Oppressive Will

A counterspell that prices itself off your own hand size inverts the Force Spike school of taxation. Mana Leak and its relatives ask the caster for a flat payment, then leave the timing up to you; this one asks instead that you hold cards, converting that hoarded grip into a wall the opponent has to climb. A full hand turns it into a hard counter in all but name. An empty one is the opposite extreme: zero cards means a tax of zero, so the spell simply resolves and your three mana buys nothing. That spread is the whole design, and it cuts against the deck most likely to be holding it. The blue control shell sitting on six cards rarely needs a counter that strong, while the deck that wants a three-mana answer usually cannot afford to empty its grip on threats and still keep the wall stocked. The strength is real but anti-correlated with the moment of need: the tax scales with a resource you spend down precisely when you are under pressure. So it reads as an elegant thought experiment in resource-converted interaction more than a fixture, a counter whose ceiling is a number you control but can seldom max out on the turn it matters. The dial it traces, from soft tempo tax toward conditional hard answer, is one blue keeps revisiting; this is the version that hands that dial to the caster's own card count.