Live Play Data

Lightning Bolt

· Instant · Marvel Super Heroes Commander (MSC)

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

4080

Decks Running

1957

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

72%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=643

15%

17%

44%

T6-9

10%

T10+

Median 6 P25 4 · P75 7 · max 19

On curve 1% (9 / 643 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 36%

The "good card" funnel

4085 brought · 1469 players

Brought to game

4085

Ever drawn

899

Reached battlefield

643

Still on board at game end

≥ +2.1pp

Players who cast this card win 31% of the time (n=596) , vs 25% when it never left the library (n=2675).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 22% (n=223).

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 +5.9pp; 95% confidence interval +2.1pp to +9.7pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

1008 instances

4.2%

Library

5.8%

Battlefield

60.6%

Graveyard

10.4%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Vivi Ornitier 109 decks
2 Fire Lord Azula 87 decks
3 Krenko, Mob Boss 86 decks
4 Smaug the Impenetrable 71 decks
5 Lathliss, Dragon Queen 68 decks
6 Kuja, Genome Sorcerer // Trance Kuja, Fate Defied 63 decks
7 Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness 31 decks
8 Prismari, the Inspiration 30 decks
9 Magda, Brazen Outlaw 29 decks
10 Kratos, God of War 27 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 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.