Basically, what I'm getting at here is that some people seem to like, and some people seem to dislike, having the color pie very strict on some things.
For instance:
Red can't deal with enchantments.
Black can't deal with enchantments or artifacts.
Green doesn't get direct kill spells.
White is bad at draw spells.
Blue bounces stuff and is generally the only color to get straight-up hard counterspells that can hit anything.
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I generally don't like this concept of a hard color pie in some respects.
I feel like the color pie should be more restrictive in terms of flavor and efficiency. For instance, I could accept a red or black spell that dealt with enchantments, but at a high mana cost, and perhaps in black's case, harsh drawbacks. Or a black spell that could deal with artifacts, but perhaps has both a high mana cost and some kind of big drawback, like sacrificing a couple creatures. Maybe keep a lot of out-of-color stuff to sorcery speed as well. I'm basically fine as long as it still keeps with a color's flavor. I think hard mechanical restrictions are a bit overly restrictive to mono-color players, especially if you can find flavor reasons or variant mechanics that excuse the 'bleed' and keep mana costs less efficient than the colors that are supposed to be 'good' at something.
MaRo, of course, seems to take the other stance, from what I've heard, he opposes reprinting cards like Chaos Warp and doesn't like cards like Path to Exile (very efficient creature removal in white, when efficient creature removal is supposed to be black's thing).
To some degree, I agree with MaRo on things like Path to Exile. Things like that break the color pie wide open. It seems more like something that should have had a higher mana cost, and that black should have the most efficient remove any one creature spell in Modern, in terms of mana cost. Not that I don't think we need something _like_ Path to Exile in Modern to keep combo and a lot of huge indestructible or recursive creatures in check, but at 1 cmc, I think white is the wrong color to give it to.
Ultimately, I think spells like this should be acceptable in Modern:
Curse of Disrepair2B Enchantment - Aura
Enchant artifact.
At the start of enchanted artifact's controller's upkeep, they must pay 2 or sacrifice enchanted artifact.
Overcharge Enchantment1RR Sorcery
Choose target enchantment. If it is an aura enchanting a creature, it's controller must sacrifice the enchantment, or the enchanted creature takes 4 damage. Otherwise, the controller of the enchantment must sacrifice it or take 5 damage.
Price of Sabotage2BB Sorcery
Sacrifice 2 creatures that don't have defender you control as an additional cost to cast this spell.
Destroy target artifact whose converted mana cost is less than or equal to the combined power of the creatures you sacrificed.
Warp Enchantment1RRR Sorcery
Destroy target enchantment. Give it's controller one of the following enchantment tokens of their choice:
"Creatures you control get +1/+0."
"At the end of your first main phase, you may have target creature you control gains haste."
"At the start of your upkeep, deal 1 damage to target creature or player."
Tangle Aether Networks1BBB Sorcery
Choose target enchantment. As an additional cost to cast this spell, pay life equal to twice that enchantment's converted mana cost.
Destroy the chosen enchantment and all other enchantments with the same name on the battlefield.
The color pie should be pretty strict. When every color can do everything, even at worse efficiency it creates little need to branch into other colors. Part of the tension of the game in eternal formats where mana is very good is to have enough colors to be versatile but not over extend into colors which opens you up to mana disruption. There's a very real tension introduced to the game when for example you need to worry about Wasteland and Stifle but also want to include Destructive Revelry, Swords to Plowshares, and Daze. That tension is good for the game.
Stretching things every now and then is fine (Chaos Warp and Hornet Sting for example) but I don't think it's something you want to make a habit of doing. A much bigger problem in my opinion is shifting aspects of the color pie from one color to another. This works in standard but when a long standing effect suddenly becomes a long standing effect in another color over a period of several blocks it creates issues in the non rotating formats because you hit a critical mass of cards and suddenly that tension I explained in my first paragraph is gone.
The color pie, and the mana system, is what makes magic magic. It makes each color unique and feel like it does something special. Also, the arguments like "black/red can't deal with enchantments, lets make flavorful ways for them to deal with them" are silly. Both colors CAN deal the enchantments and have been dealing with them for years. Black can make you discard enchantments and red can kill you before you cast the enchantment. Its those sort of difference in strategies that make each color special.
I am fine with them redefining the color pie when appropriate, like Faithless looting, but they need to be thoughtful and deliberate. Stuff like Hornet sting shouldn't be done. Chaos warp is sort of ok, but stuff like this needs to be done VERY sparingly and needs to stay flavorful. Hornet sting isn't ok because its literally just a bad shock, its not actually mechanically flavorful to green.
I agree with basically most of Maro's stuff about the color pie except I don't think that Path to exile is a mistake. I've always considered cheap removal with a boon to the opponent part of whites color pie since it has been since alpha.
Red destroys artifacts, so if you're pairing it with Black there's no reason for Black to be able to do so as well. Black should probably have some anti-enchantment power, but not Red, because Red is dumb where Black is smart.
Green gets direct kill spells so long as the creature you want to destroy flies. Admittedly, you could even give an opponent's creature flying and then use something like Plummet, but a 2-for-1 tradeoff isn't very efficient.
Draw is a thing that is seen in all the colors, but particularly in Blue and Black. White has to lean on these colors if it wants a fast tempo, which isn't really necessary, since White has the best ability to survive anything out of all the other colors of Magic.
Countermagic has been a Blue staple for a long time. It appeals to a very narrow section of the playerbase, and there's no reason to expand it to other colors.
Color equality just sounds boring. If all the colors can do the same things, there's no point in having different colors.
Hornet Sting - I agree that this is a bad card for the color pie. Because it is just a bad shock, mechanically speaking. However I do like the idea of green getting a card that represents a hornet sting. I think perhaps a better way of handling it would be a 'hornet' creature with flash and flying that can sacrifice itself to deal one damage to target creature or player, but otherwise has 0/1 stats and perhaps a 'power can't be altered' restriction so it can't be hit with buff spells to enable it to deal damage without sacrificing itself
Beast Within - I'm fine with the effect, but I think it's CMC should be at least 4, and it should be a sorcery, not an instant.
Hour of Need - Eh? I'm not sure about it, I don't have a big issue with it, at least in terms of the pie or the CMC or anything, but I have a hard time understanding it flavor wise in the first place, especially it's name, as I never got the impression that Sphinxes were that helpful when there is 'need', and I also find the idea of shapeshifting things into sphinxes weird because they don't seem like things that are very mystically/lore connected to shapeshifting, other than being in blue
Polymorph - Shapeshifting is pretty solidly in blue's color pie, the pseudo-randomness here though is more Red. Actually, the pseudo-randomness aspect is almost anti-blue. I think this should have perhaps been a 2UR spell as is.
Rapid Hybridization - I'm fine with this color-pie wise and balance wise, I don't really _like_ it as a card though, not my style, it's pretty solidly blue with the shapeshifting stuff and experimentation hints, I'd perhaps consider that 1 cmc is too low, and that just giving them a 3/3 as a drawback isn't sufficient to justify certain removal in blue. I'm pretty certain there was a card that this is basically the same as that gave an ape instead of a Frog Lizard. I'd also consider changing it to a sorcery speed and taking 'rapid' out of the name, because the effect sounds complicated and extreme enough that I have trouble justifying an instant speed flavor wise just because you can put the word 'Rapid' in front of it, but I get the impression that it is instant speed to match the ape version, which is okay flavor wise at instant and much simpler seeming in flavor-related process stuff.
Chaos Warp - I'm fine with the effect in Red, and flavor-wise I think it should stay instant speed. On the other hand I think the CMC should be at least 4 if they were to bring it into Modern.
Path to Exile - I know removal of this sort in white has very old origins in MTG, but the color pie has shifted around since then, and white has always had perhaps a little too much going for it, dipping into everyone's pieces of the pie without paying for it the way Black tends to. If I were to ban Path to Exile, I'd probably first create all of the following cards (names can be whatever fits, I just threw in my ideas for that), so that things that Path to Exile currently keeps under control could still be effectively kept under control:
Lost in AggressionW Instant
Exile target attacking creature. Its controller may search his or her library for a basic land card, put that card onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle his or her library.
Exile to Distant Lands1W Sorcery
Exile target creature. Its controller may search his or her library for a basic land card, put that card onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle his or her library.
Mad Fertility RiteB Instant
Destroy target creature. Its controller may search his or her library for a basic land card, put that card onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle his or her library.
Sudden SpiteB Enchantment - Aura
Flash
Enchanted creature has -1/-0.
Enchanted creature loses all activated or triggered abilities. It can't have or gain any activated or triggered abilities.
Sentence of SilenceW Enchantment - Aura
Flash
Enchanted creature has +0/+1.
Enchanted creature loses all activated or triggered abilities. It can't have or gain any activated or triggered abilities.
I think the color pie is an important concept for Magic, but the way they handle it is pretty frustrating sometimes. The choices they made for what each color can and cannot do is not very balanced at all.
Well the hard weaknes isnt a problem unless its really important.
By that i mean, if the format doesnt have a serious hate enchantment, both black and red are in no trouble.
However, in the past it was a serious problem if red cant remove Worship they are in serious trouble, as this card simply spells "you lose". Even more annoying was the Circle of Protection cycle, as red and black could not deal with them they were extremly imbalanced.
But the amount and power of hate cards was a problem anyway.
Right now we have a shift to planeswalkers and they at least made sure that creatures could kill them, which eliminates the problem for the colors. Sure, burn spells can kill a planeswalker aswell, so in that regard reds and slighty black are in an advantage for that.
Black has at least discard to work around its weakness. So the only thing black fears the most is the top of the opponents deck, the card they draw is something black cant realiable controll.
Red had much more land destruction in the past to controll the speed and even if it could not end the game with creatures, it had all the burn to finish the job.
So the amount of cards that are a "real" problem for the weakness that they cant handle enchantments did never really become a serious deal anymore.
Cards like Platinum Angel are greatly designed as every color can destroy it. It even has flying so even green got the removal to destroy it, as green gets fair amount of "destroy flyer" or "deal damage to flyer".
In the end, its good if colors feel different and they still archive that.
Real big weaknesses are not absolute necessary and probably should not exist.
Every color can to some degree handle anything, even if that means the use of artifacts, which actual act as a cross solution to give every color something fundamental.
Especially for black controll strategies it was very important to have some form of artifact that could destroy problematic enchantments / artifacts.
Thats why we simply never see a "controll" mono red shell, it simply doesnt support that strategy as it has that many weaknesses and theres not much reason to stay mono red, you use green or white if you need to and you get what you need.
So in that way the color pie itself is fine, it helps to make the colors actual feel different, play different, aim for different things. But "mono" isnt a real thing in magic, pretty much any deck will be 2 colors, even in Drafts and Limited you wont really be mono unless you have a good reason to be ; black is the color that gets strongest pushed into the mono line, which also fits the colors backround identity best, being egoistic and power focused, blacks best friend is black itself (swamps that is, Corruption, Shades, black tends to get stronger going deep into it).
Rapid Hybridization - I'm fine with this color-pie wise and balance wise, I don't really _like_ it as a card though, not my style, it's pretty solidly blue with the shapeshifting stuff and experimentation hints, I'd perhaps consider that 1 cmc is too low, and that just giving them a 3/3 as a drawback isn't sufficient to justify certain removal in blue. I'm pretty certain there was a card that this is basically the same as that gave an ape instead of a Frog Lizard. I'd also consider changing it to a sorcery speed and taking 'rapid' out of the name, because the effect sounds complicated and extreme enough that I have trouble justifying an instant speed flavor wise just because you can put the word 'Rapid' in front of it, but I get the impression that it is instant speed to match the ape version, which is okay flavor wise at instant and much simpler seeming in flavor-related process stuff.
I see red as the punisher. If the opponent plays enchantments, so what? Hit them for more because they spent mana on enchantments. One cool thing would be some red spells that increase damage to opponent equal to the number of enchantments that player controls. Something like that feels quite red to me.
With regards to anything out of the color-pie, it can be done sparingly indeed if it can fit the flavor to some degree. In many cases, these color-pie breaking things fit the set that they're in, just like all the stuff that happened in Planar Chaos. One spell I love is Dash Hopes as it really fits the feel of black even though it is indeed a counterspell by the fact that the opponent can lose life if they want to resolve the spell. Almost like a deal with a demon kind of thing!
I think it really depends on the theme for the block or format. So for things like the Time Spiral block, it seems oki.
Sometimes I like mono chrome decks, but there is a season for multicolours. For instance right now colours are very easily splashed. It has been so since Innistrad/RTR ... so I welcome mono chrome decks at this point.
Thing about multicolour is that each colour's identity tends to bleed into each other. While I don't think it should, if the ability/flavour allows it I am fine. (that said flavour is very subjective =P)
End of the day, I am more concerned about power levels and diversity, bleedwise... I am pretty ambivalent.
I think I just came to the conclusion that I am okay with non-strict colour pie in a long winded way. =P
I always cringe when someone plays a card of the wrong color from Planar Chaos.
I don't even understand what the people at WotC were thinking. "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if we screwed up all the colors and put effects in the wrong sector of the color pie? Never mind that it will screw the balance of those colors for the rest of the entire future, who cares about that?" Just the idea makes me facepalm (at least retrospectively, as I wasn't a Magic player back then).
Sure, something like Brute Force might not absolutely break the game, but it still makes me cringe. +3/+3 for one mana is a super-green exclusive. It has no place in other colors (not for that mana cost). Putting it in a color that has super cheap burn is just pure stupidity. What were they thinking?
Harmonize put green back on the map for the whole time it was legal. The fact that some abilities are better than others (card draw is stronger than fatties) is lost on the strict color pie. I like cards like Desert Twister that are expensive but give people in that color options.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
I don't have a problem with the pie, I have a problem with wizard's choice of cards that they print. Back in the day we had cards like Nevinyrral's Disk to shore up weakness now most artifacts in standard are useless.
To tell the truth I think a strict color pie is just an excuse to make blue the best color since R&D have justified giving U color pie violations just because U's phylosophy is abstract.
The color pie should be about quality and quantity, not about definitives. Red should get more cards like Chaos Warp that can deal with Enchantments but are rare and have steep drawbacks compared to White's enchantment/general removal. Everyone should get a bit of everything with each color just getting their main trick more often and concrete than the rest. W and U already get a bit of everything, it's extremely unfair that the other colors are never allowed to fight their weaknesses when these two, specially when together, just have no weakness.
I'm both okay and not okay with the color being manipulated.
( Before I use these examples, I should say I am aware that the off-color nature was a big part of the theme for the Time Spiral block and/or were color-shifted variants of existing cards. )
Take Counterspells, quintessentially blue. 99% of the time I'd want them to stay blue, but I can't say that I mind a card like Dash Hopes: it's a very black punisher card. Pay the life, it goes away. Mana Tithe, on the other hand, feels like a blue card with white flavor text written on it. On the whole, I'd prefer these forays out of the normal color pie to be minimal.
While I wouldn't go as far as banning it, I do feel Path To Exile is just too good removal for white in Modern, and the same with Swords to Plowshares in Legacy. Black should be removal king, and in most non-rotating formats, it just isn't. It's still lacking an iconic 1-mana kill spell, which doesn't seem overpowered given how many more ways there are to protect your creatures from destroy ( Indestructible, Regenerate, etc. ) versus protecting them from Exile. On the other hand, white's enchantment focused removal like Banishing Light I'm absolutely fine with, or taxing effects like Magus of the Tabernacle.
@pokerbob1 - Yeah, Pongify was what I was thinking of. Thanks!
Time for more opinions, yay!
Worship - This card _is_ pretty harsh on some red decks, but red, typically, does at least have targeted creature removal, same with black, so they can theoretically bypass it... until white brings out creatures with protection of the appropriate types or indestructibility. This is a card that I think _should_ be fair, but part of the reason I think red and black should get some (difficult, higher CMC than other colors) answers to enchantments.
Circles of Protection - Yeah, these are more harsh on red and black than the rest, again, I think they should be fair, but they are not as fair as they should be due to red and black lacking effective enchantment-hate even at higher cmc.
But there are some more along those lines others haven't mentioned yet in the thread that Red in particular has problems with: Propaganda, Sphere of Safety, and Ghostly Prison - These break down red aggro decks terribly, screwing up the very reason red is supposed to not need enchantment removal. A lot of more control-ish black decks have similar problems with Ensnaring Bridge. Built in release valves help these cards from breaking the game outright, but they are a big part of the reason I think it might be best for all colors to get enchantment and artifact removal of some sort.
Leyline of Sanctity - Hello single card that can be played for free before game starts that shuts down entire deck archetypes! Awkwardly, I'm fine with this card. And under the conditions I ask, it still effectively will be auto-win against most burn and discard decks, simply because of the early game protection it will grant, but I think just giving red and black options to get rid of it effectively will go a long way towards keeping it from hating out entire deck types from competitiveness just from sideboards.
Platinum Angel - Actually, I'm totally fine with this. Every color has answers to it, due to being a flying artifact creature without any special protections.
Phyrexian Obliterator - Run away! Yeah, I think cards like this that absolutely need to be removed or they'll completely ruin creature combat and such, and worse, cause problems with red's removal, should not be at CMC 4, even with such strict color requirements. I think this guy should have been BBBBB instead (maybe even higher, but I don't think that is needed). He doesn't break the game where he is, but I think he'd have been fairer just once CMC higher. I see 5 cmc as where the cheapest 'oh god must remove this now' creatures should go.
Brute Force - Yeah, I'm NOT okay with this card. It totally steals green's thunder. I'd be fine with it at 1R, but it doesn't seem that fitting for red, even with the name they gave it. Just straight up giving the same effects for a different color usually bothers me unless it is already in that color's pie naturally, like Naturalize and Disenchant. Brute Force is an example of them doing it how I think is wrong. A more red effect I think would be something like giving +4/-1, or +2/+0 and first-strike or trample.
Harmonize - This I'm actually fine with, it is more expensive than Divination, yet mostly remains on curve, so it's still worth casting, but it doesn't give green a cheap way to match blue's specialty. Green has plenty of other sources of card draw under certain circumstances, so something like this I think doesn't fully escape their pie either, especially given the flavor they are treating it with. I feel like it is sorta the saving and recovering lore of green compared to the analytical discovery of blue. Going 1 cmc higher is often the minimum of the changes I'd request before a color gets something out of it's typical pie, but this isn't as bad of a break in the first place, so scaling up the effect so that it's still on curve is fine, but in cases where it strongly breaks the pie, I think it shouldn't scale up, and in fact should often have drawbacks or restrictions or unreliability or punisher type effects on top of being higher cmc.
Dash Hopes - I'm barely fine with this. Normally I'd say, even with the punisher effect, it breaks into blue's territory too hard to not need 1 more cmc added, but part of black's pie is supposed to be stealing things from other colors with drawbacks, and another part of black's pie is keeping CMC low via drawbacks. I think I'd be a bit more okay with it if you did something like pay 1 life to cast it as well.
Nevinyrral's Disk and Oblivion Stone - No, I don't think artifacts that can do it instead excuse a mono-color not having any answers. This isn't just about balance, but about flavor. So long as the breaking of the pie is done in a flavorful way, costs are increased, and maybe drawbacks added, depending on circumstances, I think it's probably workable. These as answers run into issues anyway, like the need to re-print them in Standard if you wind up with too many things that they can theoretically help answer, or if what they are meant to help answer has really good artifact hate. If you are breaking out of a color this way anyway, flavor wise in deck building (Vorthos-ishness here) you might as well be splashing another color for answers. And, as mentioned, they and similar things aren't in the current Standard... while we are in an enchantment heavy block at that (if a terribly nerfed one with no real must-answer enchantments).
Speaking of enchantment heavy blocks - Black and Red not being able to properly answer enchantments is I think a big part of why they couldn't do a much more awesome enchantment focused Theros block. Similar issues I think occurred with Scars of Mirrodin for artifact hate for Black, but were less of an issue for Vorthos because almost everything in Phyrexia felt kinda black anyway. They did it the other way there though, instead of nerfing artifacts to make it fair for Black, they let Black sit without answers to mad artifactness, although it helped that a lot of those artifacts were creatures of course. I feel like enchantments could be a much bigger part of the game without breaking it if black and red had some form of answers to them at higher CMC with drawbacks.
Thoughtseize - Regardless of what WotC says, I don't consider this an answer. I generally don't consider pre-emptive things answers in the first place. An answer, in the way I'm considering things, is something that you'll react with, perhaps have to wait to draw or search for in your deck. Not to mention that this is ineffective against top-decking opponents or ones with lots of card draw. Or in this case, with black, simply an opponent with a heavy focus on enchantments. Banishing Light for instance is balanced around the idea it can be removed to get your card back, but that falls apart when black can't remove it. And no, I'm not saying Banishing Light breaks the game, even against pure mono-black. Just that it becomes a somewhat undercosted 'exile target nonland permanent' against mono-black.
Remove anything - A spell that is mono-colored which can lastingly remove any one target permanent I think should be at least CMC 5 (cmc 4 for multi-color), and I think should perhaps have some color specific tricks or minor drawbacks related to it's casting. More restricted spells, like ones that can't remove a land, or can't remove a creature, something that is in-color for not being able to remove that thing, should cost 1 cmc less than that, for instance, Bramblecrush is a card I consider pretty balanced along these sorts of lines. For a simpleish 'destroy target non-land permanent' with color appropriate drawbacks or casting restrictions or something, I'd be fine with things like this: 1BBB, GBB, WWB, 1WWW, 2GG, 1UUU, RRRR, etc. If it wasn't a non-land permanent, just add 1 or another of an appropriate color to casting costs. I'm not fond of this type of spell however in general. I think if a new Vindicate were printed, it should be 2WB cost, maybe accompanied by an exile variant at WWBB. Needless to say, I'm pretty sure this kind of effect with super-flexible lasting removal should stick to sorcery speed unless you get up into insane 7+ cmc casting costs for instant speed versions.
Bounce effects in blue, which aren't lasting removal, break these guidelines of course.
Desert Twister - This is an example of a card I think is fine as is, and I think could be reprinted in Modern balance and flavor wise, as a remove anything spell, CMC 6 easily justifies things, especially at sorcery speed, and it seems sufficiently flavorful as a green spell capable of destroying any sort of target permanent. If it were 5 cmc, I'd probably want some kind of drawback or casting restriction, like giving the opponent a creature (I'm not fond of beast within's casting cost or instant speed, as noted before).
I think they could stand to add more high-drawback or high-CC colorless cards to give certain decktypes access to things they wouldn't normally get.
5
Sorcery
Destroy target creature
That said, I hate the fight mechanic in green. Green is already above average at producing all three resources. Green is already above average at disrupting all of the opponent's other permanent resources. It's a very powerful color. Probably the best or second best color in the modern era. Green does not need to be better than red at removing creatures as well.
I don't mind the occasional workaround. Something like
Aura Extortion2BB
Sorcery
Target opponent may sacrifice an artifact or enchantment. If that player does not, he or she loses 5 life.
Here's another example
Wolf Sense1GG
Enchantment—Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +2/+2 and has hexproof.
When enchanted creature becomes blocked, you may draw a card.
Both of these give an opponent a choice. He can either let me do something really efficient on-color (lose 5 life in the black one's case, potentially gain a lot of card advantage in the green one's case) or something off-color (the black one still costs twice as much as Naturalize, but it can kill a god, the green one is basically a wincon).
Now I want to make a cycle of these punishers. Except I don't have a white or blue punisher mechanic. (Then again, white and blue have the entire pie.)
To me, Rapid Hybridization is too efficient. Its only saving grace (as big an offense to Vorthos as it is to Maro) is that it destroys the creature, rather than exiling it; without that, I would prefer to be hit with Path to Exile over Rapid Hybridization, which should say a lot about its powerlevel.
I'd like to see Plummet and friends go the way of Red Elemental Blast, Acid Rain, and other clearly off-color hosers, TBQH. Green has a perfectly good way of dealing with creatures and there's absolutely no reason for flying hate to exist in this game. Or alternately, you could spread the ridiculously niche cards across the pie.
Also, it's absolutely lulzy to hear people after New Phyrexia saying we should ban every card that used Phyrexian mana because color pie.
Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
I always cringe when someone plays a card of the wrong color from Planar Chaos.
I don't even understand what the people at WotC were thinking. "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if we screwed up all the colors and put effects in the wrong sector of the color pie? Never mind that it will screw the balance of those colors for the rest of the entire future, who cares about that?" Just the idea makes me facepalm (at least retrospectively, as I wasn't a Magic player back then).
Sure, something like Brute Force might not absolutely break the game, but it still makes me cringe. +3/+3 for one mana is a super-green exclusive. It has no place in other colors (not for that mana cost). Putting it in a color that has super cheap burn is just pure stupidity. What were they thinking?
Hate it, I want more Sinkhole and Damnation
They need to do another Planar Chaos type set.
Neither of the cards is outside of the current color pie. Black still gets land destruction and board wipes; you're complaining about power level, not color-pie restrictions.
Ok, I knew I shouldn't have given examples... How about Psionic Blast.. I'm not complaining about power level. I want white dragons, blue fireballs, green angels, ect...
For instance:
Red can't deal with enchantments.
Black can't deal with enchantments or artifacts.
Green doesn't get direct kill spells.
White is bad at draw spells.
Blue bounces stuff and is generally the only color to get straight-up hard counterspells that can hit anything.
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I generally don't like this concept of a hard color pie in some respects.
I feel like the color pie should be more restrictive in terms of flavor and efficiency. For instance, I could accept a red or black spell that dealt with enchantments, but at a high mana cost, and perhaps in black's case, harsh drawbacks. Or a black spell that could deal with artifacts, but perhaps has both a high mana cost and some kind of big drawback, like sacrificing a couple creatures. Maybe keep a lot of out-of-color stuff to sorcery speed as well. I'm basically fine as long as it still keeps with a color's flavor. I think hard mechanical restrictions are a bit overly restrictive to mono-color players, especially if you can find flavor reasons or variant mechanics that excuse the 'bleed' and keep mana costs less efficient than the colors that are supposed to be 'good' at something.
MaRo, of course, seems to take the other stance, from what I've heard, he opposes reprinting cards like Chaos Warp and doesn't like cards like Path to Exile (very efficient creature removal in white, when efficient creature removal is supposed to be black's thing).
To some degree, I agree with MaRo on things like Path to Exile. Things like that break the color pie wide open. It seems more like something that should have had a higher mana cost, and that black should have the most efficient remove any one creature spell in Modern, in terms of mana cost. Not that I don't think we need something _like_ Path to Exile in Modern to keep combo and a lot of huge indestructible or recursive creatures in check, but at 1 cmc, I think white is the wrong color to give it to.
Ultimately, I think spells like this should be acceptable in Modern:
Curse of Disrepair 2B
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant artifact.
At the start of enchanted artifact's controller's upkeep, they must pay 2 or sacrifice enchanted artifact.
Overcharge Enchantment 1RR
Sorcery
Choose target enchantment. If it is an aura enchanting a creature, it's controller must sacrifice the enchantment, or the enchanted creature takes 4 damage. Otherwise, the controller of the enchantment must sacrifice it or take 5 damage.
Price of Sabotage 2BB
Sorcery
Sacrifice 2 creatures that don't have defender you control as an additional cost to cast this spell.
Destroy target artifact whose converted mana cost is less than or equal to the combined power of the creatures you sacrificed.
Warp Enchantment 1RRR
Sorcery
Destroy target enchantment. Give it's controller one of the following enchantment tokens of their choice:
"Creatures you control get +1/+0."
"At the end of your first main phase, you may have target creature you control gains haste."
"At the start of your upkeep, deal 1 damage to target creature or player."
Tangle Aether Networks 1BBB
Sorcery
Choose target enchantment. As an additional cost to cast this spell, pay life equal to twice that enchantment's converted mana cost.
Destroy the chosen enchantment and all other enchantments with the same name on the battlefield.
Stretching things every now and then is fine (Chaos Warp and Hornet Sting for example) but I don't think it's something you want to make a habit of doing. A much bigger problem in my opinion is shifting aspects of the color pie from one color to another. This works in standard but when a long standing effect suddenly becomes a long standing effect in another color over a period of several blocks it creates issues in the non rotating formats because you hit a critical mass of cards and suddenly that tension I explained in my first paragraph is gone.
Black and red should get enchantment punishment, not removal.
The color pie, and the mana system, is what makes magic magic. It makes each color unique and feel like it does something special. Also, the arguments like "black/red can't deal with enchantments, lets make flavorful ways for them to deal with them" are silly. Both colors CAN deal the enchantments and have been dealing with them for years. Black can make you discard enchantments and red can kill you before you cast the enchantment. Its those sort of difference in strategies that make each color special.
I am fine with them redefining the color pie when appropriate, like Faithless looting, but they need to be thoughtful and deliberate. Stuff like Hornet sting shouldn't be done. Chaos warp is sort of ok, but stuff like this needs to be done VERY sparingly and needs to stay flavorful. Hornet sting isn't ok because its literally just a bad shock, its not actually mechanically flavorful to green.
I agree with basically most of Maro's stuff about the color pie except I don't think that Path to exile is a mistake. I've always considered cheap removal with a boon to the opponent part of whites color pie since it has been since alpha.
Green gets direct kill spells so long as the creature you want to destroy flies. Admittedly, you could even give an opponent's creature flying and then use something like Plummet, but a 2-for-1 tradeoff isn't very efficient.
Draw is a thing that is seen in all the colors, but particularly in Blue and Black. White has to lean on these colors if it wants a fast tempo, which isn't really necessary, since White has the best ability to survive anything out of all the other colors of Magic.
Countermagic has been a Blue staple for a long time. It appeals to a very narrow section of the playerbase, and there's no reason to expand it to other colors.
Color equality just sounds boring. If all the colors can do the same things, there's no point in having different colors.
Hornet Sting - I agree that this is a bad card for the color pie. Because it is just a bad shock, mechanically speaking. However I do like the idea of green getting a card that represents a hornet sting. I think perhaps a better way of handling it would be a 'hornet' creature with flash and flying that can sacrifice itself to deal one damage to target creature or player, but otherwise has 0/1 stats and perhaps a 'power can't be altered' restriction so it can't be hit with buff spells to enable it to deal damage without sacrificing itself
Beast Within - I'm fine with the effect, but I think it's CMC should be at least 4, and it should be a sorcery, not an instant.
Hour of Need - Eh? I'm not sure about it, I don't have a big issue with it, at least in terms of the pie or the CMC or anything, but I have a hard time understanding it flavor wise in the first place, especially it's name, as I never got the impression that Sphinxes were that helpful when there is 'need', and I also find the idea of shapeshifting things into sphinxes weird because they don't seem like things that are very mystically/lore connected to shapeshifting, other than being in blue
Polymorph - Shapeshifting is pretty solidly in blue's color pie, the pseudo-randomness here though is more Red. Actually, the pseudo-randomness aspect is almost anti-blue. I think this should have perhaps been a 2UR spell as is.
Rapid Hybridization - I'm fine with this color-pie wise and balance wise, I don't really _like_ it as a card though, not my style, it's pretty solidly blue with the shapeshifting stuff and experimentation hints, I'd perhaps consider that 1 cmc is too low, and that just giving them a 3/3 as a drawback isn't sufficient to justify certain removal in blue. I'm pretty certain there was a card that this is basically the same as that gave an ape instead of a Frog Lizard. I'd also consider changing it to a sorcery speed and taking 'rapid' out of the name, because the effect sounds complicated and extreme enough that I have trouble justifying an instant speed flavor wise just because you can put the word 'Rapid' in front of it, but I get the impression that it is instant speed to match the ape version, which is okay flavor wise at instant and much simpler seeming in flavor-related process stuff.
Chaos Warp - I'm fine with the effect in Red, and flavor-wise I think it should stay instant speed. On the other hand I think the CMC should be at least 4 if they were to bring it into Modern.
Path to Exile - I know removal of this sort in white has very old origins in MTG, but the color pie has shifted around since then, and white has always had perhaps a little too much going for it, dipping into everyone's pieces of the pie without paying for it the way Black tends to. If I were to ban Path to Exile, I'd probably first create all of the following cards (names can be whatever fits, I just threw in my ideas for that), so that things that Path to Exile currently keeps under control could still be effectively kept under control:
Oh, and Chaos Warp is not okay, but Rapid Hybridization is fine? Disagree.
By that i mean, if the format doesnt have a serious hate enchantment, both black and red are in no trouble.
However, in the past it was a serious problem if red cant remove Worship they are in serious trouble, as this card simply spells "you lose". Even more annoying was the Circle of Protection cycle, as red and black could not deal with them they were extremly imbalanced.
But the amount and power of hate cards was a problem anyway.
Right now we have a shift to planeswalkers and they at least made sure that creatures could kill them, which eliminates the problem for the colors. Sure, burn spells can kill a planeswalker aswell, so in that regard reds and slighty black are in an advantage for that.
Black has at least discard to work around its weakness. So the only thing black fears the most is the top of the opponents deck, the card they draw is something black cant realiable controll.
Red had much more land destruction in the past to controll the speed and even if it could not end the game with creatures, it had all the burn to finish the job.
So the amount of cards that are a "real" problem for the weakness that they cant handle enchantments did never really become a serious deal anymore.
Cards like Platinum Angel are greatly designed as every color can destroy it. It even has flying so even green got the removal to destroy it, as green gets fair amount of "destroy flyer" or "deal damage to flyer".
In the end, its good if colors feel different and they still archive that.
Real big weaknesses are not absolute necessary and probably should not exist.
Every color can to some degree handle anything, even if that means the use of artifacts, which actual act as a cross solution to give every color something fundamental.
Especially for black controll strategies it was very important to have some form of artifact that could destroy problematic enchantments / artifacts.
In the beginning that was Nevinyrral's Disk and later Oblivion Stone.
Red worked around the problem with its speed.
Thats why we simply never see a "controll" mono red shell, it simply doesnt support that strategy as it has that many weaknesses and theres not much reason to stay mono red, you use green or white if you need to and you get what you need.
So in that way the color pie itself is fine, it helps to make the colors actual feel different, play different, aim for different things. But "mono" isnt a real thing in magic, pretty much any deck will be 2 colors, even in Drafts and Limited you wont really be mono unless you have a good reason to be ; black is the color that gets strongest pushed into the mono line, which also fits the colors backround identity best, being egoistic and power focused, blacks best friend is black itself (swamps that is, Corruption, Shades, black tends to get stronger going deep into it).
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With regards to anything out of the color-pie, it can be done sparingly indeed if it can fit the flavor to some degree. In many cases, these color-pie breaking things fit the set that they're in, just like all the stuff that happened in Planar Chaos. One spell I love is Dash Hopes as it really fits the feel of black even though it is indeed a counterspell by the fact that the opponent can lose life if they want to resolve the spell. Almost like a deal with a demon kind of thing!
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I think it really depends on the theme for the block or format. So for things like the Time Spiral block, it seems oki.
Sometimes I like mono chrome decks, but there is a season for multicolours. For instance right now colours are very easily splashed. It has been so since Innistrad/RTR ... so I welcome mono chrome decks at this point.
Thing about multicolour is that each colour's identity tends to bleed into each other. While I don't think it should, if the ability/flavour allows it I am fine. (that said flavour is very subjective =P)
End of the day, I am more concerned about power levels and diversity, bleedwise... I am pretty ambivalent.
I think I just came to the conclusion that I am okay with non-strict colour pie in a long winded way. =P
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Oooh Dicey:
[dice=1]100[/dice]
Harmonize put green back on the map for the whole time it was legal. The fact that some abilities are better than others (card draw is stronger than fatties) is lost on the strict color pie. I like cards like Desert Twister that are expensive but give people in that color options.
The color pie should be about quality and quantity, not about definitives. Red should get more cards like Chaos Warp that can deal with Enchantments but are rare and have steep drawbacks compared to White's enchantment/general removal. Everyone should get a bit of everything with each color just getting their main trick more often and concrete than the rest. W and U already get a bit of everything, it's extremely unfair that the other colors are never allowed to fight their weaknesses when these two, specially when together, just have no weakness.
I'm both okay and not okay with the color being manipulated.
( Before I use these examples, I should say I am aware that the off-color nature was a big part of the theme for the Time Spiral block and/or were color-shifted variants of existing cards. )
Take Counterspells, quintessentially blue. 99% of the time I'd want them to stay blue, but I can't say that I mind a card like Dash Hopes: it's a very black punisher card. Pay the life, it goes away. Mana Tithe, on the other hand, feels like a blue card with white flavor text written on it. On the whole, I'd prefer these forays out of the normal color pie to be minimal.
While I wouldn't go as far as banning it, I do feel Path To Exile is just too good removal for white in Modern, and the same with Swords to Plowshares in Legacy. Black should be removal king, and in most non-rotating formats, it just isn't. It's still lacking an iconic 1-mana kill spell, which doesn't seem overpowered given how many more ways there are to protect your creatures from destroy ( Indestructible, Regenerate, etc. ) versus protecting them from Exile. On the other hand, white's enchantment focused removal like Banishing Light I'm absolutely fine with, or taxing effects like Magus of the Tabernacle.
UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU's prison: blue is the new orange is the new black.
Mizzix Of The Izmagnus : wheels on fire... rolling down the road...
BSidisi, Undead VizierB: Bis zum Erbrechen
GTitiania, Protector Of ArgothG: Protecting Argoth, by blowing it up!
GYisan, The Wanderer BardG: Gradus Ad Elfball.
Duel EDH: Yisan & Titania.
In Progress: Grand Arbiter Augustin IV duel; Grenzo, Dungeon Warden Doomsday.
Time for more opinions, yay!
Worship - This card _is_ pretty harsh on some red decks, but red, typically, does at least have targeted creature removal, same with black, so they can theoretically bypass it... until white brings out creatures with protection of the appropriate types or indestructibility. This is a card that I think _should_ be fair, but part of the reason I think red and black should get some (difficult, higher CMC than other colors) answers to enchantments.
Circles of Protection - Yeah, these are more harsh on red and black than the rest, again, I think they should be fair, but they are not as fair as they should be due to red and black lacking effective enchantment-hate even at higher cmc.
But there are some more along those lines others haven't mentioned yet in the thread that Red in particular has problems with:
Propaganda, Sphere of Safety, and Ghostly Prison - These break down red aggro decks terribly, screwing up the very reason red is supposed to not need enchantment removal. A lot of more control-ish black decks have similar problems with Ensnaring Bridge. Built in release valves help these cards from breaking the game outright, but they are a big part of the reason I think it might be best for all colors to get enchantment and artifact removal of some sort.
Leyline of Sanctity - Hello single card that can be played for free before game starts that shuts down entire deck archetypes! Awkwardly, I'm fine with this card. And under the conditions I ask, it still effectively will be auto-win against most burn and discard decks, simply because of the early game protection it will grant, but I think just giving red and black options to get rid of it effectively will go a long way towards keeping it from hating out entire deck types from competitiveness just from sideboards.
Platinum Angel - Actually, I'm totally fine with this. Every color has answers to it, due to being a flying artifact creature without any special protections.
Phyrexian Obliterator - Run away! Yeah, I think cards like this that absolutely need to be removed or they'll completely ruin creature combat and such, and worse, cause problems with red's removal, should not be at CMC 4, even with such strict color requirements. I think this guy should have been BBBBB instead (maybe even higher, but I don't think that is needed). He doesn't break the game where he is, but I think he'd have been fairer just once CMC higher. I see 5 cmc as where the cheapest 'oh god must remove this now' creatures should go.
Brute Force - Yeah, I'm NOT okay with this card. It totally steals green's thunder. I'd be fine with it at 1R, but it doesn't seem that fitting for red, even with the name they gave it. Just straight up giving the same effects for a different color usually bothers me unless it is already in that color's pie naturally, like Naturalize and Disenchant. Brute Force is an example of them doing it how I think is wrong. A more red effect I think would be something like giving +4/-1, or +2/+0 and first-strike or trample.
Harmonize - This I'm actually fine with, it is more expensive than Divination, yet mostly remains on curve, so it's still worth casting, but it doesn't give green a cheap way to match blue's specialty. Green has plenty of other sources of card draw under certain circumstances, so something like this I think doesn't fully escape their pie either, especially given the flavor they are treating it with. I feel like it is sorta the saving and recovering lore of green compared to the analytical discovery of blue. Going 1 cmc higher is often the minimum of the changes I'd request before a color gets something out of it's typical pie, but this isn't as bad of a break in the first place, so scaling up the effect so that it's still on curve is fine, but in cases where it strongly breaks the pie, I think it shouldn't scale up, and in fact should often have drawbacks or restrictions or unreliability or punisher type effects on top of being higher cmc.
Dash Hopes - I'm barely fine with this. Normally I'd say, even with the punisher effect, it breaks into blue's territory too hard to not need 1 more cmc added, but part of black's pie is supposed to be stealing things from other colors with drawbacks, and another part of black's pie is keeping CMC low via drawbacks. I think I'd be a bit more okay with it if you did something like pay 1 life to cast it as well.
Nevinyrral's Disk and Oblivion Stone - No, I don't think artifacts that can do it instead excuse a mono-color not having any answers. This isn't just about balance, but about flavor. So long as the breaking of the pie is done in a flavorful way, costs are increased, and maybe drawbacks added, depending on circumstances, I think it's probably workable. These as answers run into issues anyway, like the need to re-print them in Standard if you wind up with too many things that they can theoretically help answer, or if what they are meant to help answer has really good artifact hate. If you are breaking out of a color this way anyway, flavor wise in deck building (Vorthos-ishness here) you might as well be splashing another color for answers. And, as mentioned, they and similar things aren't in the current Standard... while we are in an enchantment heavy block at that (if a terribly nerfed one with no real must-answer enchantments).
Speaking of enchantment heavy blocks - Black and Red not being able to properly answer enchantments is I think a big part of why they couldn't do a much more awesome enchantment focused Theros block. Similar issues I think occurred with Scars of Mirrodin for artifact hate for Black, but were less of an issue for Vorthos because almost everything in Phyrexia felt kinda black anyway. They did it the other way there though, instead of nerfing artifacts to make it fair for Black, they let Black sit without answers to mad artifactness, although it helped that a lot of those artifacts were creatures of course. I feel like enchantments could be a much bigger part of the game without breaking it if black and red had some form of answers to them at higher CMC with drawbacks.
Thoughtseize - Regardless of what WotC says, I don't consider this an answer. I generally don't consider pre-emptive things answers in the first place. An answer, in the way I'm considering things, is something that you'll react with, perhaps have to wait to draw or search for in your deck. Not to mention that this is ineffective against top-decking opponents or ones with lots of card draw. Or in this case, with black, simply an opponent with a heavy focus on enchantments. Banishing Light for instance is balanced around the idea it can be removed to get your card back, but that falls apart when black can't remove it. And no, I'm not saying Banishing Light breaks the game, even against pure mono-black. Just that it becomes a somewhat undercosted 'exile target nonland permanent' against mono-black.
Remove anything - A spell that is mono-colored which can lastingly remove any one target permanent I think should be at least CMC 5 (cmc 4 for multi-color), and I think should perhaps have some color specific tricks or minor drawbacks related to it's casting. More restricted spells, like ones that can't remove a land, or can't remove a creature, something that is in-color for not being able to remove that thing, should cost 1 cmc less than that, for instance, Bramblecrush is a card I consider pretty balanced along these sorts of lines. For a simpleish 'destroy target non-land permanent' with color appropriate drawbacks or casting restrictions or something, I'd be fine with things like this: 1BBB, GBB, WWB, 1WWW, 2GG, 1UUU, RRRR, etc. If it wasn't a non-land permanent, just add 1 or another of an appropriate color to casting costs. I'm not fond of this type of spell however in general. I think if a new Vindicate were printed, it should be 2WB cost, maybe accompanied by an exile variant at WWBB. Needless to say, I'm pretty sure this kind of effect with super-flexible lasting removal should stick to sorcery speed unless you get up into insane 7+ cmc casting costs for instant speed versions.
Bounce effects in blue, which aren't lasting removal, break these guidelines of course.
Desert Twister - This is an example of a card I think is fine as is, and I think could be reprinted in Modern balance and flavor wise, as a remove anything spell, CMC 6 easily justifies things, especially at sorcery speed, and it seems sufficiently flavorful as a green spell capable of destroying any sort of target permanent. If it were 5 cmc, I'd probably want some kind of drawback or casting restriction, like giving the opponent a creature (I'm not fond of beast within's casting cost or instant speed, as noted before).
5
Sorcery
Destroy target creature
That said, I hate the fight mechanic in green. Green is already above average at producing all three resources. Green is already above average at disrupting all of the opponent's other permanent resources. It's a very powerful color. Probably the best or second best color in the modern era. Green does not need to be better than red at removing creatures as well.
Aura Extortion 2BB
Sorcery
Target opponent may sacrifice an artifact or enchantment. If that player does not, he or she loses 5 life.
Here's another example
Wolf Sense 1GG
Enchantment—Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +2/+2 and has hexproof.
When enchanted creature becomes blocked, you may draw a card.
Both of these give an opponent a choice. He can either let me do something really efficient on-color (lose 5 life in the black one's case, potentially gain a lot of card advantage in the green one's case) or something off-color (the black one still costs twice as much as Naturalize, but it can kill a god, the green one is basically a wincon).
Now I want to make a cycle of these punishers. Except I don't have a white or blue punisher mechanic. (Then again, white and blue have the entire pie.)
To me, Rapid Hybridization is too efficient. Its only saving grace (as big an offense to Vorthos as it is to Maro) is that it destroys the creature, rather than exiling it; without that, I would prefer to be hit with Path to Exile over Rapid Hybridization, which should say a lot about its powerlevel.
I'd like to see Plummet and friends go the way of Red Elemental Blast, Acid Rain, and other clearly off-color hosers, TBQH. Green has a perfectly good way of dealing with creatures and there's absolutely no reason for flying hate to exist in this game. Or alternately, you could spread the ridiculously niche cards across the pie.
Also, it's absolutely lulzy to hear people after New Phyrexia saying we should ban every card that used Phyrexian mana because color pie.
On phasing:
I loathe creatures! Praise Prison and Land Destruction!
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You do realize just last year they gave red Rubblebelt Maaka?
Psionic Blast is fine by me, as a rarely seen top-down design (although I'd probably weaken it slightly by costing it at 1UU).
Also, squirrel.
They need to do another Planar Chaos type set.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=517520
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=517520