Live Play Data

Lightning Strike

· Instant · Marvel Super Heroes (MSH)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

505

Decks Running

233

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

64%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=77

21%

43%

T6-9

16%

T10+

Median 6 P25 4 · P75 8 · max 14

On curve 6% (4 / 77 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 32%

The "good card" funnel

506 brought · 209 players

Brought to game

506

Ever drawn

120

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -1.5pp

Players who cast this card win 28% of the time (n=69) , vs 19% when it never left the library (n=323).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 26% (n=36).

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 +9.0pp; 95% confidence interval -1.5pp to +19.5pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

133 instances

3.0%

Library

6.0%

Battlefield

60.9%

Graveyard

9.0%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Fire Lord Azula 25 decks
2 Krenko, Mob Boss 14 decks
3 Kuja, Genome Sorcerer // Trance Kuja, Fate Defied 9 decks
4 Vivi Ornitier 7 decks
5 Bruce Banner // The Incredible Hulk 6 decks
6 Smaug the Impenetrable 6 decks
7 Thor, God of Thunder 5 decks
8 Thor Odinson 5 decks
9 Heartless Hidetsugu 4 decks
10 Kibo, Uktabi Prince 4 decks

Card text

Lightning Strike

Instant

Lightning Strike deals 3 damage to any target.

Marvel Super Heroes (MSH) · Common · Illustrated by Toni Infante

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.