Card Preview

Stubborn Denial

· Instant · Khans of Tarkir (KTK)

Decklist Inclusion

Buy on TCGplayer

Times Brought

550

Decks Running

250

In Decks

1548

Decklist Inclusion

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

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

Final zone distribution

156 instances

3.8%

Library

3.8%

Battlefield

46.8%

Graveyard

8.3%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The "good card" funnel

550 brought · 222 players

Brought to game

550

Ever drawn

142

Reached battlefield

Still on board at game end

≥ -4.0pp

Players who cast this card win 36% of the time (n=69) , vs 28% when it never left the library (n=344).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 37% (n=62) — 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 +8.1pp; 95% confidence interval -4.0pp to +20.2pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

First-cast turn

n=74

14%

59%

T6-9

11%

T10+

Median 6.0 P25 5 · P75 7 · max 15

On curve 1% (1 / 74 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 25%

74 of 100 times cast 74%

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.