Pointed Discussion

I prefer Aura of Silence.

in a pinch you could play this on your own artifact or enchantment

Now White's getting limited counterspells, this is reprintable. With the cost reduced to W, even.

Piece of crap, just use disenchant. Not only do you not have your opponent gain life, this card requires timing and mana at the right time. Using this to gain life from countering your own cards? Let me remind you that you have wasted two cards to gain life when you can play something like 2 healing salves. Complete piece of crap.
I can understand that you probably don't want the card to activate once it hits the field but disenchant is always better in all cases. If you can't deal with a card hitting on the field for one turn then your deck doesn't deserve to be played.

Seems like this could cost if you got the life, might be a bit more intresting also. The way it is right now it isn't really that effective. Oh well, they can't all be winners.

stops darksteel forge and other crap that is hard to remove otherwise, White counterspell FTW

Other than what brockdjwest said, Disenchant beats this for everything that isn't indestructible (as Shoe2 said) and doesn't have ETB effects. For indestrucible artifacts, it's mostly beaten by Revoke Existance. In short, no a good card.

This could get some use in a Kavu Predator deck, as some nice surprise life gain and counter, but seems like it might be hard to use. If this was it would be infinitely more applicable.

Counterspell for white cant complain too much but yeah its bad

this is not good when White got disenchant anyway...

This was printed two years before Annul. White does get limited counterspells now, so White Annul (no lifegain) might be fair.

Awesome, but mostly just for the novelty. Mirage was an early set, and a white counterspell was noteworthy and unexpected, no matter how bad it was.

In theory, this could protect you from artifacts with shroud, or artifacts with game-winning instant-speed effects (Grindstone, I'm lookin' at you and yer crazy Painter's Servant combo.) In practice, when those circumstances arise you'll just be cursing yourself for tapping out the turn before.

Splurge for Return to Dust if Darksteel is causing you problems, bomb the board with Purify if shrouded/hexproofed artifacts are giving you nightmares, or splash blue for Spell Snare if you're that afraid of instant-speed winnery like Grindstone. (Note that both True Believer and Runed Halo offer ongoing protection from that kind of stuff for .)

If you just like the idea of countering stuff unexpectedly with a mono-white deck, try Mana Tithe, Rebuff the Wicked, and Lapse of Certainty (which can function as Time Walk for if you play it well).

Accept against indestructible artifacts, I'd almost always prefer Disenchant. Of course, this can stop some pesky enter the battlefield effects, such as Sundering Titan.

@Fanaticmogg - There are many important cases where countering a spell is vastly superior to letting it resolve and destroying the resulting permanent. A few examples:
- Solemn Simulacrum
- Spike of Ish Sah
- Hatching Plans
- Wurmcoil Engine
- Door to Nothingness (only if they've got some way of using it right away, but if they do it's kind of important!)
- Fists of Ironwood (If you REALLY don't want them getting those tokens)

You get the idea. Anything with ETB/LTB effects you are much better off countering, and some things have pretty nasty ones. Plus anything where they can respond to destruction with abilities off the permanent.

Even without cases like that, letting something like Enchanted Evening resolve can allow your opponent to do shenanigans in response to you blowing it up. Having the permanent never hit the field in the first place is a big deal.