Removal – Hate
For this cycle, we continue explore the allied color pairs destroying the thing they hate, and then getting something back for it if they destroy their enemy color.
A counterspell that only affects instants and sorceries, but with the added bonus of allowing white or blue to scry when countering red spells.
This one was heavily inspired by Judge’s Familiar, and is clearly better than Miscast, but I would say comparable to Disrupt or Flusterstorm.
This card again reinforces my love of blue-black land removal and obviously highlights their hatred of green. Since lands have a mana value or zero, I made it punish Forests for each of their types, granting a benefit against rarer, better lands.
As land removal, it’s comparable to Evil Presence or Sea’s Claim without facilitating your creatures’ landwalk abilities. The added benefit of mill fits it nicely into a stall-and-mill strategy.
Scorch does what black and red do best: it gets rid of creatures. My lovely wife Diane hates burn spells that can’t hit players, but agreed that this one was okay since it can get rid of a creature and cause the controller to lose life.
While not as fast as Shock, this card is still a solid one-mana removal spell against weenie decks, with the added benefit of killing opponents who have the audacity of running white creatures.
I went through multiple iterations of this spell before settling on the current wording. When I first imagined this card, there were no blue artifacts. Fortunately, there are plenty now, making this spell’s second ability relevant.
A one-mana, flexible Shatter is a solid card in my opinion, since it can get rid of all those pesky Vehicles and Equipment the kids like so much, as well as disrupting an overpowered mana base.
Wane was an alright half of a card back in the old days, but Demystify could never stand on its own. For one mana, getting rid of an enchantment just isn’t good enough for the cost of the card. Making it flexible between green and white helps a bit, but this really shines as a silver bullet against classic Black Control that relies on Necropotence.