Counterspell

Counterspell: INFO

  • Used in 6 decks in EDH Chamber
  • Found in 24 different themes in EDH Chamber
  • 1.20

    Themes for Counterspell

    This data is collected from the articles deck lists in EDH Chamber.

    View decks

    Counterspell seems to be an EDH staple as it has so many differents themes listed!

    Sygg, River Cutthroat: Illustrated by Jeremy Enecio

    Tempo

    Tempo is a way to describe decks focusing on heavy interaction with efficient mana usage. Tempo decks play a few threats early, and try to chip away opponents HP and resources. Tempo decks are not the fastest decks causing damage, and aim to dragging the game a bit longer, and preventing opponents plans with right timed removals.

    Fallen Shinobi: Illustrated by Tomasz Jedruszek

    Saboteur

    Saboteur is an effect on a creature triggered whenever the creature deals combat damage to an opponent. Many saboteur creatures have evasion and can wreck havoc with their effects if unanswered.

    Merfolk Spy: Illustrated by Matt Cavotta & Richard Whitters

    Unblockable

    Unblockable creatures often have strong evasion, like flying or fear, or they are simply unblockable. Highly evasive creatures tend to have lower power to balance the strong effect of free damage in combat and tend to have lower toughness too.

    Demonic Embrace: Illustrated by Sidharth Chaturvedi

    Discard

    The ways to discard are plenty: cycling, rummaging, end steps discard phase, to name a few. Discard decks are built around triggers from discarding, like madness and synergizes well with reanimating.

    Cathars Crusade: Illustrated by Karl Kopinski

    +1/+1 counters

    White has many great support spells and permanents for +1/+1 counters theme. Counters theme is often combined with White-weenie or token strategy and turns the small creatures into a formidable force.

    Barony Vampire: Illustrated by Daarken

    Vampire tribal

    Vampire tribal is second most popular mono black tribal. Eternal vampire have a multitude of different commanders available and different game plans, too. One vampire tribal can focus on full combat with lord effects, other focusing on life gain and life loss and third can focus on stealing other players creatures.

    You Find Some Prisoners: Illustrated by Lie Setiawan

    Cast from Exile

    Casting from exile is often found from red, and sometimes carries over combinations like rakdos or even mono black. Some popular cast from exile ways are madness, adventures, cascade and impulsive draw.

    Etali, Primal Storm: Illustrated by Raymond Swanland

    Theft Cast

    Casting other players spells is mostly found in Grixis colors. Ways to steal spells tend to focus around exiling libraries and abusing opponents graveyards most of the time. Decks focusing on opponents spells is close to chaos decks and can cause some irritation in the play group.

    Sneak Attack: Illustrated by Tyler Jacobson

    Cheat Permanents

    Cheating permanents to the battlefield is available in every colours. How the permanents are cheated into play depends on the colours available, eg black uses reanimation from the battlefield and red uses sneaking, meaning the permanent will be sacced in the end of the turn.

    Cryptic Command: Illustrated by Jason Rainville

    Cantrips

    Cantrips are spells with a draw effect on them. Cantrip decks are often instant and sorcery spell slinger decks and aim to cast as many cantrips as possible and creating value from the cast triggers.

    Illustrated by James Ryman

    Aristocrats

    Aristocrat decks are a combination of sacrifice effects, reanimating and value creation. Wincons revolve around multiple triggers, either from dying, ETB or cast triggers.

    Phantasmal Image: Illustrated by Nils Hamm

    Illusion tribal

    Illusions are mostly blue creatures and some times have a specific characteristic: if they are targeted with a spell or activated ability the creature is sacrificed.

    Brainstorm: Illustrated by Willian Murai

    Draw matters

    Draw matters decks gets value out of card draw triggers. Value can be anthem effects, tapping creatures or straight up life loss for the opponents. Draw matter decks run a high amount of interactions and tend to draw during opponents end steps.

    Anointed Procession: Illustrated by Victor Adame Minguez

    Tokens

    Mono white token decks aim to create a mass of small creature tokens and then with anthem effects or +1/+1 counter defeat the opponents in combat. White token decks are aggressive decks and aim to flood the battlefield soon rather than later due to the weaker card draw mono white has access to.

    Drakuseth, Maw of Flames: Illustrated by Grzegorz Rutkowski

    Dragon tribal

    Dragons, alongside Goblins, are reds primary creature types. Dragons are reds strongest creatures and most of the expansions have some kind of red dragon in them. As dragons are expensive to cast, dragon tribal decks run multiple cost reduction effects and have ways to cheat the expensive dragons on the battlefield.

    Clone: Illustrated by Kev Walker

    Clones

    Mono blue has multiple ways to clone own or opponents permanents. The gameplay changes effectively, when you get to play your opponents biggest threats, too and clone decks can lead to some very weird and interesting situations.

    Power Artifact: Illustrated by Terese Nielsen

    Artifacts

    Artifact decks aim to interact and gain advantage with own artifacts by copying them, turning them into creatures and simply create new artifacts as tokens. Artifact decks are very popular and they have multiple infinite loops.

    Prosperous Pirates: Illustrated by Josh Hass

    Pirate tribal

    Pirate tribals are creature heavy decks focusing on controlling and preventing opponents from winning with resource efficient interactions. Pirate decks are less combat focused than many other tribal decks.

    Treasure: Illustrated by Alayna Danner

    Treasures

    Treasures are artifact tokens similar to Gold tokens. Treasures have an activated ability to create one mana of any color, by tapping and saccing the token. Treasures are available in every color but focusing on red and green.

    Power Artifact: Illustrated by Terese Nielsen

    Artifacts

    Artifact decks aim to interact and gain advantage with own artifacts by copying them, turning them into creatures and simply create new artifacts as tokens. Artifact decks are very popular and they have multiple infinite loops.

    Cryptic Command: Illustrated by Jason Rainville

    Cantrips

    Cantrips are spells with a draw effect on them. Cantrip decks are often instant and sorcery spell slinger decks and aim to cast as many cantrips as possible and creating value from the cast triggers.

    Isochron Scepter: Illustrated by Mark Harrison

    Combo

    Combo decks are control heavy decks, running a heavy amount of card draw or tutors. If the decks get to assemble the combo pieces the game often ends in an infinite combo.

    Llanowar elves: Illustrated by Chris Rahn

    Elf tribal

    Elves are greens primary creature type since the beginning. Elf decks run a huge amount elf mana dorks and the are able to produce infinite and close-to-infinite amounts of mana, as the cards mana output increases with the amount of elves controlled. Elf tribals are combat focused.

    Grindstone: Illustrated by Greg Simanson

    Mill

    Milling in mono blue can be done in two clear ways: self-mill or regular mill. In self-mill, blue usually tries to find some kind of an infinite loop piece and retrieve it from the graveyard or run the Thassa's Oracle or Laboratory Maniac combo. In the regular mill the goal is to mill opponents whole libraries and win by having an opponent draw from an empty library.

    Articles with Counterspell in the deck list

    Kamiz, Obscura Oculus: Illustrated by Chris Rallis

    Esper Tempo deck: Kamiz, Obscura Oculus with Saboteur

    When Streets of New Capennas Obscura deck was released I immediately found Kamiz interesting, as the commander allows many different strategies varying from unblockable to draw matters, from discarding to reanimating in Esper colors. This is my take on Kamiz as a mix of all as a strong Tempo deck.
    Evelyn, the Covetous: Illustrated by Marta Nael

    Grixis Vampire tribal and exile with Evelyn

    Streets of new Capenna introduced a new vampire tribal commander in Grixis colors. Evelyn has an interesting way to provide value with vampire tribal and the decks power level increases according your opponents decks!
    Minn, Wily Illusionist as a commander in mono blue EDH deck. With lots of permanents!

    Mono blue commander: Minn, Wily Illusionist with permanents

    Adventures in the Forgotten Realms precons published in 2021 summer have some very interesting commanders! Minn, Wily Illusionist flied under the radar for a long time for me, but finally I've built my own mono blue deck! With lots of permanents.
    Silumgar flies to the dimir lands laying waste to every opponent.

    EDH Dragon tribal deck: Dimir dragons

    Tribal decks are very popular in EDH. Dragon tribal is the third most popular tribal theme according to EDHRec with over 13k decks available. Most of these decks are Gruul, Jund, Rakdos or 5-color decks, though. This deck is off-color Dragon tribal with Silumgar as the Commander.
    Malcolm and Breeches

    Izzet Jank Pirate Tribal: Malcolm + Breeches

    Mono blue, Izzet and Grixis have been the main colors for Pirate tribals for ever. I wanted to build a pirate tribal deck focusing on the pirating: exile your opponents cards, play them yourself and turn them into your weapons.
    Simic snake elf scout commander: Lonis, Cryptozoologist

    Simic clue token commander: Lonis, Cryptozoologist

    Simic commander decks are often called value decks: playing spells, drawing cards and doing tons of stuff and prolonging the games. This simic deck: Lonis, Cryptozoologist Clue token deck has several wincons including milling, combat, tapping out your opponents whole board and stealing nonland permanents.