Insidious Will

The middle mode is the one nobody talks about, and it's why this card is stranger than its counterspell pedigree suggests. Countering a spell is the floor: hold up mana, answer the threat, move on. But the redirect and copy modes intervene without negating, which gives the card a reach a straight counter cannot match. All three modes work while the target is still on the stack, so you have to act before resolution: bend a removal spell back onto its caster's own creature before it lands, or fork an opponent's big sorcery, or, more usefully, double up your own. The catch is the price. Four mana buys a poor rate on the counter mode by any efficiency measure, and the modes that justify the extra cost (the redirect, the copy) are situational enough that the card often functions as an overpriced answer. What redeems the design is that it bundles three blue-mage instincts (deny, deflect, duplicate) into one instant, so you never have to guess which one the turn will demand. You pay the tax up front whether you use the breadth or not. This is a flexible modal blue spell of the expensive sort, built for the mage who would rather hold one card that does whatever the moment requires than three narrow cards that each do one thing better and sit dead the rest of the time.