Card Preview

Defiler of Flesh

· Creature — Phyrexian Horror · Dominaria United (DMU)

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

103

Decks Running

In Decks

321

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Card text

Defiler of Flesh

Creature — Phyrexian Horror

Menace As an additional cost to cast black permanent spells, you may pay 2 life. Those spells cost {B}

less to cast if you paid life this way. This effect reduces only the amount of black mana you pay. Whenever you cast a black permanent spell, target creature you control gets +1/+1 and gains menace until end of turn.

4 / 4

Dominaria United (DMU) · Rare · Illustrated by Mathias Kollros

Final zone distribution

29 instances

48.3%

Battlefield

17.2%

Graveyard

13.8%

Exile

20.7%

Hand

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Rowan, Scion of War 4 decks
2 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse 4 decks
3 Umbris, Fear Manifest 4 decks
4 Baron Helmut Zemo 3 decks
5 Captain N'ghathrod 3 decks
6 Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos 2 decks
7 Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER // Sephiroth, One-Winged Angel 2 decks
8 Valgavoth, Terror Eater 2 decks
9 Acererak the Archlich 1 decks
10 Amalia Benavides Aguirre 1 decks

The "good card" funnel

103 brought · 50 players

Brought to game

103

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 67% of this card is still on the battlefield at game end. This reflects how often it survives removal, not just whether it's a permanent.

≥ -15.1pp

Players who cast this card win 28% of the time (n=20) , vs 21% when it never left the library (n=67).

Observed gap +6.6pp; 95% confidence interval -15.1pp to +28.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=21

10%

14%

38%

T6-9

19%

T10+

Median 6 P25 4 · P75 8 · max 12

On curve 29% (2 / 21 cast on T4)

21 of 100 times cast 21%

Full analysis unlocks as more games are tracked. Stats refresh nightly.

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Basic play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games; the full deep-dive page needs a larger, more diverse sample (at least 300 tracked games played by 10 or more different pilots, with no single pilot over 40 percent of the copies). 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 660,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.