Live Play Data

Stinging Study

· Instant · Commander 2021 (C21)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

497

Decks Running

233

Median Cast Turn

6.0

Drawn → Played

51%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=52

15%

12%

54%

T6-9

13%

T10+

Median 6.0 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 13

On curve 33% (6 / 52 cast on T5) Cast same turn as drawn 32%

The "good card" funnel

497 brought · 215 players

Brought to game

497

Ever drawn

102

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -9.0pp

Players who cast this card win 36% of the time (n=48) , vs 31% when it never left the library (n=329).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 37% (n=45).

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 +4.8pp; 95% confidence interval -9.0pp to +18.6pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

119 instances

4.2%

Library

4.2%

Battlefield

50.4%

Graveyard

11.8%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

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

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 720,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.