[UB Pair] Nightmare

Nightmare

Instant
Discard a card. Counter target spell. Then, unless that spell controller pay 1, return Nightmare to its owner hand.

Too powerful?

I dislike this card because it has a ton going on with it for a counterspell.

Also, I don't see why this card needs to be UB. Discarding a card as payment for a counterspell (forbid) countering a spell (counterspell) and doing something unless your openent pays mana (Rhystic Study). This card is mono blue and not fun to play against.

I like this a lot less than the other UB counterspell on the board, and I don't think that there needs to be more than one in the final set. It's just a bit too complicated for the effect.

Perhaps something like this would work better as an off-color second ability, like:

Nightmare Counter
Instant
Counter target spell.
, discard a card: Return ~ to your hand from your graveyard. Play this ability only as a sorcery.

Or maybe with a flashback cost that's similar, like Flashback--UBB, discard a card.

Forbid is such an elegant card, having to play this would just make me sad. I think the idea would have more merit morphed towards something like Probe - one of my favourite cards when kicked.

Or a crazy one:

At the beginning of your upkeep, if CARDNAME is in your graveyard with a black card directly on top of it, you may (pay a cost, if you do) return CARDNAME to your hand.

I know with modern design principles the order of one's GY shouldn't matter :p

Yeah I agree with the fact graveyard order shouldn't matter. Lets put it this way, is this card good enough where all other players should be forced to keep there graveyard organized?

Exiling cards from GY would be better than the order thingy. It could be made black card(s) to keep the dimir theme, but isn't really needed. I'll try to brainstorm something that recurs like this as it feels about as good an idea as the discard for Forbid, but maybe the following would be too much of a rip-off:

"Forget"
Instant
Counter target spell.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if "Forget" is in your graveyard, you may exile two instant cards from your graveyard. If you do, return "Forget to your hand"

Just curious, could you exile forget and another instant and return forget from the exile zone to your hand with the way thats worded, or does it check to see if it's in your graveyard on resolution?

Yeah probably, though I think they haven't let any stuff like that go through so there aren't examples... I was thinking about it for a while but forgot to make it 'two other cards'