel slots into any Commander deck, and the hand-size text is a quiet but real edge in high-card-draw strategies. The top commander pairings on Playgroup Live skew toward blue-heavy draw engines and wheel-adjacent commanders, which is consistent with what you'd expect from a card that rewards keeping a full grip.

At a glance

19% of tracked Commander decks include Thought Vessel
76% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends
T4 median first-cast turn across tracked games
81% battlefield stickiness once cast
49% of drawn-and-cast copies were cast on the same turn they were drawn
1506 distinct players have brought Thought Vessel to a tracked game, spread evenly across the dataset

First-cast turn

n=963

10%

20%

12%

10%

31%

T6-9

T10+

Median 4 P25 2 · P75 7 · max 21

On curve 30% (192 / 963 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 49%

The "good card" funnel

4797 brought · 1506 players

Brought to game

4797

Ever drawn

1269

Reached battlefield

963

Still on board at game end

784

76%

Of 4797 Thought Vessels brought to games, 1269 were drawn, 963 of those were cast, and the large majority remained on the battlefield at game's end.

≥ +2.5pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=892) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=3019).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 31% (n=279) — 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 +5.6pp; 95% confidence interval +2.5pp to +8.7pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

1392 instances

2.6%

Library

56.3%

Battlefield

18.0%

Graveyard

4.7%

Exile

Most Thought Vessels that enter play stay there: 81% stickiness reflects opponents' general disinclination to spend removal on a 2-mana mana rock, and the majority of copies that never hit the battlefield simply never left the library in a 100-card deck.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The commander list spans multiple color identities and strategies, from wheel-heavy blue builds to colorless artifact commanders, consistent with a colorless staple that earns inclusion on its own merits rather than synergy with a single archetype.

Frequently Asked

How often is Thought Vessel drawn in a Commander game?

In 3735 tracked multiplayer games where Thought Vessel was in a deck, it was drawn 26% of the time. That rate is normal for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of those drawn copies, 76% were cast before the game concluded, and 49% were cast on the exact same turn they were drawn.

What turn does Thought Vessel usually get cast?

The median first-cast turn is 4. The distribution clusters early: turn 2 is the most common cast turn, with a second wave spread across turns 5 through 7 for copies drawn later in the game. The interquartile range runs from turn 2 to turn 7, so expect a wide spread depending on when the card surfaces.

Does casting Thought Vessel correlate with winning?

Games where Thought Vessel resolved show a win rate of 30%, compared to 24% in games where it stayed in the library. That is a +5.6 percentage-point difference across 892 cast observations and 3019 library observations. The sample is large enough to treat this as a directional signal: decks that cast Thought Vessel tend to win somewhat more often, though deck quality and strategy likely explain part of the gap.

Is Thought Vessel legal in Commander?

Yes. Thought Vessel is legal in Commander, Duel Commander, Oathbreaker, Pauper Commander, Legacy, and Vintage. It is not legal in Standard, Modern, Pioneer, Historic, or Brawl. Its colorless identity means it carries no color restriction and fits any Commander deck.

Which commanders most commonly run Thought Vessel?

On Playgroup Live, the most frequent pairings are Y'shtola, Night's Blessed (Esper), Ms. Bumbleflower (Bant), Captain America, Team Leader (Jeskai), Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls (Rakdos), and Bello, Bard of the Brambles (Gruul). The spread across very different color identities reflects Thought Vessel's colorless identity. The higher-frequency pairings in blue-heavy commanders are consistent with decks that generate large hand sizes and want to keep every card drawn.

How concentrated is the Thought Vessel data across players?

The dataset is well-distributed. 1506 distinct players have brought Thought Vessel to a tracked game on Playgroup Live, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for only 26% of instances. That breadth means the numbers are not skewed by one or two prolific players and can be read as a broad-based signal rather than one person's preference.