Live Play Data

Key to the City

· Artifact · Commander 2021 (C21)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1483

Decks Running

664

Median Cast Turn

5.0

Drawn → Played

65%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=244

14%

10%

13%

36%

T6-9

T10+

Median 5.0 P25 3 · P75 7 · max 12

On curve 23% (35 / 244 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 35%

The "good card" funnel

1483 brought · 589 players

Brought to game

1483

Ever drawn

373

Reached battlefield

244

Still on board at game end

178

Once cast, 73% 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.

≥ +1.2pp

Players who cast this card win 28% of the time (n=226) , vs 21% when it never left the library (n=919).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 25% (n=112).

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 +7.2pp; 95% confidence interval +1.2pp to +13.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

435 instances

3.9%

Library

40.9%

Battlefield

29.9%

Graveyard

5.3%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Terra, Herald of Hope 142 decks
2 Magar of the Magic Strings 34 decks
3 Captain Howler, Sea Scourge 30 decks
4 Squall, SeeD Mercenary 30 decks
5 Greasefang, Okiba Boss 19 decks
6 Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer 16 decks
7 Anje Falkenrath 12 decks
8 Hashaton, Scarab's Fist 12 decks
9 The Beamtown Bullies 12 decks
10 Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad 11 decks

Card text

Key to the City

Artifact

, Discard a card: Up to one target creature can't be blocked this turn. Whenever this artifact becomes untapped, you may pay {2}

. If you do, draw a card.

Commander 2021 (C21) · Rare · Illustrated by Sean Murray

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 760,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.