Pointed Discussion

Hmm. What sort of blue deck has more creatures? merfolk perhaps?

@Vedalken_Arbiter

one that counters enough of your opponents spells that they don't have any.

I can see Grixis and W/U using this to a great extent. The amount of removal and counter in both is more than enough to give turn this into a counterspell that has a better casting cost.

Lullmage Mentor says hi. Merfolk decks will love this! U/W Allies too I think. It'll replace Cancel in the deck that I'm running for sure.

Ehhh.
Kind of iffy for a counterspell, especially given the few creature based blue decks.

Panoramic art with Raid Bombardment.

Remember: Blue has TONS of creatures!

G/U Eldrazi token control?

where is blue going...

REPLACES Negate/Essence Scatter/Cancel if you play G/U. I'm loving the G/U push this season.

Wow, I didn't realize this "shares" art with Raid Bombardment. Even more irony to this card since Raid Bombardment has like hundreds of goblins in the background, and this just has the spellcaster and some bubbles lol.

I bet this was originally supposed to read "if you control LESS creatures than that spell's controller" but Wizards felt that it would be an almost all-the-time scenario.

I don't know how I feel about this card. It's just weird, blue isn't supposed to take advantage from having a lot of creatures, that's a white thing. Planar Chaos...

CoyoteMoon has a good point. It is weird that the art doesn't really match the card- why is there only one mage in the picture? Either the artist screwed up, or they changed the flavor of this card after it was drawn up... Also, the mage in the panoramic art isn't countering a spell, he's countering Raid Bombardment's triggered ability. That might just be a nonfactor, but still odd.

Anyway, I like the art itself; I really enjoy when they do panoramic or related cards, like Tar Pitcher and Tarfire.

I could see myself playing this in a Merfolk deck. Merfolk rely on having high numbers (for Drowner of Secrets, for instance) and if I countered a Wrath of God using something like this, I'd feel like I've earned it more than if I used a regular Counterspell.

pretty good, especially because it only costs one blue as compared to Cancel.

I guess this card doesn't want me countering my own spells, because no matter how hard I try I can't get more creatures then myself. Whatever, Counterspell will let me be an idiot.

Insanely overrated, ive even seen pro's talk about this card when they should be burning it instead, especially when in the same set there is actually a moderately mediocre counterspell variant finally in Deprive. Absolute trash in nearly every control deck, and even in a swarm deck or U/G variant id prefer using strictly superior counterspell's that dont have the risk of being a completely dead card. Even soft-counters like essence scatter and negate WILL get used eventually and do there job, but this piece of trash is no different from coin flip jank like Capricious Efreet and his ilk. Purely a casual card, and shockingly maybe the only counterspell that wont cause much resentment from the enemy, since atleast they will realize your a noob for using scrub cards like this (Albeit if somehow you end up winning they might be more enraged then a game ending cryptic command ).

Back to more serious discussion of this card, namely Limited play, counters are generally bad in limited, but in Roe things are slower and i guess the ability to counter a game breaking Eldrazi or Pestilence Demon/Deathless Angel is useful. The only little flaw in that reasoning is that the decks that are most likely to try to cast monstrous and expensive bombs will almost definitely have a hefty amount of spawn tokens and nest invader/ emrakul's hatcher like spawn providers. Once again that means that the likelihood that your Unified Will disappoints and causes you the loss is way too high, but hopefully sense and light will return to those who are blinded by the lure of a 2 cmc "hard counter", and all will acknowledge this card for the trash it is. 0.5/5 is my generous rating, and once again i have to curse the arrogance of Wotc believing that all cards deserve a token .5 minimum rating.

This card is such crap. Don't play me for a fool wizards, you have given up on making good counter spells because too many babies complained about something they didn't like. I hate mill decks and I think milling is a stupid way to win a game, are you going to stop making good mill cards now? I complained like a baby so you must, thats what you did with counter spells. And anyone claimming the "not fun" argument, you are standing on thin ice my friend. Of coarse its not FUN to get your spells countered, nor is it fun when somebody plays a Path to Exile on your Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre even before the end of your turn. Of coarse its not fun to have the cards you need in your hand and then your opponent casts Mind Shatter. That is apart of the game, if you don't like it that go play... poker or something not fun.

If you are going to play this in extended then you are not a good magic deck builder. This card is only feasable in a merfolk deck and merfolk is only feasable in extended. In extended, there are 1,000 better counter spells than this card. This card is used strickly for standard merfolk, and current there is no such deck.

when does blue control have enough creatures to play this?

Wow, people are way too critical of this card. As mentioned by several other commenters there are 2 types of control decks that would love this card: GU and Merfolk. Either would have a ton of creatures. If Merfolk is running Lullmage Mentors, the whole idea of the dang thing is to churn out enough merfolk to be able to counter anything they have with your numbers of creatures, so playing this thing would counter their spell and nab you a Merfolk. Anyway, I understand players not thinking this card is as good as other counters, but it certainly has it's place in some decks. Just because you wouldn't use it doesn't make a player who would a noob. At solid 3/5 for being a niche card that enough players would be glad to have.

*facepalm* you're doing it wrong, wizards...

Let's see.
Vampires, Merfolk, Elves, Goblins.....
For crying out loud in today's meta where half the decks don't contain more then a handful of creatures, you can easily abuse this card...especially in a tribal or token deck. 1U for a counter anything card. That's better than 'counterspell'.
Yes....it needs the right deck, but in the right deck it is better than both Mana Leak and counterspell.

I know not many people care about T1.5, but this, Deprive and a few others make G/U Control/Aggro decks complete monsters in Extended.

I've seen this card played in a U/G deck to its fullest potential.
T1: Forest, Birds of Paradise (or Llanowar Elves)
T2: Lotus Cobra, Misty Rainforest, Pop it for an Island, then cast Nest Invader off the mana produced by the Cobra.
T3: Forest, Kozilek's Predator, and mana up for this card right here, maybe even casting a Garruk Wildspeaker to untap the lands.
T4: Land, Overrun, pop Garruk, game.
Seriously, in a build of Eldrazi Spawn production, this counter is potent.
I get that the above situation isn't garunteed every time, but the point is that it's very possible for a U/G deck to make this a hard counter very quickly.
While situational, people will not throw it into a deck that can't promise more creatures than the opponent.

Not incredible, but great for decks that like this, such as Merfolk and Faeries. Well, Faeries already has Spellstutter Sprite. Fish. . . Fish has FoW and Daze in Legacy. . . and sometimes Foil.

I guess it says something that this just showed up in an aggro deck in Pro Tour Modern...

A couple of months late on this comment, but this did NOT show up in an aggro deck - it was an aggro-control deck specifically (Zoo/Catfish). Saying this showed up in a plain aggro deck is very misleading, as this deck is all about resolving one or two big, cheap threats and protecting them / clearing the way via spells. And for the metagame at the time, it was very good - one or two creatures was usually enough in a field filled with Cloudpost and all variety of combo decks.

@ TimmyForever

Delver of Secrets, Lorwyn Faeries, and Merfolk disagree with you.

I could understand the fact that this card is rated less than 4 stars if its cost was UU, but the fact that it's splashable really makes it shine, because you'd most likely need to splash another color to get creatures unless you're playing merfolk or faeries.

If your deck has blue in it and you're running lots of creatures this is a no brainer.

Do any of you actually play Magic? This card is better than any counterspell in the entire game when it's in the right deck... White Soldier/Token/Proliferate/Populate/Goblin decks....

5 out of 5... It's better than the original counterspell when you put it in a deck it's designed for.

*Faceslap*

Hey, the color weight is next to nothing. If you're running a token deck that's splashing blue, this would make a pretty good fit!

I'm seeing a lot of hate here and I'm not sure where it come from. Obviously, blue is not the color to go for large numbers of creatures, but has anyone heard of blue green, or more importantly blue white? The single U in the cost means you can use other colors to cast it, you know. It's not hard to think about dropping a Day of Judgement and then a small creature. Or maybe blue black, using kill spells and counters to keep the board clear.

Remember, if you have one creature and they have none, then you have more creatures. And isn't that the goal of any blue deck anyway?

@TimmyForever
Tarmogoyf would like a word with you, being the best blue creature in modern.

One way to run this is to have more creatures than the other guy. The fun way to use this is to make sure you have more creatures than the other guy by taking his away.

Solid 3.5