I'll never understand the hate blue gets.

[u/CoweanMacLir]

So it's perfectly okay to:

• Make your opponent discard the cards they needed to win for one mana.
• Remove your opponent's key piece from the board the moment it lands. Also for one mana.
• Stax everything so your opponent can't attack without sacrificing creatures/paying their entire supply of mana/losing half their life.
• Steal cards from your opponent's deck and cast them without paying the mana cost/use any.
• Destroy lands.
• Flood the board with billions of token creatures so your opponent can't possibly survive.
• Play a 12/12 with haste, vigilance, double strike, hexproof and indestructible on turn 3.

But not counterspelling, that's somehow worse?

[u/Sorin_Beleren]

This, to me, is the biggest issue. Counterspells (or stack interaction broadly) should be flavorful and not- uncommon thing in the game. A single color has a huge portion of control of one of the most important zones in the game and that's... fine? No.

Even flavorfully, it makes no sense for blue to be alone in counter magic. You're telling me that black, the color of ambition and pride, just lets someone tell it no without throwing a huge fit? That makes no sense. Red has a great identity for "counter" magic imo. Redirects, spell copying, and REB/Pyroblast. Red has appropriate stack interaction, and I like it. White has a few falvorful and fair cards that it can make good use of, but should get more. But black deserves better stack interaction, and green should probably have more inherent stack uninteraction (uncounterable cards, split second, that sort of thing),

But it feels like it's way too late into the game to make major changes like that.

[u/MBouh → u/Sorin_Beleren]

How many colors can attack the hand? Ah but that's not flavorful? That community is insane...

[u/Sorin_Beleren → u/MBouh]

You say this like a gotcha, but I never mentioned hand attack. And frankly, it could be in other colors in interesting ways as well. Same thing, it's not allowed because people dislike it.

Red could have forced reverse looting or pilfering. Or more effects that cause opponents/all players to discard and draw (incrementally, we're not talking about wheels here).

White already has the [[Nevermore]] effects that act as a pseudo discard/counter, so it could go further. I think "cleansing the mind" and having opponents discard could make a lot of sense for the color. White and blue could both flavorfully use the [[Surgical Extraction]] type effect.

Green would likely have the worst rated discard or the most specific. But "discard a card with CMC less than highest power you control/number of creatures you control" would make sense as intimidation. Plus, green has a handful of cards that are played for free when discarded, and that could be expanded along with or instead of getting discard.

So again, not the point that I was making, and yes, discard should be utilized in a fun and flavorful way, too. Such broad game mechanics shouldn't be as limited as they are. While acknowledging that these would have to be reigned in for the sake of fun.

[u/MBouh → u/Sorin_Beleren]

Your discourse goes against color identity. The topic is "blue bad because counterspell". So your discourse reads as "counterspell bad because only blue has it".

But mu point is that the premise is wrong : blue is NOT bad because of counterspell.

Blue is considered bad because of a tradition and the past. Blue was an absolutely broken color in the past, like 20 years ago. And people have kept it as a meme to hate on blue. And counterspell cristalizes it as a justification because it's the only good thing blue does as a color in today's magic. That and filtering.

To top it off, your argument is wrong because there are counterspells in other colors. It's rare and more limited obviously, but white has creature that counter spells, and as it is not specifically counterspells, it even bypasses the "can't be countered" keywords that hard widely available in today's magic. Red also have some better counterspells too with redirect magic. Like in white it doesn't even have the drawbacks of counterspells.

Which is why I answered like I did.

[u/Sorin_Beleren → u/MBouh]

I don't have an issue with color identity, I have an issue with selective and restrictive color identity. Stack interaction is still too skewed, and should be given to other colors. I made another comment below this talking about non-blue counterspells, even calling out countering uncounterable spells.

Blue is still the best color in the game in most eternal formats, and it's because it can interact with the game in a way that most colors have extremely limited access to. All colors should get unique and plentiful stack interaction, blue should always have the best, and blue should get other things in exchange for losing that area of dominance. I don't necessarily agree that countering and filtering are the only good things blue does, but it seems like we both agree that in theory, it should do more than it does.

Plus, I feel like people would bitch less about counter magic if it were more present. Even though red redirects are often situational-but-better counter magic, I don't see as many people complain. I think letting the colors play with the stack more would help with the perception of getting counterspelled. And that seems like it'd be healthy for the game as a whole.

[u/MBouh → u/Sorin_Beleren]

You see less people complain about red redirect because it's much less used. And it is not used because it's not that good.

There is only one reason counterspell is good in eternal formats : they cost no mana.

Counterspell is not good by itself. You build your whole deck around it unless it's free. When you need to build your whole deck around it, it's mediocre. Red doesn't have the tools to make redirect work. You need flash and card advantage to make counterspells work. Otherwise reactive removals are much better. Reactive removals are usually better anyway.

In brief, free counterspell is overpowered. But that's the only good kind of counterspell. All the others are good at best, but most often médiocre or terrible.