Live Play Data

Vanquish the Horde

· Sorcery · Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

827

Decks Running

382

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

56%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Vanquish the Horde is in 6% of tracked Commander decks, cast at a median turn of 7 and reaching players' hands 23% of the time it's in the library.

Vanquish the Horde is White's scalable board wipe: a nominal 8-mana sorcery that routinely costs far less once the battlefield fills up. Across 786 tracked multiplayer Commander games, it appears in 382 of 6444 distinct decks, an inclusion rate of 6%.

The card's printed cost is steep, but the cost-reduction clause is the whole point. 70% of casts landed at or ahead of the card's base mana value, meaning players are frequently casting this well before turn 8 by leaning on a crowded battlefield. Of 189 drawn copies, 56% were cast before the game ended. That gap between drawn and cast reflects both games that end before the card becomes relevant and situations where players hold it, waiting for maximum impact.

As a sorcery that resolves directly to the graveyard, Vanquish the Horde is purely a "cast it and forget it" effect. Its value is timing: deploying it when creatures are plentiful enough to bring its cost into range while threatening enough to justify clearing the entire board.

At a glance

6% of tracked Commander decks include Vanquish the Horde
23% draw rate across tracked games
56% of drawn copies were cast before the game ended
T7 median first-cast turn, reflecting how long players wait for the right moment
70% of casts landed on-curve or ahead, driven by the creature-count discount
335 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game

First-cast turn

n=105

11%

70%

T6-9

13%

T10+

Median 7 P25 6 · P75 9 · max 13

On curve 70% (19 / 105 cast on T8) Cast same turn as drawn 22%

The "good card" funnel

827 brought · 335 players

Brought to game

827

Ever drawn

189

Reached battlefield

105

Still on board at game end

56%

Of 827 copies brought to tracked games, 189 were drawn and 105 of those were cast, with every resolved copy moving to the graveyard as expected for a sorcery board wipe.

≥ -6.4pp

Players who cast this card win 25% of the time (n=100) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=535).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 29% (n=73) — 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 +2.0pp; 95% confidence interval -6.4pp to +10.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

209 instances

2.9%

Library

55.5%

Graveyard

12.0%

Exile

29.7%

Hand

Vanquish the Horde resolves directly to the graveyard every time it is cast, so the library bucket represents the large share of copies that simply were never drawn in the observed games, a normal outcome for a singleton in a 100-card deck.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER and T'Challa, the Black Panther lead the list by raw deck count, but the spread across ten commanders spanning mono-White to five-color shows this card is not locked to a single archetype.

Frequently Asked

How often is Vanquish the Horde drawn in a Commander game?

In 786 tracked multiplayer games where Vanquish the Horde was in the deck, it was drawn 23% of the time. That is consistent with what you'd expect from a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of the 189 copies that reached a player's hand, 56% were eventually cast. The remainder reflects games that ended before the card became relevant, or players waiting for a more opportune moment to sweep the board.

What turn does Vanquish the Horde typically get cast?

Median first cast lands on turn 7, with the middle half of casts spread between turns 6 and 9. The cost-reduction clause is doing real work here: 70% of casts came on turn 8 or earlier. When creatures stack up quickly, the card becomes castable well before a player would otherwise have 8 mana available. Players also tend to hold it for a few turns once they draw it, with a median hand-to-cast delay of 3 turns.

Is Vanquish the Horde legal in Commander?

Yes. Vanquish the Horde is legal and unrestricted in Commander, as well as in Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, Historic, Timeless, Duel Commander, Brawl, and Oathbreaker. It is not legal in Standard, Pauper, Pauper Commander, or Premodern. Its closest Commander analogs are Wrath of God and Damnation, though its creature-count scaling makes it distinctive in creature-heavy pods.

Which commanders most often run Vanquish the Horde?

In the Playgroup Live dataset, Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER and T'Challa, the Black Panther lead with the most tracked decks running this card. Both commanders operate in White-inclusive color identities with creature-heavy strategies, which makes a scalable board wipe especially attractive. The distribution is reasonably broad across the top 10 commanders listed, so this is not a card concentrated in a single archetype.

Does casting Vanquish the Horde actually improve your win rate?

In 100 participations where Vanquish the Horde was cast, the normalized win rate was 25%, compared to 23% in 535 participations where it never left the library. The gap is directional but the standard error is large relative to the delta, so treat this as an early signal rather than a firm conclusion. The win rate in the 4-player format is normalized to a 25% baseline, so 25% is roughly in line with expectation.

How concentrated is the Vanquish the Horde data among specific players?

335 distinct players have brought Vanquish the Horde to a tracked game, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for only 3% of all instances. That spread is a genuine strength of this dataset: the numbers are not skewed by one or two prolific players repeatedly running the same deck. The picture reflects a wide cross-section of the Playgroup Live community.