Admiral's Order

Permission has always taxed the aggressor most. A traditional counterspell wants two mana untapped and a passive turn, which is exactly what a beatdown deck cannot afford: every mana held for interaction is a creature not cast, and every passive turn hands the initiative back. This resolves that tension with a behavioral discount. If you committed to combat this turn, the counter costs a single blue, which means an aggressive deck can attack with everything and still protect the alpha strike from a removal spell, a fog, or a combat trick. The timing is the part that repays reading closely. Raid checks whether you attacked this turn, so the discount switches on the moment attackers are declared: the price is live throughout your own combat phase, which is precisely the window where a defensive fog or trick would otherwise blow the swing out. It is protection for your offense, not a reactive shield. A sorcery-speed board wipe on the opponent's turn still costs the full , and against instant-speed interaction on their end step Raid gives you nothing, because you did not attack on their turn. The full cost is the floor for the turns you stumbled or got run over, so the card never rots in hand when you could not swing. What makes it a design rather than a cost reduction is that the payout is gated behind the thing the deck already wanted to do: it hands the tempo aggressor a way to say no while giving control shells no reason to look at it.