Live Play Data

Decisive Denial

· Instant · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

727

Decks Running

331

Median Cast Turn

7.0

Drawn → Played

63%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=98

61%

T6-9

18%

T10+

Median 7.0 P25 6 · P75 9 · max 16

On curve 1% (1 / 98 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 26%

The "good card" funnel

727 brought · 335 players

Brought to game

727

Ever drawn

156

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -1.5pp

Players who cast this card win 27% of the time (n=95) , vs 20% when it never left the library (n=511).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 27% (n=58).

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 +7.5pp; 95% confidence interval -1.5pp to +16.5pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

169 instances

3.6%

Library

2.4%

Battlefield

60.9%

Graveyard

5.3%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Zimone, Infinite Analyst 143 decks
2 Bruce Banner // The Incredible Hulk 20 decks
3 Pako, Arcane Retriever 17 decks
4 Aragorn, the Uniter 15 decks
5 Kenessos, Priest of Thassa 11 decks
6 Riku of Many Paths 11 decks
7 Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle 9 decks
8 Haldan, Avid Arcanist 9 decks
9 Xyris, the Writhing Storm 6 decks
10 Bonny Pall, Clearcutter 5 decks

Card text

Decisive Denial

Instant

Choose one — • Target creature you control fights target creature you don't control. (Each deals damage equal to its power to the other.) • Counter target noncreature spell unless its controller pays {3}

Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC) · Uncommon · Illustrated by Lorenzo Mastroianni

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 780,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.