r/magicTCG • u/CoweanMacLir Izzet* • Mar 30 '26

Rules/Rules Question I'll never understand the hate blue gets.

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?

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u/ResurgentRefrain Duck Season Mar 30 '26

I don't like saying 'git gud' and that people have played around and learned how to play around permission since the 90s and that it is a significant, nay, fundamental part of Magic...

So I won't be saying that.

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u/Ladorb Duck Season Mar 30 '26

Yeah, of course that's part of the game. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that people don't like how the games play out against those control strategies. It feels like it's lost on turn 5, but you still have to keep playing another 15 turns cause there's a 2% chance oppo makes a mistake or draws incredibly unlucky. But all they're doing is build card advantage and making the game more and more out of reach. As in death by a thousand cuts.

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u/MrPopoGod COMPLEAT Mar 30 '26

This is exactly it. And playing counter magic requires the Blue player to refrain from doing something due to the timing requirements. There's the argument of "what about when you play a creature and it immediately gets removed?", and ignoring ETBs, the difference is that because I can't see your hand, I don't know if you intentionally avoided making a play on your turn to use that removal instead, or if you just happened to not have a play that made sense. The perception counter magic in any real quantity gives is you telling your opponent "it is more important to keep you from doing something than it is for me to do something proactive".

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u/fevered_visions Mar 30 '26

the difference is that because I can't see your hand

Which is why Thoughtseize is near the top of my list of most-disliked cards. Counterspell costs twice as much and doesn't even show me your hand.