Scent of Brine
Instant
Reveal any number of blue cards in your hand. Counter target spell unless its controller pays 
for each card revealed this way.
- CMC
- 2
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- U
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Urza's Destiny
- Price
- $0.16
- EDHREC rank
- #24808
Scent of Brine counters a spell for free if you reveal a blue card from your hand — the ceiling is a hard counter with no mana investment, and the floor is a dead card when your hand is empty. Outside of dedicated hand-sculpting or bluff-heavy strategies, the condition makes it too unreliable to justify a slot over unconditional one-mana interaction.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Scent of Brine is a fringe include in blue decks that consistently hold a full hand of blue cards — Teferi's Puzzle Box chaos builds and draw-heavy spellslinger lists occasionally exploit it as a free counterspell on a key turn. Legacy and Vintage have access to Force of Will and Force of Negation, which are strictly better free countermagic with less conditional reveal costs, leaving Scent of Brine on the outside looking in. Pauper is where the card is most plausible, since the pool of free interaction at common is shallow, but even there the hand-reveal condition creates too much uncertainty in a format that rewards consistency.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.16 bulk tier
At $0.16, Scent of Brine is deep bulk — you're not paying for power, you're paying for cardboard. It won't appreciate unless some future interaction makes hand-reveal countermagic suddenly relevant, which is not on the horizon.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.