by Elton Gahr

Created on: October 24, 2009

With the growth of the internet and the many sites dedicated to magic the gathering cards and decks the game of magic the gathering took a change. Netdecking as it is called, became the norm, with players getting their decks not from their own ideas but from others. This has led to considerably less variety in the types of decks you are likely to face at a tournament even while it has increased their overall quality. But a good player can use this to his advantage. If you know the metagame well you can know the central cards of any deck, often after having seen only a handful of cards.

That is where Declaration of Naught comes into play. A rare blue enchantment from the morningtide expansion set of magic the gathering. It costs two blue to put into play and when you do you connect with it the name of a card. You may then, at any time in the future pay one blue, and counter that card.

There are advantages and disadvantages to this type of counter spell. The biggest of the disadvantages is the most difficult to overcome. Since you are not countering a spell your opponent has already cast you are forced to guess at the cards that your opponent will want to play. The only real solution to this is to know your opponent's deck well. This can be very difficult in the first round of a tournament and because of this Declaration of Naught is sometimes forced into the sideboards of decks, not because it wouldn't be useful in the first game but because without an understanding of the deck you are facing there is no good way to use it. The other is that you lose your surprise and your counter spell can effectively be removed with disenchant, but if you have other counter spells this may not be easy to do.

The advantage of this card is two fold. First, with this one card you are able to potentially counter up to four of your opponent's spells. This is unlikly to happen but it is reasonably possibly to hit at least two.

The second advantage is far more powerful against blue decks. This is because this is an ability and not a spell, that means that other counterspells can't counter it. If you target cancel with it then you can weaken their counter spelling ideas well, making it a very useful card in blue mirror matches.

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