Live Play Data

Burst Lightning

· Instant · Foundations (FDN)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

401

Decks Running

166

Median Cast Turn

6.0

Drawn → Played

65%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=60

17%

12%

47%

T6-9

12%

T10+

Median 6.0 P25 4 · P75 8 · max 14

On curve 2% (1 / 60 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 29%

The "good card" funnel

401 brought · 149 players

Brought to game

401

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -2.8pp

Players who cast this card win 26% of the time (n=54) , vs 17% when it never left the library (n=258).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 18% (n=30).

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 +8.9pp; 95% confidence interval -2.8pp to +20.6pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

102 instances

2.9%

Library

3.9%

Battlefield

56.9%

Graveyard

7.8%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Prismari, the Inspiration 12 decks
2 Kuja, Genome Sorcerer // Trance Kuja, Fate Defied 11 decks
3 Krenko, Mob Boss 9 decks
4 Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might // Temple of Power 7 decks
5 Vivi Ornitier 7 decks
6 Fire Lord Azula 6 decks
7 Niv-Mizzet, Visionary 6 decks
8 Judith, Carnage Connoisseur 5 decks
9 Alania, Divergent Storm 4 decks
10 Massimo, the Magician 4 decks

Card text

Burst Lightning

Instant

Kicker

(You may pay an additional {4}

as you cast this spell.) Burst Lightning deals 2 damage to any target. If this spell was kicked, it deals 4 damage instead.

Foundations (FDN) · Common · Illustrated by Vance Kovacs

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 740,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.