Ten Days of Reality Fracture in cEDH: Samut in One Deck in Five, the $50 Jace in 1.4%

cEDH · by Andreas Graw · October 12, 2026

Ten days after Reality Fracture's release, Samut, Tyrant of Naktamun is in one cEDH decklist in five (682 of 3,351), as many as Worldly Tutor, while the set's $50 Jace is in 48. Her instants and sorceries get split second, she doesn't, and six of the format's ten most-played counterspells can't target her anyway. Plus the $1 druid in most Rograkh + Thrasios lists, the haste source in two of three Sisay lists, and the 171 new cards that haven't made a single list.

Ten Days of Reality Fracture in cEDH: Samut in One Deck in Five, the $50 Jace in 1.4%

Cast Ad Nauseam with Samut, Tyrant of Naktamun on the battlefield and the table gets priority with nothing to do with it. No Flusterstorm, no Swan Song, no free Fierce Guardianship. Samut is a two-mana 2/1 with one line of rules text, "Instant and sorcery spells you control have split second," and split second means that while that spell is on the stack, players can't cast spells or activate abilities that aren't mana abilities. Not your opponents, and not you either.

In the ten days since Reality Fracture's tabletop release on October 2, she's in 682 of the 3,351 cEDH tournament decklists we've tracked. That's one in five, and exactly as many as Worldly Tutor. The set's most expensive card, The Theorist, Jace Beleren, costs about $50 and is in 48. A one-dollar green uncommon, Pia, Aether Ascetic, is in 376, including 100 of the 186 Rograkh + Thrasios lists.

Reality Fracture brought 286 new cards. 171 of them haven't appeared in a single list yet, another 100 are in fewer than one list in 200, and three have cleared 5%: Samut, Pia and the other Samut. This is the filter. What those three do, where they actually live, and the catch on the blue one that decides how you play against her. Ten days and two tournament weekends is early, so we'll flag where the numbers are soft.

Samut, exactly: what split second stops and what it doesn't

Split second usually lives on the spell itself. Samut hands it to every instant and sorcery you control, on every turn, including the counterspell you cast on someone else's. The details decide games, so here they are straight from the Comprehensive Rules and Wizards' release notes:

The catch: Samut doesn't have split second

Samut gives split second to your instants and sorceries. She is a creature spell, and she has no split second of her own. While she's on the stack, anything that can counter a two-mana blue creature spell can counter her.

That's where the format's counterspell suite gets interesting. Of the ten counterspells that show up most in these 3,351 lists, six can't target her, and split second has nothing to do with it. Their own text rules her out:

| Counterspell | In these lists | Can it target Samut? | |---|---|---| | Mental Misstep | 63.8% | No, mana value 1 only | | Flusterstorm | 63.1% | No, instants and sorceries only | | Fierce Guardianship | 62.2% | No, noncreature only | | Force of Will | 62.0% | Yes | | Pact of Negation | 61.1% | Yes | | Mindbreak Trap | 59.7% | Yes (it exiles) | | Swan Song | 53.3% | No, enchantments, instants and sorceries only | | Force of Negation | 46.3% | No, noncreature only | | An Offer You Can't Refuse | 44.9% | No, noncreature only | | Red Elemental Blast | 33.2% | Yes, she's blue |

Pyroblast (30.9%) gets her too. So the majority of the format's most-played counterspells can't touch her on the way down, and the four that can are the ones you'd rather keep for the combo turn.

Once she's on the battlefield, she's a 2/1 that's protected only while one of her controller's split-second spells is on the stack. Every other moment is a window: when her controller casts a creature, an artifact or an enchantment, activates an ability that isn't a mana ability, or passes priority with nothing on the stack. Chain of Vapor (36.3% of these lists), Into the Flood Maw (31.1%) and Snapback (22.1%) all send her back to her owner's hand, and Orcish Bowmasters (32.2%) only needs one ping, because split second doesn't stop its triggers. Timing cuts the other way too. Her effect applies only while she's on the battlefield (CR 611.3b), so if she leaves while one of her controller's spells is still on the stack, that spell loses split second and the table can answer it.

What she actually protects

Put those rules next to the way cEDH decks win, and a pattern shows up. Samut covers the instants and sorceries in a combo, never the permanents:

She doesn't make a combo uncounterable. She protects the instants and sorceries and leaves the permanents exactly as exposed as they were. That's still a lot of protection, and it explains which decks picked her up.

Where Samut actually lives

One in five is a format-wide number. Broken down by commander, it looks different: Samut shows up under 99 different commanders, and no deck has made her mandatory.

| Commander | Lists | With Samut | Share | |---|---|---|---| | Kraum + Tymna (Blue Farm) | 265 | 105 | 39.6% | | Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy | 240 | 70 | 29.2% | | Rograkh + Thrasios | 186 | 63 | 33.9% | | Sisay, Weatherlight Captain | 167 | 5 | 3.0% | | Rograkh + Silas Renn | 153 | 63 | 41.2% | | Thrasios + Tymna | 118 | 46 | 39.0% | | Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. | 72 | 25 | 34.7% | | Ishai + Rograkh | 46 | 23 | 50.0% |

No commander with 100 or more lists runs her in more than 41.2% of them. Her highest rates among the big decks are Rograkh + Silas Renn (41.2%), Blue Farm (39.6%) and Thrasios + Tymna (39.0%), and the first two run Ad Nauseam and Brain Freeze in nearly every list. Sisay has five colors and could play her; 5 of 167 lists do. Across every list whose commander's color identity includes blue, she's at 28.4% (682 of 2,402).

What does that mean at the table? If your three opponents' decks were random draws from these lists, the chance that at least one of them runs Samut is about one in two (1 − 0.7965³ ≈ 49.5%). EDHREC's cEDH set review called her "this set's all-star" on September 29 and expected her in nearly every game. Ten days in, it's closer to every other game.

Is she winning? Not measurably, yet. Lists with Samut made the top cut 28.8% of the time (576 lists with known standings), against 27.3% for the whole window. That's about one standard error, which is the polite way of saying no edge so far. She was in 26 of the 131 first-place lists, 19.8%, almost exactly her share of the field.

A winning list to study: Kalvin Le's Ishai + Rograkh deck took the 66-player Commander Invitational Qualifier at Final Fortune Gaming on October 10. Samut sits next to Underworld Breach, Lion's Eye Diamond and Brain Freeze, which DeckCortex's combo engine flags as a complete combo, with Silence for the turn it matters.

For scale, here's how this year's earlier hits started, each measured over its own release day plus nine days: Hexing Squelcher 34.8%, Gleaming Splendor 22.5%, Samut 20.4%, Formidable Speaker 15.8%, The Queen of Dale 14.1%, Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu 9.7%. Of the eight most-played new cards of 2026 in our September count, only two started faster. And starts aren't destiny: Shang-Chi opened at 9.7% and is in 23.6% of lists in this window.

The field hasn't adjusted to her yet. Against the 30 days before release, Red Elemental Blast went from 34.3% to 33.2% of lists, Pyroblast from 31.0% to 30.9%, Vexing Bauble from 24.0% to 23.1%. The one place the answers moved is Blue Farm, the deck most likely to sit across from a Samut: compared with the month before the prerelease, Pyroblast went from 29.7% to 37.4% of its lists and Orcish Bowmasters from 71.9% to 80.0%.

Pia, Aether Ascetic: the $1 card in most Rograkh + Thrasios lists

Pia is Formidable Speaker's template pointed at enchantments: when she enters, you may discard a card, and if you do, you search your library for an enchantment card and put it into your hand. Formidable Speaker, the creature-tutor version, is in 97.8% of Rograkh + Thrasios lists. The reason Pia works there is the rest of the tutor package: the deck already runs Finale of Devastation (96.8%), Green Sun's Zenith (95.2%) and Chord of Calling (95.2%), and all three put a creature onto the battlefield. With Pia in the deck, each of them doubles as an enchantment tutor.

The enchantments worth finding are already in those lists: Mystic Remora (96.2%) and Rhystic Study (95.2%) for cards, Earthcraft (79.6%) and Cryptolith Rite (73.7%) for creature mana. DeckCortex's combo engine lists Earthcraft and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl as a complete two-card combo, so in the 43.5% of Rograkh + Thrasios lists that run the Squirrel Girl, Pia is a combo tutor. Small wonder 100 of 186 lists (53.8%) picked her up in ten days.

Her other homes follow the same logic. Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer runs her in 34 of 37 lists: cast Rocco with X = 3 and his trigger puts Pia onto the battlefield, and she finds Food Chain, which is in all 37. One detail for Kinnan players (59 of 240 lists run her): Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy's own ability only puts a non-Human creature onto the battlefield, and Pia is a Human Druid.

In total she's in 376 lists, 11.2% of the field and 22.2% of the lists that can play green, and those lists make the top cut at 27.4%, the field's rate. The list that shows the whole filter in one place: Marc Gómez won Andorra frikiing days (40 players, October 10) with Rograkh + Thrasios and five Reality Fracture cards: Pia, both Samuts, Marwyn, the Preserver and the $50 Theorist. The engine finds the Squirrel Girl + Earthcraft line in it.

Samut, Hazoret's Champion: Sisay's second haste source

"Creatures you control have haste." On a two-mana legendary creature, that's exactly what Sisay wants, and 109 of the 167 Sisay lists (65.3%) run her. That's more than half of all the lists she appears in.

Sisay's engine is two legends that tap. Ioreth of the Healing House has ": Untap two other target legendary creatures" (93.4% of Sisay lists) and Marvin, Murderous Mimic has the activated abilities of your other creatures (85.6%). When Sisay puts them onto the battlefield, neither can use a ability that turn unless something deals with summoning sickness. Shang-Chi already does that by letting your creatures' abilities be activated as though they had haste, and he's in 95.8% of these lists. Samut gives them actual haste, which makes her a second enabler for the same loop, and a legendary card with mana value 2 that Sisay can fetch once her power is 3. Six of the eight Sisay lists that finished first in this window ran her. That's a small sample, but it points the same way.

Outside Sisay she spreads thin: 36 of 186 Rograkh + Thrasios lists, 17 of 41 Winota, Joiner of Forces lists and 11 of 15 Vraska, Soul of Stone lists. Overall she's in 204 lists, 6.1%.

The rest of the top ten

| # | Card | Lists | Share | Where it lives | Price | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | 4 | Geist of Saint Thalia | 92 | 2.7% | Rograkh + Silas Renn, 19 of 153 | $0.87 | | 5 | Hall of Echoes | 71 | 2.1% | Magda, Brazen Outlaw, 24 of 65 | $2.98 | | 6 | The Theorist, Jace Beleren | 48 | 1.4% | 26 commanders, none above 7 lists | $50.78 | | 7 | Marwyn, the Preserver | 43 | 1.3% | Rograkh + Thrasios, 19 of 186 | $0.26 | | 8 | Dack Fayden, Helping Hand | 40 | 1.2% | 28 of them as the commander | $0.41 | | 9 | Flickering Hound | 36 | 1.1% | Thrasios + Yoshimaru, 11 of 70 | $7.86 | | 10 | Fblthp, Impossibly Lost | 33 | 1.0% | Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow, 7 of 22 | $0.26 |

Geist is a 1/2 flier that makes your noncreature spells cost less, and its biggest home is Rograkh + Silas Renn. Hall of Echoes is a Magda card for now: 24 of its 71 lists, and no other commander has more than four. Flickering Hound, which EDHREC's set review rated about as highly as Displacer Kitten, has 36 lists to show for it.

The money doesn't follow the lists. Samut, Pia and Samut, Hazoret's Champion cost $11.46 together. The twelve most expensive Reality Fracture cards, $8.20 and up, appear 92 times in these 3,351 lists combined, as often as the 87-cent Geist of Saint Thalia on its own. Hexhaven Invigorator, the second most expensive at $28.05, is in exactly one. Prices reflect demand from every format and from collectors, not cEDH play.

Among the new commanders, one stands out. Dack Fayden, Helping Hand costs six, puts one creature from your library onto the battlefield for each opponent, goads them for the rest of the game and gives each opponent control of one of them. In ten days he has 28 entries and seven first-place finishes, two of them at events with 119 and 69 players. The next two new commanders by entries, Vraska, Soul of Stone (15) and Jace, Multiverse Architect (14), have one win between them. Dack's story is its own piece: our Dack Fayden deep dive.

What to do with this

If you're on Blue Farm, Rograkh + Silas Renn or Thrasios + Tymna, about four lists in ten already run Samut, and the decks that win through Ad Nauseam and Brain Freeze get the most from her. We can't see which card each player cut, but between the month before the prerelease and these ten days, the cards that lost the most ground in the same decks were Professional Face-Breaker in Blue Farm (46.2% to 34.3%) and Windfall in Rograkh + Silas Renn (62.7% to 46.4%).

If you're on Rograkh + Thrasios, Pia is already the majority choice. The card that fell furthest in those lists is Clever Impersonator (50.1% to 35.5%).

If you're on Sisay, Samut, Hazoret's Champion is in about two lists out of three, and Arcane Signet dropped from 75.5% to 58.7% over the same stretch.

If you're playing against Samut, spend Force of Will, Pact of Negation, Mindbreak Trap or a red blast on her while she's on the stack, because Fierce Guardianship, Swan Song, Flusterstorm, Mental Misstep, Force of Negation and An Offer You Can't Refuse can't. Once she resolves, hit her in a window: in response to her controller's creatures, artifacts or enchantments, when they pass priority, or on your own turn. Keep your Vexing Bauble on the table, because it still counters the free spells her controller casts.

What to watch

Data: DeckCortex cEDH tournament corpus, canonical entries dated October 2 to 11, 2026 (n = 3,351 decklists; nothing from October 12 had been ingested at writing time). Share = share of tracked tournament decklists that contain the card, main deck including the command zone; it is not field share and not a win rate, which DeckCortex doesn't track. Top-cut conversion = lists that made the top cut ÷ lists with known standings (n shown). Per-commander shares divide the lists running a card by that commander's entries in the same window; color-identity denominators use each commander's identity on Scryfall. About 108 lists in the window appear to be the same deck reported by both topdeck.gg and MTGTop8; removing them moves Samut from 20.4% to 20.0% and changes no conclusion here, and the first-place counts above already exclude them. Lists dated before October 2 can already contain Reality Fracture cards: 232 of the 3,632 lists from September 18 to October 1 include Samut, 209 of them from events on September 26 and 27, the prerelease weekend. Our data can't tell whether those events allowed the set early or players updated their lists afterwards, so this piece counts from October 2. First-ten-days comparisons use each card's own release day plus nine days. "Before release" comparisons use September 2 to October 1 for the whole field and August 25 to September 24 inside individual decks. The 286 new cards are Scryfall's first printings in Reality Fracture (268) and Reality Fracture Commander (18). Card text and rulings are from Scryfall and the Comprehensive Rules effective September 25, 2026. Prices are Scryfall paper market prices pulled October 12, 2026, not a live TCGplayer feed, and new-set prices move daily. Combo lines come from DeckCortex's combo engine; a combo count is a signal, not the final 1–5 bracket. EDHREC's set review is EDHREC's opinion, quoted with its date.

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