Live Play Data

Lofty Denial

· Instant · Core Set 2021 (M21)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

236

Decks Running

125

Median Cast Turn

7.0

Drawn → Played

52%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=28

21%

54%

T6-9

18%

T10+

Median 7.0 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 12

On curve 0% (0 / 28 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 21%

The "good card" funnel

236 brought · 118 players

Brought to game

236

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -2.9pp

Players who cast this card win 35% of the time (n=23) , vs 18% when it never left the library (n=155).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 16% (n=23).

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 +16.4pp; 95% confidence interval -2.9pp to +35.7pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

61 instances

1.6%

Library

1.6%

Battlefield

55.7%

Graveyard

4.9%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

Card text

Lofty Denial

Instant

Counter target spell unless its controller pays {1}

. If you control a creature with flying, counter that spell unless its controller pays {4}

instead.

Core Set 2021 (M21) · Common · Illustrated by Manuel Castañón

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 780,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.