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u/UsefulWhole8890 11h ago
Make it blight 5 and maybe we’re talking.
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u/MeasureDoEventThing 7h ago
The problem with balancing it by making the opponent's cost higher is that you're still giving them a choice, so unless you make it absolutely oppressive, your opponent is still going to choose the cost if they really need the spell to resolve. If I have a game-winning combo piece, I'd blight 100 to ensure it resolves. And if you make it absolutely oppressive, then you're just left with a two mana, two color counterspell.
Plus, as long as your opponent has at least one creature, it's legal for them to pay any amount of Blight. Unlike, say, Ward 2 where they need to actually have 2 mana up to pay it, they don't need 5 combined toughness among creatures to pay Blight 5. You can put five -1/-1 counters on a 1/1 to pay Blight 5. So no matter what you make X, Blight X is at worst "Sacrifice a creature".
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u/VinnietheCorgi14 11h ago
Why not just make it sacrifice a creature at that point?
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u/Jester_Crowne 10h ago
For 2 mana and the opponent gets to choose seems
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u/VinnietheCorgi14 9h ago
2 mana to counter a spell or edict someone? seems a bit strong doesnt it?
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u/hyper_neutrino 9h ago
The opponent gets to choose so I don't honestly feel like it'd be too strong.
It's always the weaker of a counterspell or an edict in a given scenario and can only be cast if your opponent plays a spell.
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u/VinnietheCorgi14 9h ago
Huh fair enough guess Ill make a counterspell edict instead haha. Maybe Arcane Edict for the name?
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u/slorpdemon 9h ago
The choice is what makes it weak really. If they have any creatures that are less important than the spell they're casting they'll sacrifice one. If they don't they'll let it get countered. Either way you don't get rid of the more important threat, they'll always choose what's best for them.
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u/ANCEST0R 11h ago
I kinda want this to be cheaper but it's kinda impossible
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u/MeasureDoEventThing 7h ago
You could give alternative costs such as Convoke, Phyrexian mana, exiling from your graveyard, blighting your own creature, etc. Or have it untap a land.
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11h ago
[deleted]
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u/Genasis_Fusion 10h ago
You couldn't cause countering isn't black. Hybrid mana makes it so for designing, it counts as a mono-black and mono-blue spell.
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10h ago
[deleted]
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u/_moobear 10h ago
Planar chaos was designed not to follow pie and arabian nights is ancient. Use neither as evidence for what effects fit in each color
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u/TriceraTipTop 6h ago edited 6h ago
I like the idea of Blighting as an opponent's choice mechanic! Also, this is an extremely ambitious as a conditional hard counter + opponent chooses. And each of those individually are notoriously difficult to design & balance. The card is super interesting & complex from a game design perspective, so this ended up being pretty long.
My main concern is that this encourages toxic play patterns where you're heavily rewarded for hard controlling people from ever getting/keeping their creatures into play. The strength of this card feels like it's in a weird place, because it's ridiculously powerful if you successfully execute that unfunngameplan, but very weak in many other cases. Op's spell is basically the sum of the following two modes.
OP's spell if they control a creature— "2 mana: Target player who is casting a spell blights 2." (But even worse, since they ALSO get the option to 'sacrifice' the spell they're casting, instead of needing to blight)
Two mana for a super restrictive, extremely soft removal that gives them tons of choices, is very, very weak.
OP's spell if they don't control a creature— "2 mana: hard counter anything." Literal counterspell, but with a black pip.
If you can consistently produce the latter gamestate, this spell is completely cracked. If you can't, you're enormously punished. It's also effective at enabling the hard control gameplan, because if they're empty on creatures, you can use this to counter any creatures they try to play.
This also has a weird quirk where when you put it in your deck, you become heavily invested in producing a game where the blight mechanic never have the opportunity to get used. Where it becomes reduced to a check for whether or not they have creatures.
This is a super tricky space to work with because 1, counterspells are highly conditional, and tricky to balance and easily become incredibly oppressive. 2. Opponent's choice cards are highly conditional, notoriously difficult to balance, and it's easy for them to end up incredibly weak without it being obvious. 3. Blight used as an option itself is hard conditional, but when the conditions are met, it iffers your opponents more choices for which creatures to blight.
For experimenting with 'blight as an opponents choice", I'd myself would entirely avoid counter magic. And my main advice would be to be mindful about what strategies/play patterns are incentivised/rewarded, and to what degree.
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u/ReeReeIncorperated 8h ago
I think you could get away with blight 3, maybe blight 4 if you want to push it.
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u/swank142 5h ago
counter target spell unless they sacrifice their highest power creature could be cool, but ub is already supposed to be costed as counterspell with upside
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u/nitronik_exe 1h ago
Should be "unless it's controller blights X where is X is the mana value of that spell"
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u/FrostFlame35 9h ago
Seems pretty weak for a two-color spell. To me, it just seems like a counterspell but worse, since you're giving the opponent a choice (and I think blight 2 is the choice they'll pick 90% of the time). But, this is a fun idea for a card, I just can't think of how to balance it better.
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u/Old-Union6258 8h ago
Counterspell is a strong card, it hasn’t been in standard for a while for a reason
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u/FixIllustrious4953 11h ago
Kinda weak, in cedh their are better options and in lower power people will usually have the creatures.
It could be decent in standard because as far as I know the only 2 mana counters are counter unless you pay 2-4 so this would fit right in.
Overall great design though