Welcome artisans. Today I’m going to do something a bit different. I’m posting a single card design and will talk about its implications for an overall format and the game as a whole. This is more “big picture” design about how the implications of one simple card can be quite impactful on design.

It would be fair to say that Spell Tax is my pitch for making taxing counterspells secondary in White, as they were before. I argue that they fit White’s slice of the color pie, that this shift is good for the health of formats, and that it helps mitigate some issues with counterspells that Wizards has.

Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

Stasis Snare

Naturalize

Banisher Priest

Spell Pierce

Approach of the Second Sun

Spell Pierce

Negate

Botanical Sanctum

Negate

Spell Pierce

Counterspell

Spell Pierce

Lookout's Dispersal

There was a point in time when White was secondary in counterspells. Just as red is secondary in flying but limited to dragons and phoenixes, White could counter a spell only if it taxed it, or if it returned it to the library. The effect was eventually demoted to tertiary, as not enough white counterspells were made to justify its position as secondary.Taxing counterspells already fit in within White’s slice of the color pie. White gets taxing effects all the time, such as on. White appreciates the idea of “answers with answers”, most clearly shown in cards like. It doesn’t remove a creature unconditionally, but it can trap it within an enchantment. This is the “play fair” part of white; it can remove anything as long as there is an out. Paying the extra 2 for Spell Tax is the workaround for removing the spell, in the same way-ing a Stasis Snare or killing ais the workaround for that creature removal. Theeffect in particular is a better fit for White than for Blue, as its steep drop-off in usefulness as the game goes on makes it best in low-to-the-ground aggressive decks. Blue sometimes dips its toes into this space in tempo decks like Modern Merfolk, but the White Weenie archetype is a more prominent deck type that this card would slot perfectly into.Splitting counterspells between Blue and White also can aid format health. A major issue with recent Standard was control decks likebeing hated out of the format by the existence ofand. These counterspells ironically doomed control decks, as the 4- and 7-mana haymakers you cast were easily taken down by 1- and 2-mana spells out of the sideboard. With the best decks all being Blue, it meant games two and three were very hard for control to win. The format’s good mana fixing, along with both counterspells being in the same color, meant they were easy to splash for as well. Even early in Kaladesh standard there were RG decks like Pummeler runningjust to cast counterspells from the sideboard. Ifwere Blue andwere White, it would be harder for a deck to splash them both, and in a world wheres are split between two colors, tier 1 Blue decks wouldn't be able to easily break into tier 0.5 via exclusive access to countermagic.A common counterargument to the white counterspell is that counterspells are already one of the most disliked card types in the game (up there with land destruction) so making more of them would be a bad move . My position is that you wouldn’t make more of them, but instead, divide each set’s counterspell count between the two colors. Looking at Ixalan Block as an example,andcould have easily been colorshifted to White (the later with the tribal rider changed to Vampires or Dinosaurs of course) while the rest would stay Blue. This has the added benefit of making it harder to do the counterspell.dec Wizards tried to keep under control by splitting the cheaper counterspells with “outs” and the more expensive hard counters into different colors.The taxing counterspell works in White, contributes to format health, and adds to color diversity among decks. I hope this card served as an example of the possibilities of stretching Magic’s design just past the corners, and I look forward to hearing feedback from the Artisans.