Protect the Negotiators

A soft counter whose tax rises with your own creature count, and that dependency inverts the usual countermagic contract. Mana Leak or Daze punishes an opponent who overextends their mana; this spell instead grows more punishing the wider you already are, reading as a near-hard counter when your board is full and doing almost nothing when it is empty. The pull runs against instinct: it wants an Azorius shell that keeps deploying threats, precisely the archetype that historically cannot spare the mana to leave a counter open. The white kicker is what reconciles the two impulses. Pay the extra pip and a whiffed counter still leaves a Soldier behind, and every token you make (including that one, once it resolves) raises the ransom on the next spell you aim this at. So the interaction compounds in the direction a go-wide deck was already headed: cast creatures, and your stack answer sharpens without you having to switch gears. It is countermagic engineered for tempo rather than draw-go control, an attempt to hand board-flooding strategies a piece of permission that pays them for their own aggression instead of penalizing it.