Anti-Spike police / counterspell density
Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2019 8:38 pm
I've just recently moved and found myself in a new metagame. One thing about this metagame is that there's often a huge gap in the powerlevel of many of the players/decks.
For example, the last evening I played one game was myself (Chromium artifact beats), someone piloting a worse-than-precon Mowu, Loyal Companion (it was running EDH staples like giant growth and Pollenbright Druid), The Scarab God (casual zombie tribal), Gitrog Monster (uninteractive graveyard combos).
Some of these games... end extremely poorly for the newer players. The two most egregious examples were Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder hitting the field Turn 3, followed up by casting Expropriate turn 5 and enough other spells to get the table to scoop. Another game a Titania, Protector of Argoth cast Nissa, Vital Force on turn 3, and then effectively stormed off with her emblem turn 4.
I've thinking of throwing together a Braids, Conjurer Adept deck with the intent of using it as a targeted group hug. Throw extra cards at the newer players and counterspells at the degenerate players. As I haven't played a whole lot of mono-blue, I was wondering what the recommended counterspell density to be highly disruptive to combo-ish decks but not enough that I'm just being a huge jerk countering everything.
I was wondering if there were any good anti-spike counterspells like Mental Misstep (since it is fantastic against low-curve murder machines and terrible against Timmy cards).
What are some good, targeted group hug cards? For example, Howling Mine isn't great here because it'll just allow the degenerate decks to do more degenerate things faster. Stuff more like Curse of Verbosity.
For example, the last evening I played one game was myself (Chromium artifact beats), someone piloting a worse-than-precon Mowu, Loyal Companion (it was running EDH staples like giant growth and Pollenbright Druid), The Scarab God (casual zombie tribal), Gitrog Monster (uninteractive graveyard combos).
Some of these games... end extremely poorly for the newer players. The two most egregious examples were Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder hitting the field Turn 3, followed up by casting Expropriate turn 5 and enough other spells to get the table to scoop. Another game a Titania, Protector of Argoth cast Nissa, Vital Force on turn 3, and then effectively stormed off with her emblem turn 4.
I've thinking of throwing together a Braids, Conjurer Adept deck with the intent of using it as a targeted group hug. Throw extra cards at the newer players and counterspells at the degenerate players. As I haven't played a whole lot of mono-blue, I was wondering what the recommended counterspell density to be highly disruptive to combo-ish decks but not enough that I'm just being a huge jerk countering everything.
I was wondering if there were any good anti-spike counterspells like Mental Misstep (since it is fantastic against low-curve murder machines and terrible against Timmy cards).
What are some good, targeted group hug cards? For example, Howling Mine isn't great here because it'll just allow the degenerate decks to do more degenerate things faster. Stuff more like Curse of Verbosity.