Just because they made something years ago (guttural response aside, wich is still considered a mistake) doesn't mean that every color can have counters today.
Magic in it's early years were a lot less organized than today color-pie wise.
Judges familiar has the counter ability because its blue, and white is secondary in counters. way behind but can have some sort of counters with taxing.
artifacts use gimicks for that and even then it's way more costly and restriced.
I *hate* partial cycles, especially when they're as color-random as this!
(see Torment)
Thanks, WotC- now I won't have cool (U/B)(G/U)(W/B)(W/R) uncounterables
This cycle only works with R or G guilds, and a few stretches in U guilds. Since RtR has four guilds with R or G, it's a lot less sketchy than making Dimir and, specially, Orzhov uncounterables. It would just make no sense.
Still, don't be sad about the other 5 guilds. They'll get a rare cycle of their own, with a different characteristic tying them together.
Sorry but i don't agree. every color is good at something and bad at something. the game always changing. and blue got counters because it fits it's share of the color pie. as i said, white is second but ways behind and its gotta have some taxing effect for it to make sense.
Saying that every color should get counters because in the past it was like that is regression not progression.
based on the color pie, I agree that having a cycle of 10 uncounterable cards is too much, and i call its a smart decision from them not to make 10 cards.
especialy if one o them is Orzhov. wich has no reason to have it.
I'm assuming the Gatecrash cards will have their own different cycles, however. That's fine with me, too. I feel like that many uncounterable cards is a little bit of an overkill.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but, just because they're not in GTC, doesn't mean they won't be in Sinker. GTC could get a new cycle that the RTR guilds get in Sinker, and the GTC guilds could get this cycle in it as well.
No, I say more colors should get counters because it's good design, and the decision to move them all into one single color was a bad design choice that has been hurting the game ever since. The fact that white is getting counterspell effects now is because only recently has WotC realized their mistake.
In that aspect, the earlier sets were better designed than most of the sets that came after them, because counterspells were spread among the colors. It's not the first time that this has happened. For example, M10 was miles better than the preceding core sets because they went back to alpha to find the things Richard Garfield got right and that the current designers (Mark Rosewater specifically) got wrong.
its Bad design, if every color had access to some form of counter, then the game would be all about who can cancel more things from the opponent and wizards would need to create more cards that cant be countered. this leads to Unfun/Frustrating games, especialy for new and casual players.
Also Red and Green can have a card not be countered since they are the colors of uncounterable. maybe grull will have some kind of mechanic that abuses that.
A WB uncountarable card would violate the color pie. Uncountarable is primary a R and G effect (U hate stuff). Supreme Verdict reasoning is that blue can play uncountarable stuff because it could have a clause "Counter target spell that counter [this]" except that rule wise this clause is "Can't be countered".
But I can't see a black or white card avoiding counters like red, green and blue spells can possibly do.
I think this was miserable cycle to begin with anyway...
its Bad design, if every color had access to some form of counter, then the game would be all about who can cancel more things from the opponent and wizards would need to create more cards that cant be countered. this leads to Unfun/Frustrating games, especialy for new and casual players.
Also Red and Green can have a card not be countered since they are the colors of uncounterable. maybe grull will have some kind of mechanic that abuses that.
Why? No one said that such counters would have to be reasonably costed/playable. Or even Universal. Look at things like Lifeforce or Deathgrip for example.
Also, it's funny how you can replace "counter" with any type of card and the same principle applies. What if Wizards focused on simply large, powerful creatures exclusively? How fun would that be? Just because it's a counter doesn't make it automatically "unfun." It's simultaneously hilarious and sad how people have associated "counter" with unfun. It simply makes me believe such people are terrible at Magic to the point of lacking the mental plasticity to PLAY AROUND CERTAIN CARDS. Spot removal, hand recursion, large creatures etc. People simply don't like counters because they are either too lazy, or stupid to play around them, and as such would loathe the idea of counters in other colors. What about Dash Hopes? Mana Tithe? Avoid Fate?
Pathetic. I've pushed lethal spells through hands like Pact of Negation + Brainstorm + Force of Will + Spell Pierce without uncounterable effects just by not being a bad player, not like the people whining about counters in all colors would know anything about that. Just because you want a linear game that the morons who switch over from Yu-Gi-Oh can place first in during their first event doesn't mean the rest of us desire the same. L2playmagicwell.
@Lord Void:
You misunderstand why people hate counters. Its a weird psychology trick.
For example; comparing cancel and vindicate. Timmy plays his 10/10 creature and it gets vindicated. He goes "aww, that sucks, i woulda won."
Now instead say it gets countered, he goes "Wow counters are stupid."
Its the simple aspect of "being able to play my spell, even if it does nothing"
compared to "you are such a jackass that you didn't even let me play my spell."
Of course, I lean in favor of U/G as my slice of the color pie so I love counters, but I can see why people get upset - its not bad magic, its merely frustration at feeling locked out of the game, whereas other removal at least lets them feel as if they did something.
Same concept with land destruction, except it literally locks people out of games.
No, I say more colors should get counters because it's good design, and the decision to move them all into one single color was a bad design choice that has been hurting the game ever since. The fact that white is getting counterspell effects now is because only recently has WotC realized their mistake.
In that aspect, the earlier sets were better designed than most of the sets that came after them, because counterspells were spread among the colors. It's not the first time that this has happened. For example, M10 was miles better than the preceding core sets because they went back to alpha to find the things Richard Garfield got right and that the current designers (Mark Rosewater specifically) got wrong.
White is getting counterspells now? Where do you see monowhite counterspells in the current card pool? Anything from 8th edition on is pretty much what Wizards considers current. We have 2 counterspells both from Planar Chaos (so take that with a grain of salt) and we have lapse of certainty which came from our last muticolored block and was shard aligned. This little owl familiar the azorius got is just that. An Azorius owl. He is guild aligned and gets a tiny counter effect as a result.
It has nothing to do with moving counters into white. They even said in a recent article they don't have to justify the guild cards abilities for each color because they are guild aligned and just need to fit guild flavor not necessarily both colors the guild is made of. You think that they are going to move a mechanic that new players hate into other colors when they are all about attracting new players?
Maro isn't the only person that works at Wizards as well. It is sad to see people always rushing to blame their favorite magic pariah every set. Before a set is released they give you every member of the team that worked on it and yet nobody ever blames anyone but Maro.
@Lord Void:
You misunderstand why people hate counters. Its a weird psychology trick.
For example; comparing cancel and vindicate. Timmy plays his 10/10 creature and it gets vindicated. He goes "aww, that sucks, i woulda won."
Now instead say it gets countered, he goes "Wow counters are stupid."
Its the simple aspect of "being able to play my spell, even if it does nothing"
compared to "you are such a jackass that you didn't even let me play my spell."
Of course, I lean in favor of U/G as my slice of the color pie so I love counters, but I can see why people get upset - its not bad magic, its merely frustration at feeling locked out of the game, whereas other removal at least lets them feel as if they did something.
Same concept with land destruction, except it literally locks people out of games.
I think this is very accurate. Even though the result is exactly the same (ETB/LTB triggers aside) people respond very differently to removal vs. countermagic.
For some reason, remvoval just feels more interactive to most players. I cannot explain it more than that.
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I think that the flavor of counterspells is likely a big part of that - they are more explicitly flavored as "stopping your stuff" than spells like Doom Blade, and it doesn't help that a lot of counterspells have smarmy flavor text.
This cycle shouldn't even have happened. It's pushing the boundaries of the color pie and overkill in some instances. Why does UW needs a uncounterable DoJ when the player should run his own counterspells to work around the opponents' ones? Instead of promoting interaction and skill, players just have to wait 4 turns to turn the game around without working for it.
"Oh, blue has an uncounterable counterspell in the past" as the rationale for the cycle is just plain lazy design. A multicolored block is a huge opportunity to showcase the synergy between the colors yet, the multicolored cards esp. hybrid, are really uninspired by regurgitating boring common keywords with no further extension, and in some cases, pure vanilla. If there were to be an exception, it would be Izzet. Some spells such as Chemister's Trick look really fun to play in Limited
To those saying that the cycle isn't there because BW uncounterable spell would break the color pie:
I say, who cares about the color pie ? Man, I miss the days where the flavor of the card justified in which color it went. Makes me glad I didn't start playing after the first Mirrodin block. You guys missed out on a lot of great stuff like Psionic Blast and Apocalypse...
I think this is very accurate. Even though the result is exactly the same (ETB/LTB triggers aside) people respond very differently to removal vs. countermagic.
For some reason, remvoval just feels more interactive to most players. I cannot explain it more than that.
Probably because once it actually hits the field they could try to protect it outside of counterspells of their own. If my Craw Wurm hits the field and you Doom Blade it, I can at least try(or had the opportunity to) protect it. Cloudshift, granting Protection from X, Hexproof, etc. If you Counterspell it while it's on the stack, I need my own countermagic.
I'm personally fine with countermagic, just expanding on your point.
Posts like Lord Void make me happy that someone like him will never, ever be designing Magic because they have absolutely no idea how the game works/should work.
Counters are unfun. Period. Full stop. They lead to unfun gameplay and the only people who like counters are people that don't like to play Magic. It's that simple. It's the very nature of what a counter is. You don't want to play against the threat.
No one likes being told they can't play their cards. No one likes being told they can't play their game. Magic is unique in that it's one of the very few games out there that doesn't let people play their game because of counters.
Counters have been and will continue to be a mistake of Magic. That's why they're moving toward costing counters much less aggressively. So, pretty much counter supporters are wrong. It's that simple.
On topic: I could care less about if there is another cycle of these or not. I'm sure gatecrash will be great with or without this cycle.
Realistically, i'm only posting here because I want this thread to come up when it gets updated so I can watch people respond to toto4567. Is there a follow option on here? ^^
Posts like Lord Void make me happy that someone like him will never, ever be designing Magic because they have absolutely no idea how the game works/should work.
Counters are unfun. Period. Full stop. They lead to unfun gameplay and the only people who like counters are people that don't like to play Magic. It's that simple. It's the very nature of what a counter is. You don't want to play against the threat.
No one likes being told they can't play their cards. No one likes being told they can't play their game. Magic is unique in that it's one of the very few games out there that doesn't let people play their game because of counters.
Counters have been and will continue to be a mistake of Magic. That's why they're moving toward costing counters much less aggressively. So, pretty much counter supporters are wrong. It's that simple.
The way you feel about counters is the way I feel about combos, which is why I bother with counters to begin with. Casual games usually devolve into people playing nothing but combo decks if no one uses counterspells. Talk about not playing a game. Just people sitting there ignoring each other trying to go off first. It's awful.
Aggro isn't quite as horrible in that situation but it's still annoying to have games go swing swing swing burn burn burn every time.
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@_@
Reprint Misdirection and Dominate . There, now you can you lose to your own cards instead of being mad at blue.
Posts like Lord Void make me happy that someone like him will never, ever be designing Magic because they have absolutely no idea how the game works/should work.
Counters are unfun. Period. Full stop. They lead to unfun gameplay and the only people who like counters are people that don't like to play Magic. It's that simple. It's the very nature of what a counter is. You don't want to play against the threat.
And posts like toto's make me happy that someone will never, ever be designing Magic because they clearly have absolutely no idea how to read text longer than the simple few sentences they are used to.
Read my post before you respond to it, unless you just want to look like an idiot. "Counters are unfun, period" is an opinion, and while countermagic is something I dread to see (being a combo player), I do not by any means consider it unfun. Countermagic is interactive, thought-provoking, and adds a whole new layer to Magic strategy and thought process. I'm sorry that you don't enjoy those things and prefer slinging spells freely like a dim-witted moron, but some of us have cerebellums with functional capacity greater than a shrew's.
I can agree that perhaps in Standard, counters should be less aggressively costed, and that they should not bring back cards like Counterspell. However, that does not change the fact that counters can fit numerous roles, as far as restrictions and costs go, much like the numerous cards I used as examples in the post you so blindly skimmed over.
And lastly - because you clearly missed this point as well - learn how to play against countermagic. The mentality of "well I can just play my spells without worrying about a thing and if they have a counter that is unfun and overpowered" is childish, ignorant, and frankly biased/annoying. Part of learning how to play Magic is learning how to topple and come out on top of various card interactions; if you cannot do that, you are bound to suck at Magic forever. Anyway halfway competent player can bait countermagic if they know what they're doing, making it only further clear to me those who so fervently oppose this style of play are simply terrible Magic players.
Posts like Lord Void make me happy that someone like him will never, ever be designing Magic because they have absolutely no idea how the game works/should work.
Counters are unfun. Period. Full stop. They lead to unfun gameplay and the only people who like counters are people that don't like to play Magic. It's that simple. It's the very nature of what a counter is. You don't want to play against the threat.
No one likes being told they can't play their cards. No one likes being told they can't play their game. Magic is unique in that it's one of the very few games out there that doesn't let people play their game because of counters.
Counters have been and will continue to be a mistake of Magic. That's why they're moving toward costing counters much less aggressively. So, pretty much counter supporters are wrong. It's that simple.
It's obvious you play this game at a very casual level. Counters keep the game in older formats from getting out of control, without Force of Will, Daze and other such cards the format would just be a race of who can go off first. And counterspells really just add another dynamic to the game, you need to learn how to bluff, bait and play around them. If you can't handle counters then go play Yu-Gi-Oh, you obviously aren't any good at this.
Magic in it's early years were a lot less organized than today color-pie wise.
Judges familiar has the counter ability because its blue, and white is secondary in counters. way behind but can have some sort of counters with taxing.
artifacts use gimicks for that and even then it's way more costly and restriced.
This cycle only works with R or G guilds, and a few stretches in U guilds. Since RtR has four guilds with R or G, it's a lot less sketchy than making Dimir and, specially, Orzhov uncounterables. It would just make no sense.
Still, don't be sad about the other 5 guilds. They'll get a rare cycle of their own, with a different characteristic tying them together.
Saying that every color should get counters because in the past it was like that is regression not progression.
based on the color pie, I agree that having a cycle of 10 uncounterable cards is too much, and i call its a smart decision from them not to make 10 cards.
especialy if one o them is Orzhov. wich has no reason to have it.
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Wishful thinking, I know, but could happen.
its Bad design, if every color had access to some form of counter, then the game would be all about who can cancel more things from the opponent and wizards would need to create more cards that cant be countered. this leads to Unfun/Frustrating games, especialy for new and casual players.
Also Red and Green can have a card not be countered since they are the colors of uncounterable. maybe grull will have some kind of mechanic that abuses that.
But I can't see a black or white card avoiding counters like red, green and blue spells can possibly do.
I think this was miserable cycle to begin with anyway...
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
Why? No one said that such counters would have to be reasonably costed/playable. Or even Universal. Look at things like Lifeforce or Deathgrip for example.
Also, it's funny how you can replace "counter" with any type of card and the same principle applies. What if Wizards focused on simply large, powerful creatures exclusively? How fun would that be? Just because it's a counter doesn't make it automatically "unfun." It's simultaneously hilarious and sad how people have associated "counter" with unfun. It simply makes me believe such people are terrible at Magic to the point of lacking the mental plasticity to PLAY AROUND CERTAIN CARDS. Spot removal, hand recursion, large creatures etc. People simply don't like counters because they are either too lazy, or stupid to play around them, and as such would loathe the idea of counters in other colors. What about Dash Hopes? Mana Tithe? Avoid Fate?
Pathetic. I've pushed lethal spells through hands like Pact of Negation + Brainstorm + Force of Will + Spell Pierce without uncounterable effects just by not being a bad player, not like the people whining about counters in all colors would know anything about that. Just because you want a linear game that the morons who switch over from Yu-Gi-Oh can place first in during their first event doesn't mean the rest of us desire the same. L2playmagicwell.
You misunderstand why people hate counters. Its a weird psychology trick.
For example; comparing cancel and vindicate. Timmy plays his 10/10 creature and it gets vindicated. He goes "aww, that sucks, i woulda won."
Now instead say it gets countered, he goes "Wow counters are stupid."
Its the simple aspect of "being able to play my spell, even if it does nothing"
compared to "you are such a jackass that you didn't even let me play my spell."
Of course, I lean in favor of U/G as my slice of the color pie so I love counters, but I can see why people get upset - its not bad magic, its merely frustration at feeling locked out of the game, whereas other removal at least lets them feel as if they did something.
Same concept with land destruction, except it literally locks people out of games.
UWBSharuum the HegemonBWU
UAzami, Lady of ScrollsU
UGMomir Vig, Simic VisionaryGU
GAzusa, Lost but SeekingG
GUEdric, Spymaster of TrestGU
White is getting counterspells now? Where do you see monowhite counterspells in the current card pool? Anything from 8th edition on is pretty much what Wizards considers current. We have 2 counterspells both from Planar Chaos (so take that with a grain of salt) and we have lapse of certainty which came from our last muticolored block and was shard aligned. This little owl familiar the azorius got is just that. An Azorius owl. He is guild aligned and gets a tiny counter effect as a result.
It has nothing to do with moving counters into white. They even said in a recent article they don't have to justify the guild cards abilities for each color because they are guild aligned and just need to fit guild flavor not necessarily both colors the guild is made of. You think that they are going to move a mechanic that new players hate into other colors when they are all about attracting new players?
Maro isn't the only person that works at Wizards as well. It is sad to see people always rushing to blame their favorite magic pariah every set. Before a set is released they give you every member of the team that worked on it and yet nobody ever blames anyone but Maro.
I think this is very accurate. Even though the result is exactly the same (ETB/LTB triggers aside) people respond very differently to removal vs. countermagic.
For some reason, remvoval just feels more interactive to most players. I cannot explain it more than that.
Want to see me in action? Check out my stream! Currently broadcasting Boros Burn in Standard. Full archive available.
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........................
"Oh, blue has an uncounterable counterspell in the past" as the rationale for the cycle is just plain lazy design. A multicolored block is a huge opportunity to showcase the synergy between the colors yet, the multicolored cards esp. hybrid, are really uninspired by regurgitating boring common keywords with no further extension, and in some cases, pure vanilla. If there were to be an exception, it would be Izzet. Some spells such as Chemister's Trick look really fun to play in Limited
I say, who cares about the color pie ? Man, I miss the days where the flavor of the card justified in which color it went. Makes me glad I didn't start playing after the first Mirrodin block. You guys missed out on a lot of great stuff like Psionic Blast and Apocalypse...
BUG Dredge BUG]
WUBRG Storm WUBRG
UBR FaerieStalker UBR
EDH
Sygg, River Cutthroat (1vs1)
Maga, Traitor to Mortals (multiplayer)
Probably because once it actually hits the field they could try to protect it outside of counterspells of their own. If my Craw Wurm hits the field and you Doom Blade it, I can at least try(or had the opportunity to) protect it. Cloudshift, granting Protection from X, Hexproof, etc. If you Counterspell it while it's on the stack, I need my own countermagic.
I'm personally fine with countermagic, just expanding on your point.
Standard
RWUAmerica TempoUWR
& More...
Modern
URXGrixis/Tarmo/Tempo TwinURX
Counters are unfun. Period. Full stop. They lead to unfun gameplay and the only people who like counters are people that don't like to play Magic. It's that simple. It's the very nature of what a counter is. You don't want to play against the threat.
No one likes being told they can't play their cards. No one likes being told they can't play their game. Magic is unique in that it's one of the very few games out there that doesn't let people play their game because of counters.
Counters have been and will continue to be a mistake of Magic. That's why they're moving toward costing counters much less aggressively. So, pretty much counter supporters are wrong. It's that simple.
Realistically, i'm only posting here because I want this thread to come up when it gets updated so I can watch people respond to toto4567. Is there a follow option on here? ^^
The way you feel about counters is the way I feel about combos, which is why I bother with counters to begin with. Casual games usually devolve into people playing nothing but combo decks if no one uses counterspells. Talk about not playing a game. Just people sitting there ignoring each other trying to go off first. It's awful.
Aggro isn't quite as horrible in that situation but it's still annoying to have games go swing swing swing burn burn burn every time.
Reprint Misdirection and Dominate . There, now you can you lose to your own cards instead of being mad at blue.
And posts like toto's make me happy that someone will never, ever be designing Magic because they clearly have absolutely no idea how to read text longer than the simple few sentences they are used to.
Read my post before you respond to it, unless you just want to look like an idiot. "Counters are unfun, period" is an opinion, and while countermagic is something I dread to see (being a combo player), I do not by any means consider it unfun. Countermagic is interactive, thought-provoking, and adds a whole new layer to Magic strategy and thought process. I'm sorry that you don't enjoy those things and prefer slinging spells freely like a dim-witted moron, but some of us have cerebellums with functional capacity greater than a shrew's.
I can agree that perhaps in Standard, counters should be less aggressively costed, and that they should not bring back cards like Counterspell. However, that does not change the fact that counters can fit numerous roles, as far as restrictions and costs go, much like the numerous cards I used as examples in the post you so blindly skimmed over.
And lastly - because you clearly missed this point as well - learn how to play against countermagic. The mentality of "well I can just play my spells without worrying about a thing and if they have a counter that is unfun and overpowered" is childish, ignorant, and frankly biased/annoying. Part of learning how to play Magic is learning how to topple and come out on top of various card interactions; if you cannot do that, you are bound to suck at Magic forever. Anyway halfway competent player can bait countermagic if they know what they're doing, making it only further clear to me those who so fervently oppose this style of play are simply terrible Magic players.
It's obvious you play this game at a very casual level. Counters keep the game in older formats from getting out of control, without Force of Will, Daze and other such cards the format would just be a race of who can go off first. And counterspells really just add another dynamic to the game, you need to learn how to bluff, bait and play around them. If you can't handle counters then go play Yu-Gi-Oh, you obviously aren't any good at this.
counters are a normal part of the game. the original point of the discussion was only that if it's right or not to not be in every color these days.
Anyway On Topic:
Since there's not gonna be an uncounterable cycle. i wonder what kind it will be.