Urza's Cave
75% of drawn Urza's Caves are cast before the game ends, and decks that resolve it show a +11.4 percentage-point win-rate lift over decks that never interact with their copy.
Urza's Cave is a niche but purposeful land: it taps for colorless mana and, when sacrificed for {3}, fetches any land from the library onto the battlefield tapped. Across 852 multiplayer Commander games tracked on Playgroup Live, 75% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended, one of the higher execution rates we see for lands with an activated ability.
The card sits in 422 of the 14659 decks in the dataset, an 3% inclusion rate that reflects its specialist role. It is not a universal staple. It slots into colorless artifact strategies and land-synergy builds where fetching a specific land at the right moment matters more than raw mana acceleration. The median first activation lands on turn 4.0, consistent with early-game utility rather than a late tuck.
The concentration picture is healthy for a card this narrow: 324 distinct players have brought Urza's Cave to a tracked game, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for 324 spread across the top-commander list, which skews heavily toward colorless and five-color commanders. That commander spread tells you exactly who wants this card.
- 3% of tracked Commander decks include Urza's Cave
- 75% of drawn copies reach the battlefield before the game ends
- T4.0 median turn of first activation
- 64% battlefield stickiness once activated
- 39% win rate in games where Urza's Cave was activated
- 324 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game
First-cast turn
n=172The "good card" funnel
905 brought · 324 playersOf 905 Urza's Caves brought to games, 229 were drawn, 172 of those were activated, and 64% of activated copies stayed on the battlefield through end of game.
Players who cast this card win 39% of the time (n=163) , vs 27% when it never left the library (n=587).
When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 31% (n=54) — 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 +11.4pp; 95% confidence interval +3.7pp to +19.0pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.
Final zone distribution
251 instancesMost Urza's Caves end up in the graveyard after their sacrifice ability resolves, which is expected. A smaller cluster finishes on the battlefield, likely copies that generated colorless mana but were never sacrificed before the game ended.
Commanders that played this card
in tracked games- 1 Zhulodok, Void Gorger 24 decks
- 2 Ultron, Artificial Malevolence 19 decks
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3
Ulalek, Fused Atrocity
16 decks
- 4 Molecule Man 12 decks
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5
Hearthhull, the Worldseed
9 decks
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6
Lumra, Bellow of the Woods
9 decks
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7
The Necrobloom
9 decks
- 8 Ultima, Origin of Oblivion 8 decks
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9
Teval, the Balanced Scale
6 decks
- 10 Karn, Legacy Reforged 5 decks
Colorless commanders dominate the top-commander list, with Ultron, Zhulodok, and Molecule Man leading by deck count. The spread across roughly a dozen different commanders suggests Urza's Cave fills a consistent role across colorless and land-synergy strategies rather than being a one-deck card.