Mashup: the Gathering Workbench: Recent Activity
| Mashup: the Gathering Workbench: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
Recent updates to Mashup: the Gathering Workbench: (Generated at 2025-07-03 20:36:47)
I actually didn't know it was from Alliances - I thought it was from Ice Age - but the set is irrelevant. It's a free counterspell. The most iconic Turn 0 counterspell, and the classic response to Turn 1 wins like Channel-Fireball. Most free counterspells like Daze and Thwart need you to have taken at least one turn before you can cast them; Foil and Mental Misstep are I suspect the only other Turn 0 counterspells, and Force of Will is far better than them.
That flaggy thing? I don't recognise that set symbol.
jmgariepy mentioned Avoid Fate (and Guttural Response) when he said "Previous counterspells in green and white focus on protecting your creatures, or forcing a creature of yours to get through". And wow, I'm impressed you've managed to avoid hearing about Force of Will. It's been one of the defining cards in Type 1 tournaments for over 10 years.
Discard a card just makes it a spellshaper, I guess. Force of will isn't somehting I'm familiar with. I guess it's like a counterspell? Ah, it's a counterspell good enough to convince even card advantage people to use it. Makes sense, this certainly mirrors it.
I think the green counterspell is something like 'counter target spell that targets you or a creature you control' but we're getting too wordy now, non-creature is good enough, I'd say.
It certainly feels more like FOW with the "pay 1 life and exile" version. And FOW is iconic enough that I'd say if it was just "discard a blue card", it'd feel wrong, and feel like it should be "pay 1 life and exile".
Random Generator gave me Force of Will and Forest, color shifting Force of Will green. Previous counterspells in green and white focus on protecting your creatures, or forcing a creature of yours to get through. I didn't want to bank on the usual, and instead, figured that an expensive green counterspell might be willing to hit anything but creatures and lands. The fact that I didn't have to change "blue card" to "green card" was just gravy... It means this card is an expensive response in Green, but a tier 1 counterspell in Blue/Green.
My one hangup is that I'd prefer to get rid of "pay 1 life" and "exile" and replace with just discard a blue card. But the minor strangeness directly confronts players and tells them that they have Force of Will in their hand. I don't know. Anybody out there have an opinion on that?