Is this counterspell printable?

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Sporegorger_Dragon
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Post by Sporegorger_Dragon » 2 years ago

Is the following conceivably printable in any sort of set, supplementary or otherwise?

Curve Counter
1u
Instant
Kicker u
Counter target spell unless its controller pays 1. If this spell was kicked, counter that spell instead.
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Skello496
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Post by Skello496 » 2 years ago

I mean yeah, that's totally printable. Mana Tithe does the first part for one mana and cancel is the equivalent to it being kicked, so there's no reason that it wouldn't work.
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Post by void_nothing » 2 years ago

Why not? Better Cancel variants get printed at uncommon (and even common!) in many sets, and neither the unkicked nor the kicked mode is particularly strong.
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Post by Sporegorger_Dragon » 2 years ago

Thank you for your comments.

My concerns were that an early conditional counter that later eliminated its drawback would be too versatile (hence the very conservative power level; unkicked version was originally just Mana Leak, but that might have been overkill.)
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Post by void_nothing » 2 years ago

Sporegorger_Dragon wrote:
2 years ago
Thank you for your comments.

My concerns were that an early conditional counter that later eliminated its drawback would be too versatile (hence the very conservative power level; unkicked version was originally just Mana Leak, but that might have been overkill.)
Mana Leak itself is too much for Standard these days, so I think that's a fair assessment.
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DJK3654
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Post by DJK3654 » 2 years ago

Seems fairly strong—Cancel isn't too far from playable—but it's probably okay.

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Post by spacemonaut » 2 years ago

Something we need to avoid in Magic design is creating the strictly best version of things. WotC hasn't ever made a 2cmc monocolor "destroy/exile target nonland permanent." in white or black. They have made them conditional, multicolour, with tradeoffs, with compensation (swords to plowshares), or limited in targeting options.

They did make counterspell, and this situation is why it can't be printed into standard anymore, and we instead have 2CMC counterspells with similar constraints attached.

In fact, Gavin and other WotC staff have publicly acknowledged they 100% screwed the pooch by making Arcane Signet, because it's the strictly best mana rock they could possibly justify in that slot in any commander deck, and they can never make a stronger version without enormous power creep. Gavin said more or less it's impossible to get people excited about alternatives now, because there's no room to move left anymore, and they can only make worse versions of it by comparison. They made the best-in-slot card and now the jig is up. (This didn't excape the community for a moment; the same day the card was previewed there was no shortage of people pointing out Wizards had made a huge mistake. R&D absolutely had to see this coming and I speculate they used it to push the brawl decks, trading away long term benefit for short term. The card should never have been printed and it still blows my mind they printed it.)

What we might be concerned about is this card being one of the defacto best-in-slot counterspells, given its power as akin to a utility knife. I don't think that's too serious a risk, but it is up there as a risk.

I would take a step to differentiate it to make it not a risk: make the card cost 1W instead of 1U. Keep everything else identical, including the kicker cost at . Now it's like Mana Tithe, but more expensive on account of increased flexibility, and if you've got blue you can turn it into a 1WU Cancel. Now you've got yourself a solid uncommon Azorius counterspell with plenty of room to make a "better" version later, which translates directly into horizontal room to mess about with alternative formulations. That's not strictly required, but it is an option.

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Post by void_nothing » 2 years ago

spacemonaut wrote:
2 years ago
Something we need to avoid in Magic design is creating the strictly best version of things. WotC hasn't ever made a 2cmc monocolor "destroy/exile target nonland permanent." in white or black. They have made them conditional, multicolour, with tradeoffs, with compensation (swords to plowshares), or limited in targeting options.
I have to agree in principle, but "no card may ever be strictly better than another" is absolutely not true. It's true that nonbasic lands shouldn't be strictly better than a basic, and in fact I can't think of one - bar Alpha duals - that is: even the Pathways suffer from, well, not having a basic land type, which can be important. And Arcane Signet was a mistake, although that's lessened by the fact that it's only for singleton formats; you could argue that Command Tower is a MUCH BIGGER mistake in that sense.

But while "Curve Counter" would be an upgrade over Cancel basically every time, it would only be a sidegrade from Broken Concentration, Admiral's Order, Neutralize, Sinister Sabotage, Saw It Coming, Scatter to the Winds... I could go on.

The reality is that there are some things that are just baselines and some things are lines that shouldn't be crossed. And Cancel for Standard is a baseline, along with Savannah Lions and probably Shock off the top of my head.
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Post by Sporegorger_Dragon » 2 years ago

void_nothing wrote:
2 years ago
spacemonaut wrote:
2 years ago
Something we need to avoid in Magic design is creating the strictly best version of things.
I have to agree in principle, but "no card may ever be strictly better than another" is absolutely not true.
But spacemonaut didn't say that; they said that "the best version of card should never be designed and printed," not that "no card should be strictly better than another."

The point of contention is their evaluation that Curve Counter is too good, not that it is better than Cancel. This is the point you two disagree on.
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Post by spacemonaut » 2 years ago

Yes, I'm not concerned about making cards that are strictly better than other cards. Of course Cancel has cards strictly better than it, that's fine.

I'm concerned about best in slot. Once you make a best-in-slot card, like Arcane Signet, there is no sidegrading from that—you've made the best that there is, and anything else is either power creep or a downgrade. They could've made a Boros Signet cycle that didn't cost to activate and entered tapped, but they went for the be-all end-all, and, well, they got what they went for and all the problems with making the best-in-slot card.

Negate and Essence Scatter are basically them playing around with the design space to which Counterspell is the best-in-slot.

Cards like Doomblade and Abrupt Decay and Dreadbore and Despark (or Vindicate) are them playing around in some design space in which the theoretical best-in-slot could exist and should never because then all the fun of making these sidegrades vanishes.

Out of all the cards that are not counterspell, I'm highlighting the risk for Curve Counter to be best-in-slot. It's unlikely! I'm just showing an available option for stepping away from that risk entirely by diving into the sidegrade space: make it a worse mana tithe or a cancel that costs two colors, in exchange for being both in one package.

(By "best in slot" for Curve Counter, I mean in practice rather than in theory. Counterspell already exists. But will Curve Counter be the card where people play a 4-of by default and analyse new counterspells by whether they measure up to Curve Counter? That would be the best-in-slot-in-practice factor. I'm not saying it will be, just that that's a risk to assess.)

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