Pointed Discussion

the only cool Cancel flavortext.
Sure, its core set stuff, but does it have to show up in every block now?

Aaron's Random Card Comment of the Day #27, 11/2/10

I distinctly remember two painful transitions that Magic underwent during my days as a player. The first was the printing of painlands (like Adarkar Wastes) in Ice Age. I had my forty Revised dual lands by then, and remember being puzzled by their removal from Fourth Edition, and later irritated that their so-called “replacements” were so much worse, and didn’t even span the enemy color pairs.

The second was the printing of the card Shock in Stronghold. Lightning Bolt had disappeared a few years prior, and we had been making due with Incinerate, which had a handy anti-regeneration clause on it which (kind of) justified its additional mana and avoided the dreaded “strictly worse” comparison. It was just “worse” than Lightning Bolt. And then Shock came along, broadcasting loud and clear that Lightning Bolt was not coming back. Weak.

I didn’t really get the big picture about power level and how cards that were too good hemmed in both deck builders and card designers, I just knew that I liked powerful cards and didn’t really enjoy the feeling of having toys taken away.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t correct for my predecessors in R&D to do so. We can’t be held prisoner by earlier mistakes. Granted, we can’t go slaying sacred cows left and right, but over time steps need to be taken to course-correct any and all off-kilter aspects of this very complicated game.

With my memories of painlands and Shock still in my head, it was with a conflicted heart that I went along with the plan to print Cancel in Time Spiral. Its powerful forefather, Counterspell, hadn’t been seen since Seventh Edition, and we had been doing a little dance with cards like Hinder trying every way we could to not have to bring back Counterspell and yet not print something strictly worse. But eventually, for the betterment of the game going forward, you have to bite the bullet, print the “correct” simple card, and recalibrate the power curves.

We got to “hide” it in Time Spiral as an homage to the Alpha staple, art and all, but the jig was up when the card showed up in Tenth Edition, and then Shards of Alara. It was here to stay. The transition was not without pain, I understand that, and want to minimize those kinds of experiences in general. And heck, we brought Lightning Bolt back, so who knows what future R&D teams will repeal?

I’ve often defended Cancel publicly, and not because I’m trying to rub salt in anyone’s wounds or lord it over them that we broke their toys, but rather because I find enjoyment pointing out to people that cards they think are universally accepted as “weak” or “terrible” are actually showing up in successful tournament decklists.

As with Adarkar Wastes, or Shock, or Tectonic Edge, or any number of cards that are strictly worse than cards from Magic’s early years, when Cancel shows up in top-tier constructed lists, it says to me that we--or whoever was in R&D at the time--was probably correct in toning things down a bit, even if "why" isn't always apparent to most players.

...but then they kept it...

So the flavour text here corroborates the old Counterspell's art's assertion that a spell failing makes your fingers melt.

I just want you to know, metalevolence, that I rated your post a five; It made me laugh.

I'd go with Dissapate over this any day.

I still believe that Shock was right, Cancel was wrong, and reprinting Lightning Bolt while continuing to not print Counterspell is double-super-deluxe wrong. Proactive spells should be weaker than reactive ones, because reactive ones don't inherently do anything. If you have a super-strong counterspell, but your opponent never actually casts a spell, you're just sitting there accomplishing nothing, which means all your opponent has to do is wait until your patience gives out and you squander your resources and give him an opening. Strong counterspells create an interesting tension in gameplay as you need to balance counteroffense with the need to actually accomplish anything. Strong burn, by converse, just lets you randomly win games in a lame way by bolting the opponent for 3 right when he stabilizes, making him feel like he wasted his effort shuffling. Sure, my philosophy can lead to games taking forever, but I think that's preferable to ten-minute blowouts which are crushing for the loser and hardly prove anything about the winner. A game with Counterspell feels like chess, a duel of wits that resonates down through the ages; a game with Lightning Bolt feels like Tic-Tac-Toe, an utter waste of time where the outcome is predetermined before the game even starts.

@willpell: I agree with most of your reasoning, but not your conclusion :)

Cheap counterspells mean that games stagnate; it also makes it very hard to recover from an early fall behind. Imagine you're up against a deck full of Mana Leak, Deprive, Spell Pierce, Psychic Barrier, Negate... and that's from a quick Gatherer search of cards in Standard, CMC <=2, "counter target spell". Now, imagine that your opponent has four or five lands out, and you missed a couple of land drops and are stuck on two. Then you start drawing lands, and you now have a reasonable amount of mana. But your opponent counters every spell you cast, and meanwhile is attacking you, milling you, or proliferating poison counters onto you. You're behind the game, and you're going to STAY behind the game until you die, because your opponent needs only two open lands to stop you from doing things. You can't Doom Blade his creature, because he has a counterspell. You can't cast your own creature, because he has a counterspell. You can't bring out an Elixir of Immortality, because he has a counterspell.

See what's happening? Counterspell answers 99% of things you want to do, with the caveat that you have to react instantly (as opposed to Doom Blading a creature or Shattering an artifact, which you can do a couple of turns later if necessary).

Yes, cheap counterspells create tension. But is it a good tension? And is it a better tension than that created by back-and-forth creature casting?

Interesting side note, that is actually a self portrait of Mark Poole on the Timespiral art.

Quoting willpell: "If you have a super-strong counterspell, but your opponent never actually casts a spell, you're just sitting there accomplishing nothing, which means all your opponent has to do is wait until your patience gives out and you squander your resources and give him an opening."

Try to play a game without ever casting a spell. Or actually try to wait til a control player 'squander' their grip of counterspells - something tells me that it just won't happen. You just made up these words since you want to bring back the dominance of blue just so you can watch your opponents writhe in pain for 10+ minutes a game, not being able to resolve a spell.

I play blue too (and every other color) and I win with Mana Leak and Cancel. Just 4 - 6 counterspells in a deck, and takes much more to play than your 'stop them all with super-strong counterspells' mindset.

I miss Counterspell. But I can see why this is fixed. Of course, so is my dog. He doesn't like it any better than the players do.

Counterspells are an inherently powerful part of the game. Counterspells are an "easy" foil to most strategies.. just counter the key card of a combo or synergy and you actually nullify more than one card.

From the start I thought cancel is a fair cost for a hardcounter. I'm not saying it is a powerful card, but comparable to the fairness of doom blade or naturalize, or possibly Incinerate.

ah shaddup blue players; you already got Mana Leak back!

Each Time Spiral card was an homage to at least one previously printed card.

This card is referencing Counterspell, right down to the original printing's art, as well as flavor text referencing the original art's famous 'melty fingers.' Also of note, Mark Poole is the same artist for both cards, and both contained self-portraits of Poole as he looked at the time.

This is the correct cost for a catch all counterspell. I'm glad Time Spiral existed, so many basic niches were filled with the correct cost.

> We can’t be held prisoner by earlier mistakes.

*cough* Reserved List *cough*

the look on that guy's face is the same look every control player had when wizard's printed this instead of counterspell

The look on the guys face is amazing

2.5 Stars