I'm just wondering what colors people think are allowed to do the most by themselves.
I personally feel like white gets a lot. It can deal with creatures, graveyard hate, enchantments, artifacts, and even if it has no specific "counter target spell," cards like silence and safe passage are incredibly strong control cards.
White also gets really aggressively costed creatures, to the point of being able to race green.
I feel like most of what green has that white doesn't is now pretty corner-case in standard (trample, land destruction) and white can even do a lot of what black can do, in terms of making creatures go away.
White has always been my most intuitive color, though, so I'm not sure if I'm seeing things that aren't there. I feel like 80% of what I want to do in a deck can be done just with white.
Do other people have colors that they feel like have more access to the color pie than others? Please keep the discussion calm, this isn't a "zomgs magic is dying" thread.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'll be sad if people don't start calling The Chain Veil "Fleetwood Mac."
honestly, why do people really think any one color got more of the color pie than another? If you look over the course of the history of magic (from 1993 to present) you will see that EVERY color in the game has gotten an equal share of the color pie. Sure in one Standard Season one color may have the "lion's share" while another may be getting shafted. However overall they are on even footing.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero." -- Varsuvius, Order of the Stick
I really don't feel that the colors have been balanced over the years. I do think they are getting better at it though.
Anyway, I think one reason that white feels so full right now is because it does a lot of things, and it does them well. In the past, white has definitely felt like a one trick pony with its endless variations of life gain and damage prevention. Modern white is thankfully quite varied.
Historically, blue was the color that got most of the abilities. Being the "tricky" color gave it lots of interesting and powerful spells.
Black was second, as it could receive almost any ability as long as it paid enough for them. About the only thing really off limits for black was enchantment and artifact destruction.
I'd guess green was third. It's known for its fat creatures, but it has had a surprising amount of interesting effects if one looks close enough.
Red would probably be last or close to white, historically speaking. Red was nearly as linear as white used to be, with the important distinction that red's abilities were actually playable.
Anyway, I'm sure I got some of these mixed up. There was an article some time ago that showed an actual graph of the number of abilities each color got. Blue and black were numbers 1 and 2, respectively. I don't remember the others, so I just put them in the order that I felt they were.
About the only thing really off limits for black was enchantment and artifact destruction.
I guess black forgot to tell R&D about this when they printed Gate to Phyrexia. Simply put, just because Black does NOT have Enchantment removal, and for the most part does not have artifact removal. Does not mean it doesn't have ways of dealing with either of these types of cards.
For that matter, traditionally speaking, black shouldn't have answers to Planeswalkers either. Yet that didn't stop Wizards from printing Aether Snap or Vampire Hexmage.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero." -- Varsuvius, Order of the Stick
I think WotC has balanced it fairly evenly. I mean, some years/blocks one colour gets more than another, but overall they're pretty balanced. I mean, it's not like only one or two colours got a Mox. Or white got theonlydecentone-drop. It's fairly even, IMAO. (For those of you who weren't around last time I explained IMAO, it means In My Awesome Opinion)
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DCI Level 2 Judge
Modern: GRB Jund BRG RBU Grixis Delver UBR Legacy: W Death & Taxes W GRB Punishing Jund BRG GUR Canadian Threshold RUG Commander: RUG Maelstrom Wanderer GUR
The OP question is what color can do the most on its own, and for me that is White. This doesn't mean that it's the most powerful or that balance is lacking, it means that it's the most versatile.
For me, the current order of color by the number of options they have is:
1: White
2: Black
3: Blue
4: Green
5: Red
Historically, I can remember one or another Standard meta where Green sucked, where White sucked, where Blue sucked (right now is a good example), and where Red sucked (mostly because of Blue and White being good, not through any inherent deficiency). Mono black, however, hasn't been that viable except in fits and starts. This has been the case since Necro Summer '96 and only given a reprieve briefly in Onslaught and again with Death Cloud in Darksteel. Not even the printing of Damnation was enough to bring Mono Black Rack out of tier 2 status. It didn't even survive as an archetype since the very next thing to happen was it co-opted Tarmogoyf and some other green and/or white support.
I'd say overall though, that the least likely colour to "suck" for very long has always been Blue. Eventually, a Blue containing deck will show up in top 8s everywhere.
Without a doubt to me, it is white. White over the years has had a more diverse set of answers printed in it than any other single colour. It has creature removal (and true removal at that with Swords and Path), artifact destruction, enchantment destruction, the most efficient wide range board sweepers (time and again actually), life gain and damage prevention (admittedly, not great mechanics, but something most of the other colours lack entirely or have some other stipulation on. also admittedly, black's life gain does tend to be the best when it does come up), efficient creatures, fair number of creatures with evasion (flying is the hallmark here with white), etc.
This is NOT to say white is broken or unbalanced. It just has the most diverse set of answers and options of any other colour out there. Really, the only thing it honestly lacks is a real counterspell of any sort but that is pretty solidly blue's domain only (even the colour shifted one in black had an out for people to still get their spell through!). Black's artifact destruction is OLD. And in case you haven't noticed, they have shifted the colour pie a bit over the years to solidify it, more or less, into what it is now. To be fair to my own argument here, white lost its best artifact destruction card when they redefined the pie to put that into green (Disenchant became Naturalize). Thus, you can't really look back and claim the two aforementioned Phyrexian cards since the latter of them was printed in what, '96? And not to mention, the one has a fairly significant drawback in light of what white could do at the time (Phyrexian Tribute vs Disenchant...really?). And actually, it could be argued that in that era, especially with the Gate, it was a time of artifacts in general so more colours needed answers (see: Mirrodin where every colour which normally scorned artifacts had something to do with them anyway since it was the block theme).
And for utility from diversity, blue is probably the followup to this since it has traditionally been the "tricksy" colour. It's answers may not be as straightforward or as definitive as another colour's, but it is still obnoxious and gets the job done.
tl;dr White has its fingers in the most of the colour pie but is not necessarily broken because of it. Blue is pretty diverse while still being kind of single minded almost. Other colours follow in some other order. Black is probably next IMO.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Standard: BRG Jund Midrange GRB //// B Vampire Aggro B //// WRU Patriot Control URW
Extended: RGW Zoo WGR
Legacy: RUG Canadian Thresh GUR
another vote for white. IMO white edges out blue as blue can't Permanently deal with permanents .
there's not much white can't do.
White can't push the tempo dial on 'extreme', and it can't make cards out of nowhere.
Last I checked, that means White almost can't do anything.
I don't think there's a colour hogging everything right now. I think there's a disparity, with two colours not having (not being) as much as a certain other three.
Of course, in the actualtwo-color deck paradigm, Blue continues to be an all-star achiever. Big finishers, unsolvability, inevitability, and the ability to do almost anything to the game state, including saying no.
And all of it efficiently in mana.
You can shore it up with any other color, and Blue is what's doing your job.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Epic banner by Erasmus of æтђєг.
Awesome avatar provided by Krashbot @ [Epic Graphics].
blue was really good back in the past, because it had so many cards to cast at the end of your opponents turn (among MANY other reasons) causing you to always be using your mana to it's full extent....
ALSO IT WAS SOOOOOOOO Flippin powerful...
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Standard RU Owling Mine (Runeflare Trap) RU
Recent FNM's
3-1 2nd
2-0 drop (Yeah, that is 2 wins and a drop...)
3-1 3rd
Blue, without a shadow of a doubt. It has a huge variety of effects which no one else gets, whereas every other color usually shares effects (Land Destruction in red, black and green; Creature Removal in black, white and red; haste in red and black; etc.) No one else gets counterspells, barring like three really bad versions in white and black. No one else gets bounce. Even card draw is basically non-existent except in limited amounts in black. Cloning- Blue. Switching P and T- Blue. Library manipulation- blue. Milling- blue. Interacting with Artifacts- mostly Blue. All sorts of weird and tricky effects- automatically blue. (See Time Stop, for one example out of many.) And although Blue is supposed to be a bad creature color, it gets great weenies too (Merfolk are probably the 3rd best tribe in the game; Faeries also prove how wrong the idea of Blue having bad creatures is).
In fact, I'm pretty sure Mark Rosewater has come out and said that Blue's share of the colorpie has more exclusive effects and is larger than any of the other colors.
Also, back in the old days R&D had this thing where whenever it wasn't blindingly obvious where to put an effect, or maybe if they just thought it was "weird and different", they automatically put it in Blue without analyzing it. Thus Propaganda, Pendrell Mists and Energy Flux all ended up in Blue despite the mechanics all being later reprinted as White cards once R&D realized "huh, I guess taxing might belong in White!" And Ray of Command of course is a quintessentially red card that once again, "wacky effect? Must be Blue!"
The color with the smallest share of the color pie is almost certainly Green, followed by Red. White's share is almost Green - mana effects - draw effects + mass removal + creature removal + taxing effects. Black is probably 2nd to Blue because it can access a lot of mechanics by paying life, or tied with White, I'm not sure.
A good way to examine the breadth of each color's share is to examine the rares from each set and how diverse they are, since this is where each color's premiere effects are generally placed.
I personally feel like white gets a lot. It can deal with creatures, graveyard hate, enchantments, artifacts, and even if it has no specific "counter target spell," cards like silence and safe passage are incredibly strong control cards.
White also gets really aggressively costed creatures, to the point of being able to race green.
I feel like most of what green has that white doesn't is now pretty corner-case in standard (trample, land destruction) and white can even do a lot of what black can do, in terms of making creatures go away.
White has always been my most intuitive color, though, so I'm not sure if I'm seeing things that aren't there. I feel like 80% of what I want to do in a deck can be done just with white.
Do other people have colors that they feel like have more access to the color pie than others? Please keep the discussion calm, this isn't a "zomgs magic is dying" thread.
Anyway, I think one reason that white feels so full right now is because it does a lot of things, and it does them well. In the past, white has definitely felt like a one trick pony with its endless variations of life gain and damage prevention. Modern white is thankfully quite varied.
Historically, blue was the color that got most of the abilities. Being the "tricky" color gave it lots of interesting and powerful spells.
Black was second, as it could receive almost any ability as long as it paid enough for them. About the only thing really off limits for black was enchantment and artifact destruction.
I'd guess green was third. It's known for its fat creatures, but it has had a surprising amount of interesting effects if one looks close enough.
Red would probably be last or close to white, historically speaking. Red was nearly as linear as white used to be, with the important distinction that red's abilities were actually playable.
Anyway, I'm sure I got some of these mixed up. There was an article some time ago that showed an actual graph of the number of abilities each color got. Blue and black were numbers 1 and 2, respectively. I don't remember the others, so I just put them in the order that I felt they were.
I guess black forgot to tell R&D about this when they printed Gate to Phyrexia. Simply put, just because Black does NOT have Enchantment removal, and for the most part does not have artifact removal. Does not mean it doesn't have ways of dealing with either of these types of cards.
For that matter, traditionally speaking, black shouldn't have answers to Planeswalkers either. Yet that didn't stop Wizards from printing Aether Snap or Vampire Hexmage.
Modern:
GRB Jund BRG
RBU Grixis Delver UBR
Legacy:
W Death & Taxes W
GRB Punishing Jund BRG
GUR Canadian Threshold RUG
Commander:
RUG Maelstrom Wanderer GUR
Phyrexian Tribute (and the already mentioned Gate to Phyrexia).
The OP question is what color can do the most on its own, and for me that is White. This doesn't mean that it's the most powerful or that balance is lacking, it means that it's the most versatile.
For me, the current order of color by the number of options they have is:
1: White
2: Black
3: Blue
4: Green
5: Red
I'd say overall though, that the least likely colour to "suck" for very long has always been Blue. Eventually, a Blue containing deck will show up in top 8s everywhere.
This is NOT to say white is broken or unbalanced. It just has the most diverse set of answers and options of any other colour out there. Really, the only thing it honestly lacks is a real counterspell of any sort but that is pretty solidly blue's domain only (even the colour shifted one in black had an out for people to still get their spell through!). Black's artifact destruction is OLD. And in case you haven't noticed, they have shifted the colour pie a bit over the years to solidify it, more or less, into what it is now. To be fair to my own argument here, white lost its best artifact destruction card when they redefined the pie to put that into green (Disenchant became Naturalize). Thus, you can't really look back and claim the two aforementioned Phyrexian cards since the latter of them was printed in what, '96? And not to mention, the one has a fairly significant drawback in light of what white could do at the time (Phyrexian Tribute vs Disenchant...really?). And actually, it could be argued that in that era, especially with the Gate, it was a time of artifacts in general so more colours needed answers (see: Mirrodin where every colour which normally scorned artifacts had something to do with them anyway since it was the block theme).
And for utility from diversity, blue is probably the followup to this since it has traditionally been the "tricksy" colour. It's answers may not be as straightforward or as definitive as another colour's, but it is still obnoxious and gets the job done.
tl;dr White has its fingers in the most of the colour pie but is not necessarily broken because of it. Blue is pretty diverse while still being kind of single minded almost. Other colours follow in some other order. Black is probably next IMO.
BRG Jund Midrange GRB //// B Vampire Aggro B //// WRU Patriot Control URW
Extended:
RGW Zoo WGR
Legacy:
RUG Canadian Thresh GUR
EDH:
U Arcum Dagsson U //// WB Teysa, Orzhov Scion BW //// UR Jhoira of the Ghitu RU
Special thanks to spiderboy4 of High~Light Studios for the banner
there's not much white can't do.
White can't push the tempo dial on 'extreme', and it can't make cards out of nowhere.
Last I checked, that means White almost can't do anything.
I don't think there's a colour hogging everything right now. I think there's a disparity, with two colours not having (not being) as much as a certain other three.
Of course, in the actual two-color deck paradigm, Blue continues to be an all-star achiever. Big finishers, unsolvability, inevitability, and the ability to do almost anything to the game state, including saying no.
And all of it efficiently in mana.
You can shore it up with any other color, and Blue is what's doing your job.
Awesome avatar provided by Krashbot @ [Epic Graphics].
So it was an over exaggeration. White can’t mill or cook me bacon.
Chill.
ALSO IT WAS SOOOOOOOO Flippin powerful...
RU Owling Mine (Runeflare Trap) RU
Recent FNM's
3-1 2nd
2-0 drop (Yeah, that is 2 wins and a drop...)
3-1 3rd
In fact, I'm pretty sure Mark Rosewater has come out and said that Blue's share of the colorpie has more exclusive effects and is larger than any of the other colors.
Also, back in the old days R&D had this thing where whenever it wasn't blindingly obvious where to put an effect, or maybe if they just thought it was "weird and different", they automatically put it in Blue without analyzing it. Thus Propaganda, Pendrell Mists and Energy Flux all ended up in Blue despite the mechanics all being later reprinted as White cards once R&D realized "huh, I guess taxing might belong in White!" And Ray of Command of course is a quintessentially red card that once again, "wacky effect? Must be Blue!"
The color with the smallest share of the color pie is almost certainly Green, followed by Red. White's share is almost Green - mana effects - draw effects + mass removal + creature removal + taxing effects. Black is probably 2nd to Blue because it can access a lot of mechanics by paying life, or tied with White, I'm not sure.
A good way to examine the breadth of each color's share is to examine the rares from each set and how diverse they are, since this is where each color's premiere effects are generally placed.
0 Karn
W Darien
U Arcanis
B Geth
R Norin
G Yeva
UW Hanna
RB Olivia
WB Obzedat
UR Melek
BG Glissa
WR Aurelia
GU Kraj
BRU Nicol Bolas
RGB Prossh
BGW Ghave
GUB Mimeoplasm
WUBRG Sliver Overlord
GWU Treva, the Renewer
EDH Spike:
U Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Trades