I've been weighing Denial for a bit. I run it in
Marchesa, the Black Rose where I have her on the board starting turn 4 or 5, and unless she's in the yard before an end step, she's basically there the rest of the game. Varina gets removed more often, and spends less time in play. I'd have to really note over several games how often I have a creature with power 4 or greater on the field when someone casts a noncreature spell that needs to be countered. I would run Fierce Guardianship over this if I felt that Varina was in play often enough.
toctheyounger wrote: ↑3 years ago
yeti1069 wrote: ↑3 years ago
Also, I want to reiterate that I feel playing the counterspells that require only rather than (Delay, Arcane Denial, Swan Song) is the way to go in a 3-color deck where Blue isn't the primary color. In general, I try to limit how many cards I run with or in their mana cost. I think God-Eternal Oketra and Kindred Discovery are the only ones.
I generally agree. I don't have a copy of
Delay myself, and my only
Swan Song is in use, but I can see the value in splashing as minimally as possible.
ChocoDude wrote: ↑3 years ago
In that vein, I've been thinking of replacing my Reconnaissance with Stubborn Denial. It's especially good with Varina on the board.
Not the worst idea in the world tbh. It does hinge on having a lord or our commander in play, but the CMC and price could not be better. Well, it could, but I'm not
made of money.
I've just noted more than one game where I was hurting for
or
where requiring multiple pips in that color either wasn't an option, or made for some awkward plays: do you play out the cards in hand to advance your board state, or hold up mana for the counterspell? The more color requirements, the more strained those situations get. If my mana were a tiny bit better (ABUR duals, maybe another filter land or two), I might care less, but I'm still getting hands with colorless sources and
.
What I like about Delay and Arcane Denial is they counter anything. I run Swan Song because it's cheap, and hits most of the spells this deck cares about, but I'd like a full counter there better. Dovin's Veto is nice for its ability to blank almost anything without a response, but again, it's asking for two non-black colors, and has some restrictions. I think it's among the best counters available to the deck, but I don't know that I'd necessarily want to lean on it. Maybe I'm being too conservative on this?
FoW I don't think I'd run here, as there aren't enough other blue cards in the deck to reliably have something to pitch. In my Marchesa list, which is something like 40% blue, 30% black, 30% red, I often am holding FoW and don't have a card to pitch. That deck also does a better job of keeping cards in hand (more on this in a moment). It also has more redundancy of effects, so I can often hold up a valuable blue card to pitch, because I have the effect on the table already. Here, the blue cards are more unique, and therefore harder to give up or hold back, I think.
So, I haven't been running the Archive or TAI for a long time. I had tried the Archive a while back, but didn't like spending 5 mana on set-up, and had one game with another deck where the doubled draw milled me out. Most games, cards in hand haven't been too much of a problem, but there have been some where it's been harder hanging onto things, and having one of those two would have helped a ton. I like TAI for being cheaper, and a little harder to remove as an enchantment, but the double
makes it a little less enticing than the colorless Archive. I'll have to post my current list on here when I have a chance to get some feedback on what you would cut to add one of those.