Card Preview

Perplexing Test

· Instant · Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC)

Decklist Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

407

Decks Running

223

In Decks

1442

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Card text

Perplexing Test

Instant

Choose one — • Return all creature tokens to their owners' hands. • Return all nontoken creatures to their owners' hands.

Secrets of Strixhaven Commander (SOC) · Rare · Illustrated by Fariba Khamseh

Final zone distribution

115 instances

2.6%

Library

1.7%

Battlefield

51.3%

Graveyard

8.7%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The "good card" funnel

407 brought · 205 players

Brought to game

407

Ever drawn

105

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -5.5pp

Players who cast this card win 31% of the time (n=51) , vs 24% when it never left the library (n=258).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 27% (n=44) — about the same as leaving it in the library. Those players survived long enough to draw it, so the gap above is about the card resolving, not just about surviving.

Observed gap +7.3pp; 95% confidence interval -5.5pp to +20.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=56

66%

T6-9

21%

T10+

Median 7.5 P25 7 · P75 9 · max 14

On curve 13% (3 / 56 cast on T5) Cast same turn as drawn 25%

56 of 100 times cast 56%

Full analysis unlocks as more games are tracked. Stats refresh nightly.

Frequently Asked

Why isn't there more data on this card?

Playgroup Live collects per-card gameplay data from real Commander games. Basic play counts appear once a card reaches 100 tracked games; the full deep-dive page needs a larger, more diverse sample (at least 300 tracked games played by 10 or more different pilots, with no single pilot over 40 percent of the copies). 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 650,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live subset of that corpus.