Live Play Data

Spectral Denial

· Instant · Tarkir: Dragonstorm (TDM)

Live Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

271

Decks Running

115

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

46%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=27

26%

44%

T6-9

22%

T10+

Median 7 P25 5 · P75 9 · max 22

Cast same turn as drawn 22%

The "good card" funnel

271 brought · 102 players

Brought to game

271

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -3.4pp

Players who cast this card win 45% of the time (n=24) , vs 29% when it never left the library (n=181).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 39% (n=29).

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 +15.7pp; 95% confidence interval -3.4pp to +34.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

71 instances

8.5%

Library

4.2%

Battlefield

50.7%

Graveyard

4.2%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 Zimone, Infinite Analyst 49 decks
2 Zaxara, the Exemplary 11 decks
3 Ureni of the Unwritten 9 decks
4 Eshki, Temur's Roar 7 decks
5 Teval, the Balanced Scale 4 decks
6 Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm 3 decks
7 The Ur-Dragon 3 decks
8 Ramos, Dragon Engine 2 decks
9 The Emperor of Palamecia // The Lord Master of Hell 2 decks
10 Y'shtola, Night's Blessed 2 decks

Card text

Spectral Denial

Instant

This spell costs {1}

less to cast for each creature you control with power 4 or greater. Counter target spell unless its controller pays {X}

Tarkir: Dragonstorm (TDM) · Uncommon · Illustrated by Xabi Gaztelua

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 730,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.