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Moxonomy

Lapse of Certainty

Instant2 generic manaWhite mana

White does not get to counter spells very often, and when it does, the price is always something other than mana. Here the price is that the spell does not die: it returns to the top of its owner's library, meaning your opponent draws it again next turn instead of finding something new. That is a tempo trade, not an answer, and it reframes the card entirely. You are not removing a threat, you are taxing a turn: buying a combat step, a clock tick, or a window to close out a race, at the cost of staring the same spell back down a turn later. The clearest historical kin is Memory Lapse, which does the same library-redirect in blue at a cheaper rate; this is the white-frame version, slower but living in a color that almost never gets to say "counter target spell" without conditions or restrictions. The tension is honest: a permanent counter would be a color-pie break, so the design hands white the interaction and then claws back most of the value by refusing to deny the card-draw. Read that way, it is less a counterspell than a delaying tactic dressed as one, best in a deck that wants the opponent stuck on a redraw while the board does the rest.

Lapse of Certainty (plst)
PLST · #CON-9common
Pricing
Normal:
Foil: $1.87
Oracle Text

Rules text

Counter target spell. If that spell is countered this way, put it on top of its owner's library instead of into that player's graveyard.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
N/A
Modern
Legal
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
Legal
Brawl
N/A
Historic
N/A
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
N/A
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
Legal
Pauper Commander
Legal
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
N/A
Penny Dreadful
Legal
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
N/A
TLR
Legal
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

1 set
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