Live Play Data

Stubborn Denial

· Instant · Khans of Tarkir (KTK)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1655

Decks Running

617

Median Cast Turn

6.0

Drawn → Played

56%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=222

14%

56%

T6-9

11%

T10+

Median 6.0 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 15

On curve 3% (6 / 222 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 20%

The "good card" funnel

1656 brought · 535 players

Brought to game

1656

Ever drawn

396

Reached battlefield

222

Still on board at game end

≥ +3.1pp

Players who cast this card win 39% of the time (n=199) , vs 29% when it never left the library (n=1042).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 36% (n=155).

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 +10.0pp; 95% confidence interval +3.1pp to +16.9pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

452 instances

3.1%

Library

3.8%

Battlefield

48.5%

Graveyard

10.2%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 The Ur-Dragon 79 decks
2 Fire Lord Azula 40 decks
3 Eshki, Temur's Roar 36 decks
4 Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm 25 decks
5 Ureni of the Unwritten 21 decks
6 The Mindskinner 18 decks
7 Vivi Ornitier 12 decks
8 Indominus Rex, Alpha 11 decks
9 Kenessos, Priest of Thassa 11 decks
10 Hashaton, Scarab's Fist 10 decks

Card text

Stubborn Denial

Instant

Counter target noncreature spell unless its controller pays {1}

. Ferocious — If you control a creature with power 4 or greater, counter that spell instead.

Khans of Tarkir (KTK) · Uncommon · Illustrated by James Ryman

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 750,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.