Type 4 [Eventide]

[Mr. Type 4]

I am.  So to further clarify:

Arcane Denial is good for early threats before "the lines are drawn" and people have decided who they are going to ally themselves with.  Arcane Denial is a good way of batting down an early card without rocking the boat too much.  ie - a person you counter with AD can still be your friend.

Later, when someone is directly targeting you, you don't want to give them cards anymore and should prefer to use a strong counter.  AD at theis point is usually a move made out of desperation.

In any case, I think there is room in my small type 4 stack for AD.  I don't think it's usually better than regular old counterspell, although it is going to give you some advantage inthe early game as long as the person you counter with it isn't likely to turn right around and use those two cards against you. Vex is far worse - there is never a situation where it's better to give someone a card for nothing in return. 

IMO - the worst counterspell that is even worth considering is Suffocating Blast. (i cut it before cutting Vex)

[Metamind]

a person you counter with AD can still be your friend.

Did it really ever happen? When a player casts a spell, it's usually benefical for him to resolve it. I've never seen anyone happy about that his spell just got countered by AD.

Vex is far worse - there is never a situation where it's better to give someone a card for nothing in return. 

Vex and AD are exactly the same C.A. in the end. The only difference is that AD draws +1 card to each player, and only at the next upkeep. Vex can counter someone's spell and he'll still be your friend. You don't get anything in return with A.D. too. Not only it just cycles itself for nothing, so it was better he's never been there in the first place, it gives an opponent cards for free and a case to kill you with them.

IMO - the worst counterspell that is even worth considering is Suffocating Blast. (i cut it before cutting Vex)

I've seen some really large groups use it effectively- when you draft with 10+ players you'll have enough targets for it. Sure it's still not strong, but it is better than AD.

[Harlequin]

Vex is far worse - there is never a situation where it's better to give someone a card for nothing in return. 

Vex and AD are exactly the same C.A. in the end. The only difference is that AD draws +1 card to each player, and only at the next upkeep. Vex can counter someone's spell and he'll still be your friend. You don't get anything in return with A.D. too. Not only it just cycles itself for nothing, so it was better he's never been there in the first place, it gives an opponent cards for free and a case to kill you with them.

Not really though, what if they made a card called Super Denial that said counter a spell that spells controler draws 15 cards and you draw 14..... would you really mind if someone Super Denial'ed your spell?  So on some level it really isn't the same.

[Mr. Type 4]

a person you counter with AD can still be your friend.

Did it really ever happen? When a player casts a spell, it's usually benefical for him to resolve it. I've never seen anyone happy about that his spell just got countered by AD.

Nobody's really happy about it, but it doesn't lead to vendettas like other things do.  Like if someone counters my Panacea, I take that pretty personally and then I have to kill that person.  Arcane Denial is forgiveable.  

Vex and AD are exactly the same C.A. in the end.

If there's only 2 players, sure, but normally when you play a counterspell, that card is gone and doesn't replace itself.  AD puts you further ahead of the rest of the table when compared to just using a vanilla counter.  

I've seen some really large groups use it effectively- when you draft with 10+ players you'll have enough targets for it. Sure it's still not strong, but it is better than AD.

There's nothing worse than having your counter fizzle because someone played a trick to save his guy.  Suffocating Blast is pretty awful.

[Metamind]

Not really though, what if they made a card called Super Denial that said counter a spell that spells controler draws 15 cards and you draw 14..... would you really mind if someone Super Denial'ed your spell?  So on some level it really isn't the same.

That could mill players to death, and otherwise won't be played at all as it gives your opponent such a high C.A.. Also, it could mill yourself. So no, that card won't be playable, and yes I'll have to try to eliminate him, if I'll survive.

Nobody's really happy about it, but it doesn't lead to vendettas like other things do.  Like if someone counters my Panacea, I take that pretty personally and then I have to kill that person.  Arcane Denial is forgiveable. 

So if your Panacea is countered by AD you don't take it "personally"? And let's say that the rare occasion happened, and the two cards you drew off AD are more useful then the spell you were going to resolve... Why wouldn't you want to keep it discrete until the time is right and act as though it did hurt you (kill AD's caster)?

If there's only 2 players, sure, but normally when you play a counterspell, that card is gone and doesn't replace itself.  AD puts you further ahead of the rest of the table when compared to just using a vanilla counter. 

It puts the rest of the table ahead of you. A vanilla counter doesn't replace itself, but it doesn't draw your opponent two free cards to kill you with.

There's nothing worse than having your counter fizzle because someone played a trick to save his guy.  Suffocating Blast is pretty awful.

In target I meant the same controller for both the spell and the creature. That's pretty brutal. And even if the creature is saved, you've still countered a spell. It won't fizzle.
Taken from SCG's Virtual Judge:

Consume Strength and Suffocating Blast: You must be able to choose two separate targets for these spells in order to play them, but if one or the other becomes an illegal target before the spell resolves, it still affects the remaining one. They?re only countered if both targets are illegal when the spell tries to resolve.

http://www.starcitygames.com/pages/judgefinder.php?keywords=Suffocating+Blast&Submit2=Ask+The+Judge!

That makes it a lot better.

[Mr. Type 4]

Consume Strength and Suffocating Blast: You must be able to choose two separate targets for these spells in order to play them, but if one or the other becomes an illegal target before the spell resolves, it still affects the remaining one. They?re only countered if both targets are illegal when the spell tries to resolve.

you learn something new everyday. 

[Harlequin]

Not really though, what if they made a card called Super Denial that said counter a spell that spells controler draws 15 cards and you draw 14..... would you really mind if someone Super Denial'ed your spell?  So on some level it really isn't the same.

That could mill players to death, and otherwise won't be played at all as it gives your opponent such a high C.A.. Also, it could mill yourself. So no, that card won't be playable, and yes I'll have to try to eliminate him, if I'll survive.

From before....

Vex and AD are exactly the same C.A. in the end.

So is super denial ... its only a net +1 advantage because 15-14 = 1

You said that Vex, AD are the same Card Advantage.  You are saying that 0:1 = 1:2.  What we're saying is that this is not true.  And my example proves it 0:1 =/= 1:2 =/= 14:15, the more cards you're letting your opponent replace the "more OK" they are with you countering thier spell. Even if the net advantage is the same.

[Metamind]

So is super denial ... its only a net +1 advantage because 15-14 = 1

No. It's 15 cards - 1 spell countered. Not the same with AD when it's 2 cards - 1 spell countered.

You said that Vex, AD are the same Card Advantage.  You are saying that 0:1 = 1:2.  What we're saying is that this is not true.  And my example proves it 0:1 =/= 1:2 =/= 14:15, the more cards you're letting your opponent replace the "more OK" they are with you countering thier spell. Even if the net advantage is the same.

I don't think so. Have you ever seen a situation where a player wasn't angry when someone countered his spell? With Vex and AD each of you have spent a card, so it's -1:0 and 0:1, so unlike Super Denial you don't gain C.A.. Super Denial's card ratios are a lot smaller, and it's C.A. so high for both player so other opponents won't let you resolve it, resulting in more potential fights and more likely the spell you've tried to stop in the first place will resolve.
You are correct, they are not exactly the same but their usage in the game is.

[Nefarias]

Have you ever seen a situation where a player wasn't angry when someone countered his spell?

I can think of a couple, even though it's not really on topic. Basically, I'm pretty okay with my spell getting countered under two circumstances. The first is if it's a card I really didn't care about, something I got last pick or something. To me, getting the counter out of their hand is more valuable then some of my weaker spells resolving. The second is an extension of that; if I play a fairly powerful card, but they have to use one of the best counters in the game to stop it because that's their only one. The best example of this is when someone has to cycle Decree of Silence even though they haven't played a spell yet. Of course it is dependaent on the spell that gets countered, but I am so much happier to see that they no longer have Decree than I would've been had my Kokusho resolved.

I should note that we don't play with Vex or AD, or even vanilla Counterspell for that matter, so I really can't comment on how they work in Type 4. I <i>can</i> tell you that I have seen regular Magic games in which a person was happy that his spell got Arcanely Denied.

[Metamind]

I can think of a couple, even though it's not really on topic. Basically, I'm pretty okay with my spell getting countered under two circumstances. The first is if it's a card I really didn't care about, something I got last pick or something. To me, getting the counter out of their hand is more valuable then some of my weaker spells resolving. The second is an extension of that; if I play a fairly powerful card, but they have to use one of the best counters in the game to stop it because that's their only one. The best example of this is when someone has to cycle Decree of Silence even though they haven't played a spell yet. Of course it is dependaent on the spell that gets countered, but I am so much happier to see that they no longer have Decree than I would've been had my Kokusho resolved.

OK, if someone counters your last pick with AD I can see why you won't be angry, even be happy about it, it's just that players always save their counterspells for bigger threats. Your second argument isn't related to A.D., but I disagree. Instead of this resolving, a particular player decided to counter it. A player will spend his Decree offensively only if he will lose to the threat, so I'll be angry anyways (attack him), to lessen my opposition.
If you can cast A.D. and get no bullets back at you, I can see why would be okay, but it just has never worked for us that way.

[Luiggi]

Nucklavee    r/u r/u
Creature - Beast
When Nucklavee comes into play, you may return target red sorcery card from your graveyard to your hand.
When Nucklavee comes into play, you may return target blue instant card from your graveyard to your hand.
4/4

That's another card with great potential and killer color restrictions.

I was thinking of just manually crossing out the "red" and "blue", so that it just returns any sorcery and any instant to your hand. Too powerful?

Luis

[Mr. Type 4]

@ Luiggi - I don't think it would be too powerful.  Nucklavee has made me interested in playing with Eternal Witness.  Without the errata you're purposing it's not strong enough. 

Ok - so the debate about Arcane Denial is a tough one.  It's obviously not the best counter in the stack but wheather or not there are times when playing AD is better than playing regular old counterspell is pretty debateable.

I play with Memory Lapse and Rermand in my stack.  What do you guys think about those?

[oneofchaos]

@ Luiggi - I don't think it would be too powerful.  Nucklavee has made me interested in playing with Eternal Witness.  Without the errata you're purposing it's not strong enough. 

Ok - so the debate about Arcane Denial is a tough one.  It's obviously not the best counter in the stack but wheather or not there are times when playing AD is better than playing regular old counterspell is pretty debateable.

I play with Memory Lapse and Rermand in my stack.  What do you guys think about those?

I play with remand because you don't lose anything aside your spell for turn.  The nice thing is people never counter remand because they don't lose anything aside their spell for turn.  However, when somebody is dropping a door to nothingness or myr matrix or something busted, it's nice to be able to time walk and give everyone an extra turn to find a way to deal with it (or kill that player).

[Luiggi]

@ Luiggi - I don't think it would be too powerful.  Nucklavee has made me interested in playing with Eternal Witness.  Without the errata you're purposing it's not strong enough.

That's a good point. I don't currently have Witness in there, but it seems strictly better than something like Izzet Chronarch, which I do have and has been awesome in my experience. Having a toughness of 1 instead of 2 doesn't really seem like such a problem in a format like Type 4, since just about anything that will kill one will kill the other.

I've got Remand in my stack, but not Memory Lapse, though I suppose it could be in there. I have Hinder, which can function like a Memory Lapse if necessary, but that obviously does a much better job of getting rid of an annoying spell.

Luis

[Harlequin]

I play counterspell heavy in my stack.  Really it's because alot of my buddies who like to play are control players so they enjoy the high counterspell count.  I have both Memory Lapse and Remand in the stack.  I think sometimes Memory Lapse is better than a vanilla counter (espeically if they are in topdeck mode).  We have zero Vanilla counters (no Counterspell, Cancle, etc).  In addition to the typical Type4 counters (jack, whelk, decree, etc) + the ones discussed we have Grip of Amnesia, Dissapate, Fold into AEther, Withering Boon, Illumination, Areson's Aura, Spell Counter, Last Word, Minamo's Meddling (its like urza's glasses AND counterspell!!) We also have Stifle, Voidslime, Interdict and Voidmage Husher.  I would add Venser if I owned one.

So yeah .... getting something countered rarely makes enimies.  Infact if you go a game without something getting countered you either died too quickly or didn't play anything.

I'm not sure if someone here said it - or if it was someone's stack I saw... but someone had the great Idea of putting like 15 Accumulate Knowledge in the stack.  We haven't done it yet (because we only have 1 playset) but I think it would be really cool.

[VikingMetal4L]

Well it sounds like I've opened up quite a can of worms.  I stand by my opinion that AD is significantly better than Counterspell early in the game "before lines are drawn," not JUST because it is less likely to make enemies, but ALSO because it replaces itself in your hand, so that you don't fall as far behind the average player.

On the other hand, Counterspell is undeniably better than AD in the late game, say when you've muscled your way to a position where you can take down the last two opponents and the cards off Arcane Denial WILL come back to get you.  Since counters are arguably more important later in the game, this could be one reason to draft vanilla Counterspell over AD.  I will keep this in mind during future drafts.

As you might have guessed, I play Remand, but not Memory Lapse.  Remand I don't think of as a counter so much as a really tempo-oriented cantrip.  Memory Lapse is neither a hard counter nor a cantrip.

On a semi-related note, I think "Super Denial" crosses the boundary of being "political" and becomes straight-up teamwork.  You and whoever just got countered drew a fantastic number of cards, so unless they REALLY needed that spell to resolve, they should be pretty happy about the exchange.  Without having tested it (obviously), I would draft Super Denial very high and use it as a cooperative draw spell rather than a counter.  Say you're down to four players at roughly equal strength: SD gives you and the other guy a pretty good shot at killing the other two, increasing your expected chance to win from 25% to ~50% (very crude approximation, ignoring politics etc, but you get the idea).

Q

[Harlequin]

My point about Super Denial was one of pure mathematics.  Like take a look:

CS = Vanilla Counterspell, Vx = Vex, AD = Arcane Denial, SD = super Denial

Card -- Opponent's happy-o-meter
CS: [--]
Vx: [-----]
AD: ?
SD: [--------------------------------------------------------------------]

My point was that Because Super Denial is down-right beneficial to the person who's spell is getting countered - then Arcane Denial has to be ~somewhere~ above Vex ... not equal to it.  I don't think Super Denial ~should~ be in anyone's stack, I'm using it as a mathematically endpoint.

[Mr. Type 4]

wow, Harlequin, I had to look up some of those counterspells you're playing!  Last Word and Minamo's Meddling should be staples in every stack.  Minamo's is particularly awesome because it reveals that player's strategy, and that really can change the course of the game.

I think it's interesting how many of you like Remand.  I like Remand, but I thought i'd be the minority.  My favorite Remand play was one where I lost my Whispers of the Muse to Spelljack.  Later in the game he cast it to draw a card and I Remanded it back to my own hand!

[Luiggi]

Not to derail the main conversation, but what do people think of Snakeform? I think the fact that it cantrips makes it potentially playable in Type 4.

Luis

[VikingMetal4L]

I wouldn't play Snakeform for the same reason I don't play Pendrell Drake.  Sure, it cycles, so it's basically just the top card of your library, making a mid-range pick, but I don't see it doing anything on its own.  That is, I would cycle Snakeform at the first EOT opportunity almost every game.

If it had split second or lasted past the current turn, it would be powerful enough not to auto-cycle, hence worth considering.

Q

[Mr. Type 4]

if it lasted longer than "until EOT" it would be playable, but right now it's mostly going to be a combat trick, which is cool in limited, but in Type 4 you want to be able to just kill things most of the time as timing is very important.  You don't want to get into a situation where you can only use this as removal in combat because you really want to throw down removal when the creature's controller has used his spell for turn. 

So i have a feeling that VikingMetal is right, this thing will mostly be used randomly to draw a card without having a profound effect. 

[Luiggi]

Yeah, all good points. I guess I was thinking in too Limited a mindset (pun intended, ), since there are already tons of ways of getting rid of creatures with card advantage attached in some form.

Luis