I am sorely going to miss counterspell, being a counterbitch myself. It was a staple in most original decks that I made(keep in mind that most decks I make are based soley around the concept of forcing my opponent to not play the game. These decks always win for me).
I praise R&D on trying to balance the colors(which'll probably never happen), but completely oinking on the one that is complained about the most(heh-heh-heh) is completely bogus. I have yet to see a decent Type 2 mono-blue deck since Masques left Standard. Sure, it's been a complementary color in so many other decks, but nowadays it can't cope by itself. Red and Black can, Green could, White is a stretch but it has sufficient power to due so. Blue is slowly being turned into the "bitch" color, largely in part to many people complaining about the fact that it stops spells from being played(how many people here can honestly say that they've never wished for Islands to be banned?).
They've even started migrating card-drawing(Blue's other forte) to green(however, blue's card-drawing power is still vastly superior). How else will we continue to deplore this color??
Sure, everybody has complained about "I would've won had he not countered my 'such-and-such'". But, I have heard equally as many complaints about "That damn Wrath of God", "Why did they even print Glory", "Wild Mongrel is ludicris", "I hate Visara", and "OW!!!!!! YOU THREW YOUR SHELKIN BROWNIE RIGHT IN MY EYE!!!!!(you knew I had to lighten up eventually)".
Plain and simple, every color needs power/broken cards. The game isn't interesting otherwise. Singles sales will go down unless there's a bomb rare that each player wants to get there hands on(no, Visserdrix is not a bomb rare). I honestly feel that the game needs to be even........yet broken, to be fun. And, let me tell you, I have progressively been playing less and less magic since Onslaught block began.
Ransac, cpa trash man