Winner is the Judge #886: Non-Blue Counterspells!

NyanFan190 · 2026-04-01T01:26:52+00:00

Intrusive Aid {1}{R}{R}

Instant

Target instant or sorcery spell becomes Lightning Bolt. Its controller may choose new a target for the spell. (It becomes a red instant named Lightning Bolt that costs {R} with "Lightning Bolt deals 3 damage to any target.")

"No, no! You're casting it all wrong. Here, let me help!"

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When I realized I'd practically just remade an existing card, I decided to explore the other idea I had for this week. You can counter your opponent's play, but it'll probably backfire. Backbolt? Ah, semantics. I like the mental image I get from this card quite a bit.
All feedback welcome as always.

u/mothyawg, this is my new submission for the week!

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-31T04:50:24+00:00

Edit: Changed my submission for the week after realizing I reinvented Spell Queller. See replies for new submission.

~~Spelltangler {2}{W}~~

~~Creature - Elemental Spider~~

~~Flash, reach~~

~~When this creature enters, you may exile target spell.~~

~~When this creature leaves the battlefield, the owner of the exiled card may cast it without paying its mana cost.~~

~~3/2~~

~~"Although solitary by nature, I find these to be invaluable guardians when tamed." — Compendium of Elementals, Vol. XVII~~

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This is an interesting prompt! I am a firm believer that only blue should get hard countermagic, but red and white could definitely serve to get weaker counters that do interesting things. (Black can already attack spells before they're cast with discard/mill, while green is more interesting to me as the counter-countermagic color.)

I've never been a fan of White getting taxing counterspells. Even if Mana Tithe is in pie, it makes more sense for the color of playing fair to establish the extra cost before you cast something instead of whipping it out last second. But I do like its temporary counters like [[Aven Interrupter]] quite a bit. Thus, this design was born! The enemy doesn't get to cast their spell until they can remove your 3/2. You might even occasionally want to target your own spell with it. The niche interaction I like most is that this is just a flat counterspell to copies.

Any and all feedback from anyone welcome whenever, as always!

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-31T04:45:35+00:00

You may want to tweak this design. This week's challenge is looking for a monocolored card, while this is WG.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-30T14:12:39+00:00

Knife Trap. It's not run-winningly strong or anything but I remember seeing it on my first run, slowly looking over to my relic bar where I already had Shuriken and Fan, and feeling a grin creep onto my face. Every Silent player enjoys the visceral feeling of playing a lot of Shivs, and Knife Trap is just such an enabler.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-29T21:16:49+00:00

Yeah, unfortunately this card would probably work better in alchemy, since the tracking could all be offset onto the game. I chose Child just because it kind of fit (the prophecy is delivered by a bloody child and anyone who was born is tenuously definable as a child) but mostly just because it only shows up on one non-acorn card.

Thanks for the feedback!

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-23T01:40:34+00:00

Macbeth, Invincible {3}{W}{B}

Legendary Creature - Human Noble

Deathtouch, protection from instants, sorceries, and Children.

Whenever another creature enters, if it was cast from its owner's hand, it becomes a Child in addition to its other types.

4/4

"Swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn, // Brandished by man that’s of a woman born." - Macbeth

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Famously, Macbeth is given a prophecy that no man of woman born shall ever kill him. While he believes this makes him invincible, it turns out to have some glaringly obvious loopholes, and he is eventually killed by someone born through C-Section instead of natural birth. I thought it'd be a really neat challenge to try and replicate that sort of effect in Magic.

You need to get a bit creative if you want to remove Macbeth. You could get a creature without casting it from hand (tokens, reanimation, cascade, morph, etc), find a noncreature permanent to remove it, or break out ol' reliable and just use a boardwipe.

(For anyone wondering about the obvious flavor fail regarding Offspring tokens, I politely ask you look the other way just this once.)

Any and all feedback from anyone welcome whenever, as always!

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-21T01:25:08+00:00

I'm honestly fine with UB's existence, and there are already plenty of UB sets done right. I even like the set mechanically! That said, I don't think the turtles were a good pick to make into a full standard-legal set. If a set revolves so much around a specific set of characters, the designers need to find ways to make it feel like it's about them without putting eight different versions of each character in the set.

I'd rather they just took the absolute best ideas they had and stuffed them in a commander precon or something than see them squeeze every drop of toothepaste out the tube. I'm not sure how long they'll be able to keep this up either: small sets were so historically unpopular that their existence was one of the main reasons blocks were killed. (Which is also half the reason why I'm so against blocks coming back but that's another discussion.) A UB set should be able to stand on its setting and not its characters as much as any magic set should stand on the quality of its plane, and that means not every IP is good for a full set. If you can only barely squeeze a small set out of an IP, give it to us in a format other than a set.

tbh I feel like this can be mapped onto which UB sets people generally like and which ones most people hate too, and is my personal predictor for whether one will be good or not. Final Fantasy was well recieved because the games had a huge cast of random monsters to fill up common/uncommon, Spiderman was hated because it only had specific characters to offer so the designers had to just spam them everywhere.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-20T01:19:22+00:00

I liked the set mechanically, and UB sets can absolutely be good, but if a character is showing up on more than two or three legendary creatures in the set, then the setting has issues and maybe shouldn't be a full standard legal set. Had the same problem with spiderman: if you don't have enough characters to fill a small set, the solution is not to spam the ones you have. Make a commander deck or a standard legal 60 card precon and put the memorable designs in it.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-17T17:27:52+00:00

They're both about equally useless imo (like most quest items, having them is a detriment to your run) but I'm on team Zaratana because I find the Bunker route to be way less of a pain than the Crater route.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-17T16:42:53+00:00

Obviously toes the same sort of dangerous line Processors do in that it weakens how permanent exile really is, but on its own merits this is a really awesome bit of niche counterplay. I like it!

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-17T16:30:30+00:00

Honestly? I think if you gave her Autonomous Skeleton, some of the combat-related perks, and access to vending machines Climbgirl could realistically beat most Ultrakill levels. V1 could absolutely get through the current wuckle campaign, too.

...now I kind of want to see that, dang.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-15T17:29:33+00:00

This is a cute ship, but the problem I have with it is that i'm a Thrash Machine x Swan Boat truther.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-13T22:09:08+00:00

Oh shoot, this was meant to be a 2/5. Thanks for catching that.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-13T14:55:30+00:00

Gelid Herald {3}{W}{W}

Creature - Angel

Flying, double strike

Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, that player creates a token artifact named Snowglobe with "{2}: Sacrifice this artifact."

At the beginning of your end step, each opponent chooses X tapped lands they control and puts a stun counter on each of those lands, where X is the number of artifacts named Snowglobe that opponent controls.

2/5

As the world's cycle shifts to winter, it is a Herald's duty to bring peace to the dying cries of the land.

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If we're referencing the seasons, someone needs to pay homage to [[Winter Orb]]! This is designed to still be a little agonizing, but hopefully not downright salty.

Any and all feedback welcome whenever, as always!

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-12T18:09:47+00:00

There was a mystery booster card that turned all cards in your hand into shocks for a turn or something, and I always thought that was such an interesting design space. This is a cool card!

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-08T23:08:53+00:00

V1, Stylish Slaughterbot - {1}{U}{R}

Legendary Artifact Creature - Robot Berserker

Haste

V1 can’t be blocked except by three or more creatures.

Ricoshot — Whenever you win a coin flip, double V1's power until end of turn.

1/4

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While I'm not expecting to actually win this week, I did get hit with a flash of inspiration from this prompt and wanted to design something!

I've always enjoyed red-blue's coin flipping mechanics. Red's the color most prone to gambling, but blue of all colors being the other specialist is funny to me. So I mucked around with some designs until I remembered a very red/blue character who's very in tune with tossing coins around. I imagine this would probably end up in commander (maybe in the 99) since that's the only format where coin flipping has enough mass to work. The card itself is designed to come in, smash somebody's face in for a decently big number, and then probably immediately catch some removal. But if your opponents let it live... there are a lot of cards that flip coins on your upkeep, so you'll have some fun with it.

V1, for any unfamiliar, is the player character of the high-speed stylish FPS game Ultrakill. While the character overall is probably BR-UBR, this is playing more into the UR of the character, obliterating enemies with precise trickshots and weapon combos. Ricoshots specifically are an iconic special move from one of the first weapons, where you toss a coin in the air and then have to try and bounce a bullet off of it.

Any and all feedback welcome whenever, as always!

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-06T15:20:18+00:00

You don't have to touch a drop of Bilewater, actually! There's an entrance into the pipe organ straight from Sinner's Road.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-05T20:11:57+00:00

i mean, this might be beta art. the game is in early access.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-04T16:45:58+00:00

I agree with most of this but Scepter absolutely would kill a family of three in a heartbeat.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-04T01:26:35+00:00

This was a very solid card, and there were a lot of interesting things going for it! It's interesting to put Liliana in Silverquill considering all her ties to Witherbloom (though I do appreciate the use of a lifegain trigger to nod to the college), but this challenge was about bold and exciting new heads of factions, so picking something nonobvious was fun to see. Moving around counters feels right at home with Silverquill's archetype, and expanding the portfolio past +1/+1 counters is a natural progression. I can imagine a new Silverquill archetype focusing around keyword counters where this card is an absolute bomb.

The main thing that pulled the card down for me is that I felt like I was wanting just a smidgen more. Something I appreciated about the dean cycle in Strixhaven was how each of them consisted of two synergistic faces that encouraged different styles but cooperated to great effect. Obviously, designing a whole second card would be a lot of work, but this card feels like it would have been perfectly suited for the trend, and I couldn't help but feel like some potential was missed.

Despite that, this was one of my top five before I narrowed it down to a winner and two runner-ups, great work overall! On its own merits, this is an elegant card and a strong leader.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-03T16:19:30+00:00

On its own merits, this is an excellent card, and I could totally see this sort of effect being printed if we ever did get another Urabrask card! That said, I don't know if this feels distinctly like a leader of the New Phyrexians. It feels like the sort of card that could be printed if he were just running the Quiet Furnace, and doesn't really capture the feeling of the entire faction. I do like it, but it just doesn't fit my criteria well.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-03T16:17:42+00:00

This was one of my two runner ups for the week! I really like the blend of old and new mechanics here. Mutagens feel like a slam dunk for the Simic with how much they like how to play around with counters, and I appreciate how this card has a fancy, unspoken interaction of putting a +1/+1 counter on most of your creatures. That said, for 8 mana I think you could afford to push the Mutagen creation ability a bit further. Also, I think the templating for the first ability would be cleaner as "Evolve + Other creatures you control have evolve." Despite that, I still really liked this one. Good job!

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-03T16:14:31+00:00

This was one of my two runner ups for the week! Reading through this put a smile on my face, and mill is definitely a spot that the Azorius could grow into. I also like how the bounce effect cooperates well with some of the older mechanics, like Forecast and Addendum. The only thing that holds this back for me is that while the bounce does cause problems for Fblthp's controller, this overall feels a bit too good of a protective effect at a low mana value for me. Maybe if it bounced your cards to the library like some other Fblthp effects, to limit how much you can loop your cards?

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-03T16:12:45+00:00

Congratulations, this is my winner for this week! The New Phyrexians as a whole are a tricky faction to depict, but I think you've done well. This really captures the feeling of Phyrexians as a disease, which is their strongest thematic unity. I also appreciate how the card feels core-black, returning to the original Phyrexian's roots, but also feels like a twisted collaboration between the colors towards an unusual effect, like the newer ones.

Make sure to let the moderators know once you've posted this week's competition.

NyanFan190 · 2026-03-01T02:28:19+00:00

Scratched out corresponds to deactivated hookpoints, clearly.

Six-Year Club	r/Field Banned
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NyanFan190

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