Jester's Scepter

Counterspells normally need to predict the future: you hold up mana and hope the right spell lands on the stack. This artifact inverts that bargain by reaching into an opponent's library first, exiling five cards face down and giving you a private read on what is coming. The counter clause is then keyed not to a spell's type or cost but to its name matching one of those five exiled cards, which turns the deck-knowledge into ammunition. Against a singleton-heavy library the read is mostly information; against a deck running four copies of a key spell, each exiled match becomes a loaded counter you can fire at leisure, spending one of the exiled cards into its owner's graveyard each time. It is a mill enabler and a soft Counterbalance hybrid in a single slot, with the activation cost and tap requirement holding it to one interaction per turn cycle. The design belongs to an era fond of cards that asked you to engage with the opponent's library as a resource rather than just your own, and the face-down exile (visible to you, hidden from them) is the quiet flavor engine: a jester peeking at the cards before deciding which trick to spring. The ceiling is narrow because it can only answer names it already holds, but within that constraint it offers something most countermagic never does, which is certainty about what you are about to stop.