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Verdant Catacombs card art
Live Play Data

Verdant Catacombs

Land · Modern Horizons 2 (MH2)
10%
Live Inclusion
Buy on TCGplayer
Times Brought
3893
Decks Running
1971
Median Cast Turn
4
Drawn → Played
74%
Format
Multiplayer 1v1

10% of tracked Commander decks run Verdant Catacombs. When drawn, 74% of copies are activated before the game ends, with a median first-activation turn of 4.

Verdant Catacombs sits in 10% of the 19725 Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live. That figure reflects its role as a staple fetch land for any deck touching black or green, colorless enough in identity to slot into five-color shells as readily as two-color ones.

The most telling number is draw-to-play: 74% of drawn copies are activated before the game ends. Fetch lands are almost always used the moment they are needed, so a high rate here is expected. The median first-activation turn is 4, though the single largest cluster in the distribution is turn 1, reflecting opening-hand keeps where the fetch immediately fixes mana.

With 1111 distinct players contributing data and the single heaviest contributor accounting for just 2% of all instances, the dataset is well-spread. The numbers are directional rather than definitive given the sample, but the breadth of contributors adds confidence to the trends.

At a glance
  • 10% of tracked Commander decks include Verdant Catacombs
  • 74% of drawn copies are activated before the game ends
  • T4 median first-activation turn
  • 1111 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game
  • 709 total activations recorded across tracked games
  • 24% draw rate, consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck

First-cast turn

n=709
25%
T1
12%
T2
11%
T3
10%
T4
10%
T5
25%
T6-9
6%
T10+
Median 4 P25 1 · P75 6 · max 19
Cast same turn as drawn 63%

The "good card" funnel

3895 brought · 1111 players
Brought to game
3895
Ever drawn
953
Reached battlefield
709
Still on board at game end
47
74%

Of 3895 Verdant Catacombs brought to tracked games, 953 were drawn, 709 of those were activated, and most finished in the graveyard as the sacrifice clause resolved successfully.

≥ +0.7pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=640) , vs 26% when it never left the library (n=2448).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 38% (n=221) — 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 +4.2pp; 95% confidence interval +0.7pp to +7.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

1098 instances
4.5%
Library
4.3%
Battlefield
66.8%
Graveyard
10.8%
Exile

The vast majority of Verdant Catacombs instances finish in the graveyard, exactly as expected for a sacrifice-to-activate fetch land. Library-zone instances reflect copies that were never drawn. The small battlefield residual captures edge cases where a copy entered play but the game ended before activation.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The commander list skews strongly toward multicolor and black-green shells. The Ur-Dragon leads the count by a wide margin, but the spread across more than a dozen distinct commanders shows that Verdant Catacombs is not a one-deck staple. It earns its slot anywhere Swamps and Forests coexist.

Card text
Verdant Catacombs card

Verdant Catacombs

Land
{T}, Pay 1 life, Sacrifice this land: Search your library for a Swamp or Forest card, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle.
Modern Horizons 2 (MH2) · Rare · Illustrated by Vance Kovacs

Frequently Asked

How often is Verdant Catacombs drawn in a Commander game?
Across 3108 tracked multiplayer Commander games where the card was in the deck, it was drawn 24% of the time. That is a normal rate for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 953 instances that reached a hand, 74% were activated before the game concluded. The remainder is largely a game-length effect: late draws sometimes never resolve before the table ends.
What turn does Verdant Catacombs typically get activated?
The median first-activation turn is 4, but the distribution has a strong early cluster. Turn 1 is the single most common activation turn, driven by players who keep opening hands and fetch a dual land immediately for mana fixing. The interquartile range spans turns 1 through 6, so activations spread across the early and mid game rather than concentrating in one window.
Does playing Verdant Catacombs correlate with winning?
In 640 participations where Verdant Catacombs was activated, the normalized win rate is 30%. In 2448 participations where it stayed in the library, the rate is 26%. The delta is +4.2 percentage points. Both sample sizes are large enough to treat this as a directional signal: activating the fetch is associated with modestly better outcomes, likely because it reflects decks that resolved early mana fixing rather than a direct effect of the land itself.
Is Verdant Catacombs legal in Commander?
Yes. Verdant Catacombs is fully legal and unrestricted in Commander, as well as in Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Duel Commander, and several other formats. It is banned in Historic and not legal in Standard, Pioneer, Pauper, or Penny Dreadful. Its color identity is colorless, so it can slot into any Commander deck regardless of the commander's colors.
Which commanders most commonly run Verdant Catacombs?
The top commanders in the tracked dataset are heavily weighted toward multicolor shells with black and green. The Ur-Dragon leads with the most Catacombs decks, followed by Teval, the Balanced Scale and Atraxa, Praetors' Voice. This distribution reflects the card's natural fit: five-color and Sultai-range commanders have the most incentive to fix mana reliably and run fetchable Swamp and Forest dual lands.
How concentrated is the Verdant Catacombs data among players?
The data is well-spread across 1111 distinct players, with the single heaviest contributor accounting for just 2% of all tracked instances. That low concentration means the numbers are not driven by one prolific player's results and can be read with more confidence as a reflection of the broader Commander community's experience with the card on Playgroup Live.