Arcane Denial?

[slave]

Hi,

I'm a bit new to Legacy - as some of you may already know from some of my posts.
And I've been looking at Counters.

Now besides the staples of Daze, Force, Pierce etc., I've been looking at what others are out there.
...and I found Arcane Denial.
A hard counter like Counterspell that has no "pay mana" drawback like Daze.
Plus it 1U, so it's very playable in decks that aren't mono-blue or filled with expensive lands.

Since almost all decks in Legacy are packed with 1-drops and even 0-drops, would it be playable as a swing-card?
Capable of either being a counter, or potentially cast this together with a low CMC spell you don't need to draw another 3 cards yourself?

Thoughts?

[Kich867]

There's this whole group of people in my local store who tries to run this card in legacy, they pack it into every deck, I can't even express to you how unbelievably bad this card is in legacy.

The power level of cards in legacy is way, way too strong to use this sort of thing; if you want a counterspell that cantrips, run Remand.

Here's how this card actually reads:

Counter target spell. Draw a card. The controller of that spell may draw two cards.

On their turn they literally get an ancestral recall essentially for free. The magnitude of how bad this card is is truly unreal. There are already enough amazing counterspells in legacy, and while there are few to no good draw spells in legacy, there's enough card filtering to shake a stick at, which is all you really need.

[Julian23]

I see no point in running Arcane Denial. Which kind of strategy are you pursuing by playing mana-hungry permission that comes back to bite you in the long run? The only sane option would be combo in which case I'd much rather have Spell Pierce, Daze, Remand or Misdirection. And, of course, Force of Will. Even Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek make more sense to me in this case.

[slave]

Cheers for the input fella's - this is exactly the kind of replies I was after.

This IS a bad card, but I was wondering if anyone thought it may have been playable.
Guess not.

.....and what about Disrupting Shoal?

[Kich867]

Cheers for the input fella's - this is exactly the kind of replies I was after.

This IS a bad card, but I was wondering if anyone thought it may have been playable.
Guess not.

.....and what about Disrupting Shoal?

Shoal may be playable in some sort of mono blue modern shell, perhaps a Merfolk or some-such. As it stands now, Force of Will is a debated card anyways depending on the deck. Some decks can't afford to withstand the card disadvantage, sometimes FOW's are boarded out in matchups in favor of more one-to-one counterspells.

I don't believe it'd be functional to run 8 2-for-1 counterspells in a deck. Furthermore, it's very restrictive and requires you to have a very flexible hand. However, it is far easier to hard-cast than Force of Will for the majority of spells you'll want to hit with it. In most cases it'll be a 3 or 4 mana counterspell.

[rufus]

Arcane Denial might be worth playing on your own spells if they're creatures cast with Cavern of Souls so they're uncounterable. Then you get net +2 cards for .

[Lord Seth]

I think a comparison with Remand helps show why Arcane Denial isn't that great. It seems a reasonable comparison...both cost 1U, both counter a spell, and both get you a card.

Arcane Denial counters a spell, gets you one card, and gets your opponent two cards. This means you're down three cards in terms of card advantage (you lost Arcane Denial and your opponent gained two cards) but up two (your opponent lost a card and you drew a card). The problem is that this is a net loss of one card.

With Remand, you lose a card (Remand) and gain a card (the one you drew). Your opponent doesn't lose a card because they got it back. This is an even trade, however, it's slightly better for you because your opponent at least lost some tempo in doing so (e.g. they might have to wait a turn to cast it again, or if nothing else they have to spend more mana to cast it).

With simple math, it's not hard to see why Arcane Denial is worse; simply put, you gain a net loss in card advantage, whereas with Remand you don't lose any card advantage and instead gain some degree of tempo (whether that degree is "time walk" or "mild annoyance" varies, but it's always something).

Now you might say "wait a minute! Isn't Force of Will considered the best counterspell in Legacy? That card leaves you one card down also, as you lose two cards to get rid of one." Aha, but Force of Will has something that makes up for it: It's free to cast.

In fact, looking at it that way, it means Arcane Denial is essentially a Force of Will that, rather than being free, costs 2 mana. Which in and of itself kind of demonstrates why it's not a particularly good card. Would you play a Force of Will that required you to pay two mana in addition to the loss of 1 life and loss of a card?

[Rizso]

Arcane Denial might be worth playing on your own spells if they're creatures cast with Cavern of Souls so they're uncounterable. Then you get net +2 cards for .

This is probly what you want to do with it tbh, quite mana hungry thought thing to do.

[Lord Seth]

Arcane Denial might be worth playing on your own spells if they're creatures cast with Cavern of Souls so they're uncounterable. Then you get net +2 cards for .

There's a card that will net you +2 cards for even less mana, though. It's called Brainstorm.

[Rizso]

Brainstorm doesnt give you anything, its 1 for 1. The Card you are thinking about is ancestral recall! :P

[rufus]

As an alternative counter, Pact of Negation with Stifle and Angel's Grace to mitigate the drawback might work in the right deck.

[Michael Keller]

I remember cracking Arcane Denial(s) in packs of Alliances when it first came out. It wasn't great or necessarily bad back then, as you're talking about sixteen years of devolution of competitive play and tens of thousands of new cards and interactions that have taken place since that time.

In short: Arcane Denial was halfway decent for "competitive" play in 1996 - not so much in 2012.

[Lord Seth]

Brainstorm doesnt give you anything, its 1 for 1. The Card you are thinking about is ancestral recall! :P

No, I'm thinking about Brainstorm, because if you shuffle the useless cards away it essentially becomes an Ancestral Recall. Still, I was being a bit facetious.

Though I feel I should point out that your claim of getting a net +2 cards for two blue mana is faulty, because whatever creature you target with Arcane Denial has to cost at least one mana, meaning you will have to pay at a minimum three mana.

[Jenni]

Now you might say "wait a minute! Isn't Force of Will considered the best counterspell in Legacy? That card leaves you one card down also, as you lose two cards to get rid of one." Aha, but Force of Will has something that makes up for it: It's free to cast.

Even with Force being free to cast, often it's better to just spell pierce or even daze, because 2-for-1ing yourself by discarding a jace to force can be a big disadvantage when playing against "Fair" decks.
The reason force is the best, as far as I can tell, is because it's a counter you can use literally at any time - like when the "unfair" decks try to go off while you don't have an island in play to bounce to daze (or they could just pay for daze) and/or you tapped out to play a threat on your turn, or for some combos, before you even played your first land for the game. Honestly, if force didn't provide so much protection from "unfair" decks, I would proably never care to use it, because I really hate to give up that extra blue card if I have an alternative.
Arcane denial has essentially all the disadvantages that force normally has (except that 1 life thing), plus you can only use it when you have 2 mana up, and remand does essentially the same thing, without the penalty. Even mana leak is a better counterspell, I think, since it normally trades 1 for 1, rather than always giving your opponent an advantage.
Using it as card draw, is kind of a stretch too, since you need to play a spell, then counter your own spell, for that to work, meaning for 2 cards and at least 2 mana (assuming you counter a memnite or something), you get to draw 3 cards (net gain of 1 card), more often though you will have to spend 3+ mana on this, in which case, Divination is actually just as good (3 mana for 1 card net gain), if not better, and even see beyond is probably a better choice, than using denial to counter your own spell as a draw mechanism, since you can use see beyond to shuffle away a useless land or uncounterable spell and improve the quality of cards in your hand, or after brainstorming to shuffle away bad draws, without losing a card.


Disrupting Shoal, might actually be playable, though, as a sort of poor man's force of will. It's clearly worse, since it depends on your having another blue card in your hand with the same CMC as the card you want to counter, but if you know what deck your up against and keep hands accordingly, with a little (lot?) of luck, you could probably use is similarly to how you would use force, 2 for 1 yourself to stop something of theirs for no mana. If you have to hard cast it, then I would say it's a bit better than force, for anything over CMC=3 you will be paying more than if you just hard casted the force anyway, but considering the number of low-cost spells in legacy that are worth countering, most of the time it would probably be cheaper.
If you have Force of Will, don't play shoal, force is just more versitile, but if you can't afford forces or can't get them for any reason, shoal might be a worthwhile budgeted alternate. I would not reccomend playing both in the same deck (unless you split it like 3/1 or 2/2), 2-for-1ing yourself to often is not a good idea.

[bruizar]

I recon you shouldl read up on this material concerning arcane denial. Meadbert over at themanadrain has been working on arcane denial in vintage for a long time so any suggestions or know how you can get from him would be helpful in your pursuit to use it in legacy. http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=36422.0

[Smea.gol.lum]

The only deck, where it can be good, is Affinity in my opinion.
It's a good tempo card once you have flooded the board with little beaters and just need to prevent your opponent to gain board control for 1 more turn and can also be a +2 draw spell later on, by countering your second useless Mox Opal or Memnite when a Goyf is on the board.

[rufus]

The only deck, where it can be good, is Affinity in my opinion.
...

I wonder if it work to counter your own pacts in Hive Mind decks

[frogczar]

Spell Pierce. Better than everything but Force of Will? Possibly.

[TsumiBand]

Play it with Chains of Mephistopheles. Not trolling.

[Lord Seth]

Even with Force being free to cast, often it's better to just spell pierce or even daze, because 2-for-1ing yourself by discarding a jace to force can be a big disadvantage when playing against "Fair" decks.

Problem is that Spell Pierce and Daze a lot of the time can't even counter the card. Spell Pierce is impotent against creatures, and if they have the mana then you can't really do that much with them. Obviously there are cases where they would be better, but I'd hesitate to say it's "often."

Now, to be fair, Force of Will's loss of a card isn't negligible. My point is that in the majority of the cases, it's worth it. It's like how Swords to Plowshares is so widely played in White decks despite the fact it's useless against a lot of combo decks: The cases where it's useful occur so often that it's worth it to use them even if sometimes another card would be better (and in those cases, that's what the sideboard is for).

Still, regardless of what you think about Force of Will, Arcane Denial essentially gives you the disadvantage of Force of Will (-1 card) without the actual advantage of it (it being free).

As for Shoal, it looks like it gets played a decent amount in Modern, but I just don't see it as working in Legacy as anything other than a budget alternative to Force, in the same way Tectonic Edge/Ghost Quarter are a budget alternative to Wasteland or the shocklands are budget alternatives to the duals.