Card Preview

Stinging Study

· Instant · Commander 2021 (C21)

Decklist Inclusion

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Times Brought

222

Decks Running

105

In Decks

611

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

Card text

Stinging Study

Instant

You draw X cards and you lose X life, where X is the mana value of a commander you own on the battlefield or in the command zone.

Commander 2021 (C21) · Rare · Illustrated by Kieran Yanner

Final zone distribution

59 instances

5.1%

Library

5.1%

Battlefield

45.8%

Graveyard

8.5%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The "good card" funnel

222 brought · 100 players

Brought to game

222

Ever drawn

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -29.2pp

Players who cast this card win 25% of the time (n=21) , vs 35% when it never left the library (n=149).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 44% (n=28) — 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 -10.2pp; 95% confidence interval -29.2pp to +8.8pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=23

22%

13%

39%

T6-9

17%

T10+

Median 6 P25 4 · P75 9 · max 13

On curve 43% (3 / 23 cast on T5) Cast same turn as drawn 22%

23 of 100 times cast 23%

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.