Live Play Data

Vandalblast

· Sorcery · Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC)

16%

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1216

Decks Running

658

Median Cast Turn

6.5

Drawn → Played

56%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

16% of tracked Commander decks run Vandalblast, and when a copy reaches a player's hand, 56% of those copies are cast before the game ends, with a median first cast on turn 6.5.

Vandalblast sits in 16% of Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, appearing in 658 of the 4206 distinct decks that have played a tracked game. For a single-color, single-pip removal spell with a powerful but expensive overload mode, that footprint is broad and consistent across the red section of the tracked meta.

When a copy enters a player's hand, 56% of those copies are cast. That is a sorcery-speed card competing with every other priority in a hand. The median first cast lands on turn 6.5, which aligns with the overload cost becoming realistic: five mana on turn six or seven is when the board has usually accumulated enough artifacts to make sweeping them worthwhile. The data from 1090 tracked games spans 519 distinct players, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for under 2% of all instances, so the spread is genuinely wide.

Vandalblast is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, and Duel Commander. It is not legal in Pauper, Standard, or Brawl. In Commander specifically it fills a slot that red struggles to cover in other formats: scalable artifact removal that answers one threat cheaply or clears the whole board for five mana.

At a glance

16% of tracked Commander decks include Vandalblast
23% draw rate across tracked games
56% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends
T6.5 median first-cast turn, aligned with overload mana becoming available
519 distinct players have brought Vandalblast to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=158

10%

16%

54%

T6-9

11%

T10+

Median 6.5 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 15

Cast same turn as drawn 39%

The "good card" funnel

1216 brought · 519 players

Brought to game

1216

Ever drawn

281

Reached battlefield

158

Still on board at game end

56%

Of 1216 Vandalblast copies brought to tracked games, 281 were drawn, 158 of those were cast, and nearly all resolved to the graveyard as expected for a sorcery.

≥ -5.3pp

Players who cast this card win 26% of the time (n=154) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=841).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 27% (n=119) — 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 +1.5pp; 95% confidence interval -5.3pp to +8.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

317 instances

2.8%

Library

4.1%

Battlefield

56.8%

Graveyard

8.8%

Exile

The vast majority of Vandalblast copies never leave the library in a given game. That is a structural feature of 100-card singleton, not a signal that the card underperforms when drawn.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Doctor Doom, King of Latveria 46 decks
2 Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER 42 decks
3 Krenko, Mob Boss 21 decks
4 Kibo, Uktabi Prince 17 decks
5 Zada, Hedron Grinder 13 decks
6 Deadpool, Trading Card 11 decks
7 Kuja, Genome Sorcerer // Trance Kuja, Fate Defied 10 decks
8 Tony Stark // The Invincible Iron Man 10 decks
9 Vivi Ornitier 10 decks
10 Kratos, God of War 9 decks

The commander list is wide and colorfully varied, from mono-red aggro like Krenko to three-color control shells like Doctor Doom, confirming Vandalblast is a format-wide role-player rather than a synergy-specific include.

Frequently Asked

How often is Vandalblast drawn in a Commander game?

Across 1090 tracked games where Vandalblast was in the deck, it was drawn 23% of the time. That is in line with what a singleton in a 100-card deck can realistically deliver. Of 281 total instances that reached a player's hand, 56% were cast at some point before the game ended.

What turn does Vandalblast typically get cast?

The median first-cast turn is 6.5. The interquartile range runs from turn 5 to turn 8, which maps closely to when five mana for overload becomes available. Casts at turns 2-3 almost certainly represent the single-target mode on one mana. Players appear to time the card around its overload more often than its base mode.

How long does Vandalblast sit in hand before being cast?

Among drawn-and-cast instances, the median wait is 1 turn after being drawn before the spell is cast. Only 39% of those casts happen on the exact same turn the card was drawn. That suggests players often hold it a turn, either waiting for the right threat to appear or building toward the overload cost rather than casting it immediately as a one-for-one.

Does casting Vandalblast correlate with winning?

Win rate when cast is 26% (across 154 participations), compared to 24% for participations where the card stayed in the library. The delta is +1.5 percentage points. Both sample buckets are reasonably sized, but this is early directional signal rather than a definitive verdict. Vandalblast is primarily a disruption piece, so its value shows up in slowing opponents rather than directly generating wins.

Is Vandalblast banned anywhere relevant?

Vandalblast is legal in Commander, Duel Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, and Oathbreaker. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, Brawl, Alchemy, Historic, or Timeless. There are no bans on record for it in Commander, and it has never appeared on the Commander ban list.

Which commanders most often run Vandalblast in tracked games?

Doctor Doom, King of Latveria leads with 26 decks, followed by Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER with 24 and Krenko, Mob Boss with 19. The top-10 list spans mono-red, Gruul, Grixis, and Naya color identities, reflecting that Vandalblast is the default artifact-removal tool for any deck that touches red rather than a synergy pick for a specific strategy.