Card Preview

Key to the City

· Artifact · Commander 2021 (C21)

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

507

Decks Running

255

In Decks

1665

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

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

Final zone distribution

149 instances

2.0%

Library

41.6%

Battlefield

28.2%

Graveyard

8.1%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The "good card" funnel

507 brought · 231 players

Brought to game

507

Ever drawn

133

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

Once cast, 70% 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.

≥ -0.8pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=81) , vs 21% when it never left the library (n=311).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 28% (n=40) — about the same as leaving it in the library. Those players survived long enough to draw it, so the gap above is about the card resolving, not just about surviving.

Observed gap +9.0pp; 95% confidence interval -0.8pp to +18.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=88

10%

16%

15%

16%

34%

T6-9

T10+

Median 5.0 P25 3 · P75 6 · max 10

On curve 17% (9 / 88 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 31%

88 of 100 times cast 88%

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.