Live Play Data

Windswept Heath

Land · Modern Horizons 3 (MH3)

10%

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

3238

Decks Running

1669

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

75%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

10% of tracked Commander decks run Windswept Heath, and when a copy reaches a player's hand, 75% are activated before the game ends, with a median first-activation turn of 3.

Windswept Heath sits in 10% of the 16193 Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, making it one of the more common fetch lands in the format. Its reach extends across 1669 distinct decks that have played a tracked game.

The draw-to-play rate of 75% tells a clean story: when players draw this fetch land, they almost always activate it. Activation is instant, costs 1 life, and converts the card directly to the graveyard after fetching a Forest or Plains. The 60% same-turn activation rate reinforces that players rarely sit on it. The low 10% stickiness figure is not a weakness. It reflects the card's design: it sacrifices itself on activation and lands in the graveyard, so "stickiness" measures something structurally different here than it does for a permanent.

The commander distribution skews toward five-color and Naya (GRW) shells, which is expected. White and Green appear in Windswept Heath's fetch targets, making it a natural fit for any deck that needs both colors reliably on the battlefield. The data is spread across 974 unique players, with no single contributor representing more than a small fraction of the observations, lending reasonable confidence to the directional signals here.

At a glance

10% of tracked Commander decks include Windswept Heath
75% of drawn copies are activated before the game ends
T3 median first-activation turn
60% of drawn copies activated on the same turn they were drawn
974 unique players have brought this card to a tracked game
25% draw rate, consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck

First-cast turn

n=607

27%

13%

10%

25%

T6-9

T10+

Median 3 P25 1 · P75 6 · max 16

Cast same turn as drawn 60%

The "good card" funnel

3239 brought · 974 players

Brought to game

3239

Ever drawn

809

Reached battlefield

607

Still on board at game end

75%

Of 3239 copies brought to tracked games, 809 were drawn and 607 of those were activated, a draw-to-play rate of 75% driven by the card's immediate utility as a mana fixer.

≥ +2.5pp

Players who cast this card win 33% of the time (n=568) , vs 26% when it never left the library (n=2099).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 34% (n=177) — 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 +6.4pp; 95% confidence interval +2.5pp to +10.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

905 instances

4.0%

Library

6.4%

Battlefield

66.7%

Graveyard

7.8%

Exile

The graveyard is the expected final home for Windswept Heath. The card sacrifices itself on activation, so the distribution here maps almost directly onto how often it was drawn and used before the game ended.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 The Ur-Dragon 56 decks
2 Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER 33 decks
3 Pantlaza, Sun-Favored 33 decks
4 Baylen, the Haymaker 29 decks
5 Ms. Bumbleflower 28 decks
6 Gishath, Sun's Avatar 26 decks
7 Toph, the First Metalbender 24 decks
8 The First Sliver 22 decks
9 Atraxa, Praetors' Voice 21 decks
10 Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge 21 decks

Five-color and Naya commanders dominate the list, reflecting that Windswept Heath's fetch targets, Forest and Plains, align naturally with those color combinations. The spread across 974 unique players suggests no single archetype is skewing the numbers.

Frequently Asked

How often is Windswept Heath drawn in a Commander game?

Across 2569 tracked games where Windswept Heath was in a deck, it was drawn 25% of the time. That figure is normal for any singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 809 instances that reached a player's hand, 75% were activated before the game concluded. The remainder reflects games that ended before the player had a window or motivation to fetch.

What turn does Windswept Heath typically get activated?

Median first-activation turn is 3, with the single largest cluster hitting on turn 1. That turn-1 spike is driven by opening-hand keeps: players who start with a fetch land often crack it immediately to thin the deck and fix mana. The p75 mark sits at turn 6, meaning three quarters of activations happen by then, and only a long tail extends into the late game.

Is the win-rate lift from casting Windswept Heath meaningful?

Games where Windswept Heath was activated show a win rate of 33%, compared to 26% in games where it stayed in the library the whole time. The delta is +6.4 percentage points. With 568 observations in the cast bucket and 2099 in the library bucket, the direction is consistent but the signal should be read as directional rather than conclusive. Fetch lands also correlate with better-built decks, so the lift is partly a proxy for overall deck quality.

Is Windswept Heath legal in Commander?

Yes. Windswept Heath is legal and unrestricted in Commander. It is also legal in Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Timeless, and several other formats. It is banned in Pioneer and Historic, where its mana-fixing power was deemed too consistent for those environments. Pauper and Pauper Commander do not permit it due to its rare printing.

Which commanders most commonly run Windswept Heath?

The top of the list is dominated by five-color commanders like The Ur-Dragon, The First Sliver, Esika, and Jodah, plus Naya (GRW) builds led by commanders like Pantlaza, Gishath, and Cloud. All of them need Forest and Plains access reliably, which is exactly what Windswept Heath provides. The spread across commander identities is broad, with the single most popular commander accounting for only 1669 decks in a dataset of 16193 total tracked decks.

Why is battlefield stickiness so low for a fetch land?

Windswept Heath sacrifices itself as part of its activation cost. Once activated, it moves directly to the graveyard, never sitting on the battlefield past the turn it is used. The 10% stickiness figure reflects this design reality rather than anything about the card's power level. Any fetch land will show a similarly low number for the same structural reason.