Force of Will

Instant turn 1 lockdown madness low cost of losing 1 life and exiling another blue card and makes your opponent think twice about if you have counters in your hand once your tapped out

Counter a Black Lotus on turn 1 with 0 mana on the board? Yeah, this card is amazing.

Dangerous against combo or important plays yes. But what if everything you play in your deck is a threat like zoo? The way I see it if you force of will a spell the text read " Discard two of your blue cards lose 1 life " so i got a free blightning that does 1 damage instead of 3? Yes i understand if the card I was casting was a quasali pridemage and he has a counterbalance out but no 2 mana on the top that it is a good choice either way you are losing 2 cards have fun drawing 3 islands in a row next turn mr so called control player gg ill swing for 13 or something next turn and fireblast you where is your force of will for that?

simply amazing if you can get ahold of one.

Remand beaten! Force of Will has the power to fill your enemy's soul with terror. He will wilt before you, as an untended lotus blossom does. He will have nearly defeated himself from within before you even strike.

One of the best cards ever printed. No question. But the guy from Las Vegas said protection from blue would save something from being countered, but that is just not true. Goblin Piledriver, for example, has protection from blue, but only wile it is on the battlefield. The same is true for any and all permanents with any kind of protection. This means that a permanent with protection from blue can still be counterspelled. I will be the first to admit I don't know all there is to know about this game, but on this matter I am quite certain.

Best Legal Counterspell in Legacy! A 4-of in over 80% of the decks.

This card is awesome! No cards can beat this card... Five stars!!!

FoW is, and will probably always be, among the top 20 or so cards ever printed in MTG. What other card can stop those horrible turn 1 kill combos? Counterspell? No. Remand? Nope. Not even Mana Drain (another 5 star card btw) can save you on turn 1. There is no substitute for Force of Will!

I agree with the guy above me. For Force of will I rate 5 stars.....

I agree with you man! Oh look at the price, I buy Force or Will when it still $ 1.99 at year 1998. How lucky I have 8 of them....! Hehehehehe.....

This card is awesome, I play blue base deck with 4 Force of Will as counters. They save me a lot from opponent's threats. Thanks to Force of Will, you're the best counter!

For Force of Will I give 5 star, for "You know who from You know where" and "Jace Beleren" I give them 0 star.

I apreciate for WOTC making this card. Five stars!! I think the guy who you rate 0 stars is good comentators. At least not like you that just say... "Five Star" with no comment, no name, no home. I rate "You know who from You know where" -100000 star. Huahahahahah!!!

To Force of Will, I give 5 stars. To the babbling guy above me, I give 0 stars.

I don't agree with that. Force of Will itself not working well, but with the attraction with many blue cards, the Force of Will is very dangerous counter! And don't say Remand beaten... Remand can counter your own spell that will be countered by your opponent. It's not just put your own spell to your hand, but also lets you draw a card! Force of Will may be very dangerous counter, but what will you do if you don't have any blue cards in your hand?? I just want to say that Remand, Counterspell, and the others counter cards like Force of Will, etc. are good in a certain condition...

The best countering card hands down. Force of will beats out counterspell, pact of negation, remand and all the others by playablity, versatility, and flexibility. The ability to to save yourself or throw a seriously enormous wrench in your opponents strategy from out of nowhere with virtually no mana is astounding. And while it can be overcome( protection from blue for one) it does not detract from the absolute incredibility that this card has to offer. To put it simply, bravo. ;)

This card is my archenemy. In legacy my dredg build can win turn 2-3, but countering my only discard outlet makes things much harder... Anyone who gave this 1,2, or 3 clearly doesn't understand Legacy/Vintage - if a deck wins turn 1 or 2, then this is the only way to counter their plan.

All of the people who say this card is good situationally, don't build competitively (clearly). If you build (especially blue) competitively you rarely have available mana, because you want to maximize your effectiveness your turn, force of will lets you do that, and even after doing that, you still have countering ability. Anyone who rates this under 5 stars doesn't understand competitive magic, which is fine if you're just playing for fun. Anyone who's played against this card knows it's not fun, it just ruins your day!

Anyone who rates this card less than 5 stars does not play magic competitively. If my opponents didn't win until turn 20 I probably wouldn't think Force of Will was good either, but since 95% of the decks in Legacy and Vintage kill turns 1-4 I understand the value of this card. You don't need to have "crappy" blue spells in your deck to pitch to force either, you just run cards like Brainstorm and Ponder which are often situationally useful and therefore are not vital to your deck winning at any given time and can be pitched to Force of Will when necessary. Other cards like Spell pierce and Daze are perfect to run with Force of Will since mid to late game they lose some of their effectiveness and can be used to fuel Force. This is the best counterspell card ever printed. Period.

A staple of the eternal formats and rightly so.

For those who argue that it's only good when you're tapped out or that it's useless later in the game as a 5 CMC spell are arguing moot points. It is NEVER casted as a 5 CMC spell unless there's no other choice because mana efficiency of extreme importance and in vintage/legacy 5 mana is much better spent elsewhere (if the game even reaches that point). For those who say it's card disadvantage need to learn about mana efficiency especially at the speed of the formats (Read up on Fundamental Turns).

Force of Will allows you to develop your own board position whilst offering protection at the same time as well as an advantage against other control players, especially if they don't have a FOW. It's good for stopping turn 1/2 combos as well as stalling Aggressive ones.

FoW deserves its status as one of the top 2 premier counterspells with mana drain.

How can people seriously rate this card under 4 stars. Have the guys that did ever playe magic at all? I don't get it.

Number 1 counter magic in all meta, gamebreaker in all situations...the damage and discard is in fact nothing to countering your opponent's spell while being tapped out..THE BEST!!!

i own 12 of these bad boys!!! must have for any blue deck. i did own thirteen, but traded it. the second best counter out there, besides mana drain.

For the one or two people who can't figure out why this is such an amazing card I say to them, duh! This is on the list for the best counter spell ever. Being able to pitch a card to play a counter is amazing! I have a Legacy deck where I run 4 Guiles. He costs 5 mana so I'm pretty open to him getting killed or removed as soon as I drop him. But when I have this card or a Pact of Negation in hand, well let them try to remove him!
Amazing card!

I dont know how many times this card is a game changer on turn one.

the only bad part about this card is that it cycled out of extended. this card is kinda like wrath of god; even if you're not playing it, you NEED a playset, just in case.

this card is a must-have in ANY non-type II deck...not only is it good in general play, but it is effective against cards brought out first turn by super-expensive cards such as the Moxes and the Lotus...

I love this card. Why? It's the best combo killer alive in any format!



First turn lotus, channel, fireball, ha ha you're dead..... No, I'm not, cuz I Willed your fireball!



Actually pulling that off against the early combos was a great feat and it made me feel full of pride. It showed that cheaper cards could be just as powerful as the more expensive cards AND that this one would be a fan favorite for a long time. Even now, with Coldsnap on the rise, we all are wanting a foil Force of Will.



I own 4 of these puppies in my control deck, but I'm seriously pondering the thought of purchasing four more

Forced to put four Force of Will in my Vintage deck! Don't like to remove a Time Walk or Ancestral Recall but it's better then a turn one graveyard. Unless somebody can teach me how to use a Ancestral Recall to recall a dead player!?

This card drops jaws.

Powerful Card, Can be in many decks that run blue. Can also be very suprising when you are tapped out and your opponet doesn't know you can still counter. I own 2 of these but, I am trying to get two more.

A blue deck without Force of Will is a boring deck! It saved me many times against the "First turn kills".

This card is very good I have a control-counter deck and I have one soon I will buy from here 3 force of will!!!!!!!!!!

Force of will is one of the best counterspell cards in magic.A control deck must have 4 force of will.

THis card is GREAT. no mana countering... its sick. Proves old cards can still kick a$$. Every counterspell deck needs 4 of these.

OK a step by step evaluation of what the pluses and minuses of this card are
+ 1st turn counter of a key creature (stops pesky dark ritual things and potentially devastating 1st turn creatures
+ That alternate casting cost is alwlys useful
+ You can allow yourself to tap out and still counter something
+ You can make peopl hesitant if they know you have it
- You do lose one life if you do the alternte castng cost
- To use it regurlarly it is 5, expensive
- Not type 2 legal

Overall: This is an excelant card that can be used in many formats, and an excellent surprise just when they think they can slip something by. In type 1 or 1.5 this card is a must

Force of Will is one of those cards that makes your opponent cringe. The mere fact that you can counter any of thier spells whether or not you're tapped out makes this card fantastic. I play in multiple extended tournaments every year and in 90% of the decks there are 4 force of wills. The simple fact is that if you build a competitive non-type 2 deck that contains blue, it is going to contain force of will....

If you are playing blue in anything but Type II, you need four of these. The major weakness of blue decks used to be that they couldn't stop anything on turn one. This can stop any spell (except for things like Scragnoth) when you haven't even played a land. In fact, if you're not playing a blue deck, you might consider putting a decent amount of blue in just for this card. Just don't play this in a deck with only two other blue spells or you'll never have one to pitch. Awesome, awesome card!!!

Awesome card! Foil, thwart, and misdirection's got nothing on this card. I just won an ebay auction for four of these bad boys and I can't wait to put them in my type 1 permission deck!



However, I see that it had been placed on the restricted watch list. I can see how that is. Hopefully, it won't get restricted. It's not like Mana Drain!

An absolute must have for any extended deck that includes blue.

this card is great

Meh. Its very situational. You can eliminate anything huge your opponents play, but you lose card advantage. "Oohhh, but its free so its amazing..." well yeah but you lose life and you have to discard too. So your opponent just cast one card for your loss of 2 and one life. Congrats.
Oh yeah, and not to mention, it has to be blue. In u/w control this thing can fail on you because you dont got any blue to discard. Ouch. Its best use is a 5 mana counterspell.