Live Play Data

Lightning Strike

· Instant · Marvel Super Heroes (MSH)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

860

Decks Running

357

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

68%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=137

18%

12%

44%

T6-9

15%

T10+

Median 6 P25 4 · P75 8 · max 14

On curve 5% (6 / 137 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 33%

The "good card" funnel

861 brought · 318 players

Brought to game

861

Ever drawn

201

Reached battlefield

137

Still on board at game end

≥ -2.9pp

Players who cast this card win 23% of the time (n=123) , vs 19% when it never left the library (n=551).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 27% (n=53).

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 +4.6pp; 95% confidence interval -2.9pp to +12.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

222 instances

2.3%

Library

5.4%

Battlefield

62.6%

Graveyard

8.6%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Fire Lord Azula 39 decks
2 Krenko, Mob Boss 22 decks
3 Kuja, Genome Sorcerer // Trance Kuja, Fate Defied 12 decks
4 Bruce Banner // The Incredible Hulk 10 decks
5 Vivi Ornitier 9 decks
6 Solphim, Mayhem Dominus 7 decks
7 Thor, God of Thunder 7 decks
8 Smaug the Impenetrable 6 decks
9 Avatar Aang // Aang, Master of Elements 5 decks
10 Kibo, Uktabi Prince 5 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 750,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.