As the NEG, it can sometimes be difficult to handle affirmative offense, the AFF acts like a prosecutor arguing that the status quo is bad, however because the status quo is innocent until proven guilty, the NEG has an advantage by default. This is called the burden of proof, and by taking multiple approaches from different angles, you can create a counter plan which solves the status quo better, giving the AFF yet another thing to deal with.
Counterarguments say, hey, the AFF has a disadvantage to it, let’s do this instead which keeps the benefits, but doesn’t have a downside, or at the least the negative impact is less. 🪄
When running a counterplan, it has to be unique 💫, if the AFF plan does the same thing, they can argue for a permutation 🔁 saying both plans should be run at the same time. Mutually exclusive arguments cannot be permutated, because they do opposite things. A permutation must have all of the AFF, and all or PART of the counterplan, the permutation DOES NOT need all of the counterplan, only part of it to go through.
If the permutation doesn’t contain all of the AFF, the negative can argue that that argument is severed and doesn’t resolve.
A disadvantage that links to the affirmative, but not the counterplan, which shows that the outcome caused by the NEG is better than the AFF. This is crucial to stop the AFF from saying the disadvantage applies to you, because on even footing the AFF plan takes priority.
The person that says the counterplan is a good idea, you need a card that says the counterplan is good, otherwise anyone can argue for anything, like defunding Cheetos chips to buy more nukes.
The Internal net benefit is the counterplan, which is contained in itself and solves the issue
The external net benefit is the disadvantage, which the counterplan avoids causing without interfering directly.
The AFF has a wide variety of tricks to use in response to the NEG, some use the counteprlan as part of the AFF’s advantage, some attack or disassemble it instead.