2cmc counterspells are super necessary if your format pushes the curve down because they help keep players honest; it's important to be able to flexibly disrupt enemy plans outside of strict "removal spells"-style answers, and it promotes interesting bluffing scenarios to boot. Counterspells are great because they can serve as flexible answers to things like artifacts, enchantments, and planeswalkers, for which including specific removal is often difficult due to the sideboard-only nature of it in most formats and what a generally unexciting pick they turn out to be (I never peed my panties for
Disenchant).
Counterspells have higher potential upside than removal, that's true, but as safra points out are reactive and can get stuck in your hand, which makes for a pretty serious downside (almost like there's some kind of balance, huh, weird). You also need a critical density in a deck to really count on them from a control angle, as randomly countering shit as you topdeck into your single counterspell is less valuable than early-turn, pilot-driven decisions about what to counter and when (a shortage of blue control spells also promotes the classic Pile o' Removal control deck, which I find to be much worse to face down and which I personally tend to default to in new lists because people are way stupider about white/black/red removal includes than their counterspell suite). Further, less counters means your players don't get the experience of considering how to use them, which reduces decisions and here at Riptide dot com, we are all about Making Decisions Happen
™. Obviously too many is a problem, but too few is also not cute.
imho a lot of the counterspell debate centers on your playgroup. There's a large swath of players who will cry foul if you
Counterspell their
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief but will only grumble if it dies to
Grasp of Darkness, and sometimes, you have to cater to those people. But if you get over that ingrained notion that
blue is always unfair, and consider it objectively, counters are simply a different kind of removal, and can be played around accordingly. They also promote some cool mind games, which I dig.
Regardless of how you feel about all that, please consider how counterspells compare to your removal spells. Personally, nothing gets me giggling and closing a list like pulling up some Peasant/low-powered list and seeing all the shitty 3-4cmc counterspells in blue while black gets
Doom Blade and white gets
Journey to Nowhere.
Obviously you can do whatever you want with your format, it's your environment and I'm not going to tell you how to make it, and certainly, if your cube is a 9-mana showdown dragon-fest, by all means, run
Dismiss if that's what tickles you. But if you're loading up on
Fabled Hero,
Courser of Kruphix,
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death,
Doom Blade, and
Volcanic Hammer, I think you're better served considering a proportionate number of cards like
Miscalculation,
Condescend, and the like in blue.
