Suicidal Effort

[Moothemighty]

Suicidal Effort
UB
Instant
You may play Suicidal Effort without playing its mana cost.  If you do, you lose the game during your next end-of-turn step.
Counter target spell.


A last ditch prevention technique for combo decks.  It's risky, but it could keep your combo alive.

Updated version, with flavor text:

Suicidal Effort
UB
Instant
You may play Suicidal effort without paying its mana cost.  If you do, you lose the game at the end of your turn.
Counter target spell.
He was determined to see his plan through, even at the cost of his own life.

[Ephraim]

Mechanical nitpicking:
Which is it -- Exhaustive Effort or Suicidal Effort? (I prefer Suicidal Effort.)

The text should read,
You may play Suicidal Effort without paying its mana cost. If you do, you lose the game at the end of your turn.

Counter target spell.

That said, I think I like this spell. is just slightly less than {U}, so it is appropriately costed for a hard counter. You might need to kick it up to to provide additional compensation for the spell having an alternate cost. Of all the "free" counters I've seen, this one probably is the coolest one I've seen, both in the meshing of effect and flavour and in the acknowledgement that a free counter is really powerful.

One thing you might consider is instead of making the player lose (which means that this is good for combo decks and only combo decks) is causing the player to skip his or her next turn:

You may play Suicidal Effort without paying its mana cost. If you do, skip your next turn.

Counter target spell.

That would preserve some of the flavour (maybe change it to Exhaustive Effort then) and make it more generally useful.

[Moothemighty]

Perhaps make 2 cards?  One that skips your next turn and one that loses you the game?  I'll put the other in a new thread.

[Ephraim]

They're much too similar. I'd say pick one or the other and go with it. I tend to prefer the one that just makes you skip a turn. It's not as narrow, although it's still a steep restriction.

[Moothemighty]

Check the other thread I just made then.

For me, i like both, so i'll still keep this one.

[Ephraim]

Like I said, I like the idea, but I can guarantee you that if one of these makes it into one of TMD's sets, the other one will not -- at least not until we get to TMD set four or five -- a long time from now. "Free" counterspells are supposed to come along once in a blue moon. Now, as I said, I like these cards, since they're some of the best takes on the "free" counterspell idea I've seen yet. I happen to like the other one better, so I'm encouraging you to close this thread. If you insist on pressing for both of them, don't be disappointed when one of them gets set aside indefinitely.

[Komatteru]

Maybe skipping your next untap phase would be a significant penalty enough, since you would be unlikely to play the alternate cost if you have mana untapped, otherwise you wouldn't be able to do things at the end of your opponent's turn.  That is really one of the biggest problems with free countermagic--it allows you to play countermagic and and play draw spells on your opponent's turn.  Granted, skipping an untap phase is not much of a penalty in the first few turns, but skipping a turn seems like it makes the card really hard to swing.  Perhaps you could include a discarding a nonland card or paying some life (2 maybe) in addition to the skipping of an untap phase.  I do understand that Wizards doesn't want to print counterspells in general, and they're much more likely to print "Counter target spell. You lose the game." for 3 mana than reprint Counterspell in a basic set, and R&D would be really harsh on the penalty for a new free counterspell.

No matter what you decide , you should put the skipping the step as part of the cost, like
"You may skip your next ~whatever~ rather than pay ~'s mana cost."

This matches the Oracle wording for Misdirection, Force of Will, and company.

I think this needs to cost at least 3, if not 4.  Consider the new wave of counterspells we've seen in the past few sets.  Everyone got excited about Hinder because it costs 3.  Other free countermagic costs a lot (Force and MiD at 5, Thwart and Foil at 4), so this shouldn't be an exception.

[Alfred]

Raise the non-free price of this spell. 2 mana "hard" counterspells are considered too strong to print by wizards, even if they are gold, especially ones that have such a powerful effect (think undermine). Also, what would prevent a sligh deck from using this spell to win next turn? Make the condition "if you control a swamp and an island".

[Jacob Orlove]

1. hard counters need a minimum of two blue in the casting cost
2. this is outrageously good for combo, and very weak elsewhere.

[Komatteru]

Perhaps change to something like

2UU
You may play ~this~ without paying its mana cost.  If you do, you lose 2 life and you cannot play spells for the remainder of this turn.

That makes it pretty not good in combo, unless you're casting something like an animate spell.  In any case, if this gets countered, you still can't play spells for the rest of the turn, since it's part of the cost (wording might be shaky), which is a little more interesting.  I don't think it's too broken in decks like Dragon, since Force of Will is just a lot more useful.

However, this idea has a flaw in that if you're tapped out, you can't play anything anyway, which makes this not much of a drawback.  Although you don't get to play another in the same turn, which is pretty significant (imagine playing one of these against combo, only to have the bomb you countered followed up by a draw 7).

[Matt]

That's also no good because it can be played in every deck. It needs to require you to be playing blue, either through a blue card (FoW, MisD) or islands (Foil, Daze, Thwart).

[stolen]

2. this is outrageously good for combo, and very weak elsewhere.

I would say that this is the card's biggest problem.  As it is, it's nothing more than a combo-enabler.

Unless you can think of something really inspired, I'd just scrap this.  It can't continue as is, and if you try to turn it into a good free/pitch counter, it's going to be forced (ha).  And by that, I mean an obvious attempt to make a free counter rather than a creative and original idea.