Magic the Gathering Blog
MTG DESIGN SPACE: COUNTERSPELLS
I'm going to attempt to explore design spaces in Magic the Gathering once a week, starting with this attempt at exploring counterspells. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.
There's a lot of discussion at the moment about counterspells in Magic the Gathering. Since the printing of the eponymous Counterspell - the classic "Counter target spell" for UU - Wizards has been trying to lower the power level of counterspells ever since.
It seems that a straight counterspell for UU is too strong. However, as demonstrated by the great decks of today, 1UU is too weak, with Cancel seeing little success in T1 decks.
At the same time, the highly flexible Cryptic Command, at 1UUU, was a format defining spell.
I thought today I'd explore the design space of the counterspell with five theoretical cards.
Here they are, in order of mana cost.
Audacious Gamble
Yes, it will remind you of Force of Will. However, unlike Force of Will, you will never be able to hard cast it, and it's truly terrible as a top-deck card when your hand is empty.
However, unlike Force of Will, you can play it in a deck of any colour, as you need not exile a blue card. Also, unlike Force of Will, it would be quite advantageous in a deck using reanimation tactics or Madness keyworded spells.
Aether Spurt [note: name changed]
There's a slot between Nix and Spell Snare that's not yet been filled. This spell is designed for that slot. Unlike Nix, it doesn't hit Affinity or alternately costed cards. And unlike Force Spike, although you'll often be countering a first-turn spell with this, your mileage will vary late game.
The upside is that it will hit Moxen and Rituals, making it perfect to slow down degenerate combo decks from going off turn 1.
Tidal Denial
A little bit Gush, a little bit Counterspell. Tidal Denial may be heavily frowned up as taking up too much tempo in the early game, but you don't lose card advantage and may even get extra triggers from the soon-to-be-released Land Fall mechanic.
At the same time, this is a great spell for lategame use, where bouncing an island is often irrelevant to the game state.
If Cancel is out of favour, what incentives does a player need to pay the same cost? These next two cards explore that.
Mana Gift
Mana Gift demonstrates an invented keyword, Scavenge. If you knew you'd get extra mileage out of Cancel by boosting your mana pool on the next turn (or even the same turn), would you use it? It's a callout to mana drain without being nearly as degenerate in power. The extra mana could even be used to power out another counterspell.
Scorn
Another attempt at making Cancel attractive. Would you play Cancel if you could kick it into a pseudo Cryptic Command? I like the tension that Scorn provides in the early game - spend the card and play it as Cancel, or hold it back and get a Cryptic.
I think there's a lot of room to maneuver when it comes to counterspells. Lately Wizards has been printing a lot of 'conditional' counterspells - Essence Scatter, Negate, Flashfreeze. I'd really like to see some great counterspells back in Standard, and think Wizards has plenty of design space left in this regard.
Today's spells artwork is stolen from Redlabor.com. Go take a look at their great work.
I'm going to attempt to explore design spaces in Magic the Gathering once a week, starting with this attempt at exploring counterspells. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.
There's a lot of discussion at the moment about counterspells in Magic the Gathering. Since the printing of the eponymous Counterspell - the classic "Counter target spell" for UU - Wizards has been trying to lower the power level of counterspells ever since.
It seems that a straight counterspell for UU is too strong. However, as demonstrated by the great decks of today, 1UU is too weak, with Cancel seeing little success in T1 decks.
At the same time, the highly flexible Cryptic Command, at 1UUU, was a format defining spell.
I thought today I'd explore the design space of the counterspell with five theoretical cards.
Here they are, in order of mana cost.
Audacious Gamble
Yes, it will remind you of Force of Will. However, unlike Force of Will, you will never be able to hard cast it, and it's truly terrible as a top-deck card when your hand is empty.
However, unlike Force of Will, you can play it in a deck of any colour, as you need not exile a blue card. Also, unlike Force of Will, it would be quite advantageous in a deck using reanimation tactics or Madness keyworded spells.
Aether Spurt [note: name changed]
There's a slot between Nix and Spell Snare that's not yet been filled. This spell is designed for that slot. Unlike Nix, it doesn't hit Affinity or alternately costed cards. And unlike Force Spike, although you'll often be countering a first-turn spell with this, your mileage will vary late game.
The upside is that it will hit Moxen and Rituals, making it perfect to slow down degenerate combo decks from going off turn 1.
Tidal Denial
A little bit Gush, a little bit Counterspell. Tidal Denial may be heavily frowned up as taking up too much tempo in the early game, but you don't lose card advantage and may even get extra triggers from the soon-to-be-released Land Fall mechanic.
At the same time, this is a great spell for lategame use, where bouncing an island is often irrelevant to the game state.
If Cancel is out of favour, what incentives does a player need to pay the same cost? These next two cards explore that.
Mana Gift
Mana Gift demonstrates an invented keyword, Scavenge. If you knew you'd get extra mileage out of Cancel by boosting your mana pool on the next turn (or even the same turn), would you use it? It's a callout to mana drain without being nearly as degenerate in power. The extra mana could even be used to power out another counterspell.
Scorn
Another attempt at making Cancel attractive. Would you play Cancel if you could kick it into a pseudo Cryptic Command? I like the tension that Scorn provides in the early game - spend the card and play it as Cancel, or hold it back and get a Cryptic.
I think there's a lot of room to maneuver when it comes to counterspells. Lately Wizards has been printing a lot of 'conditional' counterspells - Essence Scatter, Negate, Flashfreeze. I'd really like to see some great counterspells back in Standard, and think Wizards has plenty of design space left in this regard.
Today's spells artwork is stolen from Redlabor.com. Go take a look at their great work.
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2 Comments:
I like that you're going out there and designing your own cards. You've got the right idea with Counterspell being too strong and Cancel being too weak. You focused on why Cancel is too weak: It's too vanilla and block mechanic counterspells always have a leg up. So, let's take a look at what you've created.
Audacious Gamble-
I like how this is a counterspell that you have to pay alternate costs for. There's a few problems though:
- Add the line "~this~ is blue." See Restore Balance cycle.
- Blue doesn't discard a random, it's more of Red's theme. Only two Blue cards have ever had to word Random in them (Apathy and Planeswalker's Mischief). Change it to discard a Blue card. The draw back of losing the ability to have this is re-animator and madness decks is a small price to pay for not disrupting the game and making it too powerful (though you still could toss an Inkwell Leviathan to this). Plus, Spike would play this more since they don't like random effects which would make it more powerful.
- A free counterspell in any color is dangerous. I don't mean to rain on your parade and say that what makes your card cool is that it could fit in any deck, but that's just too powerful. Even Mindbreaker Trap has a certain trigger for it to be used in any deck: having to play three spells a turn. Green having access to a counterspell is a very bad idea.
New wording:
Audacious Gamble []
Instant (Rare)
~this~ is blue.
You may pay 2 life and discard a blue card rather then pay ~this~'s mana cost.
Counter target spell.
Aether Burst-
The only real problem I have is the name has been taken. It's alright to make a card more powerful than Nix. Nix is almost too narrow and this would be just fine. Just pick a different name.
Tidal Denial-
Add the clause, "As an additional cost to cast ~this~" and you've got a very skill testing card to play with.
Mana Gift-
I'm frowning the name a little since it's not really taking the mana from the spell like Mana Drain is. While it does give mana as a keyword mechanic, I wouldn't recommend tying it to the name.
Scavenge - Interesting keyword mechanic, but would it be too broken with Dredge? Dredge everything into the graveyard that has Scavenge and Fireball you? Needs to be tested with.
Scorn-
A Dismiss for 1UUU, the sometimes casting cost of Cryptic Command. With Scorn and Mana Gift you've answered why Cancel is so weak and hardly used in serious play, there's not enough bang for 1UU. The tweaks are good enough to see play.
I'm glad you stuck by the Wizard's rule of Hard counters costing at least UU and the situational counters U. The fact that there are less hard counters is that Blue just gets too powerful. Look at Cyptic Command and all the havoc it created.
In all, I think these cards well pretty well designed. Except for your experimental free counterspell as written, I would love to have any of these see print or in a custom set.
I want to see more of these posts; I'm always a sucker for custom designed cards.
By
mtgcolorpie, at 16 September 2009 3:43 PM
In response to your feedback:
1. Audacious Gamble - you're probably right, needs a "random blue card" rather than simply a random card. This also stops the chance of removing a land, forcing a spell.
2. Changed the name for Aether Burst!
3. Tidal Denial - your interpretation was my intention. I'll try to upload a new image soon.
4. I'm not sure Scavange will be entirely broken. Dredge in Vintage requires no mana to operate. It'd be interesting to see how it would operate. As a mechanic I'm pretty happy with it.
5. I think Scorn is probably the most elegant card today, sitting neatly in between not powerful enough and too powerful, simply depending on the situation.
Thanks for your feedback.
By
wrongwaygoback, at 16 September 2009 10:12 PM
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