Type 4 Counterspells

[Rubik_3x3x3]

How do you like your counters? What percent of the stack do you feel should be counters? Do you use all counters that are better than counterspell, or do you mix it up with narrow-counters such as Remove Soul? How many Misdirection effects are good?

I ask because I realized that my stack is at like 18% counters and I think the appropriate number is 10 to 12%, but I'm really curious about the types of counters people think are good.

[Nefarias]

I've never actually figured out any sort of percentage numbers, but about 12.5% seems right because that would give you one per "pack" when Rochestering with 8 people. A little higher is probably fine too.

I really don't like narrow counterspells, unless they have something great attached to them like Overwhelming Intellect, Spite/Malice, W/W/W/W/W, and Bant Charm. One rule that my group tries to adhere to is that no card should be strictly worse than another, with as few exceptions as possible. For example, Decree of Silence is strictly better than Dismiss, but they're both fine, and Decree is so good that it's really tough to draw comparisons to it. Counterspell (vanilla), on the other hand, is no Decree, so there shouldn't be things that are strictly worse than that. In fact, since Counterspell is strictly worse than pretty much every "bonus" counter, that one doesn't even make the cut. Without having the whole list in front of me, I think Last Word is probably the weakest counter that we run (or Dromar's Charm, since it's very often just a vanilla counter).

There are so few Misdirection effects in the game that it's probably not that big a deal to run most or all of them. MisD itself is great if you play with ACC rules for obvious reasons. Willbender's great because it can also target abilities, and can protect your own spells from counters. Wild Ricochet is just awesome. Anything strictly worse than vanilla Deflection like Muck Drubb or Rebound is probably unplayable, as are on board ones like Goblin Flectomancer. So that pretty much leaves the vanillas: Deflection, Shunt, and Swerve. All three may be a bit much but not necessarily. I guess a lot of it has to do with how much targeted removal you have, or if a lot of it is just mass. Playing with six total may be a bit high, but it's certainly not unreasonable.

That said, I haven't played much T4 over the past two or so years. I don't imagine too much has changed, but I haven't been keeping up on it.

[oneofchaos]

I used to play narrow counterspells five years ago.  Now that we have enough counters out to choose what we want to play, MOST of your counters should be along the lines of: counter target spell or better.  I do play vex/arcane denial for political reasons because it is usually easy to counter something and not have the person super angry at you.

[Rubik_3x3x3]

OK, this seems similar to what I was thinking. Something else I was considering was a slightly higher counterspell number, but make them narrow counters to make it more interesting. As of now, most people play strictly Counterspell+ unless the narrow has a fairly impressive effect on it?

What about Countersquall? It isn't a strong effect but counters a lot and has a small effect tacked on.

[oneofchaos]

It all really depends on your stack to be honest.  I have bombs galore that just win games.  Fist of the suns, memnarch, walking archive, etc.  You want your counter spells to be able to handle the strength of your stack.

[Mr. Type 4]

I like the counterspells to have a diferent feel to them, so I like to have both good and "bad" counters.  in reality, bad counters are still pretty good, and i enjoy situations where players are forced to use their "bad' counterspells.  Many of the lesser counters are actually better in some situations.  ie: Flashfreezer is suddenly better under Gleemax. i find that the worse counterspells get played early game and the better ones are usually witheld for important situations.  Honestly I think that the more narrow counters are generally more interesting than vanilla ones, and even bad countermagic still never goes last pick. 

I play with about 12% Counterspells (i think), and try not to go much higher than that.

One rule that my group tries to adhere to is that no card should be strictly worse than another, with as few exceptions as possible.

I feel like Countermagic almost always bucks this sort of stack contruction rule because it's so good in general and you need to maintain a certain percentage in the stack to control for utter brokeness (of course if you decide to forgo or play very few counterspells, then the value of everything changes pretty dramatically).   

[Rubik_3x3x3]

I agree that narrow counters do have their own type of allure. There's something special about actually being able to counter target multicolored spell instead of just tossing down another 2UU card to stop whatever you want.

That said, what kind of ratio do you like between complete and narrow counters? I can't imagine the narrow counters are found in too large of numbers.

[VikingMetal4L]

Willbender's great because it can also target abilities, and can protect your own spells from counters.

Willbender cannot (in general) protect your own spells from counters a la Misdirection.  A spell on the stack cannot target itself; Misdirection works by changing the target of a counterspell on the stack to Misdirection so that the counterspell fizzles.  Since Willbender's ability is not a spell, this is not an option, unless the counterspell in question is Voidslime or the like.

There are, of course, on-board counters that can protect your stuff, namely Voidmage Apprentice and Prodigy.

Quinn

[Mr. Type 4]

Since Willbender's ability is not a spell, this is not an option, unless the counterspell in question is Voidslime or the like.

pretty sure Voidslime is modal, so if you try to misdirect a counterspell, you'd have to misdirect to another spell.  I'm not 100% on that, but i think that's how it works. 

Willbender is partuicularly awesome against Split Second cards. 

[Rubik_3x3x3]

I'm assuming that morph can respond to Split Second? Why is that?

[Godder]

Turning over a morph is not an activated ability, it's a static ability of the card so it doesn't use the stack and can't be responded to. Split Second only means that players can't play spells or activated abilities, and turning over a morph is neither.

[Nefarias]

Willbender's great because it can also target abilities, and can protect your own spells from counters.

Willbender cannot (in general) protect your own spells from counters a la Misdirection.  A spell on the stack cannot target itself; Misdirection works by changing the target of a counterspell on the stack to Misdirection so that the counterspell fizzles.  Since Willbender's ability is not a spell, this is not an option, unless the counterspell in question is Voidslime or the like.

There are, of course, on-board counters that can protect your stuff, namely Voidmage Apprentice and Prodigy.

Quinn

Fair enough, I blame that on the whole "haven't played the format in two years" thing. It's still awesome (and is particularly great when you can sac it to the aforementioned Voidmage Prodigy after he's already done his thing).

[Rubik_3x3x3]

@ Godder. I had a feeling it was something like that. Forgot the term 'static ability' due to 3 hours of sleep last night and had a hard time explaining it to even myself.

[VikingMetal4L]

pretty sure Voidslime is modal, so if you try to misdirect a counterspell, you'd have to misdirect to another spell.

It doesn't use the "Choose one--" templating, so I have to disagree.  Like Naturalize.  You can misdirect that from an enchantment to an artifact, right?

Quinn

[Elfer]

I'm thinking of adding Interdict and errata-ing it to have split second. This makes it actually nerf abilities, and adds a way for players to team up or combo to get rid of a mistmeadow witch.