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It's a hard counter without heavy blue requirements that can save you against almost anything your opponent brings to bear. If you are countering in your opponent's turn, you will often be able to make use of the card draw first. You are also exchanging card advantage for tempo advantage, which can be very powerful, particularly in aggro/control.
But on the other hand...
It's a terrible card. In blue control you want to be crushing your opponent through card advantage, not feeding them more cards. Even if you counter a key spell this is cube, they will draw more powerful cards. Tempo decks can do just as well with soft counters without giving away card advantage.
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In my opinion, it is just as it is during it's era in constructed - it's an easily splashable hard counter. It's not that good in pure control, but decks splashing blue for tempo and card draw would love it.
It is best in tempo decks where you have some kinda curve like T1-1 drop or cantrip, T2-2/x evasive creature, T3-Man-o-War, T4-2 drop+hold up counter mana.
In these cases Mana Leak or especially Remand is just better. If you are really going super all in on supporting blue tempo I guess it could get a spot but there are a lot better 0-2 mana counters that are good in tempo decks that cost 0, U, or 1U.
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Some times I do wonder if I should cut it for Rune Snag or Power Sink. But then again, many spells in cube are so cheap that a soft counter just does not do the trick. Arcane Denial is a hard counter for 1U and therefore unique. The card disadvantage sucks, but on the other hand if you play the tempo game it probably does not matter, and if you play control, you can get away by having the more relevant spells than your opponent.
This argument really comes down to how you view tempo, card quality, and card advantage. Arcane Denial is almost always a tempo and card quality gain for you, at the cost of card advantage.
The statement I often hear is, this is cube, so all the cards are powerful, and thus giving the opponent an extra card is nearly always bad. I think this statement is extremely reductionist, and probably just wrong. The spread of objective power level between the highest and lowest powered card in cube is not as high as say limited, but games are not about objective power level. Spells are often great or terrible depending on the game condition. Countering a Wrath to have the opponent draw a plains and a Disenchant is often as good or better than a Counterspell. Sure, Arcane Denial requires more thought that his UU brother, and for that matter relies on luck a bit more, but that is part of the fun.
If you have tested Denial and don't care for it, then by all means, cut it. If you haven't tested it yet, well, people laughed at Force of Will at first for being card disadvantage too. Trust me, I was there.
I consider -1 card advantage an acceptable drawback on a 1U hard counter. I'll play Arcane Denial in any blue deck and will likely never cut it.
This. Also, it's especially useful against aggro. The aggro opponent is likely to draw cards that are inferior in quality to the ones you draw (Isamaru vs. Jace2.0; Incinerate vs. Meloku).
I consider -1 card advantage an acceptable drawback on a 1U hard counter. I'll play Arcane Denial in any blue deck and will likely never cut it.
I agree. It's a hard counter for 1U. Until we get one of these with no drawback, I'm going to play it. It's been a great card for us, and we play it in pretty much every single blue deck. It's particularly nice in blue tempo where the casting cost is really important and drawing an extra card is nice. You can also counter one of your own spells with it to draw three cards, which is pretty nifty sometimes, particularly in counterburn.
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The spread of objective power level between the highest and lowest powered card in cube is not as high as say limited
No, but it's absolutely there. And countering an Armageddon so I don't lose the game is well worth the drawback. And in the late game, it counters game-ending spells when Rune Snag and friends cannot. And in the early game, it's a hard counter where Remand and friends aren't. I don't really care what they're drawing when I'm countering a spell that I would otherwise lose to.
..........
It's the same reason I use Force of Will and not Cancel. Or Vampiric Tutor and not Grim Tutor. Or Dark Ritual and not Charcoal Diamond. The tempo advantage is worth the card disadvantage.
Arcane Denial is not Card Disadvantage in the conventional sense. In reality it is actually card advantage. The player Casting Arcane Denial finishes up a card (+1) and the opponent finishes up 2 cards (+2)
Player One (casting Arcane Denial)
0 - Card parity generated by trading a card for a card
+1 Slow Trip
Player 2 (Getting spell countered)
0- Card parity generated by trading a card for a card
+2 Slow Trip
Have an opponent draw one more card than you is not the same thing as losing one more card than an opponent. In other words there is a bigger value difference between -1 (player1) : +0 (player2), and +0 (player1) : +1(player2) in magic. Furthermore there is an even bigger difference between +1 (player1) and +2 (player2), and this trend will continue until eventually Player one will get more value, while drawing fewer cards, than player 2 (assuming player 1's cards are worth more than player 2's)
Another example of this type of effect is Jace 1.0's first ability. Would you classify it as card dis-advantage?
In order to properly evaluate Arcane Denial I think you need a more involved description of what is going on.
Some decks have a strategic advantage over others, aka the deck is capable of generating more value than the opponent.
Lets say for instance that every card in Deck 1 is worth twice as much (theoretically) as those in Deck 2.
If deck1 loses a card the "value" of the loss is greater than if Deck 2 simply gaining a card. Deck two would gain half as much from drawing a card as making deck 1 discard a card (using this mock value comparison).
Why would a card like duress be so good? Simply because it can trade up, gaining incremental value. Theoretically this is card parity, but value is an important factor, and that is important to evaluating Arcane Denial. It is not a cut and dry card advantage or tempo debate because you are not actually losing the card, on the contrary your gaining card advantage by casting it.
Calculating +1 cards (Player 1) to be half as good as +2 cards (Player 2) is not really correct except in the numerical sense.
If Arcane Denial is in your graveyard, can you target it with Snapcaster, can you use the denial to counter the Snapcaster thus drawing three cards? Does that open up some sort of wormhole?
I don't agree with Happy Gilmore's definition of card advantage. I generally take it to mean the difference of meaningful cards and/or permanents between you and your opponent. And I think most players would generally see it that way too.
But, the underlying points he makes are very relevant.
Cards are worth, virtually, different amounts. The textbook definition of card advantage doesn't mean that the net value is necessarily *good* in every situation of a game (and visualizing this works better when you know exactly what cards are in the game battlfield, hands, and decks at the time, etc.). My Control Magic has a wildly different virtual value in my hand in one situation, when all you have are a Birds of Paradise and two 1/1 tokens; and another, when you have an Inferno Titan and two 1/1 tokens. Cards, especially ones like Control Magic, can have varying levels of applicable use in a game.
Arcane Denial is definitely one of those cards.
Arcane Denial trades the usefullness of your narrow card with a narrow opportunity of effectiveness with [anything your opponent does] and in exchange gives your opponent more cards back than you. Usually, your opponent having more cards, and therefore more options, is a liability for your goal of winning the game. The key, then, is to rely on the rules of Magic to make this liability as small as possible.
Since Arcane Denial only costs 1U you can very easily trade up in terms of resources spent in that turn.
Some spells have such large effects on the game that they build enough inertia torward winning that they are nearly impossible to come back from. Something as simple as Viridian Shaman may ensure that your whole deck's plan is now gone because you had a Mirran Crusader with Grafted Wargear attached to it. Preventing that may be the best thing you can possibly do that game. Because it is a hard counter, you can mostly rely on the singleton nature of cube to ensure your opponent can't make the same play again right away (compared to Memory Lapse or Remand, which are still excellent spells in their own right). Compared to Mana Leak, it is still relevant in the late game since it is not limited to your opponent's mana production - this is relevant for those late-game titan plays and the like.
Because the resource system in Magic provides restrictions on how many spells you can cast in a turn, Arcane Denial is very effective in the early- and mid-game behaving like a hard counter with no drawbacks whatsoever. Your opponent doesn't have the resources to fully utilize the replacement cards they're drawing. The semi-random nature of the game, too, gives you more chances for your opponent to miss drawing something better than what they already had in-hand.
In a pinch, you can also combine it with another irrelevant spell in the late game to make it a slowtrip-Sift.
I think that understanding Arcane Denial's role in cube is essential to using it well and being happy with it. I like having a counterspell that is typically more effective in fast decks, while still providing a versatile answer to nearly everything in later turns of the game as well. Having a drawback doesn't mean a card is bad. It means that, like most cards in Magic, it has its best uses and its poor uses, and managing those in drafting, deck construction, and playing will force nuanced decisions; I enjoy that sort of thing quite a bit in my cube.
I think the card is essentially uncuttable because we'll never get a hard counter at 2 mana ever again without some insane loopholes to jump through, especially not one that draws you a card after as well!
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Arcane Denial is not Card Disadvantage in the conventional sense.
Yes it is. It's exactly card disadvantage in the traditional sense. The only time its not is if you counter your own spell to draw three cards, in which case it's a 2 for 3.
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Another example of this type of effect is Jace 1.0's first ability. Would you classify it as card dis-advantage?
Yes. It certainly can be.
Quote from Happy »
Why would a card like duress be so good? Simply because it can trade up, gaining incremental value. Theoretically this is card parity, but value is an important factor, and that is important to evaluating Arcane Denial.
Duress is card parity. It's not card advantage, and neither is Denial. Duress is so good because it can generate tempo advantage by disrupting your opponent's curve, or remove critical spells from their hand. But that doesn't make it card advantage. That just makes it a good spell.
I think the card is essentially uncuttable because we'll never get a hard counter at 2 mana ever again without some insane loopholes to jump through, especially not one that draws you a card after as well!
This is unfortunetely true. Wizards regarding Counterspell as too powerful means that we won't get any hard counters at two mana (or only ones with huge drawbacks).
Therefore, we must look at what we already have: Counterspell, Mana Drain and Arcane Denial are the only cubable unconditional counter spells for 2 mana. Memory Lapse, Remand and Delay are only temporal solutions and cards like Mana Leak, Miscalculation, Logic Knot and others give the opponent the option to pay mana as an out. Deprive is a hard counter, but with a steep drawback. Others have even sillier drawbacks or even easier outs. This leaves Arcane Denial as one of only three cards* in its category: Spells that just say "no" for two mana and no previous set up or large drawback. And I consider "I draw one, then you draw two" a far smaller drawback in the early game than permanently setting you back a land drop.
And since this kind of card is very powerful (some say even too powerful - see above), you should run as many of those as possible in your cube. Which means that you should run Arcane Denial.
I don't agree with Happy Gilmore's definition of card advantage. I generally take it to mean the difference of meaningful cards and/or permanents between you and your opponent. And I think most players would generally see it that way too.
But, the underlying points he makes are very relevant.
Cards are worth, virtually, different amounts. The textbook definition of card advantage doesn't mean that the net value is necessarily *good* in every situation of a game (and visualizing this works better when you know exactly what cards are in the game battlfield, hands, and decks at the time, etc.). My Control Magic has a wildly different virtual value in my hand in one situation, when all you have are a Birds of Paradise and two 1/1 tokens; and another, when you have an Inferno Titan and two 1/1 tokens. Cards, especially ones like Control Magic, can have varying levels of applicable use in a game.
Arcane Denial is definitely one of those cards.
Arcane Denial trades the usefullness of your narrow card with a narrow opportunity of effectiveness with [anything your opponent does] and in exchange gives your opponent more cards back than you. Usually, your opponent having more cards, and therefore more options, is a liability for your goal of winning the game. The key, then, is to rely on the rules of Magic to make this liability as small as possible.
Since Arcane Denial only costs 1U you can very easily trade up in terms of resources spent in that turn.
Some spells have such large effects on the game that they build enough inertia torward winning that they are nearly impossible to come back from. Something as simple as Viridian Shaman may ensure that your whole deck's plan is now gone because you had a Mirran Crusader with Grafted Wargear attached to it. Preventing that may be the best thing you can possibly do that game. Because it is a hard counter, you can mostly rely on the singleton nature of cube to ensure your opponent can't make the same play again right away (compared to Memory Lapse or Remand, which are still excellent spells in their own right). Compared to Mana Leak, it is still relevant in the late game since it is not limited to your opponent's mana production - this is relevant for those late-game titan plays and the like.
Because the resource system in Magic provides restrictions on how many spells you can cast in a turn, Arcane Denial is very effective in the early- and mid-game behaving like a hard counter with no drawbacks whatsoever. Your opponent doesn't have the resources to fully utilize the replacement cards they're drawing. The semi-random nature of the game, too, gives you more chances for your opponent to miss drawing something better than what they already had in-hand.
In a pinch, you can also combine it with another irrelevant spell in the late game to make it a slowtrip-Sift.
I think that understanding Arcane Denial's role in cube is essential to using it well and being happy with it. I like having a counterspell that is typically more effective in fast decks, while still providing a versatile answer to nearly everything in later turns of the game as well. Having a drawback doesn't mean a card is bad. It means that, like most cards in Magic, it has its best uses and its poor uses, and managing those in drafting, deck construction, and playing will force nuanced decisions; I enjoy that sort of thing quite a bit in my cube.
I may have miss-represented myself. Card advantage by definition counts only the cards and not the value. The post I made was kind of a thought process being spewed on the internet. More appropriately what I was trying to illustrate is the importance of value when evaluating cards.
My point is still valid about the comparisons about losing a card, gaining card parity, and drawing an extra card.
Losing a card <<< Card Parity <<<<<<< Card Advantage. In practice this becomes much more visible. Theoretically each of these states are separated by the same # of card, one. However, the actual effect on the game is much greater.
Value is not an easy concept to define, but in this discussion it is very relevant.
Yes, the opponent is drawing 2 cards, but your still gaining +1 cards. Yes your opponent will be receiving one more card than you, but the impact of that is based on card value, timing, and board state.
Conclusion:
Sometimes Arcane Denial will be bad, but sometimes it will be absolutely outstanding. The better your opponent's deck is against you the worse Arcane Denial becomes.
Arcane Denial is a fantastic card as it's a hard counter, for a cheap cost, and can be splashed in almost any deck because of the 1U casting cost. Of course you don't want to just counter anything with it, but rather counter something good so that you're stopping a real threat at the cost of giving them 2 cards of unknown power and yourself 1.
I'm sure most of us can at least agree being able to reliably counter something like Animate Dead is well worth the card disadvantage. Remand is good, but it only slows down their win condition, it doesn't stop it. This means that in the tempo/aggro deck both cards fill the same function usually, but in the control deck you'll often times be happier to see Denial past the first few turns.
What's the point in comparing Arcane Denial to Counterspell? Unless you're going to run two or more copies of Counterspell in your cube this is as close as you'll get.
What's the point in comparing Arcane Denial to Counterspell? Unless you're going to run two or more copies of Counterspell in your cube this is as close as you'll get.
What's the point in comparing Arcane Denial to Counterspell? Unless you're going to run two or more copies of Counterspell in your cube this is as close as you'll get.
I don't agree with this. I think Cancel is closer to Counterspell than Arcane Denial. I think 3 cards is very different than 1 mana. Now, I'm not trying to make the argument that Cancel is cubeworthy (although I think it's actually pretty close to being there for larger cubes), I'm just saying that just because both are 2 mana hard counters doesn't mean there isn't anything more similar to Counterspell. As this thread has been saying that Denial is at its best in a blue tempo based deck whereas Counterspell is at its best in a blue control deck. For me, if I'm playing a straight control deck, I'd rather have Cancel than Denial, especially vs aggro (where I don't want them to draw more cheap threats/burn/Armageddon) or the mirror (where card advantage is king).
Personally, I only really like Denial if I can negate the disadvantage by having a way to cheese away the opponents hand, like a Mind Twist or Balance, or if I attack their manabase with something like Tangle Wire.
But this is one of the things I love about cube and the fact that each cube is different because of our different experiences with controversial cards such as this. Differing experiences and opinions keeps it fresh.
There's a pretty big difference between 2 mana and 3 mana, and one blue vs double-blue. I'd run it over Cancel in every deck, without question. The card disadvantage is pretty negligible (-1 isn't a hurdle you can't recover from) but the cost advantage is pretty huge. If it prevents their game-ending spell from resolving in a situation where another counterspell wouldn't work, it's worth all the CDA that comes with it.
I don't agree with this. I think Cancel is closer to Counterspell than Arcane Denial. I think 3 cards is very different than 1 mana. Now, I'm not trying to make the argument that Cancel is cubeworthy (although I think it's actually pretty close to being there for larger cubes), I'm just saying that just because both are 2 mana hard counters doesn't mean there isn't anything more similar to Counterspell. As this thread has been saying that Denial is at its best in a blue tempo based deck whereas Counterspell is at its best in a blue control deck. For me, if I'm playing a straight control deck, I'd rather have Cancel than Denial, especially vs aggro (where I don't want them to draw more cheap threats/burn/Armageddon) or the mirror (where card advantage is king).
Right, I agree with that statement, which is why people should be evaluating Arcane Denial against Cancel or Hinder rather than against Counterspell. There, the tradeoff is a bit more clear. Would you rather include the much increased flexibility of Arcane Denial that might bite you in the butt or would you rather have a safer but far less flexible Cancel which only goes into one deck?
So, what do people think of one of the most hotly contested counters of all time?
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But on the other hand...
It's a terrible card. In blue control you want to be crushing your opponent through card advantage, not feeding them more cards. Even if you counter a key spell this is cube, they will draw more powerful cards. Tempo decks can do just as well with soft counters without giving away card advantage.
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In these cases Mana Leak or especially Remand is just better. If you are really going super all in on supporting blue tempo I guess it could get a spot but there are a lot better 0-2 mana counters that are good in tempo decks that cost 0, U, or 1U.
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The statement I often hear is, this is cube, so all the cards are powerful, and thus giving the opponent an extra card is nearly always bad. I think this statement is extremely reductionist, and probably just wrong. The spread of objective power level between the highest and lowest powered card in cube is not as high as say limited, but games are not about objective power level. Spells are often great or terrible depending on the game condition. Countering a Wrath to have the opponent draw a plains and a Disenchant is often as good or better than a Counterspell. Sure, Arcane Denial requires more thought that his UU brother, and for that matter relies on luck a bit more, but that is part of the fun.
If you have tested Denial and don't care for it, then by all means, cut it. If you haven't tested it yet, well, people laughed at Force of Will at first for being card disadvantage too. Trust me, I was there.
This. Also, it's especially useful against aggro. The aggro opponent is likely to draw cards that are inferior in quality to the ones you draw (Isamaru vs. Jace2.0; Incinerate vs. Meloku).
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I agree. It's a hard counter for 1U. Until we get one of these with no drawback, I'm going to play it. It's been a great card for us, and we play it in pretty much every single blue deck. It's particularly nice in blue tempo where the casting cost is really important and drawing an extra card is nice. You can also counter one of your own spells with it to draw three cards, which is pretty nifty sometimes, particularly in counterburn.
No, but it's absolutely there. And countering an Armageddon so I don't lose the game is well worth the drawback. And in the late game, it counters game-ending spells when Rune Snag and friends cannot. And in the early game, it's a hard counter where Remand and friends aren't. I don't really care what they're drawing when I'm countering a spell that I would otherwise lose to.
..........
It's the same reason I use Force of Will and not Cancel. Or Vampiric Tutor and not Grim Tutor. Or Dark Ritual and not Charcoal Diamond. The tempo advantage is worth the card disadvantage.
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Player One (casting Arcane Denial)
0 - Card parity generated by trading a card for a card
+1 Slow Trip
Player 2 (Getting spell countered)
0- Card parity generated by trading a card for a card
+2 Slow Trip
Have an opponent draw one more card than you is not the same thing as losing one more card than an opponent. In other words there is a bigger value difference between -1 (player1) : +0 (player2), and +0 (player1) : +1(player2) in magic. Furthermore there is an even bigger difference between +1 (player1) and +2 (player2), and this trend will continue until eventually Player one will get more value, while drawing fewer cards, than player 2 (assuming player 1's cards are worth more than player 2's)
Another example of this type of effect is Jace 1.0's first ability. Would you classify it as card dis-advantage?
In order to properly evaluate Arcane Denial I think you need a more involved description of what is going on.
Some decks have a strategic advantage over others, aka the deck is capable of generating more value than the opponent.
Lets say for instance that every card in Deck 1 is worth twice as much (theoretically) as those in Deck 2.
If deck1 loses a card the "value" of the loss is greater than if Deck 2 simply gaining a card. Deck two would gain half as much from drawing a card as making deck 1 discard a card (using this mock value comparison).
Why would a card like duress be so good? Simply because it can trade up, gaining incremental value. Theoretically this is card parity, but value is an important factor, and that is important to evaluating Arcane Denial. It is not a cut and dry card advantage or tempo debate because you are not actually losing the card, on the contrary your gaining card advantage by casting it.
Calculating +1 cards (Player 1) to be half as good as +2 cards (Player 2) is not really correct except in the numerical sense.
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But, the underlying points he makes are very relevant.
Cards are worth, virtually, different amounts. The textbook definition of card advantage doesn't mean that the net value is necessarily *good* in every situation of a game (and visualizing this works better when you know exactly what cards are in the game battlfield, hands, and decks at the time, etc.). My Control Magic has a wildly different virtual value in my hand in one situation, when all you have are a Birds of Paradise and two 1/1 tokens; and another, when you have an Inferno Titan and two 1/1 tokens. Cards, especially ones like Control Magic, can have varying levels of applicable use in a game.
Arcane Denial is definitely one of those cards.
Arcane Denial trades the usefullness of your narrow card with a narrow opportunity of effectiveness with [anything your opponent does] and in exchange gives your opponent more cards back than you. Usually, your opponent having more cards, and therefore more options, is a liability for your goal of winning the game. The key, then, is to rely on the rules of Magic to make this liability as small as possible.
Since Arcane Denial only costs 1U you can very easily trade up in terms of resources spent in that turn.
Some spells have such large effects on the game that they build enough inertia torward winning that they are nearly impossible to come back from. Something as simple as Viridian Shaman may ensure that your whole deck's plan is now gone because you had a Mirran Crusader with Grafted Wargear attached to it. Preventing that may be the best thing you can possibly do that game. Because it is a hard counter, you can mostly rely on the singleton nature of cube to ensure your opponent can't make the same play again right away (compared to Memory Lapse or Remand, which are still excellent spells in their own right). Compared to Mana Leak, it is still relevant in the late game since it is not limited to your opponent's mana production - this is relevant for those late-game titan plays and the like.
Because the resource system in Magic provides restrictions on how many spells you can cast in a turn, Arcane Denial is very effective in the early- and mid-game behaving like a hard counter with no drawbacks whatsoever. Your opponent doesn't have the resources to fully utilize the replacement cards they're drawing. The semi-random nature of the game, too, gives you more chances for your opponent to miss drawing something better than what they already had in-hand.
In a pinch, you can also combine it with another irrelevant spell in the late game to make it a slowtrip-Sift.
I think that understanding Arcane Denial's role in cube is essential to using it well and being happy with it. I like having a counterspell that is typically more effective in fast decks, while still providing a versatile answer to nearly everything in later turns of the game as well. Having a drawback doesn't mean a card is bad. It means that, like most cards in Magic, it has its best uses and its poor uses, and managing those in drafting, deck construction, and playing will force nuanced decisions; I enjoy that sort of thing quite a bit in my cube.
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Yes it is. It's exactly card disadvantage in the traditional sense. The only time its not is if you counter your own spell to draw three cards, in which case it's a 2 for 3.
Yes. It certainly can be.
Duress is card parity. It's not card advantage, and neither is Denial. Duress is so good because it can generate tempo advantage by disrupting your opponent's curve, or remove critical spells from their hand. But that doesn't make it card advantage. That just makes it a good spell.
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This is unfortunetely true. Wizards regarding Counterspell as too powerful means that we won't get any hard counters at two mana (or only ones with huge drawbacks).
Therefore, we must look at what we already have: Counterspell, Mana Drain and Arcane Denial are the only cubable unconditional counter spells for 2 mana. Memory Lapse, Remand and Delay are only temporal solutions and cards like Mana Leak, Miscalculation, Logic Knot and others give the opponent the option to pay mana as an out. Deprive is a hard counter, but with a steep drawback. Others have even sillier drawbacks or even easier outs. This leaves Arcane Denial as one of only three cards* in its category: Spells that just say "no" for two mana and no previous set up or large drawback. And I consider "I draw one, then you draw two" a far smaller drawback in the early game than permanently setting you back a land drop.
And since this kind of card is very powerful (some say even too powerful - see above), you should run as many of those as possible in your cube. Which means that you should run Arcane Denial.
* Two, if you don't have / play Mana Drain.
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I may have miss-represented myself. Card advantage by definition counts only the cards and not the value. The post I made was kind of a thought process being spewed on the internet. More appropriately what I was trying to illustrate is the importance of value when evaluating cards.
My point is still valid about the comparisons about losing a card, gaining card parity, and drawing an extra card.
Losing a card <<< Card Parity <<<<<<< Card Advantage. In practice this becomes much more visible. Theoretically each of these states are separated by the same # of card, one. However, the actual effect on the game is much greater.
Value is not an easy concept to define, but in this discussion it is very relevant.
Yes, the opponent is drawing 2 cards, but your still gaining +1 cards. Yes your opponent will be receiving one more card than you, but the impact of that is based on card value, timing, and board state.
Conclusion:
Sometimes Arcane Denial will be bad, but sometimes it will be absolutely outstanding. The better your opponent's deck is against you the worse Arcane Denial becomes.
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I'm sure most of us can at least agree being able to reliably counter something like Animate Dead is well worth the card disadvantage. Remand is good, but it only slows down their win condition, it doesn't stop it. This means that in the tempo/aggro deck both cards fill the same function usually, but in the control deck you'll often times be happier to see Denial past the first few turns.
And that is exactly the point: Since you can't run two copies of Counterspell, you run Counterspell and Arcane Denial.
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I don't agree with this. I think Cancel is closer to Counterspell than Arcane Denial. I think 3 cards is very different than 1 mana. Now, I'm not trying to make the argument that Cancel is cubeworthy (although I think it's actually pretty close to being there for larger cubes), I'm just saying that just because both are 2 mana hard counters doesn't mean there isn't anything more similar to Counterspell. As this thread has been saying that Denial is at its best in a blue tempo based deck whereas Counterspell is at its best in a blue control deck. For me, if I'm playing a straight control deck, I'd rather have Cancel than Denial, especially vs aggro (where I don't want them to draw more cheap threats/burn/Armageddon) or the mirror (where card advantage is king).
Personally, I only really like Denial if I can negate the disadvantage by having a way to cheese away the opponents hand, like a Mind Twist or Balance, or if I attack their manabase with something like Tangle Wire.
But this is one of the things I love about cube and the fact that each cube is different because of our different experiences with controversial cards such as this. Differing experiences and opinions keeps it fresh.
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Right, I agree with that statement, which is why people should be evaluating Arcane Denial against Cancel or Hinder rather than against Counterspell. There, the tradeoff is a bit more clear. Would you rather include the much increased flexibility of Arcane Denial that might bite you in the butt or would you rather have a safer but far less flexible Cancel which only goes into one deck?
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