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Whelming Wave

· Sorcery · Commander Legends (CMR)

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

232

Decks Running

129

In Decks

848

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Card text

Whelming Wave

Sorcery

Return all creatures to their owners' hands except for Krakens, Leviathans, Octopuses, and Serpents.

Commander Legends (CMR) · Rare · Illustrated by Slawomir Maniak

Final zone distribution

77 instances

6.5%

Library

2.6%

Battlefield

54.5%

Graveyard

3.9%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait 21 decks
2 Kiora, Sovereign of the Deep 19 decks
3 Kenessos, Priest of Thassa 12 decks
4 Koma, Cosmos Serpent 8 decks
5 Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle 7 decks
6 Omo, Queen of Vesuva 5 decks
7 Charix, the Raging Isle 4 decks
8 Runo Stromkirk // Krothuss, Lord of the Deep 4 decks
9 Xyris, the Writhing Storm 4 decks
10 Kami of the Crescent Moon 3 decks

The "good card" funnel

235 brought · 125 players

Brought to game

235

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -2.8pp

Players who cast this card win 32% of the time (n=33) , vs 19% when it never left the library (n=127).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 42% (n=21) — 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 +13.2pp; 95% confidence interval -2.8pp to +29.2pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=35

63%

T6-9

20%

T10+

Median 7 P25 6 · P75 9 · max 23

On curve 11% (3 / 35 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 39%

35 of 100 times cast 35%

Full analysis unlocks as more games are tracked. Stats refresh nightly.

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Basic play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games; the full deep-dive page needs a larger, more diverse sample (at least 300 tracked games played by 10 or more different pilots, with no single pilot over 40 percent of the copies). Until this card clears those bars you're seeing only the basic counts. Stats refresh nightly.

How is Playgroup Live card data collected?

Players using Playgroup Live import their decklists before a game and log card actions as they play. Each cast, zone change, and resolution is recorded as a real game event. Stats on this site are computed from those events, not from decklist scrapes or theorycrafting. Playgroup has recorded 670,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.