Why do people hate Blue?
General forum
Posted on May 22, 2020, 1:08 p.m. by TriusMalarky
I mean, seriously, what's up? It's not that hard to beat, the worst cards have already been banned, why is Blue always evil?
GoblinElectromancer says... #3
Because blue is the most powerful color. It has access to zero mana counter spells like Force of Will and Daze and it can find cards you are looking for from powerful cantrips such as Ponder and Brainstorm .
May 22, 2020 1:23 p.m.
Flooremoji says... #4
GoblinElectromancer: Well, the cards you listed aren't legal in formats outside of commander legacy and vintage (and pauper for some), but the hate for U goes deeper than just those formats. However, I can agree that they do represent rather well the problems people have with blue.
It's easy to feel like losing when your opponent counters your spell and draw extra cards because they then have a tangible advantage (cards) and and a psycological advantage (countering your spells, and the uncertainty of how many more spells they can counter). Blue can feel way to easy to splash for some people, others feel punished when they don't splash U. It's more what blue can do as a color rather (card draw, counters, bounce, cantrips) than specific cards. Losing tempo when your spells get Remanded or bounced can also feel really bad. Not being able to cast spells when your opponent can (i.e. your opponents endstep) can also make some players feel left out.
May 22, 2020 1:54 p.m.
So first up. People always bring up FoW as a good or powerful magic card. Lets be clear. It is not. It is trading 2 cards and 1 life for 1 card. You generate a mana advantage but lose card advantage. The reason it sees play it is gives you a chance versus the combo decks or the unbeatable turn 1 plays.
As for blue. Blue did the things card games want the most. They want to reduce varience. Blue does that with deck manipulation. They want to trade 1 card for 1 card or 1 card for 2 cards. Blue could counter which always traded 1 for 1 at least where as a removal spell would still let advantage be generated off ETB effects or similar. You want to have more options that your opponents and blue did that with card draw. So for the longest time blue was the most powerful.
Right now I would argue in standard that has been over taken by green as green has access to better mana advantage. ETBs from green generate at least a card if not more advantage generally. The engines and support let green have answers to everything in a way blue doesnt. And when you pair them you get Uro Oko Krasis etc
May 22, 2020 3:53 p.m.
Last_Laugh says... #6
Every time I think of blue control decks I get PTSD from facing Esper Drownyard during that standard every damn week. It was a deck full of answers, it ran 0 creatures, and its' only win-con was Nephalia Drownyard to make you mill 3 each turn. It was soul crushing to play against and it took FOREVER (usually went to turns early in game 2).
May 22, 2020 4:21 p.m. Edited.
TriusMalarky says... #7
I mean, counterspells are actually really bad. I mean, really bad. The only advantage Cancel has over Murder is the fact that Cancel can hit non-creatures. But Cancel only works at one time compared to hundreds.
I think people hate blue 'cos they lose to it and then don't want to play around it. It's just skill -- any deck can beat a counterspell heavy deck just by reading the blue player.
I think it's deep-seated trauma and an unwillingness to let go of prejudices in favor of unreasonably hating a color that is no worse than any other color. I mean, Green recently stole all of blue's abilities anyways.
I do hate oppressive control. That kind of deck is a product of a bad format, and it's not even fun to play. Trust me, I tried. But blue has so many fun strategies, for both sides.
May 22, 2020 4:38 p.m.
I think part of it is because people playing blue often have to make more decisions and blue decks often are built around long, drawn out games.
May 22, 2020 5:31 p.m.
you must be new... decks used to be called Draw-Go where they played islands, said go and countered 20 spells a game... hell they were even called "permission" decks
May 22, 2020 6:44 p.m.
Because a lot of people hate spinning tires which is a huge fan of. It has the most cards that simply subtract from the game, cause inaction, are nearly a catch-all Counterspell works on basically any spell short of something that has the "cannot be countered" text, which there is not a lot of. Extending beyond counterspells tends to have the most catch-all cards in general. Also, outside of MtG players if you asked anyone what type of magic identity truly represents it feels very hazy. There is a lack of punishers in the game overall as well that slap people for sandbagging & causing inaction, most punishers currently are woefully inadequate, easily removed, or provide no benefit to the casting player. I think more beneficial punishers to traditional strategies would go a long way to decreasing the hatred.
May 22, 2020 7:25 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #11
Because the vocal portion of the MtG player base wants to:
- Cast and resolve creatures.
- Crash the creatures into each other.
- Interact at sorcery speed.
- Play with maximal open information.
They therefore get upset about other people:
- Countering their creatures.
- Defending using non-creature methods.
- Interacting at the last possible moment.
- Keeping as much hidden information as possible.
All of which blue excels at. I theorize that it is the same reason people hate combo. Combo only does 3/4 things in every deck (non-blue combo decks don't usually counter anything), but they double down on hidden information.
May 22, 2020 8:34 p.m.
I don't think it is fair to say it's all about creatures, I don't even see many comments here pertaining to creatures vs. spellslinger. Of my complaints none of that has a thing to do explicitly with creatures. More the catch-all nature of blue & a lack of reasonable punishment that works around those catch-alls. Overall, the game does not currently have nearly as many inaction punishers with upside regardless of the color doing the sandbagging. New Chandra is one of them.. Even Thought Distortion does not have any upside to balance dinging one sandbagger for 6cmc
May 22, 2020 9:03 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #13
Only half of my points were about creatures. I guess I could have reworded the first point to be spells and I will concede that it would have been a better point if I had. My points weren't about what people were saying here, but about what my experience is with players who "hate blue".
Really my points are even more about players who want to complain about any aspect of the game that doesn't appeal to them personally and therefore other people's fun is "wrong". There are valid criticisms of the game to be had. None of them are ever phrased "I hate ...", "... is cheap", or "people shouldn't be allowed to ...".
Your feeling that there should be more "punishment" is well known to me, I admit to not completely understanding what you mean and so I haven't engaged on the point further. You are however as far as I remember from conversations that we have both participated in, willing to try to understand how others can like stuff you don't.
I don't really think it is fair to say that blue has a lot of "catch-all" cards. Counterspells are limited in their temporal nature. Having to have the mana and card available when your opponent casts their spell is the most restrictive of "removal" options. They are compensated by being allowed to interact with all card types. Other than counters I am at a loss to what other catch-all cards you are referring to.
Another point, and one that everyone may be able to agree on is that bad blue players make the game tedious without adding anything interesting to the game. Somehow it isn't as obvious to people that counterspells are not an entire strategy unto themselves. A deck that contains 50% Terror reprints would be awful to play against, but no one does that. People will make a deck 50% Counterspells for some reason though. A well piloted blue deck may take more turns to complete a game, but time should be similar if they are not trying to intentionally run down the clock. At least the time spent on the blue player's turns. If you find yourself taking long turns against a blue deck, they aren't to blame.
Unless they are playing solidarity, but that is only one turn and at the end of it one or the other of you has won.
May 22, 2020 10:03 p.m.
Last_Laugh says... #14
I think he's referring to more punisher cards that deter draw-go style control decks. Think Price of Glory and Stoneshaker Shaman type effects.
May 23, 2020 12:49 a.m. Edited.
LordBlackblade says... #15
I've seen discussions before on the psychology of counterspells, and I think that is a real factor. You process differently your Colossal Dreadmaw getting countered with Cancel than you do it being removed right after it resolves with a Murder. Either way, it ends up in the graveyard, but the mechanism is different. There's some human subconsciousness stuff going on that comes down to, as Last_Laugh said, people don't like being told no.
May 23, 2020 1:10 a.m.
Some players want to create action more than they want to impede it & that can be frustrating in a format where there tends to be more ease & reward stapled onto passive cards. Gidgetimer a punisher with upside (something additive..though parallel) is Captive Audience - zombies is a nice additive effect. Curse of Opulence is less of a punisher but is another action promoter than gives possible benefit to the casting player. Cindervines has stapled on removal (I consider this an upside). They definitely are heading in the right direction now to have benefits stapled onto more action-pushing cards that aren't just removal fodder. There was just a long history of Price of Glory type-punishment where there isn't a payoff for the player using it & all it really accomplished was to waste a field slot until some player finally used some sort of bounce-effect or splash removal & then just went ahead & kept sandbagging, in affect these types of punishment accomplished the opposite of the intended effect by making players have to play MORE responsively. Another good example is Stranglehold, all you really do is play it & wait for an opponent to remove it. Also, those Murder examples are not catch-all. There is so much higher of a ratio of workarounds for removal than there is counterspells. also has Rewind types of effects, essentially making some lame game-delay free, which is bound to tick some people off. To be completely honest though, I think some people hate on blue because it is fun to hate on it. It is fun to route against the NE Patriots too! It is just part some identities to force action (not necessarily creature stompy) in games & if you get too much traditional strategy in a meta you have to build very specifically to not get dogpiled into oblivion. It is like a fun deciding tool for me to point to where my damage or targeted effects will go instead of flipping coins on who I'm going to mess with. & I partially hate on because history shows it is usually smart to do so while you have the means to do so :) Also, I often hate on because usually as a byproduct of playing the color, a player will have a clutch of cards in hand (& cards in hand is one of my major determinants for who I will be messing with). I hate on because, until fairly recently, passive strategy was the most winnable & most rewarded EDH playstyle & punishment of passive-play has been historically inadequate at actually punishing.
May 23, 2020 11:19 a.m.
fatalzintomyum says... #17
I think that the object that dominates this chat is apparently the thought that blue has just some psychological effect on players, and that truly, past the brain, blue is truly not that good. I do agree that blue has this effect, but I would just like to say one thing. Blue is very powerful and there is quite the reason that it is the only colour on the power nine. Blue has aggresive creatures,(just look at delver and the standard "tempo winter" after Ixalan), it has very powerful interaction in the form of bouncing quite everything and also the classic Counterspell, and, of course, it has card draw, and the best too. Card advantage, in a game that progresses slowly,(which it always shall, playing against blue) card advantage is everything. In every format, blue card draw has played an important role, from Ancestral Recall to the humble Divination. Blue is the most powerful colour, whether or not it is interesting or not, and in this game, no matter how interesting your colour is, in the end, power is all, and blue is rolling in it.
(I would like to say that I cannot pesonally say that I like blue at all, but this is undeniable)
May 23, 2020 1:20 p.m.
TriusMalarky says... #18
magwaaf draw-go is one of my favorite archetypes. I have a $30 pile of way-too-good Blue cards just because I can. Gitaxian Probe, Treasure Cruise, Gush, Counterspell rounded out by Delver of Secrets Flip and Brineborn Cutthroat is an amazing deck. I'm working on finishing a full meta of 8 $30 high-power decks(all of which should be balanced within the mini meta), so Mono- Pox and t2 Infect, as well as Rituals Red and Free Stompy will be coming along sometime(once I get the money), which all should beat it. But I built Blue first 'cos it's just so fun.
Gleeock I guess a lack of decent stax punishers is a problem... they could definitely print something like for an enchantment that says "At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, ~ deals 1 damage to them. If you have one or fewer cards in hand and that opponent has 6 or more cards in hand, ~ deals 2 damage instead." and Hexproof would be pretty balanced.
Course, Stax in general is bad for the game. Any card that hates out Lantern Control or stupid stuff like Infinite Turns or Stax decks is fine by me. It wouldn't work well against tempo, but the best tempo cards got banned into oblivion so now nobody can use them.
May 23, 2020 10:30 p.m.
Also tbh I think blue is just solidly good and intensely more degenerate in edh (comparitive to other formats) like nothing feels worse than than having someone cast a Narset's Reversal on their Beacon of Tomorrows
May 24, 2020 2:42 a.m.
dbpunk... Sure that feels bad. In defense of Narset's Reversal versus most of the rest of , it is advancing the game a little more (at least the spell is still being cast) & the player at least gets the card back. A major gripe with the color is often just that constant tire-spinning the color does, which Narset's Reversal at least feels like progression.... just not for the intended target :) (also Narset's is not catch-all). Although, I get you are just using 1 example of powerful
May 24, 2020 7:06 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #21
Nobody mentioning Control Magic effects yet? With Agent of Treachery running rampant in standard now, not just being told "No", but working for your own gameplan, your own cool cards simply to see them cheesily stolen over and over again feels even worse than just a counterspell.
May 25, 2020 4:20 a.m.
TriusMalarky when i started playing constructed our draw go was the 1998 randy buehler style that then became draw go with grim monoliths, masticore, and morphling... it was hell
May 25, 2020 5:12 p.m.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-online/flashback-standard-gauntlets-mirage-tempest
this was when i started getting into constructed
May 27, 2020 9:48 a.m.
golgarigirl says... #25
From my experience, especially with newer players, it's the idea of having to work around an 'invisible' threat. It's super easy to understand the threat or power inherent in a Baneslayer Angel, or even in Doom Blade (because both deal with something on the board) but in a Counterspell? Learning to count mana and time things right, learning to bait things out, and of course, not getting salty and learning from it. Some even have trouble with it because draw-go isn't their play-style and thus it's just harder to understand (I've learned teaching new players that it's ten times easier to teach a new player when you find their preferred play-style). And no amount of telling them how timing-sensitive counterspells are can help if they don't try it themselves.
June 23, 2020 8:01 p.m. Edited.
Omniscience_is_life says... #27
golgarigirl that’s definitely the experience I had as a new player, basically anyone could bluff having a Cancel and I’d quail. Another thing is, especially for new players, fliers. Not being able to stop an incoming attack from a Levitation’d up baddie except maybe with your one Mammoth Spider that you thought looked cool can be a tough experience. (And yes, I know red has dragons, and white has angels, but blue has Archetype of Imagination-type effects)
June 23, 2020 8:15 p.m.
TriusMalarky says... #28
To be fair, I can convince a newb that I can immediately kill him if he attacks me with his guaranteed-to-kill-me horde of dinosaurs as long as I have a Forest in hand and an Evolving Wilds open.
June 24, 2020 10:07 a.m.
The Biggest annoyance with blue is indeed counters. Even if you know how to face an opponent with counters and you know for sure the opponent is. Your strategy is usually (I am not going to play anything while he has 2 or more mana untapped), it still gives advantage to the opponent simply because he more than likely has more instances and plays right before the end of your turn. leaving you with an empty board or useless 1 mana fodder.
July 14, 2021 5:13 p.m.
Welcome to the club, econinja!
The thing about counterspells, particularly the original Counterspell , is that they remove agency from the opponent without advancing the user. It's up there with land destruction, stax, and discard in "most hated mechanics" because they slow down the game and reduce interaction. The opponent can't do anything, and the user has no reason to close out the game quickly. This leads to a game where one person is bored and the other is just wasting time. All of these can be played around, but counterspells are pretty much the universal answer.
Also, the theft mentioned earlier is a big part of blue's bad reputation.
: "Look at my shiny new toy !" : "You can't have it. It belongs to me now." : " : ( Brand ?" : " Nope ."
It's hard to show off how cool/scary/smashy your deck is when bits and pieces can't be used.
And I say all of this as the owner of a deck with four Counterspell , four Hymn to Tourach , and three Control Magic .
July 14, 2021 6:01 p.m.
TriusMalarky says... #31
Actually, legendofa, it depends on the deck. Some decks, like the classic Control, tend to want to drag the game out. However, many decks that use countermagic, such as Modern's Cascade archetypes and Legacy Delver, want to end the game fairly quickly. And, honestly, with the way design has been going, control decks in Standard and Pioneer have a lot more incentive to resolve their win con as soon as possible to avoid the opponent breaking out with a high value bomb or whatnot.
Countermagic, on the surface, sounds like it'd be cool to build a deck where you counter everything, but actually making that work is fairly difficult. You need to be able to draw 2-3 cards per turn at least while also countering and removing everything the opponent does, and that's not really viable.
July 14, 2021 11:02 p.m.
TriusMalarky Points well taken. But the "counter everything" philosophy (trap) is popular with the casual control crowd, who aim for small, in-game interaction wins without focusing on how to close out the game itself. Add to this the general reluctance of kitchen table players to concede, and you have a "fun, friendly" game where one person isn't having fun and and isn't feeling friendly.
The established crowd generally honors and accepts counterspells. The people with a deck pulled together from a booster box, a Commander deck fresh out of the box, and their friend's leftovers generally think counterspells waste time and energy. (These are broad statements, so there's going to be a lot of exceptions. The overall trend is still there.)
July 15, 2021 10:51 a.m.
TriusMalarky says... #33
There's also the detail that casual players tend not to play cards as actively. This provides a counterspell heavy deck more time and also fewer opportunities to counter, and fewer opportunities means that you're more likely to be able to actually counter every single spell.
July 15, 2021 12:05 p.m.
Because its the no fun color most of the time
Take a look at my arbiter decklist for proof
July 16, 2021 9:37 p.m.
yorick_tome says... #35
You can play any game to win, but you play MTG because you like collecting the cards and creating strategies for playing them together.
With red's damage, greens "creature fights", blacks destroy, and white's exiles, you still get to at least play your card. That also means it has a shot to do something, trigger its own abilities or another card's.
With blue, you don't get to play your cards, which is the whole point of the game. The same is mostly true of straight milling them out of your deck unless you've got a black deck good at recovering from your graveyard. And even worse are the blue cards taking your cards or taking control of them, so not only do YOU not get to play your cards, but your opponent (who didn't pay for them) does. On a very fundamental level, blue breaks the core purpose of the game.
Also, will all the other ways to remove creatures, there's generally a response. Remove white's exile enchantments, make a creature indestructible, hexproof, return it to your hand, bump its toughness, prevent all damage, etc. Fewer of these work against black murder cards, but then again many black murder cards often have a cost in life or sacrifice. The only way to counter a counterspell... is a counter spell, which you have to have a blue deck for. That is spectacularly turdulent. Counterspells and milling break the fundamental gameplay: you don't get to play your cards. It's like if draining the pool was a legal move in water polo, and the only counter to it was to drain the pool yourself.
But that's not all. As people mentioned above, counters may not be competitive in live competitions, but in MTG Arena, the game automatically stops for your opponent to counter, making counters MUCH more powerful. Yes, you can play around it if you have a lot of cards to burn with enough extra mana to get a card with a repeated ability out after they've already countered once (sometimes twice) that turn. But even when you do that, you are now dealing with the fact that you aren't fully in control of the order you can play cards on your own turn.
And the worst part is not just losing the card to a counter, it's the fact that knowing you have to do that often breaks a potential combo. Now, that might be a fair trade if the blue control player might waste mana if they don't end up countering, but often there are instants to draw, scry, creatures with flash, etc... so that if you miss your combo worrying about the counter, they can still finish their turn at the end of yours if they didn't use all their mana waiting for a counter.
And that last point is another major issue. Magic games have a rhythm to them. Yes, occasional instants can play with that rhythm. But having a deck built around instants simply murders it. Red burn decks might have this a little, but they also do things like actually play creatures, and they have straight forward response from decks of other colors (play creatures tough enough to take a hit, gain life, hexproof, indestructible). Again, the only counter to a counterspell is... counterspell.
So it's not just that blue basically takes a dump on the purpose of the game, it's also that it's such a snowflake with countering, milling, timing. The regular flow of the game has to change to accommodate special little snowflake blue.
I have years of hate built up on this. If MTG Arena had an option to never play against a blue-only deck (or blue back, to be honest), I would check it in a heartbeat.
Last_Laugh says... #2
Do you know anyone that likes being told 'no' over and over? Me neither... people like getting away with doing broken things.
May 22, 2020 1:18 p.m.