Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #604: Designing Counterspells

Episode Date: January 18, 2019

This is the first in my "Designing [Blank]" series where I talk about how to design basic Magic effects.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. And I dropped my daughter off at school. Okay, so today we're going to start a new series. The series is called Designing Blink. Where what I'm going to do is take basic things that we do, just basic effects that magic has, and talk about how we design for them. So our first foray into this will be designing counterspells. So I'm going to talk all about what we need to do to make counterspells.

So first thing we need to do is we need to do some definitional stuff and talk a little bit about how we define counterspells. So the first distinction I want to bring up is what we call a soft counter spell and a hard counter spell. This is a term that R&D uses. Okay, so a hard counter spell is a counter spell where it just says counter target spell. What that means is it counters anything. It doesn't matter what the spell is. It doesn't matter what the opponent does.

It's just going to counter the spell is. It doesn't matter what the opponent does. It's just going to counter the spell. You have 100% certainty that you are going to be countering the spell with the spell. A soft counter means that there's some condition to it that means it won't necessarily

counter everything. It could only counter a certain subset of spells. It could only counter a certain subset of spells. It could only counter the, you know, sometimes it could counter them unless the opponent does something. A soft counter means that there might be means in which I can't counter everything. Like a hard counter is, if I have a hard,

here's the way to think of it is, if I have a hard counter in my hand, no matter what you do, you know, I can stop anything you can do. This allows me to stop anything. A soft counter means, oh, well, I conditionally can stop you, but not necessarily everything. Or you might be able to take steps to keep me from stopping you. So why do we differentiate between these two? One, it has to do with how many we make. For example, we try to put a hard counterspell and a soft counterspell at common in most large sets.

Sometimes we'll have a second soft counterspell at common, depending on the set. But usually, there's two counterspells at common, one hard, one soft. Uncommon, we will usually have another hard and another soft counterspell. Uncommon, sometimes we'll have one or the other. Not necessarily always both. Where at common, we tend to have both. And then at rare,

we don't always have counterspells at rare. I mean, we do have them at rare, but it's not every set necessarily won't have rare counterspells. It is something we do, and it is something we will do, but it's like, for example, you will always see at common a hard and a soft counter. Like I said, sometimes two, but you will always see that at common. That is something we normally do. Another difference between a hard and a soft counter spell is the mana required to cast it. One of our requirements for a hard counter spell

is, well originally it was you had to have two blue mana. Counter spells are in blue. We've over the years relaxed that. Now what we say is if it's a hard counter, you need at least two colored mana. So what does that mean? So in mono blue, it still means you need blue blue if you're going to have a hard counter but in multicolor it allows us to have hard counters in which just blue is there's just one single blue mana so something like

like absorb for example is one blue white maybe absorb is a bad example there's some more modern ones where it's a hard counter but it just has two, it's blue hard counter, but it just has two. It's, you know, blue and some other color, and then uses some generic mana, and it's a hard counter. But the reason we did that is a lot of times in multicolor play, we like, we've been getting out of the habit

of doing too much of dedicated, where there's multiple. I mean, we do some, but we've been lessening it, and it allows us to make counter spells that are multicolored in a way that is just a little cleaner. Okay, the next thing we have to differentiate between is what I will call a vanilla counter spell versus an added effect or an added cost. And what that means is a vanilla counterspell is counter target spell. I will get into the types of counterspells. There's some

other things I would consider vanilla where you're countering a subset but that's all you're doing is just countering a spell. Usually vanilla means all I'm doing is I counter something. Whatever I counter, that's all I'm countering. That's what the spell does. Counter target spell or target subset spell, and that's all it does. That's a vanilla counter spell. Added effect means that in addition to countering the spell, you're doing

something else. And you will notice that there's a lot of spells that do that, where I counter a spell, then I have a rider on the spell, then I do something else. Added cost means that usually it's a cheaper counter spell, but there's some additional cost I need to do it for it. Meaning, oh, in order to do this, I need to spend some additional cost, usually over and above mana, usually is how it works. I have to return something to my hand, or I have to sacrifice something, or there's some payment I am making.

We don't do a lot of this last category of the added cost, just usually when we look at spells, vanilla means that I'm going to do the basic effect and I'll pay accordingly. Added effect means it's going to cost a little more than normal, but I get some other ability. Added cost means it's a little bit cheaper

but there's something I have to do that is usually a negative sometimes the added cost by the way is not a cost per se sometimes it's an effect but an effect that is negative but usually if your counter spell is cheaper than average there has to be downside to it

and that downside usually by you paying additional costs or the effect being something that you generally don't want to have happen. The last category that we look into when making a counterspell is whether or not it's an instant, so all counterspells are instants because they're reactionary,

or it's another card type. And because they're reactive, usually if it's a permanent, it needs to have flash on it. So a common thing we'll do is creatures that haven't entered the battlefield, in fact, that counters a spell or some subset of that, and it has flash so that you can play it at a time in which you can react. The vast majority of our counter spells are, in fact, instants. Like, when we talk about common, most of the time it's common. But we do occasionally do permanents.

And usually when we do permanents, there's a couple ways to do it. One is you can do an enter the battlefield effect, and then it'll have flash, usually, you know, permanent. Or another common thing is it can have a cost to counter a spell. Sometimes that cost requires you sacrificing the creature. That's more common these days. You know, originally, once upon a time we'd made more, like we would make like Urtai, the original Urtai for example, where it's a permanent that can continually counter things. We don't really do repeatable countering

anymore where a single permanent can continually counter things. That is not something we do a lot of. But, we do do a more common thing you'll see, and we even do occasionally a common, is a counter spell sitting on a permanent

that usually requires mana and sacking. So it has the ability to counter a spell and the opponent... Now that's an open... Another distinction here. Open versus closed. Open means my opponent knows I have the counter spell so that they have the ability to play around it.

Closed or secret means that my opponent doesn't definitively know I have the counterspell, but they can try to read what I'm doing to figure out whether I have a counterspell. A real common example there would be where, oh, I'm leaving mana open at a time. I didn't cast a spell on my turn. I'm leaving mana open. That kind of hints at a counterspell. Now you can be bluffing or something. kind of hints at a counterspell.

Now you can be bluffing or something. But the difference is when it's open information, that's considered a weaker counterspell because the opponent, one of the big powers of a counterspell in general is the opponent doesn't definitively know it's there. There are clues, you know, open man stuff, but

they don't necessarily know. And the fact that you can bluff, the fact that I can pretend that I have something that I don't have, means that sometimes even though I'm showing that I have a counterspell, it doesn't even mean that I have a counterspell. So there's a lot of give and take on counterspells. And we like, one of the things that's fun about counterspells is that there's a big bluffing aspect of counterspells. So we like to build that in.

One of the things I'll be talking about is a lot of how we make counter spells has to do with costing. One of the things to remember in general is counter spells are mostly reactive. Like I said, there is the permanent type to sacrifices where while it's reactive, at least it's

open reactive. So because things that are closed or secret, we want to make sure that you have the ability to play them. We don't tend to make counterspells that get all that expensive. Pretty much, I will put counterspells in three categories.

What I'll say are cheap counterspells, or counterspells that cost one or two mana. Usually those are things that don't aren't, normally they're not hard counters. You know, the original counter spell caused blue-blue, but the default now is cancel, which is one blue-blue.

Oh, let me explain this real quickly. Just as a... When magic first came out in alpha, in... I think counter spell was originally uncommon, and then we moved it down to common in later sets. So it was two blue mana,

so blue-blue, counter target spell, Instant, or originally it was interrupt, back when we had interrupts, but later it would become instant. Counter-target spell. We then realized that that was just a little bit too aggressive. It was a little bit too strong. That two mana was too much. So we

made cancel. So cancel is one blue-blue. So cancel is counter-spell, but one more mana. One with an additional generic mana. What we've discovered. So cancel is counter spell, but one more mana, with an additional generic mana. What we've discovered is that cancel is a little under. From a constructed standpoint, it's kind of

fringe, meaning it sees play every once in a while, but mostly out of kind of desperation. It is a little bit weak. Really, if we cost it counter spells correctly, it wants to cost about half a generic mana and two blue. But we don't do, other than unhinge, we don't

do that. So what we do now is we'll do counter spells that cost two mana, provided there's an additional cost to them, or they only hit a subset of things. And if we're talking hard counters, if it

costs one or two mana, there's additional costs that go along with it. It's not just mana. Or, if it's, often now we will make three mana counter spells that are hard counters, but they have an extra rider on them. Because you get a little extra bonus on cancel. There's space for us to do extra things. So if we're trying to push a counter spell for a constructed, often we'll do cancel plus something. And that's how we make a lot of our constructed counter spells.

Okay. Sorry. Back to... So there's three, what I call three categories of counter spells from a side. There's small, cheap counter spells, which cost one or two mana. Those are seldom hard counter spells, although everyone's in a blue moon. Might be a hard counter with an additional cost.

They tend to be things that are... Usually they're things that hit only a subset or are things your opponent can work around. Then you have the medium counter spells, which are 3 and 4 mana. Those tend to be where most of the hard counters end up. And a lot of our constructed shots tend to be around 3 and 4 mana. I mean. And a lot of our constructed shots tend to

be around 3 and 4 mana. I mean, 1 and 2 can be constructed shots, but they're usually not hard counters, they're soft counters. Then we have what I would call the expensive counter spells, tend to be about 5 or 6. We don't do much more than 6. I'm not going to say never,

we've made a few, but normally in counter spells, once you start getting to five and six it's, you know, it's a lot of mana to leave open as a reaction. And even the five and six ones have to have a pretty big net effect that you

would be willing to sort of do them. So that we don't even make tons of the expensive ones. We made some. Usually there are counterlls that have a strong rider where the idea is they go in a deck that counters and there are things that help

you sort of advance a lot in the game. Oh, another important thing before I get into the subsets of counterspells. When we first... So long ago, in Magic's early days, we were much more aggressive on our counterspells. And

so much so, that there was a popular deck type called a permission deck. So what a permission deck was, was a... sometimes they called it draw-go. What it meant was, it was a deck in which it was mostly counterspells. In fact, the traditional Drago deck was almost nothing but counterspells. And the idea being that what I'm going to do is just prevent you from playing every single card

I can, that it all matters. I mean, I might let you play things that are supporting, but themselves are not threats. But then I will just counter every threat that you produce so that you have no way to win. And then eventually, the way that the decks win is

they use some small incremental advantage to beat you. So like, CMU Blue, Eric Lauer, back in the day, he was part of Team CMU, and he made a deck called CMU Blue that Randy, I think, played in one of the worlds and was made into a world deck, for example. And it was, the whole shtick of the deck is

that it counters every single spell, and then it has a card drawing that allows it to draw X cards. And then when it wants to win, it just makes you, your opponent, draw X cards. And the rule of card drawing is if I have to draw a card and I can't, I lose. So the idea is early in the game,

it's drawing cards as a means to get to the counter spells and stuff. Late in the game, it can be its win condition. So the idea was it was a card that fit early in the game, it's drawing cards as a means to get to the counter spells and stuff. Late in the game, it can be its win condition. So the idea was it was a card that fit perfectly in the deck that did what the deck wanted to, to allow it to gain control, and then later in the game could double as a win condition. Another common thing sometimes you'll see in these kind of decks were lands that tap for colorless, but had the ability to turn into creatures, so that early in the game I'm just using them for mana, but later on they become the creatures that can start winning the game, because my opponent has no, you know, I counter all his threats and answers, so that

my little guy can win the game for me. What happened was, those decks are not particularly fun to play against. Like, one of the things that over... One of the things that we try to do is figure out where are things fun and not fun, and, like, where are the pinch points? Like, where... Like, what mechanic makes more people unhappy than happy?

Like, we want people to have access to things. It's not, for example, we don't want people to be able to counter spells. Counter spells is a very interesting and dynamic component of the game. But what we found was, there were certain kind of decks that the way the deck

worked is, I'm just never going to let you do anything. And so the whole game is, you don't do anything. And the three worst sort of versions of this were the counter spell deck, where I just counter every single thing you do. The land destruction deck, where I destroy all your single thing you do, the land-destruction deck, where I destroy all your land so you can never play anything, and the hand-destruction

deck, the card-discard deck, where I just make you lose all the cards out of your hand so you never have a card that you can cast. And what these three decks have in common is when the decks are doing what they're supposed to be doing, the opponent doesn't even get to play. One of the things that's very intimidating about these decks when they were

powerful was I would early on do something and then you literally would have games where I can't do literally nothing. I can do nothing the whole game. And that is very frustrating. So while we continue to have discard and land destruction and counter spells,

one of the things we do right now is make sure that they don't exist in a large enough volume from a strength-wise that you can make decks in which your opponent just doesn't do anything. That that general gameplay is not particularly fun.

And so that's something we have to be very careful about. So we do do counter spells. We like counter spells. We want people playing counter spells in Constructed. It's just a matter of how...

how... how often and how powerful in general the things are. Now, limited counterspells are an important part of any limited play, and, you know, we, like I said, we make sure common has counterspells at common in every set we make. Okay, so let me talk a little bit about the kinds of counter spells. There are categories of counter spells. So let me talk about that. Okay, so first is what I would call the subset counter spell. And what that means is it's a soft counter spell because it doesn't counter everything. It counters something. Usually a subset will counter just a kind of thing or a grouping of things. So let's walk through the kinds of subsets that we can have. Number one is card types. So a very common thing to do, for example, remove soul

is a very common one of these subset spell. Counter target creature. We'll have spells that counter target non-creature. Sometimes we'll counter target instant or sorcery. Now, when we have spells that counter normally in normal magic we will counter creatures, we will counter non-creatures, we will counter instant sorceries.

The reason for it is in limited there's enough creatures being played that that's always relevant. And because removal is so important in Limited, countering non-creature spells and or instants and sorceries is very valuable in protecting your creatures. So those are all spells that any Limited deck can play. So those are stuff we do all the time. We will do stuff, for example, like counter an enchantment or counter an artifact in a set

that has a theme that's playing into that space. But we tend not to do the card type subsets unless there's a theme that runs in. Like, for example, in Mirrodin, oh, it has an artifact theme. Well, we ended up putting

the funny thing there is, I originally made a card I called Malfunction, which was a single blue mana to counter-target artifact. But that got turned into a null, which is a card that already existed, which is for a single blue mana to counter-target artifact or enchantment. At the time, the reason I made Malfunction

was the set had enough artifacts in it that you would play, especially limited and sometimes in standard, a counter-spell to Countered Artifacts. We didn't need the Ore Enchantment Rider. But it was decided that, I don't know, for various reasons, not to make the Strictly Worse a null, so we just made it null in Mirrodin. But the one thing you'll notice is,

when we have themes where the card type matters for the theme, we are very conscious of making sure that we have counterspells for that subset. Okay. That is card type. Next is color. In another subset, you will see things that care about color. Normally the most common thing you'll see—oh, whoa, sorry. Okay.

Somebody just cut me off so anyway I'm okay but one of the drives to work you get the real me driving to work experience somebody just okay oh it's good

the sorry safety first sometimes throws my concentration my rule of thumb is always make sure that I'm driving safely first. So that is... Okay.

Collected again. Back to counterspells. Okay. So... Oh, subsets. When we do color, the most common thing, because blue is the counterspell in color, is to counter green or black spells, because those are green's enemies. Not blue's enemies, green and black.

We've had blue counter... Hasn't blue countered other colors? It's for sure countered green and black. Sometimes it's green, sometimes it's black, sometimes it's green and black. In multicolored sets, we will have it counter multicolored spells. We will have it counter monocolored spells. Sometimes there are different groupings of things. But, you know, one of the stuff

that we'll do sometimes is color. Another one we'll do is convert a mana cost. Sometimes blue will counter cheap spells. I think it's counter expensive spells, but normally it's more blue will counter cheap spells. I think it's counter expensive spells, but normally it's more likely to counter cheap spells. But it can care about the size of the spell. And then there are a lot of subsets that just sort of depend upon

the theme that we're going on, the theme that we're playing around with. Sometimes, for example, we let blue counter not just spells, but sometimes abilities. Usually when it counters abilities, it counters spells and abilities. Countering abilities in the early days was green,

like rust and stuff. But we've shifted it over to blue. Blue mostly is the countering countering abilities and additional countering spells as far as other subsets I mean blue can anything blue is allowed to counter

any kind of spell that we want to say sometimes in the past we've had to counter certain mechanics sometimes it counters certain types of creatures. If the creatures are a big enough theme,

like often we'll do remove silver just counters a creature, but sometimes we'll get even narrower. But a lot of it, a lot of the subsets for counterspells is what is the theme you're playing around with? What might people want within this theme? So let me, one of the challenges in general, by the way, what is the theme you're playing around with? What might people want within this theme? So let me, one of the challenges in general, by the way, of designing counter spells is that there's not a lot of space for elegance.

You know, there's not a lot of design-wise, there's only so many different things that you can do. I mean, blue, because it's, blue's a reactionary color, counterspell's a reactionary, and what that means is that there's a subset of things you can do. So one of the things that we're very conscious of on counterspells is that we are much more willing to reprint counterspells than most effects, and the reason for that is there's just a limited number of counterspells that are nice and clean and simple, and we've made a lot of them. Not all

of them, but we've made a lot of them. And so, counterspells are one of the things you'll most often see us reprint. More so than almost any other effect. Because of the limitations of counterspells, it just fences

you in a little bit and gives you less space to play around. Okay, that is the subset counterspell. Let's talk about the mana leak. So the mana leak is a spell that says I'm going to counter your spell

unless you pay some cost. The vast, vast majority of the time that cost is mana. Usually when we make mana leaks, we don't, with rare exceptions, usually it's three or us mana. Usually when we make mana leaks, we don't, with rare exceptions, usually it's three or less mana. Usually it's one, two, or three.

And the idea being, the reason we don't do mana leaks for much more than three is, there just comes a point where for all intents and purposes, it's a counter spell. It's a hard counter. Like if I say,

counter your spell unless you pay six, well how often do you cast a spell you have the mana and cast a spell and then have enough leftover mana that if we did that you could pay that

so mana leaks tend to be a little bit smaller sometimes we'll do X spells in mana leaks that is the only place where we let you do

larger stuff is where it's X so it scales along with the mana. So, earlier in the game, I don't have the ability

to make you spend a lot of mana when you don't have it. And then in the late game, when you do have more mana, then I can try to use that. So,

the X mana leak is the one example where we'll let you force your opponent to pay more mana. But it scales because it's X. Now,

most of Counterspelllls are in blue. This is one space, because taxing is primarily a white thing, we have let white dabble just a little tiny bit in the mana leak space. Mostly, the ones we've done, you just have to pay a little tiny bit. We don't do... Blue has mana leaks and stuff, just have to pay a little tiny bit. We don't do... Blue has, you know, mana leaks and stuff, we have to pay like three. White, normal, when we've done them, we've made you pay a little less than that.

But, one of the things, I guess, I'll talk about this since we're talking about counterspells, is people complain sometimes that counterspells are so locked in blue that really nobody else has regular access to counterspells. I mean, we give white a little bit, and

I'll get to some stuff in a second that red can do. But why is that? And usually what people say is, hey, there's no other spell effect that's like that. And then my answer is, well, yes, there is. For example, discard is a good example where primarily black does discard. There's some fuzzy areas where blue and red will play in the space. But not often. You know, blue does a little bit of straight-up discard and more of, like, filtering that you can target your opponent if you need to.

And red does wheel fortune effects and stuff where you discard your hand and draw cards, but none of them do straight up sort of, you know, or very frequently do normal just discard effects. So, I mean, there are effects that we do that. The one major reason we haven't really pushed it out to other colors is it is not a fact that in volume is something that we like, as I explained earlier.

So the problem with putting something in the second color is it just increases the amount people can play in a deck. Because right now, if you want to play a heavier counterspell deck, you're very heavy on blue. And if counterspells were spread evenly in the second color, it would make

it much easier to make a concentration of spells. That is why it's in blue. Anyway, Man of the League, occasionally in white. We have toyed over the years of trying different

things of where to put counter spells, and we've definitely bled in a couple different places. Like I said, I'll get to some stuff in a second. But blue is our primary place for doing it. And I think white is where we've most recently been dabbling just a little bit. Okay.

Next, delaying counter spells. So what a delaying counter spell is, is I counter your spell, but I give it back to you. I might put it back in your hand. I might have put it on top of your library, like Memory Lapse is a very famous one that I put on top of the library. So delaying spell means that I stop you, but I haven't permanently stopped you, I've temporarily stopped you. We don't do a lot of delaying counterspells. Um, they, uh, I think when we sort of cut down on the number of counterspells we do,

like, people sort of prefer the more traditional counterspells, so we don't do as much delaying. We've talked a little bit about moving delaying stuff into white. Um, we did make a white memory lapse at one point. Um, because white is the color of delay. Um, and, you know delay and the interesting thing about delay and counter spell sorry, is that it's it's kind of temporarily

stopping it and it's situational like delay and counter spell is a counter spell because I might have resources and if you stop me I have to then build up the resources meaning that there can be long term repercussions A delaying counterspell is a counterspell because I might have resources, and if you stop me, I have to then build up the resources, meaning that there can be long-term repercussions,

even though if I get the spell back that it's being countered. The perfect example could be, there's a giant combat in which my... There's a big combat going on in which my giant growth will turn the tides, and turn it such that what would be a horrible thing for me becomes a good thing for me. Well, if I counter that giant growth, even though you get it back, if it stops the momentum in that moment of me, I might lose all these creatures that I would have won

or lose a creature, but maybe an important creature, that I would have kept. And situationally, it really can matter. So one of the things about the delaying ones is sort of playing in that it can be very strong against situational things

where stopping it now is not replicated later. Like I said, we don't do tons of these, but it is a category that we do. Okay, let me get into a category

we do a lot of. It's what I'll call the set mechanic. And what that is, is because counterspells are so... You know, I talked about how there's a limited amount of space to do counterspells. There's only so many different ways to do nice, clean, elegant spells. It is very attractive when we have a new mechanic to want to try to use a new mechanic when we can for counter spells.

And when we can, we do. The reasons we might not is a couple. One is counter spells need to be reactionary. Some spell effects don't work really well with reaction and so we have to be sort of careful some things are more proactive oh very quickly another differentiation when I say reactive what I mean by that is if I can't stop your spell until you play the spell

I have to sit and wait for you to do something before I have my answer to it I can only answer your thing once you've done it. Proactive means I answer it ahead of time. Like Meddling Mage is kind of a classic proactive spell, where I name a spell, and then

I get to counter it. I, essentially, you can't play the spell, because it essentially will be countered if you played it. Proactive spells is a little more in white space than blue. One of blue's weaknesses is its need to be reactive, where white gets to be more proactive. So when we do... I don't know if people necessarily think of them as counter spells

because you think counter spells as being reactive, but there are proactive stuff we make, like memory... Meddling Mage, sorry, Meddling Mage type spells. We tend to put those in white. Okay, so blue, we like to do set mechanics. Sometimes we can't do them because they can't be reactive. Some times we have problems with them because some mechanics are very open information.

And we do not like having too many counter spells that are open information. We'll do a little bit on creatures, but we tend not to do hard counters anymore that are open information. We do it once in a blue moon, but we don't do it very often. Usually we do soft counters. Mana leaks are a very common thing that we'll put on a creature. You can sack the creature. But we tend to put things that are open information

so the opponent knows about them and can play around them, and it's more like, oh, it's a restriction you have to play around. That, like, if I have a creature that lets me sack it to mana leak for one, more what that creature does, rather than actually counter the spells, is it says to you, your spell's loss

costs one extra. Unless you want to sort of try to goad me into sacrificing my creature. But anyway, where we can, we like doing the set mechanics on things. That's something that's important to us, and we like doing that. And wherever we can, we will. Other things that I will call counterspell adjacent, which are things that are kind of like counterspells, but not technically counterspells.

For example, spell redirection. That is when I change the targets of the spell. I don't stop the spell, but I change the targets. And in a lot of ways, it's kind of like, Spell Redirection is kind of like, I copied your version and then got my own version. So it functions in a lot of ways like a counterspell, even though it technically isn't a counterspell.

And the ability is not just in blue, but also in red. Although, we do Spell Redirection usually at rare and above. There also is Spell Copying, which not, once again, not exactly a counter spell. But in counter magic, when you're fighting a counter spell war, you can use copy spells to copy the copy spells that are copying you.

So you can, I play a spell, you counter it. I then use my copy spell to copy your countering spell, and then use it to counter your counter spell. So in certain circumstances, copy spells can function like counter spells. And once again, spell copying is also something that red can do. Both blue and red do that. So there are a bunch of things, a bunch of, like, tension. Oh, another thing that we do sometimes is hexproof granting.

Both blue and green have hexproof, and if you have a spell that grants a creature hexproof, it is a lot like countering a spell that targets a creature. We do that more than green. Like, in blue, a lot of times, we'll just counterspell that targets a creature. But we can grant hexproof. We can

do that in blue. Once again, it's done a little more in green than in blue, but it can be done in blue. So there are a lot of tangential things. Okay. So now, early on I talked about how there's vanilla, there's added effect, and there's added cost. Added cost I don't need to talk too much about. Normally the added cost is sacrificing something,

bouncing something, or paying something like life, which is just extra. And the idea there is, normally what we like to do, like one of the common tricks we like to do is, because Counterspell is so iconic for so long, that the idea you can Counterspell for two blue mana,

we often will make spells in which there's an extra cost to it, but the bare mana requirement is two blue mana. So it's like, ha-ha, it's like counterspell. For two blue mana, you can counterspell. Yeah, there's another cost. It's not quite counterspell. But it has a lot of the vibe of counterspell, which people tend to like. Okay, but the last area, which is the bigger area, which is the added effects.

And this is how a lot of counter spells are made. Once again, sometimes it's a hard counter add effect, sometimes a soft counter add effect. But the idea here is I counter target spell or subset of spell, and then I get something extra. Now, the tricky thing about it is that because it's reactionary, you can't do effects that only want to be used at a particular time. So, for example, let's say I said target attacking creature gets a bonus.

Well, that's a really weird counterspell. When can I use it? Well, I can only use it when I have an attacking creature. So that's a really narrow window. Counterspells are already narrow. The counterspell already is you have to wait for them to cast a spell, and then you have to have the mana to cast the spell to stop it. That's a lot of hoops to already jump through.

So, one of the things about the additive abilities that we've got to be careful about is you need to pick things that sort of work at any time they're done. And that cuts a lot out. There's actually not, and most

counter spells are mono blue. So, one of the reasons we reprint a lot out. There's actually not, and most counter spells are mono blue. So one of the reasons we reprint a lot of spells is there's not an endless number of effects that you can do. Now what I will say is there are two categories. What I will put generic which is, look the game always does it. Okay, draw a card

or loot or scry or mill your opponent or do things that blue does that can be done at any time that have relevance. The other thing is set-specific things, where it's like, oh, well, this set is doing something. I can do that thing. Oh, are you making a treasure?

Are you making a clue? Are you doing something in which there's extra... The set has a thematic theme that's doing something and hey here's an action I can take that I normally can't do but in this set I can do. The other thing in making is when you're doing multicolor cards

where it's blue plus a second ability sorry, second color the added abilities are almost always done on the second color for two reasons. One is, in order to make it a multicolor card, we like when the colors get represented. Sometimes we make multicolor cards

where there's a focused effect that both colors can do or where the combined elements of it feel like it's two colors. But a lot of times we're doing a counterspell. It's like, look, the counterspell feels like the blue part of the card. Well, let's do something that the other part does. The other reason we like to do it is, you know, counterspells with added abilities that are blue things we do all the time. So it is hard to find a blue ability that we haven't made a counterspell out of

that works on a reactor spell that is something evergreen. And so when you mix with a multicolored card, you just get the added value of doing some stuff you don't normally get to do. And that's a lot of the fun of making multicolored counterspells is the fact that you can make decks that are a little bit different. You know, the control decks, the most common control decks are either mono blue or blue white, just because white has a lot of tools that work well in sort of preventing the opponent from doing things, which is what a control deck wants to do. As far, by the way,

as power level, it is not that we don't make counter spells that are good counter spells. We do. We definitely push counter spells. If you go look at any standard, you know, provided that blue is viable, you know, usually you see some counter spells being played. But what gets played and how can be very variable. Cancel is a perfect example where there's environments where you would never think to play cancel. And there's environments where cancel is actually

a pretty important card in the metagame. So it can vary quite a bit. Oh, another thing to talk about is another valuable resource. So what is probably the most valuable resource of Counterspells? Is it different effects that you can do?

No, although there is definitely a limit there. Probably one of the biggest issues of resource we have with Counterspells is the name. So what we have found is, Magic is 25 years old. There are certain effects we do all the time. And the two biggest would be Direct Damage Spells and Counterspells. And the problem is, now that we do them, direct damage is very centered in red,

and counter spells is very centered in blue, so much so that at common, there are multiples in every set at common, and uncommon, and often at rare, that there are a lot of counter spells every set. So over the years, if every set has four to eight counter spells, and we make four sets a year, and plus there's supplemental sets that also have other counterspells, we quickly sort of, we just make a lot of spells that require you to say, oh, well, the idea is I'm stopping their spell. Hey, give me

a name that means I'm stopping their spell. And what we discovered is we are just running out of nice, clean, simple names. In fact, if you see a counterspell and it has a relatively clean name, one of the things that should tell you is we're planning to bring this back. We think this is a simple and elegant enough version of a counterspell that we're going to reprint it. And we think about that now.

When we make a counterspell, if we think of the counterspell, like when you name cards, you either can name it generically and we think about that now. When we make a counterspell, if we think of the counterspell, like, when you name cards, you either can name it generically so that any set can use it, or you can name it specifically so that set can use it. And often with counterspells,

if we make something nice and elegant, we will give it the simple name. Now, because a lot of words have been used up, we don't have infinite number of single- word names anymore especially for counterspellings so even then a generic name might mean

this name and the name can even be flavorful in the world as long as the flavor is a little more open ended like for example if I have a proper name of a character that lives on that world okay that's very narrow. You know, other than revisiting that world,

we're probably not going to see that counter spell on other sets, maybe core sets. But if it's something that's sort of open-ended or an expression or something that isn't as tied to a world, a common thing we'll do is where the world has a theme, so we'll word it tied to that theme, but generically, so like, well, okay, it counters artifacts,

it's referencing, like, malfunction is a good example where malfunction doesn't work on just anything, you know, it could work on something that might refer to artifacts, it has implication that it's stopping in some way, although, have we actually called the card malfunction? It also could be an artifact destruction card, but anyway, to artifacts. It has implication that it's stopping in some way. Although,

have we actually called the card malfunction? It also could be an artifact destruction card. But anyway, the idea that it's a little bit narrow, but that it's helping you

sort of point toward the theme, but, hey, most sets have artifacts in them. You could put this in a set that would want to have artifacts.

And, if it's a smaller sub-theme, like, we only want to put a card that counters artifacts in a set that cares enough about it. Meaning, if the name sort of hints toward artifacts, well, as long as it's a generic name, we could use that somewhere else. Um, I say this as important, just as you're aware,

like, one of the things we're always thinking about when we make counterspells is all the accoutrements that go with the counterspell and the names. It's just another resource you have to be cautious of. One of the things we think about, like I said, we reprint counterspells more than just about any type of spell

because of the narrowness of counterspells and because once you do something nice and clean, as long as you get it in a clean name, it's just something we can use. once you do something nice and clean, as long as you get it in a clean name, it's just something we can use.

And what's very common early on in playtesting is we almost always start by using reprints unless we can have a very clean, simple way, maybe using a mechanic from the set. Okay, so I'm almost to work. I had a bunch of traffic today. So let me finish up here. Let me talk about philosophy of sort of what

counterspells want to be. So let me talk about that and then I will be at work shortly. Counterspells in the right volume are very interesting spells. In fact, one of the most interesting spells in Magic. And one of the things we find is the more enfranchised you get as a

player, the more likely you are drawn to blue, and the more likely you are drawn to counter spells. And the reason is counter battles are very interesting at a high level version of play. And the reason is reading the signs to understand when your opponent has a counter spell

and understanding when and what to counter are all very interesting things. You know, the bluffing part of it's interesting, the properly, like, part of being good at counterspelling is understanding what of your opponent's deck is the threat you need to worry about. Like, there was a classic example many years ago

at U.S. Nationals. Mike Long and Matt Place and a bunch of people turned up with a deck called Turbo Stasis. It originally had been made, I think, in Finland. And it won the Finnish Nationals. So they brought it to the U.S. for the U.S. Nationals. And very few people had seen it.

And one of the things about the deck was it used Howling Mines. And if you understood the importance of the Howling Minds in the deck, the way to fight the deck with a control deck was to counter the Howling Minds, which was counterintuitive. Usually when you counter things, you counter things that help your opponent. Like normally a Howling Mind helps everybody and so you're like, okay because it helps everybody I'll counter the threats but this can help me so i'll take the benefit of it um but turbo stasis the way the deck worked like the howling mines were just important part of it the way turbo stasis was uh this card stasis

from alpha you would get out it kept people from untapping and then you would use um the howling mine to draw a lot of extra islands so you always had an island or a land in Tap for Blue that could pay for the upkeep of stasis. And that without the Hauling Mind, you weren't able to keep the stasis going. The whole point of Turbo Stasis is to keep the stasis going for a long time. And so that's a good example where

understanding how the deck works allows you to use your counter spells very effectively, but it requires knowledge. So, we understand that the advanced players, the more enfranchised players, and the more serious-minded players really enjoy counterspells.

Counterspells are quite fun. But, there's a balance that too many counterspells are going to be counting everything you do not particularly fun. And so, one of the things we try to do is make sure that we make interesting counter spells such that there always are some counter spells for limited and for constructed, but at a volume that it's not hitting too high.

The other thing we tend to do in constructed is we are extra careful with the hard counter spells. Those are the ones that are a little bit more dangerous. The soft counter spells are situational, meaning that they don't answer every single problem. Like, if I have a hard counter in my hand, I can really take control of the game because I can stop anything.

If I have a soft counter, if my opponent can work around the soft counter, they might be able to find answers. We tend to more push soft counters for Constructed just because it leads to more dynamic gameplay. Like, my opponent has things to do to stop me, but not infinite things,

and there's ways to work around it, where hard counters are a little harder to work around. Usually the way you work around a hard counter is getting underneath it, meaning, you know, pushing things through and trying to get the opponent to play their counter spells, which, once again, also interesting gameplay. Okay, so I'm now coming up to work.

So hopefully today, like I said, this is an... I'm trying something a little bit new, sort of breaking down how we make a particular kind of spell. I'm curious if you guys like this. It's something I'll do more of if you do. So definitely let me know. Like I said, I can call it the Designing Series.

So this is Designing Counterspells. So I would love to have some feedback. Hopefully this gives you some insight. Actually, a lot of insight today because I had extra traffic. But it gives you some idea

of what it takes to make Counterspells and how we think about Counterspells and how we craft Counterspells and all the different kinds of Counterspells that we can make that we have access to.

So anyway, I am now parked. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic and counterspells, it's time for me to make magic and counterspells. So I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.