Live Play Data

Defend the Rider

· Instant · Aetherdrift (DFT)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

531

Decks Running

228

Median Cast Turn

7.0

Drawn → Played

49%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=66

14%

62%

T6-9

15%

T10+

Median 7.0 P25 6 · P75 8 · max 18

On curve 2% (1 / 66 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 20%

The "good card" funnel

531 brought · 191 players

Brought to game

531

Ever drawn

136

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -11.1pp

Players who cast this card win 34% of the time (n=59) , vs 32% when it never left the library (n=328).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 45% (n=67).

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 +1.9pp; 95% confidence interval -11.1pp to +14.9pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

151 instances

4.0%

Library

2.6%

Battlefield

44.4%

Graveyard

9.3%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Bruce Banner // The Incredible Hulk 16 decks
2 Bello, Bard of the Brambles 14 decks
3 Pako, Arcane Retriever 12 decks
4 Balthier and Fran 10 decks
5 Dionus, Elvish Archdruid 10 decks
6 Raph & Mikey, Troublemakers 6 decks
7 Riku of Many Paths 6 decks
8 Eshki, Temur's Roar 5 decks
9 Ms. Bumbleflower 5 decks
10 The Cabbage Merchant 5 decks

Card text

Defend the Rider

Instant

Choose one — • Target permanent you control gains hexproof and indestructible until end of turn. • Create a 1/1 colorless Pilot creature token with "This token saddles Mounts and crews Vehicles as though its power were 2 greater."

Aetherdrift (DFT) · Uncommon · Illustrated by Raph Lomotan

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 700,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.