Halt

[jro]

A friend and I were trying to figure out how to improve White in Vintage without breaking other formats.  He though that counterspelling abilities should be shifted into White.  One card I suggested was a kind of combination Remand and Stifle.

Halt
1W
Instant
Choose one-- Return target spell to its owner's hand; or counter target activated or triggered ability.
"Citizen, do not proceed!"

I'm not sure if white should be allowed to do this in the color pie, but it would sure be nice if adding some abilities that weren't too out of flavor allowed some new room to open up for new archetypes in Vintage.  I'd hope that this card would be a boon to white based Fish strategies, stopping both Storm and accelerate->bomb strategies as early as Turn 1.

Other suggestions addressing the general goal would be welcomed, as would comments on the appropriateness of the card.  And while I think "Halt" is a pretty good name, the flavor text could be improved.

Current text:
Halt
1W
Instant
Choose one-- Return target spell to its owner's hand; or counter target activated or triggered ability.
"Citizen, do not proceed!"

[zimagic]

Wasn't there a reason that they decided not to do Memory Lapse in W? They were talking about Colourshifting it for a while before deciding that would be too good. How different is Stifle/Venser?

[jro]

Wasn't there a reason that they decided not to do Memory Lapse in W? They were talking about Colourshifting it for a while before deciding that would be too good. How different is Stifle/Venser?

Yeah, I think the reasoning was that since white had powerful small creatures, giving it a cheap counterspell would make mono-white aggro control strategies too strong.  I think it's kind of a shame that one of the most interactive, hard-to-value aspects of the game (what and when to counter) belongs only to one color, but I certainly understand the concern. 

The germ of this idea, remember, was trying to make White more playable in Vintage.  Green, and to some extent Red, could also stand a boost as well.  If anyone has other ideas about how to do that, please post whatever cards you can come up with.  Kind of like how Stephen Menendian's latest article explores the creation on new Vintage archetypes through unrestrictions, I'd love to see new archetypes created by new cards as well.  Is it possible to print a powerful spell for WGr in Vintage that wouldn't break other formats?  If there's any one place where people that might care about answering that question converge, it's this forum.

[Matt]

You could give white a powerful spell, but make an additional cost be that they have to return their own creatures (perhaps specifying white creatures). That definitely keeps the power level in check, and also makes it harder to use in aggro-control (trashing your own tempo).

[zimagic]

You could give white a powerful spell, but make an additional cost be that they have to return their own creatures (perhaps specifying white creatures). That definitely keeps the power level in check, and also makes it harder to use in aggro-control (trashing your own tempo).

That's a very precarious position to work. The advantage to such a card in Vintage is that it would be exclusively the W/x decks that could play it because few are going to splash a  creature for the effect. However the only advantage W/x decks enjoy currently is that they must retain a borad presence in order to compete. A effect that diminishes this board presence would need to be powerful indeed in order to offset that disadvantage.

Bringing that outside vintage, there's lots of decks that play cheap, aggressive white creatures (or have the potential to do so) that would benefit from a vintage playable spell and would suffer a lot less from the tempo loss.

Going back to the original card, Matt is this the powerful effect you're thinking of?

[Matt]

Going back to the original card, Matt is this the powerful effect you're thinking of?

No, not really. Probably something more Balance-y (although obviously Balance itself, I just mean a card where you negate an opponent's advantage by evening out some resource).

[Godder]

Wasn't there a reason that they decided not to do Memory Lapse in W?

They did Lapse of Certainty (Conflux) instead, and it's the same but 2W instead of 1U.

[Anusien]

Stifle is notably not White.  It's blue and it has some slight bleed into Green (Voidslime and some Ouphes).  I don't see Remand being White either. Memory Lapse made sense with Excommunicate, but I don't really see Remand making sense.

[Matt]

Stifle is notably not White.  It's blue and it has some slight bleed into Green (Voidslime and some Ouphes).  I don't see Remand being White either. Memory Lapse made sense with Excommunicate, but I don't really see Remand making sense.

Should stifle remain blue, though? Blue can't exclusively have everything it has historically had as in its slice of the color pie. Personally I would put this mechanic, which is a way of saying "No you can't do that" fits better in U/W than U/G (in fact I think white should be the primary home for this, in the interests of color pie equity). I don't see green, as a color, doing a lot of countermanding.

See also discussion on Recant, which predated Remand.

[Anusien]

I'd like to see white have more relevant disruption.  That said, you're taking two types of abilities that are basically solidly in the middle of white's slice of the color pie, and giving them to blue.  A case might be made for either ability to be white, but they really have given us no indication that we can bleed ether ability.  They've had chances to shift these around, but have instead reinforced their blueness (most recently with Venser).

Why did you make this a Remand instead of a Voidslime?

Okay, thinking more about it, what if you made it a Voidslime/Rebuff the Wicked combination?  Something like:
WW
Instant
Counter target spell or ability that targets you or a permanent you control.