Live Play Data

Brain Freeze

· Instant · Vintage Masters (VMA)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

908

Decks Running

435

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

52%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=139

14%

17%

18%

38%

T6-9

T10+

Median 5 P25 4 · P75 7 · max 15

On curve 9% (10 / 139 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 40%

The "good card" funnel

908 brought · 397 players

Brought to game

908

Ever drawn

266

Reached battlefield

139

Still on board at game end

≥ +11.8pp

Players who cast this card win 44% of the time (n=124) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=476).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 29% (n=105).

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 +20.7pp; 95% confidence interval +11.8pp to +29.6pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

309 instances

3.9%

Library

10.0%

Battlefield

42.7%

Graveyard

12.9%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Vivi Ornitier 51 decks
2 Kefka, Court Mage // Kefka, Ruler of Ruin 24 decks
3 Flubs, the Fool 21 decks
4 Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh 20 decks
5 Tymna the Weaver 20 decks
6 Yusri, Fortune's Flame 17 decks
7 Kraum, Ludevic's Opus 12 decks
8 Fire Lord Azula 10 decks
9 Krark, the Thumbless 10 decks
10 Prismari, the Inspiration 10 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 710,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.