Price$23.55 – $216.61
Buy on TCGplayerForce of Will
Instant
LegalGame Changer Salt 2.01CounterspellRank #190
You may pay 1 life and exile a blue card from your hand rather than pay this spell's mana cost.
Counter target spell.
Why is this card good?
Force of Will is the premier free counterspell — your insurance policy against losing on the spot.
The whole point is the alternative cost: you can counter a game-ending spell on an opponent's turn while tapped out, or interact during your own combo turn without holding up mana. That "free interaction" is what makes it a Game Changer and a staple in high-power and cEDH blue decks. In those pods, protecting your own combo or stopping someone else's is worth the steep cost.
That cost is real, though: you're spending two cards (FoW plus a pitched blue card) and a life to counter one spell. That's brutal card disadvantage in slower, grindy games.
Play it in cEDH and competitive blue control/combo decks with high blue-card density. Skip it in casual or battlecruiser pods, where you'll rarely face turn-3 wins and the two-for-one tempo loss isn't justified. Decks light on blue cards also struggle to reliably pitch for it.
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Printings (16)
Show all 16 printingsShow fewer
Rulings (1)
- 2022-12-08
To determine the total cost of a spell, start with the mana cost or alternative cost you're paying (such as the alternative cost of Force of Will), add any cost increases, then apply any cost reductions. Force of Will's mana value is always 5, no matter what you paid to cast it.