how yr play group reacts to various counterspells

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folding_music
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Post by folding_music » 4 years ago

Which sorts of counterspells do you feel that you can reasonably use in your playgroup without ruining games? Some players run slow, disruptionless decks against which counterspells are disproportionately powerful and the game breaks down as a result. On the other hand, some players bring to bear combinations which can win the game on the spot, and THEN you hope someone's got islands open, right?

(an attempt at categorizing different types of counterspells -
group A: Force of Will, Force of Negation, Foil, Daze, Thwart, Misdirection, etc. - "free" counters
group B: Disrupt, Complicate, Force Void, Condescend, etc. - advantage spikes
group C: Vex, Arcane Denial, Swan Song, etc. - consolation counters
group D: Delay, Ertai's Meddling, Remand, Memory Lapse, etc. - do-overs
group E: Confound, Dive Down, etc. - cloaks
group F: Mana Drain, Draining Whelk, Spelljack, etc. - judo counters
group G: Hinder, Counterspell, Cryptic Command, etc. - generic good counters
group H: Spell Blast, Fervent Denial, etc. - bad counters)

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

I don't see any issue with running any counterspells. Generally speaking in multiplayer commander you can't counter everything and the defense to counter magic is running lower curves with more synergy rather than combo and haymaker wincons. If people are actually annoyed by counter magic there are numerous ways to counter them such as Defense Grid, Grand Abolisher, City of Solitude, Dosan the Falling Leaf, War's Toll, Price of Glory, and Cavern of Souls.

I think that counterspells are just fine. They generally speaking can't stop a table of opponents and have to be used selectively. The answer is usually running lower curves and relying less on haymakers and or combos. Apply constant pressure to that player without going overboard (aetherspouts and the such) and they will have a hard time keeping all that mana up all the time as they need to put up defenses.
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Post by DirkGently » 4 years ago

Counterspells are a necessary evil. By which I mean - using a counterspell in commander is usually kind of a bad thing. You'd really prefer not to do it, because they're mostly kind of bad cards in terms of managing a table of opponents. Usually on-board removal is more efficient, it lets you wait until you're certain a card is your problem, it's easier to make 2-for-1s or better with board wipe or multi-target removal, etc. But, some things require a counterspell, and counterspells do answer the widest swath of problems, provided you have them available at the right time. If you're playing control, you're playing them, because sometimes they're the only thing that works.

All that to say - people who hate counterspells are idiots. if someone is counterspelling your card, it's probably because it was a very dangerous card and you shouldn't expect people not to interact with you when you play that sort of stuff. And if they're countering your mediocre cards, then they're a bad player and they're probably going to lose.
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Post by ChazA4 » 4 years ago

I use the counterspells in my group that work, to answer OP's question. I haven't run into many people who run stuff like what ISBPathfinder mentioned, which is a huge surprise, considering how prevalent counters are, on average per pod(by this, I mean all decks combined will run a reasonable number of counterspells of some kind, not all of which are blue).

Near as I can tell, I'm the only one who runs Commit // Memory, or Boseiju, Who Shelters All or Dragonlord Dromoka, etc. I saw one person in 6 years of games finally play Dosan the Falling Leaf, and it hurt(I was playing Niv's wheeling deck, which has a high number of instant spells).

As much as I hate having that sword swung at me, there's ways to play against such things, and they're very easy to implement. So bring it on, people. lol

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Post by MrMystery314 » 4 years ago

I wouldn't say counterspells "ruin games" more than any other sort of removal, and your games are probably pretty stale if people are averse to the latter. If people are running "slow, disruptionless" decks, that's on them to either speed up their decks so their opponents have fewer opportunities to shut them down or play more disruption so they can resolve their big threats. It's perfectly possible for games to still be fun even when people are actively interacting with each other, and as long as it isn't lopsided where only one person is packing removal (counterspells, wraths, spot removal), games should be fine. If your playgroup is chronically weak to counterspells and similar disruption, and I imagine that if counterspells are alone to shut games down, there may be other issues too, you can either encourage them to play better cards (they don't have to be expensive; things like Prowling Serpopard and Price of Glory, while often not cutting it at competitive tables, are perfectly fine for most) or deal with games being a bit more boring than they otherwise could be. So to answer your question, I'd say all of them are fine, although if someone's playing the full cEDH suite of Swan Song, Flusterstorm, the Forces, vs. unoptimized decks, that can certainly be annoying; but then again, that same power level disparity can apply to particularly good creatures, ramp, or win conditions anyway.

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Post by Gavvin » 4 years ago

This is such a non-issue I any group I have played in that I have been scratching my head wondering what prompted the OP.

Counterspells are part of the game and I expect any deck running blue to have a few (I rarely see any non-blue ones). I have only seen them be a "problem" when someone has packed 20+ counterspells in a deck and is concentrating on a single opponent for some reason.

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Post by gilrad » 4 years ago

I can see how people can have vastly different opinions on counterspells, seeing how, depending on your local metagame, they could be either the strongest form of removal or the weakest.

In playgroups where a solid win strategy might be "play broodmate dragon, attack the player in the best position for several turns until someone wrath's", counterspells are some of the most narrow forms of removal, since each threat might be as much damage to other players as you. It's much more economic to keep some instant-speed removal handy and hide behind a Serra angel equivelant than to stop everything that could possibly contribute to you losing the game. A counter is only useful when you know the spell is going to spell your doom.

In games where everybody only cares about developing their winning board while stopping others from doing the same (mostly combo and stax, but cards like debt to the deathless or craterhoof behemoth operate under the same principals), counters are the ultimate removal spells because they're close to 100% effective, and every spell opponents play directly contribute to their winning the game or prevent you from winning the game.

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Post by Mookie » 4 years ago

While I will often complain when my spells get countered, I'll never begrudge a player for running them - there are many scary spells that are difficult to interact with outside of countermagic (ex: Exsanguinate, Jokulhaups, etc). With the exception of Mana Drain, I don't believe that any counterspells are particularly unfair (and Mana Drain is only problematic due to its mana production). As a player that often plays combo, I do dislike free countermagic, but that's more because it isn't really possible to play around - the cards themselves are pretty fair. If I'm running blue, I always try to fit in a few counterspells as part of my interaction suite.

As a corollary, if your deck is reliant on casting big splashy spells to win, then you will be more vulnerable to a countermagic-based strategy than a deck that casts many smaller spells. This isn't that different from a creature-based deck being vulnerable to board wipes, or a graveyard-based deck being vulnerable to grave hate. If you don't want to be soft to countermagic, then either run interaction (Veil of Summer is an excellent new option), or alter your strategy.

If there are problems with counterspells, it is more likely to be a symptom of differing deck power levels than an issue with the cards themselves. If I'm playing squirrel tribal against a deck packing Force of Will and Mana Drain, I'm going to have a bad time... but if I'm playing a cEDH Hermit Druid deck against someone packing Cancel, the problem will be going in the opposite direction.

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Post by folding_music » 4 years ago

I mean, my decks with blue each run a handful of counter magic that suits their themes but I remember that, when I was an active player and had a weekly group to play with, even well-timed counterspells for the good of the game would elicit groans and a little resentment. People really hated walking into Dismiss and Mystic Snake in particular. Maybe the arms race on EDH has flattened player expectations a little so everyone gets the merit of counterspells now? stranded without regular sessions I'm more of a deckbuilder and spoiler discusser than a player now but the lingering thought of dissatisfaction over counters still keeps my theoretical builds weak and casual.

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Post by cryogen » 4 years ago

The only issues with counterspells that I've seen are either the player runs more counterspells than lands (like the Teferi control deck we had running around our meta at one point), and Forbid when that player can easily set up the buyback and creates a soft lock on the table. Both of those are a player problem where the underlying issue is one player trying to take the game away from another player(s), and not actually an issue with Counterspell itself.
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Post by Myllior » 4 years ago

folding_music wrote:
4 years ago
Maybe the arms race on EDH has flattened player expectations a little so everyone gets the merit of counterspells now?
Arms race or no, some people just have an irrational dislike of counterspells. In my experience, these people also tend to dislike theft-effects, removal, discard, instant speed protection (e.g. Heroic Intervention), Craterhoof Behemoth and a million other things. Pretty much anything that reduces their chances of winning and/or increases somebody else's. Most often this seems to come down to a difference in expectations though; if they're expecting to just dump creatures and not interact meaningfully with others' board states, then interaction from others can cause a bit of surprise.

Beyond that though, I've never really seen people have issues with counterspells. I find the more apparent it is that you're countering for the good of the table, the more likely the person whose spell just got countered will simply acknowledge it and keep playing without any ill feeling.
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Post by DirkGently » 4 years ago

Mookie wrote:
4 years ago
If I'm playing squirrel tribal against a deck packing Force of Will and Mana Drain, I'm going to have a bad time.
I don't follow this logic at all. Counterspells (and removal in general) I consider to be pretty much equally strong against any deck, since they just trade for whatever the most important thing in the enemy deck is - if anything, they're more powerful against a combo deck since there are generally fewer real threats. What are you countering that's going to be such a huge loss for a squirrel tribal deck?

I mean sure, most decks playing FoW and mana drain are probably high powered, but that's not because those cards are overpowered (Mana drain arguably is, but it's still dependent on what it lets you ramp out). I'd consider FoW to be aggressively mediocre, even outright bad, in a low-powered meta.
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Post by Mookie » 4 years ago

DirkGently wrote:
4 years ago
Mookie wrote:
4 years ago
If I'm playing squirrel tribal against a deck packing Force of Will and Mana Drain, I'm going to have a bad time.
I don't follow this logic at all. Counterspells (and removal in general) I consider to be pretty much equally strong against any deck, since they just trade for whatever the most important thing in the enemy deck is - if anything, they're more powerful against a combo deck since there are generally fewer real threats. What are you countering that's going to be such a huge loss for a squirrel tribal deck?

I mean sure, most decks playing FoW and mana drain are probably high powered, but that's not because those cards are overpowered (Mana drain arguably is, but it's still dependent on what it lets you ramp out). I'd consider FoW to be aggressively mediocre, even outright bad, in a low-powered meta.
The message I'm trying to get across is that playing a low power deck against a high power deck is going to cause issues, agnostic of whether counterspells are present in one deck or the other.

I will agree that FoW may not be the best example here, since it tends to be better in faster (read: more competitive) metas, and worse in slower ones.

To address the other point, I do think that counterspells are better against some decks that others, usually from a tempo perspective - if you're trading a 6 mana spell for a 2 mana counterspell, that's a huge tempo loss. To contrast, trading a 6 mana spell for a 2 mana removal spell can be a tempo gain, if the spell generates value (ex: Grave Titan vs Go for the Throat).

On the other hand, if a deck has a large amount of redundancy/recursion or just cares about cards being cast, then it can be resilient to countermagic - I would imagine a commander like Talrand, Sky Summoner (running a ton of cantrips) or Whisper, Blood Liturgist could function through countermagic fairly well.

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Post by Vessiliana » 4 years ago

In my group, the type of counterspell does not matter to the response. It is the density. If a deck has only a few, then it's a hazard of the game. If a deck is dedicated to countering (and overly controlling/permission-oriented in general), it gets groans.

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Post by umtiger » 4 years ago

Mookie wrote:
4 years ago
The message I'm trying to get across is that playing a low power deck against a high power deck is going to cause issues, agnostic of whether counterspells are present in one deck or the other.

To address the other point, I do think that counterspells are better against some decks that others, usually from a tempo perspective - if you're trading a 6 mana spell for a 2 mana counterspell, that's a huge tempo loss. To contrast, trading a 6 mana spell for a 2 mana removal spell can be a tempo gain, if the spell generates value (ex: Grave Titan vs Go for the Throat).

On the other hand, if a deck has a large amount of redundancy/recursion or just cares about cards being cast, then it can be resilient to countermagic - I would imagine a commander like Talrand, Sky Summoner (running a ton of cantrips) or Whisper, Blood Liturgist could function through countermagic fairly well.
The presence or absence of counterspells in a deck is a horrible metric to judge how powerful a deck is.

The reason why Counterspell vs Grave Titan needs to be such a huge tempo swing is because Counterspell can never win you the game. Threats like Grave Titan can. If there was no inherent advantage from using counter magic, there would be no reason to use counter magic at all. And even then, threats are still better than counter magic.

It's not about the cards/generals you play. Although lowering casting costs and having a way to eke out longterm card advantage helps. I would say that being a better player (proper sequencing of spells, adequate deck construction, correct threat assessment, etc.) also helps against counter magic.

I played in a playgroup for awhile where the ringleader/host personally hated counter magic. There were games where players were "scared" to play any spells at all because I was "playing blue." Of the few spells that were cast and actually worth anything, sure I countered all of them. I was accused of making the game miserable because I countered timely 2-3 spells, but then again, I was never pushed to have to counter much because they played incorrectly. The leader also was able to rally the group against my enchantment deck because I was "metagaming" them for not playing enchantment removal. So...yeah.

Whenever someone "hates playing against counters" or hints that counter magic is too strong, they can probably improve their game a lot.

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Post by gilrad » 4 years ago

umtiger wrote:
4 years ago
The presence or absence of counterspells in a deck is a horrible metric to judge how powerful a deck is.
Disagree. Assuming competent deck building, the presence of counterspells is a pretty good barometer for whether or not the deck is expected to go against one-dimentional "my board states is all that matters to win" strategies like combo or lock-out stax. Assembling combo pieces is a way more efficient avenue to victory than the red zone.

It's interesting that counterspells vs. Grave Titan is brought up, as that is a great example of how bad counters are in metas where life totals matter. If I wanted to deal with a Grave Titan, there is a long list of cards I would rather use before counterspells, ranging from propaganda effects, to even the humble terminate (sure he gets 2-6 zombies but as long as my board isn't empty that's not going to lose me the game). I would much rather save my counters for stopping spells that would prevent my imminent victory (like countering a wrath when I have a full board).

Countering threats like Grave Titan are just bad for the development of games where life totals matter. Instead of those cards doing work bringing everybody's life totals down while trying to mitigate the effect on yourself, you're essentially only allowing your threats to win the game, which is both not a very effective strategy unless you're playing combo, and super time inefficient.

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Post by DirkGently » 4 years ago

You're assuming that, because a deck has good answers to high-powered offensive strategies, that it itself must have a high-powered offensive strategy. As someone whose favorite deck is built around that not being true, I take umbrage.

Just because you want to be able to handle powerful strategies, doesn't mean you have to indulge in one yourself.
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Post by Morganelefay » 4 years ago

The only issue I have with counterspells is when they're ran by someone who clearly has no idea on what is the right thing to counter. When you see in one turn cycle your own Balefire Dragon and the next player's Wrath of God get countered, and then the third player lands Craterhoof Behemoth for gg because the blue player feared for his 3 creatures but completely ignored the army of tokens on the green side, then I get a bit peeved.
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Post by VeryOldMan » 4 years ago

In general, they complain they are all too weak (it is a modern group) and that the game would benefit (slow down) of better counter spells

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Post by Sinis » 4 years ago

Morganelefay wrote:
4 years ago
The only issue I have with counterspells is when they're ran by someone who clearly has no idea on what is the right thing to counter. When you see in one turn cycle your own Balefire Dragon and the next player's Wrath of God get countered, and then the third player lands Craterhoof Behemoth for gg because the blue player feared for his 3 creatures but completely ignored the army of tokens on the green side, then I get a bit peeved.
This upsets me less than it used to, but it's still sometimes very galling.

I don't really see a difference between the different tiers of counterspells. To me, there isn't often a difference between bog standard Counterspell and Mana Drain. Occasionally someone will essentially use Mana Drain as a ritual in my groups, but that's pretty rare; most counterspells are reserved to stop a player from winning.

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Post by Taleran » 4 years ago

DirkGently wrote:
4 years ago
Counterspells are a necessary evil. By which I mean - using a counterspell in commander is usually kind of a bad thing. You'd really prefer not to do it, because they're mostly kind of bad cards in terms of managing a table of opponents. Usually on-board removal is more efficient, it lets you wait until you're certain a card is your problem, it's easier to make 2-for-1s or better with board wipe or multi-target removal, etc. But, some things require a counterspell, and counterspells do answer the widest swath of problems, provided you have them available at the right time. If you're playing control, you're playing them, because sometimes they're the only thing that works.

All that to say - people who hate counterspells are idiots. if someone is counterspelling your card, it's probably because it was a very dangerous card and you shouldn't expect people not to interact with you when you play that sort of stuff. And if they're countering your mediocre cards, then they're a bad player and they're probably going to lose.
I disagree with this assessment pretty strongly of both counter spells and other single target spells often overlooked in this format, good application of stopping one thing is often what you need most of all.

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plushpenguin
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Post by plushpenguin » 4 years ago

Drain I believe is the only counterspell fired off at things that aren't high priority targets because the colorless mana gives such a ridiculous tempo boost. Most all other counterspells I see reserved for the most dangerous threats at the time.

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Post by umtiger » 4 years ago

gilrad wrote:
4 years ago
umtiger wrote:
4 years ago
The presence or absence of counterspells in a deck is a horrible metric to judge how powerful a deck is.
Disagree. Assuming competent deck building, the presence of counterspells is a pretty good barometer for whether or not the deck is expected to go against one-dimentional "my board states is all that matters to win" strategies like combo or lock-out stax. Assembling combo pieces is a way more efficient avenue to victory than the red zone.

It's interesting that counterspells vs. Grave Titan is brought up, as that is a great example of how bad counters are in metas where life totals matter. If I wanted to deal with a Grave Titan, there is a long list of cards I would rather use before counterspells, ranging from propaganda effects, to even the humble terminate (sure he gets 2-6 zombies but as long as my board isn't empty that's not going to lose me the game). I would much rather save my counters for stopping spells that would prevent my imminent victory (like countering a wrath when I have a full board).

Countering threats like Grave Titan are just bad for the development of games where life totals matter. Instead of those cards doing work bringing everybody's life totals down while trying to mitigate the effect on yourself, you're essentially only allowing your threats to win the game, which is both not a very effective strategy unless you're playing combo, and super time inefficient.
Well, seeing as Blue is the only color with counter magic, you're essentially saying that between two well built decks the one with blue is better. That's simply not the case. Since color identity is a huge facet in EDH and the relative strength of a commander(s) in certain colors matters, I'm sure that non-Blue can compete with Blue. "Well built" and "powerful" aren't interchangeable either.

There's are lots of ways to build a great deck without counterspells. Counterspells do not equal better and they are certainly not OP even in low-power environments. I'm going to assume that this conversation isn't solely about cEDH and that most of this conversation does center around "life totals matter" games because the OP mentioned many examples of weaker counterspells.

I quoted Counterspell vs Grave Titan simply because it was the example being brought up. However, I'm sure the person that I quoted simply means any high-cmc threat. He was referring to the tempo loss and in that case any 6-cmc threat could have probably being substituted for his purpose.

This thread isn't about whether or not countering Grave Titan is a good play or not? It's about whether or not counter magic is OP, "ruins games?"

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Post by gilrad » 4 years ago

DirkGently wrote:
4 years ago
You're assuming that, because a deck has good answers to high-powered offensive strategies, that it itself must have a high-powered offensive strategy. As someone whose favorite deck is built around that not being true, I take umbrage.

Just because you want to be able to handle powerful strategies, doesn't mean you have to indulge in one yourself.
Right, so I guess there can be metas out there where combo-race and non-combo race decks can co-exist, but in my experience once hard combo becomes accepted into the meta, it all becomes about the most efficient way to achieve a winning board state.

Although an interesting thought occurred to me: If every player except you are playing out non-interactive board states, doesn't that de-facto make your board states non-interactive as well? If everybody's got empty board states except for combo pieces, your grave titan might as well be an aetherflux resonator since there is nothing in other players' boards worth trading for a few life points.


umtiger wrote:
4 years ago
Well, seeing as Blue is the only color with counter magic, you're essentially saying that between two well built decks the one with blue is better. That's simply not the case. Since color identity is a huge facet in EDH and the relative strength of a commander(s) in certain colors matters, I'm sure that non-Blue can compete with Blue. "Well built" and "powerful" aren't interchangeable either.

There's are lots of ways to build a great deck without counterspells. Counterspells do not equal better and they are certainly not OP even in low-power environments. I'm going to assume that this conversation isn't solely about cEDH and that most of this conversation does center around "life totals matter" games because the OP mentioned many examples of weaker counterspells.

I quoted Counterspell vs Grave Titan simply because it was the example being brought up. However, I'm sure the person that I quoted simply means any high-cmc threat. He was referring to the tempo loss and in that case any 6-cmc threat could have probably being substituted for his purpose.

This thread isn't about whether or not countering Grave Titan is a good play or not? It's about whether or not counter magic is OP, "ruins games?"
On blue vs. nonblue power: Sure there's removal in every color, and each removal has situations they do better in than others. You can certainly stop that hermit druid with a terminate just as well as a counter. But a Terminate won't deal with exsanguinate for 20, nor would it stop a Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir from locking the winning combo into place. So I guess the more accurate way to put it is that counterspells are the most effective removal spells in combo metas. There are plenty of viable non-blue decks running around combo metas, but if you were to look at what color would give them the strongest boost it would probably be blue.

That comment about well-built wasn't supposed to suggest that well-built and powerful are the same, It was more of a way to describe "meta-appropriate"ness of decks.

Anyway things are getting a bit messy and straying from topic, so going back to it:

Counters are really narrow answers that basically only are ideal when the spell you're countering is guaranteed going to cause you to lose the game. In a meta game where ideally each non-answer gets you closer to winning the game, they do more than carry their weight. In games with lots of open-ended threats (e.g. six-mana creatures while you have decent blockers available), they're some of the worst removal you could hope for.

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Post by umtiger » 4 years ago

gilrad wrote:
4 years ago
On blue vs. nonblue power: Sure there's removal in every color, and each removal has situations they do better in than others. You can certainly stop that hermit druid with a terminate just as well as a counter. But a Terminate won't deal with exsanguinate for 20, nor would it stop a Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir from locking the winning combo into place. So I guess the more accurate way to put it is that counterspells are the most effective removal spells in combo metas. There are plenty of viable non-blue decks running around combo metas, but if you were to look at what color would give them the strongest boost it would probably be blue.

That comment about well-built wasn't supposed to suggest that well-built and powerful are the same, It was more of a way to describe "meta-appropriate"ness of decks.

Anyway things are getting a bit messy and straying from topic, so going back to it:

Counters are really narrow answers that basically only are ideal when the spell you're countering is guaranteed going to cause you to lose the game. In a meta game where ideally each non-answer gets you closer to winning the game, they do more than carry their weight. In games with lots of open-ended threats (e.g. six-mana creatures while you have decent blockers available), they're some of the worst removal you could hope for.
Seems like you're making contradictory statements. In your first paragraph, you praise counter magic as a universal solution. It can stop everything and in some cases it's the only solution. In your last paragraph, you condemn counter magic as narrow and the worst.

It doesn't need to be complicated. The right card at the right time is the right card.

"Meta-appropriateness"..."well built"..."open-ended threats"... are terms that can be interpreted differently and make this more complex than it needs to be.

Counterspells don't ruin games, full stop.

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