https://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Dominaria/Unwind#paper

Unwind
2U
Instant
Counter target non-creature spell.
Untap up to 3 lands.

Is it enough? Works with Baraal quite nicely, as well as LOA and academy. Counter your own Mox for +mana if need be. I like it.

This card seems very bad to me in a Vintage context. A 3-mana counterspell is essentially unplayable, and I don't want to clutter my deck with cards that are only decent/good when I have another card in play (e.g., Baral in this case). There might be some ways to make it work, but I don't think it's generally going to be worth the effort.

I'd be drooling all over this card if it was "Negate, but it's free if you have three mana", but it's not quite there.

I agree that it's pretty hot with Baral, Chief of Compliance. I think Frantic Search with same untap clause is almost good, but needs too much deckbuilding support, and I bet that's in the same boat as this.

On the upside, the thing about cards with "needs more deckbuilding support" is that if you get ENOUGH of them, they start getting good. For my taste, 1 Tolarian Academy and 1 Library of Alexandria isn't enough for me to be excited about getting untaps on utility lands. That is, it's awesome when it happens, but I wouldn't build around it.

Works with Baraal quite nicely ... Counter your own Mox for +mana if need be

Just want to point out, this doesn't work. If you have Baral out and you counter your Mox with Unwind, you'll get +1 mana. But if you let your Mox resolve, you'll ALSO get +1 mana ... and you get to keep the Mox ... and you get to keep the counter ... and you don't need a Baral to do it. Please don't make this play

The only deck I could see this in is high tide. But that’s legacy.

@Brass-Man Well, I meant with a land that gave more than 1 mana, but I get your point. I just like that I can fit this in a list with Drains and Snappys and possibly handle 2 things with 3 untapped lands. Maybe in something like Stoneforge, or Landstill.

I'm actually gonna say that this sees narrow play in a control/combo build as mana tech, since it has dual functionality as a mana boost or forcing through your combo. But I'm probably wrong.

I really think this is interesting in legacy high tide, which is a pretty second tier deck right now. I wonder if this would make it much better?

@topical_island I am not a high tide expert but i played it for some time in Legacy. Honestly, i would be very surprised if it changed much about the deck.

@albarkhane Not to sidetrack too far into legacy-land, but can you tell me why?

This is interesting. But in the context of Baral, I think it’s worse than Remand

This is bad in Legacy High Tide. You can't afford to counter stuff paying mana, unless you're already comboing so it's useless.

Yeah. I'm not so sure this isn't good in high tide.
Some facts about high tide -

1. It is less that 1% of top 8s in the last 2 months. So I'm gonna say (that while I like the deck) it objectively kinda sucks right now.
2. The one instance of a top 8 in the last 2 months ran 1 cloud of faeries, 2 Flusterstorm, 1 Snap, 1 Meditate, 1 Pact of Negation.

I'm not so sure that the deck can't be improved by replacing some number of the above cards with this counter. (Is this card really worse than a cloud of faeries?)

The problem with Unwind is you can't play it at will. If you're in the middle of going off, and your opponent tries to disrupt you? Sure, it's pretty good. It's not great when it's stuck in your hand. Cloud of Faeries doesn't have this problem.

@evouga Yeah. It just doesn't seem like that much of a problem though. It converts FoW and Brainstorm into mana, which seems pretty sweet. I doubt there are many times when you aren't able to fire it off for lack of a target. Maybe you are short the start -up mana. I can see that. I can't believe this isn't better than Snap though.