Cool Card Design of the Day5/11/2015 - I designed Aetherphobia to explore the possibility of a counterspell that helps someone who is behind catch up more than helping someone who's ahead maintain the lead. Aethertwist was just a bonus idea coaxed out by the art I found.
Aetherphobia is the brute force approach. It's over-costed if you've got as many creatures as they do, or more, but it could be dirt cheap if they've got many more than you.
And now we reveal the difficulty in designing cards that explicitly try to help the player behind: There are many axes of play in Magic, and it's impossible to measure all of them. It so happens that creatureless decks happen to love countermagic anyhow, and Aetherphobia will be useful there whether you're winning or losing. Does that exception mean the design is a failure?
Aethertwist follows a dark path, so much that it could arguably be blue-black or hybrid, though it could stay blue in a set like New Phyrexia. As a spell that gives choice to your opponent, it'll rarely be as strong as you imagine. In fact, it's useless against the first permanent your opponent casts of a given type. Still, it will slow a player's board development, whether it's a traditional creature strategy or something more unique like artifacts or enchantments. Or super-friends.
As worded, I think Aethertwist is a hard counter if your opponent doesn't have a matching permanent to sacrifice, which makes it quite strong, though it's not necessarily out of line with similar conditional 1U counterspells we've seen.
ReplyDeleteGah. You're totally right.
Delete"Counter target spell if it's controller controls no permanents that share a type with it" might be conditional enough, but still having an effect after they do, I think is too strong.
Maybe...
"Counter target spell unless its controller sacrifices target permanent that shares a type with it."
Getting to choose what they sacrifice makes it considerably stronger, possibly: "If target permanent spell's controller controls one or more permanents that share a type with it, counter that spell unless it's controller sacrifices one of those permanents"
DeleteI realized halfway through writing it out how awful that is, but I'm not sure of another way to get exactly that functionality.
Also, at that point, the odds of countering anything other that a creature seem pretty slim...
Delete"Counter target creature spell unless its controller sacrifices a creature" seems like it could be fine in a UB space. Not sure it's playable at "UB - Instant", but maybe either on a modal spell or an ability of another permanent.
DeleteI like that Pasteur. Reminds me of Perplex (or Grip of Amnesia even).
DeleteI'm happy that the double-targeted version is stronger than the original. The original was a bit anemic. It is even weirder as a mono-blue spell, though.
DeleteAetherphobia is a hard counter with only one colored mana symbol in the cost, which is verboten by WOTC.
ReplyDeletePart of the problem is that blue should be bad against early aggression. Counterspells that let you "catch up" provide a ton of value, especially when they answer a mana efficient spell late in the game
DeleteLate to the Party UUU
Instant R
Counter target spell with converted casting cost of 1. If that spell is countered this way, exile it instead of putting it into its owner's graveyard. You may play it without paying its mana cost for as long as it remains exiled.
Frankly I'm shocked Jay didn't even mention that, yeah. They just DO NOT print hard counters with a single colored mana symbol.
DeleteI think it'd be better at 2U, counter target permanent spell, this costs 1 less for each creature its controller controls in excess of you.
Given that it counts creatures, it makes sense for it to be "counter target creature spell" but then we're competing with Essence Scatter instead of Cancel, and can at best offer a one mana discount. Maybe that's worth the effort? Didn't feel like it at the time.
DeleteWould a {5}{U} Cancel be off limits? The double-colored-mana rule definitely serves an important purpose in limiting the ubiquity of countermagic. I agree that Aetherphobia doesn't quite justify bending that rule, but I suspect there are reasonable exceptions. Specifically, counterspells that wouldn't replace the need to play a significant compliment of blue lands in your deck. One way to do that is increase the blue mana requirement. Another might be to make a spell with a strong enough downside that few players would run it, and even fewer would mind when it's played against them.
Ooh, wizards have broken this rule _again_. Psychic Strike and Fall of the Gavel. Though both follow the updated rule of "two coloured mana including U and a colour that feels counterspell-y"
DeleteI see there were two pre-modern cards that broke this rule too, although both were three-colour.
I think wizards usually avoid doing expensive versions of things they don't do. But they allow it for some things, but haven't printed any 5U counterspells yet. But I don't think cards that require you to play blue lands are really an exception if they require you to have an equally strong commitment -- eg. Thwart "You may return three Islands you control to their owner's hand rather than pay Thwart's mana cost. Counter target spell" bypasses the two-U restriction in the alternative cost, but is clearly blue enough :)
I agree it's really annoying for this sort of design where you want to allow the discount, but not allow splashing the spell in a less-U deck. Maybe there's a slightly different version of the card that avoids the problem?
WOTC modified the rule to be "it takes two colored mana, at least one of them Blue."
DeleteI really don't see any good reason to break this rule. I think Mindstatic is as close as we'll get!
Wizards haven't done:
ReplyDeleteCounterpermanent
2U
Instant - Common
Counter target permanent spell.
yet have they?
Nope. Probably because the word 'permanent' lacks great flavor. Because mechanically it makes a lot of sense.
DeleteNor the UU version, though I keep putting it into my custom sets :)
DeleteHow comfortable are we with:
ReplyDeleteAEthervoid 1B
Instant
The next time a creature enters the battlefield this turn, its controller sacrifices a creature.
It's a good question. Grey area.
DeleteI'm pretty cool with it.