For instance, they play burning wish to get Show and Tell.
Do you save your counter for the following turn to counter the show and tell or counter the burning wish?
Playing Burning Wish can very well be a trap do draw out a counter. In fact if they are already holding a S&T casting a Burning Wish is a win-win because if you counter it you are one counter down for the show down, if you don't counter it they get the overmaster and they are 1 protection up for the show down. In either case they are getting one step ahead :)
They aren't really "1 protection up" after casting burning wish. If they burning wish for overmaster, and then cast the overmaster followed by show and tell, you need two counters to stop them. If instead they wish for a second show and tell, you'll still need two counters to stop them. Burning wish is equal to a threat in itself. They don't have to resolve it for it to become a threat, so when they do cast a burning wish, they don't actually gain more threats, they're just trading one for another.
The important resource associated with burning wish is mana, not cards. If you wish for overmaster, you spend 2 mana and end up with the same number of threats. However, on the turn that you try to go off, now you have a duplicate threat (overmaster) that only costs 1 mana compared to 3 mana for show and tell. Now you can play 2 threats for 4 mana. If you had burning wished for another show and tell, you would have to have 6 mana to play both of those show and tells.
For this reason, it can actually be important to counter burning wish. If you know that they're getting overmaster, you should probably just counter the burning wish. It will make them waste 2 mana on this turn. If you wait and counter the overmaster, then you only made them waste 1 mana on that turn.
Here's another question, in what situations would you cast force of will on a dark ritual?
Oh, that's a good question. I guess again it depends. Does it look like they have black mana to cast Duress before going off (or will they have it next turn) or does it look like they need Dark Ritual to resolve so they can Duress first and follow it up with more rituals to go off?
My general rules are as follows:
Against TES, TNT, ANT:
Burning Wish could get Empty the Warrens. That card has storm so it's only counterable by Stifle. When they try to go off, counter Burning Wish if you don't hold Stifle.
If they try a Burning Wish out of the blue, they could get protection. Counter it also.
If they play Infernal Tutor and are hellbent, counter Infernal Tutor (same reason as Burning Wish).
If they play Infernal Tutor and are not hellbent, they want to duplicate a card in hand. That card could be protection, or accelleration. Counter it if you have counters to spare. If you don't, wait for the protection spell, counter that and hope that he doesn't say 'Fuck it' and goes off anyway.
Always counter Ad Nauseam if they try one. Even if they are on 8 life. From 6 life you could gamble to let it go and hope it kills them, but they can still draw Petal, Petal, Ritual, LED, LED, Duress, Infernal and kill you with protection support. I've seen it happen, I've even had that luck once or twice.
Against Hive Mind:
Always counter Show and Tell, always counter Hive Mind. Seriously. Hive Mind on the board makes your game really awkward. You can never counter Pacts anymore since your counters get duplicated and counter your own counters back again. Stifle does still work though. Only thing that works under an active Hive Mind is to Stifle the Hive Mind trigger when they cast a Pact. The Stifle copy that goes on the stack because of Hive Mind will also just have one target to Stifle, so that's a pretty sure deal. Misdirections work awkwardly under Hive Mind. The copy goes off first, then the original can undo the work that the copy has just done.
Against SneakShow:
Sneak Attack may never enter the battlefield, unless you already have a safe way to never let it work (Pithing Needle on SA). Show and Tell must be countered at all times if you can. Burning Wish is a difficult one in this case. If they play those colours, they could get Thoughtseize. That one is harder to counter (costs a mana less, so Spell Pierce and Daze are worse). If they don't play black, you could let it go and see what they come up with. You really need to know what deck your opponent plays to make an informed decision here. As was mentioned earlier, Wish could be counter bait in this situation.
Against Reanimator:
Entombs and discard outlets are fine. Just stop the reanimation spells. If you Thoughtseize them turn one and see three reanimation spells and one Entomb, you of course take that one, but they usually only play 11 reanimation spells, so those should normally be your targets. I have never seen Burning Wish in Reanimator, but if they have it, it can get Thoughtseizes, Reanimation spells and more nasty stuff. Counter that Wish.
Against Dredge:
About 90% of a Dredge deck cannot be properly stopped by counterspells. Counter the discard outlets. All of them, if you can. That makes them slower for the draw-discard plan (less cards in hand, they'll have to wait more turns before it works, giving you free Time Walks). If you have a Spell Pierce that couldn't counter Putrid Imp so they still went rampage, just save it for Dread Return. They will have several zombie tokens, but at least they won't get the big nasty monster. There's always hope that Delvers get you there before the zombies finish you off.
This happened to me with Spiral Tide once. I FoWed a turn 1 Dark Ritual because I figured he's trying to go off turn 1 and if I let it he might also have discard. Turns out he can also cast a Hymn To Tourach on turn 2 and my hand is almost empty at this point. Misasignment costs games.
That depends entirely on the context of given information. Do you know their hand/ what deck they are playing? Do you have a 2nd counter or a delver on the board that can exploit tempo? Is it postboard, can you do something like surgical?
In a vacuum letting them get a show and tell and countering it might buy you a turn but this can be really dangerous. You might allow them to grab a thoughtseize/overmaster which beats your disruption.
It depends almost entirely on the matchup. For example, against Belcher, it's almost always correct to counter the Belcher. Against Sneak'n'Show, you're probably right to counter the enabler (SnT, BWish, Sneak Attack), but there are good reasons why you may not want to.
Against most other decks, it's probably right to counter the enabler.
Imagine the worse case scenario:
Burning Wish grabbing Overmaster to resolve Show & Tell.
Burning Wish grabbing Thoughtseize to remove your counter and resolve Show & Tell.
By not countering the enabler, your opponent has an uncounterable threat.
This all depends on how you plan on stopping the threat/enabler.
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For me, I think unless they're playing something like Storm and BWing for a Storm card, then you counter what they Wished for.
The way I see it is like the following scenarios:
1) They BW and already have Show & Tell in hand. If BW resolves, they're getting some protection. You need 2 counters to beat this. If you let the BW resolve, they at least have to spend the extra mana to cast their protection spell before casting Show & Tell.
2) They have BW and are BWing for Show & Tell. You need 1 counter to beat this. Again, if you just counter the Show & Tell, it costs them extra mana and time to do this.
The caveat to the above scenarios is that your counters is if your answers are situational, ie spells like Daze, Spell Pierce, or Flusterstorm, where they may not be usable if the enabler resolves. In that case, you probably want to counter the BW.
I would wait for Show and Tell. If everything works out, I wouldn't be far behind in card quantity (assuming the counter here is Force of Will you both lose 2 cards) and they won't be able to Wish > S&T again. If they go for Overmaster, I'd counter that one in a heartbeat but never Burning Wish. (If they have B.Wish + S&T you lose either way if you only have a single counter).
Also important when opting not countering the BW but the Show and tell instead is if you succeed in countering the Show and tell future burning wishes lose alot of their functionality as they can no longer find Show and tell.
Incorrect. It is almost always correct to counter the card that would give the Belcher player four mana. This should nullify 3-4 cards in the Belcher player's hand, buying you enough time to find other cards to stop them. If you wait for a Belcher, you risk getting blown out by Empty the Warrens.
This is one of the few times it's better to counter the enabler than the threat.
But in countering the enabler, you (likely) don't have a counterspell for the threat. Even if I did have two counterspells, I'd just use them on Overmaster/Thoughtseize and Show and Tell. The net benefit is that they've spent an extra mana and reduced future Burning Wish options.
If I only had one counterspell, I'd use it on the Overmaster or Thoughtseize for the reasons outlined above. I'd rather try to psych my opponent into thinking I have two counterspells than make it irrelevant/let him see and remove all doubt.
I guess if you're going to put in something like Oblivion Ring off their Show and Tell, it's better to counter the Burning Wish which could be getting an answer like Eye of Nowhere.
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