Admiral's Order is another Cancel with a marginal upside.
I currently include Disallow and Scatter to the Winds and while I don't necessarily think it's better than either of those, I think it is interesting enough to warrant some discussion.
Admiral's Order is best in a blue tempo deck as a one mana counterspell during combat or at the end of your own turn. Most of the time it is going to be cast for 3 mana however. I have not been impressed with Disallow either though since it has basically also always been a Cancel in our experience.
I think the window where this is good is too narrow in cube. In constructed, this is a good counterspell for post-combat phase counter wars. But that's just not a very common scenario in the cube. I think pretty much all the other Cancel w/ upside variants are stronger in this format.
I don't think I'm interested. Counter wars very, very rarely happen in my cube so most of the time I foresee it being played on their turn as a cancel. Nice of them throw a conditional 1 mana counter at us, has me hoping for the future of counter spells. I was kinda surprised Rivals didn't give us some kind of 1U force spike that became a hard counter with ascend.
Off topic but I am really hoping for a good counter from Return to Dominaria, I have liked supreme will but I would lose it in a second for another 2 mana hard counter. MaRo is always taking about magic being a swinging pendulum and Dominaria seems like the perfect place to let non-creatures shine again for a set.
Honestly, I don't like this "upside." How often are post-combat counter wars even taking place (and taking place in situations where you are leaving an extra mana up just in case)? Also, blue tempo isn't super popular with us, and when it is it is as a support color where the "unraided" side of this would be difficult to cast. I'd take all those 3 cmc counterspells listed above as well as Dissipate and Hinder (sometimes you really want something to go away when you counter it) before this.
It seems pretty rare for the upside to matter. If there wasn't a new Cancel variant printed every set or two, this may raise a few eyebrows, but we have seen this cost and effect tried with so many variations on upsides that this one barely registers. If the alternate cost applied to something better, like countering an instant with CMC 3 or less, things would be entirely different.
Admiral's Order is another Cancel with a marginal upside.
I currently include Disallow and Scatter to the Winds and while I don't necessarily think it's better than either of those, I think it is interesting enough to warrant some discussion.
Admiral's Order is best in a blue tempo deck as a one mana counterspell during combat or at the end of your own turn. Most of the time it is going to be cast for 3 mana however. I have not been impressed with Disallow either though since it has basically also always been a Cancel in our experience.
So how do you think it compares to some of the other tier 3 counterspells (Disallow, Scatter to the Winds, Logic Knot, Dissolve)?
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I think they are a tier above the rest.
Complicate could be included in this discussion though.
Off topic but I am really hoping for a good counter from Return to Dominaria, I have liked supreme will but I would lose it in a second for another 2 mana hard counter. MaRo is always taking about magic being a swinging pendulum and Dominaria seems like the perfect place to let non-creatures shine again for a set.
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