Live Play Data

Windfall

· Sorcery · Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander (OTC)

10%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

1938

Decks Running

961

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

54%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

10% of tracked Commander decks run Windfall, and when a copy is drawn it reaches the stack 54% of the time, with a median first-cast turn of 6.

Windfall sits in 10% of the Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, appearing in 961 of the 9914 distinct decks that have played a recorded game. That positions it as a meaningful blue staple, concentrated heavily in wheel-synergy builds rather than spread evenly across the color.

The cast pattern is instructive. Median first cast lands on turn 6, well past the early-ramp window, because the card rewards a full hand, a large board, or a Nekusar trigger rather than a blind slam on curve. Of drawn copies, 54% are cast before the game ends. The remainder reflects games that concluded before the opportunity arose, not players choosing to hold it indefinitely.

Windfall is banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage, a reminder that mass hand-refill at three mana is not a fair effect in lower-player-count formats. In Commander the multiplayer baseline normalizes it: every opponent also draws, and the political calculus of who benefits most shapes when and whether to pull the trigger.

At a glance

10% of tracked Commander decks include Windfall
27% draw rate across tracked games
54% of drawn copies reach the stack before the game ends
T6 median first-cast turn, reflecting deliberate timing rather than early deployment
740 distinct players have brought Windfall to a tracked game, indicating well-spread data

First-cast turn

n=283

14%

58%

T6-9

T10+

Median 6 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 20

On curve 10% (20 / 283 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 33%

The "good card" funnel

1950 brought · 740 players

Brought to game

1950

Ever drawn

526

Reached battlefield

283

Still on board at game end

54%

Of 1950 Windfall copies brought to tracked games, 526 were drawn, and 283 of those were cast, a conversion funnel shaped by a sorcery that rewards waiting for the right moment rather than slamming it on curve.

≥ +0.4pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=269) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=1179).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 36% (n=227) — 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 +5.9pp; 95% confidence interval +0.4pp to +11.4pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

597 instances

5.7%

Library

4.5%

Battlefield

47.1%

Graveyard

11.6%

Exile

Windfall resolves to the graveyard as a sorcery, so the final-zone chart primarily reflects where the card ended up when it was never cast: most unplayed copies remain in the library, a structural feature of 100-card singleton rather than a comment on the card's power.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Nekusar, the Mindrazer 53 decks
2 Xyris, the Writhing Storm 31 decks
3 Y'shtola, Night's Blessed 28 decks
4 Vivi Ornitier 27 decks
5 Sauron, the Dark Lord 23 decks
6 Admiral Brass, Unsinkable 22 decks
7 Doctor Doom, King of Latveria 20 decks
8 The Astonishing Ant-Man 17 decks
9 Vnwxt, Verbose Host 16 decks
10 Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler of Ruin 13 decks

Nekusar, the Mindrazer leads the commander distribution by a clear margin, but the top ten slots span Grixis, Izzet, and Esper builds, showing that Windfall's appeal extends beyond pure wheel-damage commanders.

Card text

Windfall

Sorcery

Each player discards their hand, then draws cards equal to the greatest number of cards a player discarded this way.

Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander (OTC) · Uncommon · Illustrated by Scott Murphy

Frequently Asked

How often is Windfall drawn and cast in a tracked Commander game?

Across 1780 tracked multiplayer Commander games where Windfall was in the deck, it was drawn 27% of the time. Of those drawn copies, 54% were cast before the game concluded. That's a moderate conversion rate for a sorcery that rewards specific board states. The median first-cast turn is 6, which is later than a simple ramp spell, consistent with players waiting for a favorable hand-size differential.

What turn does Windfall typically get cast?

The median first-cast turn is 6, with the 25th percentile at turn 5 and the 75th at turn 8. The distribution peaks around turns 5-8, which makes sense for a card that rewards patience. Early casts do appear in the data, but those are outliers, likely enabled by cost reduction or an opponent holding an unusually large hand early.

Is Windfall banned in Commander?

No. Windfall is legal and unrestricted in Commander, as well as in Duel Commander, Oathbreaker, and preDH formats (though it is banned in Premodern). It is banned in Legacy and restricted to one copy in Vintage, where its raw card-draw power is too efficient for those lower-complexity formats. In Commander the symmetrical draw effect makes it a negotiated, political card rather than a pure engine.

Which commanders most often run Windfall?

Nekusar, the Mindrazer leads the tracked dataset by a wide margin, which is expected given that Nekusar taxes every draw opponents make. Xyris, the Writhing Storm, Vivi Ornitier, Sauron the Dark Lord, and Admiral Brass, Unsinkable also appear near the top. The common thread is Grixis (Blue-Black-Red) color identity and wheel or card-draw synergies. The commander distribution is notably spread: the top commander accounts for far fewer than a majority of Windfall decks, indicating healthy diversity in how the card is deployed.

Does casting Windfall correlate with winning?

The win rate when Windfall is cast is 30% across 269 participations. For context, the win rate when it sits unplayed in the library is 24% across 1179 participations. The raw delta is +5.9 percentage points, but the confidence interval overlaps zero at this sample size, so treat it as a directional early signal rather than a proven effect. The data does not currently establish that casting Windfall is a reliable win accelerator.

How concentrated is the Windfall data among a small group of players?

The data is well-spread. 740 distinct players have brought Windfall to a tracked game on Playgroup Live, and the single heaviest contributor accounts for only 2% of all instances. That low concentration is a signal the statistics reflect genuine community play patterns rather than one prolific player skewing the numbers.