Live Play Data

Illusionist's Gambit

· Instant · Commander 2013 (C13)

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

541

Decks Running

272

Median Cast Turn

9.0

Drawn → Played

33%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=48

60%

T6-9

33%

T10+

Median 9.0 P25 8 · P75 10 · max 21

On curve 0% (0 / 48 cast on T4) Cast same turn as drawn 17%

The "good card" funnel

541 brought · 258 players

Brought to game

541

Ever drawn

145

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -5.3pp

Players who cast this card win 31% of the time (n=44) , vs 23% when it never left the library (n=337).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 28% (n=84).

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 +8.6pp; 95% confidence interval -5.3pp to +22.5pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

159 instances

2.5%

Library

5.0%

Battlefield

34.0%

Graveyard

2.5%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Card text

Illusionist's Gambit

Instant

Cast this spell only during the declare blockers step on an opponent's turn. Remove all attacking creatures from combat and untap them. After this phase, there is an additional combat phase. Each of those creatures attacks that combat if able. They can't attack you or planeswalkers you control that combat.

Commander 2013 (C13) · Rare · Illustrated by Zoltan Boros

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 720,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.