Live Play Data

Defile

· Instant · Modern Horizons (MH1)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

816

Decks Running

458

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

61%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=121

12%

15%

43%

T6-9

16%

T10+

Median 6 P25 4 · P75 8 · max 18

On curve 2% (2 / 121 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 24%

The "good card" funnel

820 brought · 402 players

Brought to game

820

Ever drawn

197

Reached battlefield

121

Still on board at game end

≥ +2.2pp

Players who cast this card win 34% of the time (n=106) , vs 22% when it never left the library (n=504).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 19% (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 +11.6pp; 95% confidence interval +2.2pp to +20.9pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

237 instances

3.4%

Library

1.7%

Battlefield

59.9%

Graveyard

11.4%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Szarekh, the Silent King 56 decks
2 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse 30 decks
3 Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER // Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel 24 decks
4 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth 18 decks
5 Marrow-Gnawer 18 decks
6 Imotekh the Stormlord 16 decks
7 Tinybones, Bauble Burglar 13 decks
8 Zenos yae Galvus // Shinryu, Transcendent Rival 13 decks
9 Trazyn the Infinite 10 decks
10 Massacre Girl, Known Killer 9 decks

Card text

Defile

Instant

Target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn for each Swamp you control.

Modern Horizons (MH1) · Common · Illustrated by Joe Slucher

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 680,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.