Why is counterspell still a thing?

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

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.

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.

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

blue is allowed to have all the nice things

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.

Well, there is Ancestral, which is even worse.

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?

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

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?

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.

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 @.

"collectors item"

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

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.

Why would they? Red is obviously ruining the game.

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.

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

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.

fuck off hearthstone nigger

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

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.

whoops, miss-click.

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

>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.

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

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.

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.

What standard? M10?

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

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.

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.

The art is pretty shitty user.

You could just not play standard

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.

Alara-Zendikar?

Hell yeah.

>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.

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

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.

>begin, the stack wars have
>yoda.jpg

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.

t. Sub 90 iq timmy sissy

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

underrated poestry

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.

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.

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.

U always wins baby

Except when RDW stomps it

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

That's why people hate land destruction.

>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...

>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

>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

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

(Different user 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.

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

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?

It was

Grixis lel

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

the best counterspells are conditional though

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

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

Pardon me?

Whoops. Wrong thread.

>pauper is an amazing format
>pauper is a format

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

>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

Why wouldn't it be a format?

>make the best deck in the format
>win

Woah we got a hotshot here

Save some pussy for the rest of us hombre

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

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

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

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.

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

Sure Timmy

The deck was still good a week ago?

What's your point

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

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

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.

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

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

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