Why is counterspell still a thing?

Because it gets the job done.

>>54608958
Because Magic has non-rotating formats into which Counterspell was printed.

You mean counterspell the cart or countering spells the mechanic?

>>54608958
In the 1 format counterspell is played in (Legacy) it is a solid card that is rarely even played as a 4 of. It is a decent card, and both modern and standard would be much better formats it cards like counterspell were still allowed to exists.
Little assblasted timmies who can't handle their shit being countered should fuck off back to the kitchen table, or maybe hearthstone.

Because combo is still a thing.

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>>54609211
>Little assblasted timmies who can't handle their shit being countered should fuck off back to the kitchen table

99% of the reason people hate counterpells is because of the arrogance, assumed superiority, and general smugness of their opponent when they cast them. It really can't be helped, because there's no way not to act superior when you dash someone's hopes, even if it really wasn't that hard to do so.

Counterspell is basically "Tap 2 islands, get a license to act smug until end of turn."

>>54608958
Because it is blue removal. Also the only format counterspell itself sees play in is commander.

>>54609335
if you can't take a smug opponent saying no you shouldn't play anyway. That smug feelign after countering soemthing is just too good.

>>54609335
I just don't get why people get so mad about counterspells vs other things that also stop them from doing their shit. Like, thoughtsieze somebody's goyf, all is good, fatal push somebody's goyf, all is good, rest in piece, making their goyfs useless 0/1s, all is good, but counterspell a goyf - REEEEEEEEEEEE BLUE PLAYERS REEEEEEEEEEEEE

>>54609433
The only guy I know that gets pissy about counter spells also loses his shit about removal to the point where he used three cards to get rid of my 1/2 death toucher in draft

>>54609433

Counterspell-like cards deal with everything, while straight up removal or hate cards can be dead draws.

I also feel blue's ability to refill the hand is in part at fault, because, you can brainlessly counter Timmy's wurms, then just cast any large draw spell and lose nothing, while he is left with an empty hand.

>>54610509
Counterspells can be dead draws as well, like if you draw one the turn after your opponent plays a creature, it doesn't do anything, where a removal spell would.
Honestly, counterspells, removal, discard, and permanent-based answers all have their strengths and weaknesses, and all should have their place in the game.
I mean, wizards definitely messed up when they put draw spells, and counters into the same color, but these days they print a lot of good black and green draw, and some red pseudo-draw, so I don't think its a big problem anymore.
If people don't want their dudes countered, there are plenty of good options, cavern of souls, vial, plenty of different creatures that can't be countered, things like thalia or thorn of amethyst, etc. But people would rather complain.

>>54609433
It's better to have goyfed and lost than to have never goyfed at all.

blue is allowed to have all the nice things

>>54608958
Just be glad B doesn't have (B) draw three or (B) counter target spell unless it's owner pays (3) or some other bullshit.

>>54614159
Well, there is Ancestral, which is even worse.

>>54609433
I only get salty if my opponent had an answer to literally every card I try to play. It rarely happens like that but it's frustrating to feel that no matter what you do things would turn out the same way.

However a single instance if getting blown out by your opponent's answer just makes you feel like you got outplayed. It's easy enough to see a single Counterspell coming. If Timmy is just jamming his 6 drop on turn 6 then gets blown out by a counter he deserves what he gets.

Do people actually want Magic to be like Hearthstone? Where answers are shit compared to threats?

>>54614159
I'm confused as to whether or not you're intentionally talking about Black as opposed to Blue. Blue is abbreviated as U.

>>54614188
I'd forgotten about AR and what it did so I looked it up. Are you loosers really paying $800+ for a piece of paper with shitty art on it?

>>54614328
I stopped really giving a shit about magic around 2006-7, so I don't care. But, you should be smart enough to know which color I'm talking about given the context of this thread.

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>>54614376
I thought you were making a joke about how at least Black doesn't have a draw 3 because Ancestral does exist, lol. I didn't know you didn't know about it.

It's expensive because it's a collector's item. One of the most powerful cards ever printed. You can only play it in Vintage, and even then only 1 copy, because of how powerful it is.

>Stopped giving a shit about mtg 10 years ago
>goes out of his way to shitpost and then cover up with "I dont care lol"
Then why respond, you fucking walking pile of garbage? You're not even getting the dignity of an @.

>>54614453
"collectors item"

You know, when people like shkreli are treating MtG like an actual investment, you might want to look at other hobbies.

>>54610708
Counterspells are necessary to stop value-etbs from shit as well. Removal doesn't stop Primeval Titan from grabbing two lands, or Snapcaster from Flashback shenanigans.

It exists because they never fixed blue.

>>54614581
Why would they? Red is obviously ruining the game.

>>54614494
I'm personally for the abolishment of the Reserved List, since I actually like older formats. Old cards will still have value, because they're old. I mean, look at Alpha Shivan Dragon. Fuck people trying to play stocks with cardboard though. If Wizards won't reprint shit so people can play Legacy affordably then I hope the Chinese get good enough at their fakes to destroy confidence in the second hand market.

>>54614598

Straight-up saying "no" to spells is a completely broken game mechanic.

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>>54614494

MtG isn't a single game or concept, really. I couldn't give a fuck about rich fuckers buying up staples for formats that I don't play in, that are banned in the ones I do play.

>>54614621
fuck off hearthstone nigger

>>54614640

Empowering a color to prevent other colors from playing the game is bad game design.

>>54614621
>>54614624
I'd just play with Cockatrice if I ever play again. Why spend good money just to play with fat looser's who smell like ass? Plus the internet lets me play with mates who've gotten stationed somewhere else or are overseas.

That said, if they ever abolish the Reserve list, expect the price of salt to plummet and divest accordingly.

>>54614713
>>54614611
whoops, miss-click.

>>54614621
No way to stop value-ETBs would be a broken mechanic.

>>54614299
>Do people actually want Magic to be like Hearthstone? Where answers are shit compared to threats?
Honestly, I think a lot of people do, and I think Wizards is pushing it that way. I certainly don't. My favorite standard had lightning bolt, path, a 4 mana wrath, o-ring, etc. in it, I wish standard was still like that.

>>54614744

What is Stifle? Countering spells predates the current era of powerful ETBs.

>>54614376
Okay, first, that art is dope, and no, very few people pay that. Ancestral Recall is banned in all formats but vintage, which nobody plays in paper, or if they do, they proxy. Only people who have one are collectors pretty much.

And if you don't like magic, why don't you fuck off?

>counterspells are okay
>land destruction is not

Only thing that bugs me. I'm fine with counterspells.

>>54614565
Oh, I know, and top decking a counterspell when he already has a big dude in play doesn't stop that. Like I said, they are both good, and do different things, and I want both to be strong.

>>54614760
What standard? M10?

>>54608958
If you played the game you'd know it's not

>>54614794
I think ld is fine, one of the coolest things about magic compared to say, hearthstone, is that you can interact with everything, library, hands, lands, graveyard, everything.

>>54614814
Yeah, right around then. Alara-Zendikar was a lot of fun. You could play mono-red aggro with goblin guide, lightning bolt, searing blaze, etc and it wasn't even the best deck in the format. Now they won't even give you searing spear, its pretty sad lol. You could play u/w control with Jace TMS, mana leak, path to exile and ponder, and that wasn't even the best deck. There were so many cool decks, vengevine naya, mythic conscription, Jund with bloodbraid, Eldrazi ramp once m11 gave us prime time etc.

And now most of those cards are "too OP" for modern even. And that's why I pretty much only play legacy these days.

>>54614785
The art is pretty shitty anon.

>>54614760
You could just not play standard

>>54614924
I don't. Who still does though? Standard has been dying off pretty hard around here, the last few have been pretty bad, and there has been a lot of bannings. So I'm pretty sure that it isn't just me who doesn't like how they do standard these days.

>>54614760
Alara-Zendikar?

>>54615262
Hell yeah.

>>54609335
>In response I cast Ricochet trap

I don't mind counters, but in response, imagine if every creature over a certain cost(say 4 CMC) had Quagnoth's abilities stapled to it to compensate or they make a few dozen very powerful manlands. If you have to do an arms race by reprinting Counterspell, you have to counterbalance it somehow by giving everyone a path around the storm of denial.

>>54608958
one side of the magic color pie gets to go fast, the other side gets to slow everything down.
As devastating as it can be it's real purpose is to buy time to get some real spells chugging

>>54614924
I get that argument but I think standard "can" be a lot of fun and it's a shame that isn't capitalized at on anymore. There were definitely points in MTG where standard was my favorite format

However it's just pathetic to see standard as it has been since Origins where they try to take out interaction as much as possible. Dumbing down MTG to Hearthstone level just doesn't work. The game is meant to be interactive, when it turns into BG midrange plays its shit on curve against RDW playing more of a midrange curve and the game turns into gambling on who gets mana screwed/flooded or gets to go first (see pro tour) it's just kinda fucking pathetic and unpleasant.

>>54616747
>begin, the stack wars have
>yoda.jpg

>>54619736
It really is sad. I hope they are pulling their heads out of their asses, sadly even if they are, sets are developed far in advance, so we won't see shit for like a year.

>>54609335
t. Sub 90 iq timmy sissy

>>54620237
Really? I read that as him praising the feel good moment of playing a counter spell

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>>54609433
I get a slight of salt when my shit's offed by those other means. it's natural for there to be annoyance when your plans don't go over as easily as you expected.

>>54620237
Your reading comprehension here is the one reflecting a 2 digit IQ.

>>54609335
>>54609432
I don't know what the obsession with smug as anything other than a sign of cancer is.

>>54621307
People who like smug are fags

Same as people who teabag in vidya, pretend rolling the dice is skill, etc.

I wouldn't have a problem with it if I could bury an axe in their skull, but for some reason society no longer lets us punish bad manner.s

>>54608958
MaRo and all those fags on the R&D were bluemages in their teens and thus keep favouring the color

>>54614843
everything but exiled; any time i mention anything abotu playing around witht he exiled zone (which is a zone because the designers WANTED to fuck around with 'removed from play' cards), I get 50 dickriders REEEEing at me about how exiled shouldn't be touched.

>>54610716
underrated poestry

>>54608958
Only standard players and casuals cry about counter-magic.

I play storm in Modern, Vintage and in past - Legacy.

Never once have I felt mad about counter-magic. If it and prison decks didn't exist, I wouldn't bother to even play against someone, I'd just goldfish whenever I felt like I wanted some Magic.

>>54622168
You do not begin to imagine how much MaRo hates blue, control and combo. I'm not joking or anything here, the man believes very strongly that control and combo shouldn't exist and everything should be based around creatures and planeswalkers.

>>54622455
Funny thing is - You used to be able to get cards that were "exiled" with Burning Wish and few other cards, before they decided to make "Exiled" zone.

>>54608958
U always wins baby

>>54624070
Except when RDW stomps it

>>54614794
Look, anon if you just want to jerk off while someone else watches you there are websites for that.

That's why people hate land destruction.

>>54610708
>after your opponent plays a creature

Lul, cus control decks I see only play torrential flash and have the mana next turn anyways...
It comes down to the fact control has too many easy answers, disallow, censor, essence scatter.
It is one thing to play vs a opponent who has more than 4 creatures in the full deck. Losing to control is awful because it isn't fun for the opponent to interact with, it is a gamble every time you try to play.
And the reason red aggro is back in force is because everyone is building control...

>>54626033
>mfw a friend and me played Standard MonoRed Aggro last week
>mfw the rest were playing control/meme decks
>mfw finals were between my friend and me

Feels good to shit on controlfags 5 times in a row

>>54626033
>It comes down to the fact control has too many easy answers, disallow, censor, essence scatter.
Then why has control been shit for the last years?
>And the reason red aggro is back in force is because everyone is building control...
UR control was 6.3% of the decks showing up for the Pro tour on day 1

Have you ever tried playing control yourself? You have the typical complains of someone who has never touched control in his life and assumes his enemy has some kind of infinite battery of counterspells in his hand

>>54614794
The difference with LD and counterspells is what they do when they work. LD hits a resource you need to play your spells and assuming your deck is 40% lands vs 60% action, you're less likely to draw into a replacement. It also becomes stronger the more turns the opponent can't do anything, which is more likely than not drawing into another spell in most decks. It's an oversimplification to some extent, but counterspells are less likely to Time Walk you repeatedly while spending one card

>>54626587
(Different anon here)
I haven't played magic in years, but having shit tons of counterspells isn't that tough to pull off. My old wizard/wall deck had counterspells, force spikes, daring apprentices and a decree of silence.

It wasnt infinite, but it was enough to prevent any large plays from occurring.

>>54627270
I just looked up the cards you listed and your old deck sounds like cancer.

>>54614693
What is removal, then? What's so different between spending two mana to prevent my opponent from doing something, and spending two mana to undo what they just did?

>>54627350
It was

>>54625365
Grixis lel

>>54627350
>>54627967
It wasn't truly cancerous unless it had Scalpelexis in it.

>>54610509
the best counterspells are conditional though

>>54608958
Because pauper is an amazing format, and counterspell balances delver against stompy.

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>mfw I won against Tea Burn after she got Cup of Ace right 2 times on the first turn.

>>54629799
Pardon me?

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>>54629890
Whoops. Wrong thread.

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>>54628354
>pauper is an amazing format
>pauper is a format

>>54632306
>Only paper formats are real formats.
>Vintage isn't a format.

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>>54608958
>crying about a card in a game where every single card worth playing is broken
>implying there is any rhyme or reason to the greater meta
>playing anything but EDH

>>54632306
Why wouldn't it be a format?

>>54626546
>make the best deck in the format
>win

Woah we got a hotshot here

Save some pussy for the rest of us hombre

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>>54608958
Fact: Only casual/bad players complain about counterspells

I've never been in a top 8 of a bigger event where someone reeee'd because their epic timmy card ran into a counterspell

>>54632728
I do think if it had "return an island to your hand as an additional cost" it would be slightly more fair.

>>54609335
>he never learned to play around counters and wipe that smug smile off the control player's face

>>54632691

He said LAST WEEK ya dingus egg. Pro Tour was only on this weekend so I highly doubt local metas were even thinking of mono red on their radar.

>>54632827
>I do think if they were completely unplayable it would be slightly more fair

Sure Timmy

>>54633278
The deck was still good a week ago?

What's your point

>>54633303

The deck wasn't even a blip on the Standard metagame last week. The format was wide open.

>>54633321
That doesn't mean RDW was magically worse because people hadn't discovered and tuned it yet.

>>54633471

I don't think you understand. RDW hasn't been a thing in Standard for fucking ages, it's not about the deck being "magically worse" because the deck just plain out didn't exist. The mono aggro deck of choice for a long time in Standard was mono white, then it became mono black. RDW just wasn't viable to play until Amonkhet block brought in new stuff.

>>54633534
It's still not impressive to beat a field of control players with the fastest aggro deck available

>>54633914
What IS impressive is that RDW is fucking playable, you sick fuck.

>>54633914
neither is it impressive to win by stalling the game and saying No! to everything until you draw torrential...

>>54633914

Actually it is impressive because it means your decklist and card choices combined with a read for the metagame was spot on does make it an impressive thing to do.

What's also impressive is to take a deck that wasn't even an established archetype in the current metagame and do well with it against a field of control decks that should have been prepared for aggro. However I'm guessing they were all prepared for zombies.

>>54634076
i think they said they all had graveyard hate, so probably. scavenger field main board and crook of condemnation in lots of sideboards.

>>54634112

And now watch as all those players change the sideboard for anti Ramunap Red tech and then you can switch to Zombies and bamboozle them all.

>>54634055
>implying that control doesn't have a high skill floor AND ceiling

>>54634192
luck and skill are equal parts...
They don't always have the answers, but blue has the ability to dig pretty hard if they want.

Is making an aggressive deck utilize extra land draw to damage, something that was a major problem for aggro in the past unskilled as well?

>>54632827
>>54633287
Deprive is pretty bad. It had it's uses back then, but they were marginal enough.

>>54634523
But depriving your own Halimar Depths always feels good.

>>54634287
How is it skillful to put in an obvious land that is the only non-mountains land worth playing to begin worth in a mono red deck
That's like saying it's skillful to put a haste creature in a red deck

>>54625869
Land Destruction punishes greed, sorry you don't get to play your big special snowflake dragons and combos.

Against most fast, aggro decks its basically useless. Another part of the complicated Rock Paper Scissors MtG is supposed to be.

>>54636199
The trouble comes when you combine LD and ramp, so you can deny those early land drops and basically shut the other player out of the game.

>all these people think Counterspell

Its 1 for 1 situational removal. It can be bated out or played around. Completely fair. Who the fuck thinks Counterspell is a problem when Cards like FOW or PON exist. Free counters are far more warping to their respective formats.

>>54638732
Eh, Force and Pact are rather fair. Pact is actually more "broken" because of its interaction with Angel's Grace, in my opinion.

Force is a 2-for-1, which isn't that great. And really Force just stops people from losing on the spot to other busted shit.

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Removal bothers me more than counterspell for some reason.

>>54638732
>>54638820
FoW isn't even a good counter. Literally the only reason it sees play in Legacy is because it's a counter you can do on T0 - T2. It's necessary to keep degenerately fast combo in check, but pretty bad beyond that. Most decks side it out if they're playing against something fair like DnT

>>54626033
You clearly have never played properly against control in your entire life.
It's not that hard to go underneath control decks or play around countermagic with proper spell sequencing.
If the only thing you think of in a game of magic is "always cast biggest creature", then you're doing it wrong.

>>54638732
Wow holy fuck get a load of this guy he thinks Force of Will is actually a good card. People only play it because degenerate combos exist. The instant you know your opponent isn't on combo, you board the pieces of shit out.

>>54634055

Knowing how to build your deck so you can keep saying "No!" long enough to start throwing robots at them can be.

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>>54622455
But there are cards that interact with exile. They don't go too deep because they don't want to turn exile into graveyard with a fancy name.

>>54639124
>FoW isn't even a good counter
Never change, /tg/. Never change.

Holy fuck tg is really bad at magic.

>>54635741
so by the same logic it isn't skillful to play obvious control in a control deck...

>>54644740
nice meme

>>54614760
I built a cube where the whole thing plays like that, life is expensive and death is cheap. Also, no tokens, creatures are meant to be risky investments. It plays awesomely and e and my brother love it but the one time I played it with someone else he wondered where all the tokens were and why he suddenly didn't know how to play green and white decks.