Flashfreeze

A counterspell that costs less by knowing exactly who it hates. The trade is the entire design: hard countering only red or green, the two colors that historically built around lacking their own permission, lets it come in at two mana with no scaling cost and no life payment. Against a deck full of burn or one leaning on green ramp it is a clean, unconditional answer; against blue mirrors, control, or anything in black and white it is dead in hand. That asymmetry is what the rate costs: the narrow target list buys it out of the conditional clauses that bolt onto broader permission. Among color-keyed counters built on the same premise, few strip the idea down this far, with no creature restriction and no caveat beyond the color line. The window matters as much as the color line: at instant speed it sits on the stack for the cheapest possible cost to stop a haymaker mid-development, which is precisely where aggressive red and ramping green spend their most important mana. Held for the spell that wins the game rather than the first thing the opponent casts, the two-mana price reads as a bargain instead of a gamble. It is a sideways answer by construction, useful only when you already know which two colors are coming, and dazzlingly efficient once you do.