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Counterspell card art
Live Play Data

Counterspell

{U} {U} · Instant · Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander (DSC)
38%
Live Inclusion
Buy on TCGplayer
Times Brought
4186
Decks Running
2177
Median Cast Turn
7
Drawn → Played
56%
Format
Multiplayer 1v1

Counterspell sits in 38% of tracked Commander decks, and when it reaches a player's hand it resolves 56% of the time, with a median first-cast turn of 7.

Counterspell is in 38% of the 5779 distinct Commander decks that have played a tracked game on Playgroup Live. That figure covers any deck with at least one blue pip in its color identity and reflects genuine play choices rather than theoretical decklists.

The most telling number is draw-to-play rate. Of 1110 times a Counterspell entered a player's hand, 56% reached the stack. That figure sits noticeably below the near-certain cast rates of proactive staples like Sol Ring, which makes sense: a reactive spell can only be cast when the right target presents itself. If no opponent plays something worth countering before the game ends, the card stays in hand. Median first cast lands on turn 7, later than most two-mana spells because players hold it until the moment matters.

Counterspell is legal in Commander and restricted to blue-identity decks. Its two-blue-mana cost makes it harder to splash than Negate or Swan Song, but that constraint is baked into its 38% inclusion figure across all tracked pods.

At a glance
  • 38% of tracked Commander decks include Counterspell
  • 56% of drawn copies reached the stack before the game ended
  • T7 median first-cast turn, reflecting reactive timing
  • 31% win rate in games where Counterspell resolved, vs 23% when it never left the library
  • 1281 distinct players contributed Counterspell data, spread evenly across the dataset
  • 26% draw rate per participation, consistent with a singleton in a 100-card deck

First-cast turn

n=627
0%
T1
1%
T2
4%
T3
8%
T4
15%
T5
57%
T6-9
15%
T10+
Median 7 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 19
On curve 1% (4 / 627 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 20%

The "good card" funnel

4198 brought · 1281 players
Brought to game
4198
Ever drawn
1110
Reached battlefield
627
Still on board at game end
37
56%

Of 4198 Counterspells brought to games, 1110 were drawn, 627 of those were cast, with nearly all resolving straight to the graveyard as expected for an instant.

≥ +4.8pp

Players who cast this card win 31% of the time (n=593) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=2680).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 29% (n=454) — 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 +8.4pp; 95% confidence interval +4.8pp to +12.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

1236 instances
3.0%
Library
3.0%
Battlefield
50.2%
Graveyard
8.4%
Exile

The graveyard is Counterspell's natural home: as an instant it resolves and moves there immediately, so the final-zone chart tells you how many copies were cast rather than how many stayed in play.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The top-commander list spans mono-blue through five-color decks, confirming Counterspell is a broad blue staple rather than a card tied to any single archetype or strategy.

Frequently Asked

How often is Counterspell drawn in a Commander game?
Across 3193 tracked games where Counterspell was in the deck, it was drawn 26% of participations. That is a typical draw rate for a singleton in a 100-card deck. Of 1110 copies that reached a hand, 56% were cast before the game ended. The remainder largely reflects games that ended before a suitable target appeared, not deliberate holds.
What turn does Counterspell usually get cast?
Median first cast is turn 7, with the distribution peaking around turns 5 through 8. Only a handful of casts land on turn 2, the card's mana-value turn, because players almost never slam a counterspell into an empty board. The 20% same-turn cast rate confirms that most of the time, a drawn Counterspell waits two turns in hand before finding its moment.
Does casting Counterspell actually improve your win rate?
In 593 participations where Counterspell resolved, the normalized win rate was 31%. In 2680 participations where it never left the library, the rate was 23%. The +8.4 percentage-point lift is a directional positive signal on a well-sampled dataset, though many factors beyond a single card drive who wins any given Commander game.
Is Counterspell legal in Commander?
Yes. Counterspell is legal and unrestricted in Commander, Duel Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pauper, Vintage, and several other formats. It is not legal in Standard, Pioneer, or Alchemy. Its double-blue mana cost restricts it naturally to decks with a meaningful blue presence, which is reflected in the player data on this page.
Which commanders run Counterspell most often?
The top commanders by raw deck count are spread across a wide range of color identities that include blue: from mono-blue builds to five-color piles. The top slot holds 22 decks in the tracked dataset. That the list is diverse rather than dominated by a single archetype suggests Counterspell is treated as a generic blue staple rather than a build-around piece.
How reliable is the Playgroup Live data for Counterspell?
The dataset is strong for this card. 1281 distinct players contributed instances, and no single player accounts for more than about 26% of the data, indicating the figures are not skewed by one heavy contributor. With 627 cast instances and over 2680 library-baseline observations, the win-rate comparison carries more weight than it would for less-tracked cards. Still, Playgroup Live tracks real local pods rather than every game globally, so treat these as a well-grounded directional signal.