Mana Leak

Instant

Counter target spell unless its controller pays .

Discussion (45)

rdean14 on Card creation challenge

3 days ago

I love Tibalt's Trickery and the concept of red getting Chaos Warp-style counterspells.

In my opinion, Counterspells should be Blue Primary, White Secondary, and Red Tertiary, with Blue being hard, if conditional or have other stuff going on Arcane Denial, white being tax-based, and Red being replacement style.

To be clear, I think Lapse of Certainty should be blue Memory Lapse, not white, and Mana Leak should be heavily reprinted white counterspell. Mana Tithe is excellent, imo, and should be a more frequently visited effect.

Anyhoo:

Disarrange

Instant

Exile target spell, then shuffle that card into its owner's library. That player then reveals the top card of their library until they reveal a card which shares a type with the spell exiled this way. They may cast that spell without paying its mana cost.

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It literally replaces a spell with a random spell of the same type, so it'd be really good against finishers in creature-based decks, and quite lousy against planeswalker spell or finishers in noncreature based decks

I'd like to see a counterspell made with my personal idea of counterspells in mind, so blue would be hard, but maybe conditional/other stuff, white is tax, and red is random replacement-style.

I think I was ninja'd so see the above challenge.

Puzzle_Master12 on Mirror Match

6 days ago

I would say, Connive / Concoct possibly (I don't know entirely as I'm not a master at MTG). Another thing is Mana Leak and/or Negate can be replaced with Counterspell

Balaam__ on Azorius-Spirits

4 weeks ago

Cackling Counterpart unfortunately won’t work with Geist of Saint Traft as that’s a Legendary permanent. You can cast it, true, but one will then go to the graveyard. It would work fine on non-Legendary ghosties, although at 3 mana a pop you’d have to choose a spirit with high return value to make it worth the cost. As for Mana Leak, it’s certainly viable to run accompanying control spells but since spirits typically have control effects built in, Disenchant is a decent sideboard card.

wallisface on Wizard Cleave

4 weeks ago

Some thoughts:

• Counterspell > Negate and Essence Scatter. If you need additional copies of Counterspell, the next best card is probably Mana Leak 90% of the time.

• You seem to be running a gratuitous quantity of 5-mana cards. It's going to lead to a lot of games where your hand is really gummed-up, and your opponent gets themselves into a winning state before you can do anything. I would really suggest halving this quantity of high-cmc spells.

• Even with fewer 5-cmc spells, your land count is still going to hurt you quite heavily. 21 is pretty low considering how many you'll need in play to do what you need to (on average you won't see your 5th land until you've drawn your 8th card, that's quite late for control.) Control decks generally run around 25 lands. I would say the minimum you'd want to play is 23 (though more is better).

• Detection Tower feels like a sideboard card at best. It feels like its going to mess up your own manabase more than actually help you. Especially because Tamiyo appears to be the only card you have actually targeting permanents, and cards having hexproof is generally super rare (though your local meta may vary).

lespaul977 on Azorius-Spirits

1 month ago

DocHostile, this is a great deck! You’ve a lot of great creature cards that will make this super effective no matter what environment you’re playing in.

A card that works really well in my I See Dead People (Spirit Token Deck) is Cackling Counterpart. With it, you’d be able to make a copy of any of the great creature cards you have (imagine getting another Geist of Saint Traft on the battlefield and really laying on the hurt). Plus, it has flashback, so you can do it again!

The only other suggestion I would make would be to add some good counters. I see you have Disenchant on your sideboard, but I’m wondering if completely canceling out a spell with something like Mana Leak would make sure the card you opponent plays doesn’t even hit the battlefield.

Best of luck playing with this deck! I hope it wins you some good games!

zapyourtumor on Flickertwist

2 months ago

Too many lands. I'd go down to like 20-22.

Sagu Mauler is a hard to remove morph threat.

Not much else is coming to mind right now but you should probably cut the remaining lands for cantrips like Serum Visions (for t1 play) and for t2 play you can run Counterspell and Remand and Mana Leak and stuff.

zapyourtumor on Grixis Dragon Control

2 months ago

Yeah manabase was my main concern with UU counterspells. If you think it isn't viable you can try some mix of 2x Mana Leak and 3x Drown in the Loch or something (which could also replace Abrade as additional removal).

For Iymrith, I think I would take out Ebondeath, yeah. You could also maybe take out a Niv or a Sprite Dragon (idk how good it is here or if 4 is needed--if a playset is needed then nevermind).

zapyourtumor on Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde

2 months ago

I love the name.

Some comments:

You don't have a single one drop/turn one play, other than Vial. That's definitely a big tempo loss. Jabberjaw46 mentioned Mausoleum Wanderer for the sideboard, which is a good suggestion, except I strongly think you should put all 4 copies of it mainboard.

Supreme Phantom is an amazing card. I'd up it to a playset.

Honestly, I've always been lukewarm about Geist. Yes, it is a hard to remove threat that can win games on its own, but the creature itself has no evasion, plus the angel token that's created isn't a spirit so it doesn't benefit from our lords.

I think you might be going a bit overboard on the removal and counterspells. I like that the deck is a bit more controlly than most UW spirits which makes it a little more unique, but if you add too many of these other spells it makes it harder for you to churn out enough creatures and lords and make full use of Vial. I'd just straight up cut the Mana Leaks. 4 Counterspells total feels like the highest I would go, since you also have 4 Queller (2 Counterspell 2 Force of Negation seems like a good split to me). Same for removal, you have 4 Apparition so I'd cut down to 4 removal spells tops as well (whether you keep path or on thin ice is personal preference I guess). Removing these will give you space for Mausoleum Wanderer and more Supreme Phantoms.

In case you want more spirits, Rattlechains and Shacklegeist are two that I like. Cemetery Illuminator is a new card that looks interesting for the sideboard, doubling as grave hate and CA engine. Guardian of Faith is nice as a one of in the sideboard against wipes.