Live Play Data

Lightning Bolt

· Instant · Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

2767

Decks Running

1381

Median Cast Turn

6.0

Drawn → Played

75%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=450

10%

16%

18%

43%

T6-9

T10+

Median 6.0 P25 4 · P75 7 · max 16

On curve 1% (3 / 450 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 36%

The "good card" funnel

2772 brought · 1046 players

Brought to game

2772

Ever drawn

601

Reached battlefield

450

Still on board at game end

≥ -1.5pp

Players who cast this card win 30% of the time (n=431) , vs 27% when it never left the library (n=1819).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 23% (n=131).

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 +2.9pp; 95% confidence interval -1.5pp to +7.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

675 instances

4.1%

Library

5.2%

Battlefield

62.1%

Graveyard

11.0%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Vivi Ornitier 76 decks
2 Fire Lord Azula 74 decks
3 Krenko, Mob Boss 57 decks
4 Smaug the Impenetrable 51 decks
5 Kuja, Genome Sorcerer // Trance Kuja, Fate Defied 43 decks
6 Prismari, the Inspiration 25 decks
7 Magda, Brazen Outlaw 23 decks
8 Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls 22 decks
9 Lightning, Army of One 21 decks
10 Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness 20 decks

Card text

Lightning Bolt

Instant

Lightning Bolt deals 3 damage to any target.

Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC) · Uncommon · Illustrated by Milivoj Ćeran

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 690,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.