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collections_bookmark Part of Modern Horizons 3 format_list_numbered #26 blue counterspell
Flare of Denial card art
Live Play Data

Flare of Denial

{1} {U} {U} · Instant · Modern Horizons 3 (MH3)
2%
Live Inclusion
Buy on TCGplayer
Times Brought
1161
Decks Running
518
Median Cast Turn
7
Drawn → Played
54%
Format
Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=165
0%
T1
1%
T2
2%
T3
7%
T4
12%
T5
61%
T6-9
17%
T10+
Median 7 P25 6 · P75 9 · max 20
On curve 3% (3 / 165 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 29%

The "good card" funnel

1163 brought · 476 players
Brought to game
1163
Ever drawn
308
Reached battlefield
165
Still on board at game end
16
≥ +2.8pp

Players who cast this card win 39% of the time (n=152) , vs 28% when it never left the library (n=664).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 47% (n=122).

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 +10.8pp; 95% confidence interval +2.8pp to +18.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

369 instances
3.0%
Library
4.3%
Battlefield
48.0%
Graveyard
13.6%
Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games
Card text
Flare of Denial card

Flare of Denial

{1} {U} {U}
Instant
You may sacrifice a nontoken blue creature rather than pay this spell's mana cost. Counter target spell.
Modern Horizons 3 (MH3) · Rare · Illustrated by Jason A. Engle

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.