Live Play Data

Defile

· Instant · Modern Horizons (MH1)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1822

Decks Running

931

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

60%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=263

11%

13%

46%

T6-9

17%

T10+

Median 7 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 18

On curve 1% (3 / 263 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 25%

The "good card" funnel

1827 brought · 796 players

Brought to game

1827

Ever drawn

435

Reached battlefield

263

Still on board at game end

≥ +2.7pp

Players who cast this card win 32% of the time (n=237) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=1148).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 19% (n=153).

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 +2.7pp to +15.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

513 instances

2.3%

Library

1.8%

Battlefield

61.8%

Graveyard

9.9%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Szarekh, the Silent King 97 decks
2 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse 63 decks
3 Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER // Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel 52 decks
4 Imotekh the Stormlord 42 decks
5 Marrow-Gnawer 32 decks
6 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth 28 decks
7 Zenos yae Galvus // Shinryu, Transcendent Rival 24 decks
8 Tinybones, Bauble Burglar 20 decks
9 Trazyn the Infinite 19 decks
10 Karumonix, the Rat King 17 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 750,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.