Live Play Data

Perilous Research

· Instant · Modern Masters (MMA)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

156

Decks Running

Median Cast Turn

7.5

Drawn → Played

50%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=20

10%

55%

T6-9

25%

T10+

Median 7.5 P25 6 · P75 10 · max 17

On curve 5% (1 / 20 cast on T2) Cast same turn as drawn 30%

The "good card" funnel

156 brought · 66 players

Brought to game

156

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -8.4pp

Players who cast this card win 29% of the time (n=20) , vs 18% when it never left the library (n=102).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 25% (n=19).

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 +10.9pp; 95% confidence interval -8.4pp to +30.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

44 instances

2.3%

Library

2.3%

Battlefield

47.7%

Graveyard

9.1%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor 25 decks
2 Minn, Wily Illusionist 12 decks
3 The Watcher in the Water 7 decks
4 Zedruu the Greathearted 5 decks
5 Child of Alara 3 decks
6 Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student // Tamiyo, Seasoned Scholar 3 decks
7 Third Path Iconoclast 2 decks
8 Brallin, Skyshark Rider 1 decks
9 Brenard, Ginger Sculptor 1 decks
10 Ertai, the Corrupted 1 decks

Card text

Perilous Research

Instant

Draw two cards, then sacrifice a permanent.

Modern Masters (MMA) · Common · Illustrated by Donato Giancola

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.