Daze

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Daze is a 2cmc soft counterspell with an alternative cost of bouncing an Island, making it effectively free on the early turns when tempo is paramount. It is a defining card in Delver-tempo and blue tempo strategies where the Island bounce is negligible because land counts are intentionally low. In Commander and Brawl, the alternative cost is much weaker since land counts are higher, games go longer, and opponents can simply pay {1} in the mid/late game — pushing it to fringe in multiplayer and tier-2 in 1v1 Brawl where early interaction matters more.

• Daze's power ceiling is almost entirely in formats with low land counts (Legacy Delver runs 14-17 lands) — in 100-card singleton formats where you want 36-38 lands, returning an Island is a steep tempo loss after turn 2-3.

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• Unlike Force of Will, Daze does NOT exile a card as its alternative cost, making it much easier to chain multiples in the same turn without depleting hand resources.

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• In cEDH, Daze sees niche play in fast storm/combo decks that want free interaction on the combo turn rather than holding up mana, but it's rarely included in control shells.

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• EDHREC rank: #3,393