Live Play Data

Stubborn Denial

· Instant · Khans of Tarkir (KTK)

Live Inclusion

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Times Brought

1259

Decks Running

500

Median Cast Turn

Drawn → Played

56%

Format

Multiplayer 1v1

First-cast turn

n=165

10%

15%

55%

T6-9

10%

T10+

Median 6 P25 5 · P75 8 · max 15

On curve 2% (3 / 165 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 19%

The "good card" funnel

1260 brought · 435 players

Brought to game

1260

Ever drawn

296

Reached battlefield

165

Still on board at game end

≥ +2.9pp

Players who cast this card win 40% of the time (n=149) , vs 29% when it never left the library (n=792).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 39% (n=116).

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 +11.0pp; 95% confidence interval +2.9pp to +19.1pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

337 instances

3.3%

Library

4.2%

Battlefield

48.4%

Graveyard

9.5%

Exile

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

1 The Ur-Dragon 67 decks
2 Eshki, Temur's Roar 32 decks
3 Fire Lord Azula 24 decks
4 Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm 20 decks
5 The Mindskinner 16 decks
6 Ureni of the Unwritten 16 decks
7 Indominus Rex, Alpha 10 decks
8 Kenessos, Priest of Thassa 10 decks
9 Vivi Ornitier 10 decks
10 Lord of the Nazgûl 9 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 710,000+ Commander games overall, and this card-level play data comes from the Playgroup Live seats playing virtual cards, a subset of that corpus.