Ashiok's Erasure

Counterspells answer a copy; this answers a printing. Exiling the target spell is the ordinary part: what turns the trick into a soft lock is the clause shutting off every future cast of a card by that name. Against a deck leaning on multiples of one threat or one answer, catching the first one on the stack neutralizes the rest still in the library, in hand, wherever they hide. That reframes the counterspell from a one-for-one into a slow prison against decks built on redundancy. The flash timing lets it sit up as reactive protection, held back with your mana until the spell you most want to erase actually appears rather than firing at the first thing your opponent tries. The cost is written into the last line: because the exiled card returns when the enchantment leaves, the lock is only as durable as your permanent. Enchantment removal does not just kill the lock, it hands the card back to its owner, who can then cast it freely again. So it wants a shell that keeps enchantments on the battlefield, and it wants targets that repeat: burn spells run as playsets, cantrips, whatever an opponent expects to cast three or four times a game. Against a wall of interchangeable copies the naming clause is close to a stranglehold; against a spread of singletons it is a Cancel with a delayed downside. The design lives entirely on that gap between decks that repeat a name and decks that do not.