[Discussion] Counters...and why they don't work well in legacy

[blacklotus3636]

I'll be honest everytime I try to build a deck with blue mana and blue cards in it I invariably try to fit in some counterspells because they are diverse cheap cards especially in legacy. However, when I tried to build any blue based control deck in legacy with counters in it I found that counters just weren't getting the job done. Perhaps its the speed of the format and/or certain problematic cards(goblin lackey) but I have found myself doing increasingly proactive things. I first saw it in myself over on the mizzium-vault thread where you had to choose between a version that was loaded down with 12-16 control elements ranging anywhere from counterspell-wrath or a more comboish version that just played chant and abeyance for protection. I could be incorrect on this one but I feel that counters in legacy are not that great because it is easier to do something proactive that sit around and wait for whatever horrors your opponent can unleash upon you(And with this card pool there is alot). This revelation makes sense of an entity like vintage. In a format like vintage why would you wait around to try to counter things when you can win outright much easier? Maybe everyone else already knows this and I'm just beating a dead horse but I would love to hear what other people think about this.

[barron]

I was out of magic for almost 10 years and I used to always run control decks. So when I got back into magic I started with control, but after looking up all the new cards that came out since I quit I realized that blue counterspell was just not viable. The cards I saw were

xantid swarm
aether vial
boseiju
Goblin lackey

there were more (like the leyline) but I can't think of them all.

The point is wizards has been actively trying to make blue a weaker color (rightly or wrongly) and they have succeeded.

Besides all the cards I think the big problem for blue control is the top 3. Goblins can easily outrace blue counter/control (i.e. landstill), Threshold usually has as much as you do, but is faster and has other control cards, and solidarity....loves the matchup. I thoroughly enjoy playing blue counter as a solidarity player because they have no clock and I know I will be able to out draw/counter whatever they have in their hand.

[Tacosnape]

And yet, two of the three decks you listed pack a grand total of Seventeen counters between them, not including Hydroblast and Stifle in the sideboard (8 Forces, 4 Remands, 3 Dazes, 2 Counterspells)

Not to mention Landstill is making more top appearances than ever.

I think the flaw has to do with the deck rather than the mechanic. Most counters require you have mana open. Therefore Counterspell is not the top choice for a counter. Force of Will is, because it takes from card advantage rather than tempo. Daze is a decent addition for the same reason.

Stifle sees a lot of play because it costs 1, and as most of the powerful cards that blue decks run cost 2 or greater, it gives Blue something to do with one land besides Brainstorm.

Circular Logic sees play in UG Madness. Counterspell sees play in Landstill because Landstill can keep mana open. Remand sees play in Solidarity for the same reasons, in addition to Remand just being ridiculous.

[blacklotus3636]

Maybe I didn't articulate myself in a way that people understand well. When I say counters are bad I mean when used in a reactive way. To me counters have always been "answers" and in legacy they are poor answers but in some cases great tempo stealers.

[Machinus]

Less Counterspell, more Force Spike.

[Nydaeli]

It's been established that the current metagame is very poor for blue-based control. Goblins, which continues to be the best and most popular deck in the format, runs eight 1-drops that completely circumvent counterspells. TES runs Xantid Swarm; IGGy often runs Orim's Chant; Threshold runs cheaper counters combined with a fast clock; Solidarity runs its own counters, and has superior control of the stack.

All of this begs the question: What would a favorable metagame for blue-based control look like? Is such a thing conceivable in this card pool?

[from Cairo]

All of this begs the question: What would a favorable metagame for blue-based control look like? Is such a thing conceivable in this card pool?

For mono blue? I cant think of a favorable metagame.

Landstill seems to do ok in mixed metas, but I would attribute that more to having its splashed cheap and board sweeping removal, free counters, and it's resilient win condition/stall mechanism in manlands, then I would to it's use of counterspell in its UU counter target spell form.

[C.P.]

All of this begs the question: What would a favorable metagame for blue-based control look like? Is such a thing conceivable in this card pool?

A meta without Vial, Storm, Extirpate.

I played MUC in legay for about little more than 6 month, and did pretty well in modern meta. Things like keg and Shakles are very strong in the format, although they are bit slow. Back to basic or other blue goodies help as well. Mono blue is not unviable as others think, but it certainly is a shaky choice. The three cards mentioned above are the good examples of reason why.

Vial is big threat because it is usually associated with the Ringleader and other retarded crap. Vial alone is not that bad, and can be dealt with in resonable manner. However, when coupled with lackey, early vial really sucks to deal with it with maindeck alone. Even with all that, vial does not make the deck unviable. I played against goblins every other match in one tourney, and still went 5-0.

Strom(especially solidarity) is the true killer. traditional counter control cannot deal with it unless your opponent suck too much to know it. Chalice and other cards are good but it is not enough.

Extirpate is the main reson that I gave up on the deck. It can be dealt with, and should not be that big of threat in most meta, but my meta has a deck that abuses the card to the retarded extent. Split second (Grip and Extirpate) is not fun for you.

So the ideal meta for MUC? where everyone plays non solidarity decks that does not abuse split second. It is really good at beating pure aggro and aggro control.

[FoolofaTook]

If there are critical spells that can get around counters with Split-Second then counters are just hosed as a main idea in a deck. You have to have real removal and sweepers to keep the board clean.

The only sweepers that I have seen be really effective for blue are in the Stasis builds. Tabernacle of Pendral Vale for critters and Energy Flux for artifacts. Even then they require Stasis in hand to effect the combos and this is not exactly a Power Sink friendly meta to get people tapped out.

Goblins would be the biggest problem for me with this kind of deck though. Too many ways to get things in without casting and they happen too early.

[Anarky87]

I really don't see how counterspell cards in control are crappy. I went through a small 12 mana tournament today, and in the finals, if I had not had counters (Because, ya know, they suck and are bad and such) I would have lost, simple as that. One shouldn't be using them as the main focus of the deck, as in, "I need to counter everything they're possibly gonna play." They're there to help compliment the deck in maintaining the board in their favor. I've learned their usefulness quite a bit here recently with all the Landstill playing I've done.

If you know something's gonna sneak through your defense, then you have the counter for it. If you played a crucial spell or your opponent did and you need to protect it or yourself, then you have a counter. I find counterspells invaluable anymore, and I almost won't play a Legacy deck without blue and some kind of control in it anymore.

[mikekelley]

I agree with Anarky. In fact I agree so much that the only dual lands that I actually have full playsets of are the blue ones. So that's 4 each trop, volc, sea and tundra. Maybe i'm just paranoid but in Legacy I feel like you always have to have a way to say 'NO' at critical times.

So to sum up this post that really doesn't go anywhere, I will say that I won't play a deck without blue in it.

[Hummingbird TG]

Can't you say NO in other ways, like cutting off their colors with Sinkhole or Wasteland or something? That works too, provided you back it up with a clock, no?

[Pale Moon FTW]

Against creatures counters aren't much good as opposed to just sweep the board. But counters remain the only really effecient way to deal with sorceries and instants. Hoping to hold the opponent at bay with land destruction seems too vague considering that the only effecient land destruction is wasteland and sinkhole.
But of course your deck needs to have a good synergy with the counters i.e. by playing instant drawspells instead of sorcery ones. This is very important even when you actually don't have any counters, keeping two blue mana open will often cause your opponent to play less explosively.
But I think MUC is pretty much history. It's one of those decks that like i.e. suicide has died because it's simply always stronger to splash than to keep it mono-colored. At least tundras for StP and Wrath. Unless your meta is flooded with nonbasic lands, then MUC with mainboard Back to Basics would be very strong.

I recently saw an article at SCG where the writer claimed that counters was too severe tempo loss and that simply dealing with threats after they where in play was a lot more effecient. While this is true for creatures IMO he totally ignored the whole combo archetype. Why play a creature control deckl that wrecks agro, but looses when you're unlucky and meets TES, Iggy or Solidarity when you can simply play something like Landstill which still has a decent matchup against agro while it also has a chance against combo?

[thefreakaccident]

again, another post that is trying to bring up a long lived arguement.. yes countermagic is not always the best thing to have against a few decks in the meta, ld can be dead against most combos/any deck with crucible/loam...

to be honest countermagic is never a dead draw no matter how you look at it. There are always ways to deal with the 'loop holes' to your counteragic.

the fact is, that if you go into a game expecting to counter everything.. you already lost because you suck at magic and should just not be playing it.

countermagic is used to supplement for additional answers to specific cards.. Oh your playing a 5/5 and
I have no creature removal (I think I may counter that)... they are playing an artifact that hurts you (I don't have artifact removal at the time, I think I might counter that).

If you do not agree with the fact that counter is just a way to 'help out' then you are sadly mistaken... this comment goes to every one.

[outsideangel]

The problem with relying entirely on countermagic is that you've put yourself into a position where you have to be able to counter anything the opponent plays. Now, this might work with perfect draws, but somewhere along the road you're going to run into a situation where they resolve an important spell and then you're just hosed. That's why even MUC has to run things like Powder Keg and Vedalken Shackles: you have to be able to deal with stuff that gets through your counters, because eventually stuff will get through your counters. The issue MUC runs into is that it's removal is comparatively weaker than stuff like, say, Pernicious Deed.

[Happy Gilmore]

You can't discuss the validity of Counters in a vacuum. You say that counterspells don't work in legacy, and yet one of the best decks in the format (thresh) utilizes them to great effect. Why is this? (rhetorical question, Just think about it)

[thefreakaccident]

as I said before, countermagic is a way to supplement lacking removal (for whatever may be unanswered, like a creature, artifact, ench... inst. sorc.)

If you cannot deal with it, then it is countered... now I am not saying COUNTER EVERYTHING!!!

because those are the words of a nub that should not be playing competatively (sorry if I am insulting any of you guys indirectly with this comment). It should not be the main stratagy, but if you are running blue they should be there to lend a helping hand.

And in agreement with gilmor, both thresh & fish are very strong decks which both utilize countermagic... back in the day when blue used to run the format I never saw people saying that blue as a whole sucked (and countermagic remains to be an annoyance to this day, even to those decks that claim to have immunity to them EX: counter vial/ringleader).

[Phantom]

I'm not sure I understand the title or question being discussed here. Counter work FANTASTICALLY in Legacy. 2 of the three tier one decks run them (Thresh and Solidarity) as well as 2 more upper tier decks (Faerie Stompy and Fish). How can anyone say counters don't work well in Legacy?

A more interesting question, to me at least, is why isn't the card Counterspell run more?

[Goblin Snowman]

I'm not sure I understand the title or question being discussed here. Counter work FANTASTICALLY in Legacy. 2 of the three tier one decks run them (Thresh and Solidarity) as well as 2 more upper tier decks (Faerie Stompy and Fish). How can anyone say counters don't work well in Legacy?

A more interesting question, to me at least, is why isn't the card Counterspell run more?

To be fair, Solidarity isn't what you'd call a "Top DecK" in terms of populatity, Pre or Post Hulk Flash. The real issue is that whenever someone thinks of countermagic, they think of a Blue Based control deck. Counters are fine supplements to almost every stratagy, but why is building a counter heavy deck so hard in Legacy? That seems to be more of what the OP is asking.
For reference,
"However, when I tried to build any blue based control deck in legacy with counters in it I found that counters just weren't getting the job done."

[mikekelley]

A lot of the issue is that you need to lay threats of your own with MUC. If an opponent gets one on the board, it can be tough to deal with.

I was thinking earlier about a MUC build with Palinchron, Cloud of Faeries and perhaps Treachery. This would give some beats/board control while still leaving mana open for board control. Granted that the cards with the free mechanic stuck in the first place.

Hmm.

[FoolofaTook]

A more interesting question, to me at least, is why isn't the card Counterspell run more?

Because it costs UU and makes you tap out early on to use? The counters that are in use in most of the decklists are FoW and Daze. This despite the fact that both of those counters cost you in other ways: FoW costing card advantage and Daze costing mana tempo and frequently being irrelevant later on unless FoW is also in hand.

I took the original post to mean "why aren't counters an effective concept to build a deck around?"

The answer to that is that there are many more potential cheap threats than effective ways to counter them. Therefore counters are going to be used secondarily to protect your own cheap threats and occasionally avert disaster.

The kind of deck that counters might work in as a main theme is a deck in which permanent solutions are put in play and counters are used as the protection element for those solutions. The problem is that the permanent solutions (Moat, The Abyss, Imperial Mask, Sacred Ground, Warmth, Chalice of the Void, etc.) are all too specific or not timely enough or just don't handle runaway effects. That makes the potential answer deck have a lot of bad answers game 1 and forces them to tune perfectly and draw perfectly thereafter. Then you also have the denial problem of needing to avoid consistent draws.

It really looks like counters as a way of life is just dead and unlikely to return to the competitive scene.

[Goblin Snowman]

Counters as a deck theme were viable for a short time during Type Two, I'm not sure why people think the archetype has ever been "alive". You simply have to balence how good your "permantent" solutions are against the rest of the field. Thres and every Combo deck is hurt by Chalice of the Void, and it's decent against Goblins if it can come out fast enough. Moat can simply win the game by itself against a few decks. Kinda off topic, but just responding.

Phantom, Counterspell isn't played because there are cards that duplicate its effects with an easier cost. Most Landstill, Tog, random UW/UR control decks do run Counterspell, but in an aggressive deck such as NQG or Fish, its easier to be able to tap out and still bluff countermagic.

[FoolofaTook]

The two decks that I can recall 10+ counters working in before the split formats developed were Millstone and Stasis. The Millstone deck was quite strong in the environment, losing only to landkill (a lesser played theme that never won large tournaments) and decks that fished for a very early win. White weenies with Armageddon were also problematic. Stasis was an iffier proposition but still stonewalled a lot of themes.

The counter suite back then, as I recall it, was:

4 Counterspell
3 Mana Drain
3 Power Sink

The sideboards usually had a couple of Flash Counters for when you ran into another permission deck.

Both of those decks used the counters just to stop game-losing events and to protect their permanents. I saw the Millstone deck win a 512 tourney and place very well a bunch of other times. The reason it managed to do so well was that it's kill condition relied on just 4 cards, the 4 Millstones, and they were very cheap to get out and defend even early on.

The permanent solutions that it had available like Moat, CoP:Red/Black, Ivory Tower and Library of Leng (for discard) worked very effectively with Swords to Plowshares, Wrath of God, Balance, Disenchant and Divine Offering to make an almost impenetrable defense. The 10 counters were just there for things like Armageddon, Balance, Mind Twist and the big killers Timetwister and Feldon's Cane.

[Citrus-God]

Phantom, Counterspell isn't played because there are cards that duplicate its effects with an easier cost. Most Landstill, Tog, random UW/UR control decks do run Counterspell, but in an aggressive deck such as NQG or Fish, its easier to be able to tap out and still bluff countermagic.

In short, Counters are usually good if they're proactive with your game plan. Force of Will is proactive because you're tapping out to do stuff, and you have FoW backed up. Daze is proactive because like FoW, you're tapping out to do stuff. Remand is proactive because you're stalling the tempo of the game in order to make land drops. Control decks just get away with running Counterspell because they're reactive in general.

[Hanni]

What is this thread about? Counters or MUC?

The thread title says counters... countermagic is a very strong element of the metagame. Countermagic helps keep combo in check. Force of Will is used in tons and tons of decks. Daze is used in aggro/control decks that need to invest mana into guys and thusly need free countermagic. Decks like Landstill use Counterspell because they invest in card advantage trades with board sweepers and card draw and can afford to leave UU untapped to counter stuff. Stifle gets used in many decks too, even though it's a different kind of counter.

If we're discussing MUC... I think the problem with MUC is that it's mono blue. There's too many advantages to splashing a color or two that I don't think it outweighs the mana instability and Back to Basics. Even a U/W or U/R MUC deck would be better off with the slight splash for a little board control. I like U/B too, especially now with Damnation (and Tog to replace Morphling).

You can't expect to counter everything unless your deck is designed to do that. U/B Counterbalance Tog is about the closest you'll get to being able to counter lots of spells without losing too much board control, IMO. Powder Keg in MUC just isn't as strong as Damnation against aggro (and Engineered Plague if your metagame is Goblins infested). Powder Keg answers artifacts. U/B has access to a green splash for Krosan Grip (wishable) or can simply run Engineered Explosives or Powder Keg SB. I've got a U/B/g Counterbalance Tog list built if you'd like to see the decklist.

MUC may be a little better while Hulk Flash is around but MUC lacks the tools to handle aggro/control without mass removal or spot removal. Quicksand and Powder Keg just don't do it for me, neither does Nevinyrall's Disk. This is a personal opinion though.

[Tacosnape]

Counters work in Legacy. They're amazing. Just not as your only form of an answer.

Also, there's only six counters in Legacy, assuming you mean ones played from the hand in a reactive manner and thereby don't count Chalice of the Void and Counterbalance. They are:

Force of Will (The cheapest all-purpose hard counter)
Counterspell (The cheapest all-purpose hard counter you have to hardcast)
Stifle (The cheapest activated/triggered ability counter)
Daze (The cheapest all-purpose soft counter)
Hydroblast (Cheap sideboard counterspell that doubles as removal against red)
Blue Elemental Blast (Same as Hydroblast)

Others you might see played are based strictly on metagames (Spell Snare, Trickbind), or fit strictly for certain decks (Remand, Misdirection).

[Mirrislegend]

What I'm getting from all of this is that Mana Leak is out (but we all already new that) as is Counterspell. More pointedly, any strategies that had any dependency on Counterspell is now completely invalid. The only counterspells (Remand doesnt count, its a combo piece) I can see as even remotely worthwhile are Force Spike, Daze, Stifle, and FoW. But Force Spike hasnt been tested, as far as I know, and without all 4, you cant have a solid control package. So, has anyone tested Force Spike?

[Tacosnape]

What I'm getting from all of this is that Mana Leak is out (but we all already new that) as is Counterspell. More pointedly, any strategies that had any dependency on Counterspell is now completely invalid. The only counterspells (Remand doesnt count, its a combo piece) I can see as even remotely worthwhile are Force Spike, Daze, Stifle, and FoW. But Force Spike hasnt been tested, as far as I know, and without all 4, you cant have a solid control package. So, has anyone tested Force Spike?

This is dead wrong. Counterspell is a completely valid spell. It's run as an auto 4-of in every good Landstill deck because Landstill rarely if ever taps out to play something. It's equally solid in any other blue control Archetype that doesn't tap out, and some Threshold builds still run it as far as I know, as Threshold only needs to have on threat out to win and can then focus all its resources on protecting it.

Basically, counters in Legacy need to fit one of two scenarios.

1. You need to be able to cast it for 0 mana.
2. It has to be a hard counter (Hard counters don't have the word "Unless" in them.)

This eliminates Mana Leak immediately, and probably Force Spike in my mind also. The only workable exception to this I've ever seen is Circular Logic in U/G Madness.

[Pale Moon FTW]

Also you're forgetting Spell Snare. It's like a thousand times better than Force Spike.

[Tacosnape]

Spell Snare never saw play until Flash outside of a few bizarre attempts (One of which was by me.) It's not one of the big six.

However, Spell Snare is a hard counter, and costs only one, therefore in the right metagame or the right deck it would certainly be playable.

[FoolofaTook]

Basically, counters in Legacy need to fit one of two scenarios.

1. You need to be able to cast it for 0 mana.
2. It has to be a hard counter (Hard counters don't have the word "Unless" in them.)

This eliminates Mana Leak immediately, and probably Force Spike in my mind also. The only workable exception to this I've ever seen is Circular Logic in U/G Madness.

Edit: NM, was either or on the two conditions which I missed.

[Citrus-God]

Also you're forgetting Spell Snare. It's like a thousand times better than Force Spike.

I dont recall Spell Snare countering an SCG or Ringleader....