Daily Card Redesign #82: Portal 2nd Age Common Counterspells

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development. I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

There are two printed card types for spells for Portal Second Age: creatures and sorceries. From this, two common counterspells were designed: one that counters creatures, and the other that counters sorceries. This dichotomy is something that's commonly used for common counterspell design, especially within Core Sets. So, because it's a pair that live without each other, I'm redesigning Extinguish as well. This is Extinguish:

Redesign:

I couldn't think of a satisfactory name for Extinguish that falls between Exhaustion and Eye Spy alphabetically that matches the "spells not the first cast in a turn." Since only creatures and sorceries exist, the only card types that Portal Second Age cares about are those two types. Which is excellent, since it naturally makes the above cards weaker, in case they were ever a bit more powerful.

The challenge here was to find a dichotomy of common counterspells that could be done for Portal Second Age. I couldn't reference "permanents" since the only permanent is creature. I couldn't do converted mana costs ("X or less" and "X or more") since that term is too advanced. I felt weird to include reprints of Gainsay and Frazzle, so I didn't (in retrospect, I could have referenced just sorceries and creatures to make these Portal Second Age version different).

So I took a cue from Second Guess and made a couple counterspells that care whether the spell was the first cast in a turn or if it was second, third, etc. The caveat to why these can exist is that, while within the vaccuum of Portal Second Age the above might be powerful, the restriction of sorcery or creature is quite restricting outside of the Portal Second Age environment. This is fantastic! Done.

There really should be two spells that exist in Magic: The Gathering that does:

"Counter target spell that's the first cast this turn."

"Counter target spell that's not the first cast this turn."

Costs may vary. For example, the "NOT first cast" conditional counter can cost 2U (so that it's not strictly better than Second Guess).

Lastly, take note: The name "First Not Last" refers to both about when something occurred and whether something was able to last. The title is saying that "First does not last." (which is why it counters something that was the first cast in a turn) in addition to "It's first but not last!"