Live Play Data

Brain Freeze

· Instant · Vintage Masters (VMA)

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

546

Decks Running

270

Median Cast Turn

5.0

Drawn → Played

54%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=88

15%

18%

32%

T6-9

T10+

Median 5.0 P25 3 · P75 7 · max 12

On curve 11% (8 / 88 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 35%

The "good card" funnel

546 brought · 246 players

Brought to game

546

Ever drawn

162

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ +13.9pp

Players who cast this card win 47% of the time (n=78) , vs 22% when it never left the library (n=298).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 29% (n=63).

Read this as correlation, not as the card's contribution. Casting a card means you lived long enough to cast it, so this gap widens with mana value across every card we track.

Observed gap +25.1pp; 95% confidence interval +13.9pp to +36.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

181 instances

4.4%

Library

12.2%

Battlefield

45.3%

Graveyard

8.8%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Vivi Ornitier 29 decks
2 Flubs, the Fool 14 decks
3 Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh 14 decks
4 Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler of Ruin 12 decks
5 Tymna the Weaver 12 decks
6 Krark, the Thumbless 9 decks
7 Crystal, Inhuman Princess 8 decks
8 Fire Lord Azula 8 decks
9 Kraum, Ludevic's Opus 8 decks
10 Yusri, Fortune's Flame 8 decks

Card text

Brain Freeze

Instant

Target player mills three cards. Storm (When you cast this spell, copy it for each spell cast before it this turn. You may choose new targets for the copies.)

Vintage Masters (VMA) · Uncommon · Illustrated by Tim Hildebrandt

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games, and the full charts need a sample of at least 25 observed games that is not dominated by a single pilot. 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 680,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.