Obviously the color wheel is a fundamental part of MTG, so I'm not asking whether that could be removed. To clarify, what I am asking is this:
If, while the mana system still dictates that a card must be cast with a certain color or colors of mana, those cards had no characteristic called "color" that could be referrenced by the rules and effects of the game, would that be in any way detrimental to the game itself?
Obviously, assuming the answer would be no, color can't simply be removed from the game at this point, so this is only relevant to a hypothetical reboot of the game.
I ask in the interest of determining what the most important aspects of a card are, and how to most efficiently and cleanly convey those things on a card frame. MTG conveys color really well on monocolor cards, but with cards of two or more color, it gets muddier. I want to try to avoid that issue if possible, and I believe that the color of a card (again, not the mana system) is unimportant enough that it could be left out entirely.
Well, to begin with card color is - unless altered by an ability - just a function of the mana cost, so card color is about as important as it is to easily refer to cards with certain costs on a fundamental level.
Card color also adds texture and works as a shortcut to flavor. Cards like Bad Moon derive their flavor directly from card color. And the above-mentioned ease to refer to a card by color rather than taking the long way of saying "creatures with a black mana symbol in their mana cost" allows to actually make these designs without overloading anyone's brains.
Card color is a shortcut that is easily grokkable terminology with an simple unintrusive visual representation. It's a freebie that you get with colored mana costs. You cannot actually take it out of the game while retaining the mana costs as much as you can decide not to refer to it - and deliberately cutting yourself off of a design tool that way.
Multicolor cards would probably convey card color better if their frames used more space for a hybrid-style frame treatment, but I think the variant frame with colored pinlines in MSE does a good job at this if you are familiar with it.
You might also want to look at other games that have similar concepts to colors e. g. the Pokémon TCG which also approaches multiple "colors" (there called "types"). It's a really natural way to categorize stuff and people will automatically go there.
Asking whether card color is important in the game when you already have mana color and cards with colored mana costs is like saking whether the concept of "up" and "down" is important once you have gravity. It's an emergent property not something arbitrarily added. You would have a better case asking whether creature types are important.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
- On one hand you have it for card mechanics, representing what certain cards should be able to do and thus limiting potential for certain strategies and allowing for variance. Imagine if there were no colors but it was all colorless mana... Everyone would play the exact same deck.
- On the other hand you have it for flavor, representing what cards can do based on their ideals, themes, etc.
So far Wizards has done a good job of describing the color pie (I actually really loved Mark Rosewater's articles Revisiting each color and what that color represents), but occasionally there are cards that make people turn their heads and wonder if that color should be allowed to do that.
In my honest opinion, I like it when the color pie gets bent a little bit due to the flavor represented on the card. Every red card does not have to be a haste card or deal damage, and every blue card does not have to draw cards or counter spells. I'm not saying that Lightning Bolt in Blue is okay, but I do think that when a card makes sense despite it bending the color pie a bit, then it works.
For a hypothetical reboot color is exactly as important as Supertype, and subtype or anything else without inherent mechanical baggage. Without the existence of other cards that care about these characteristics they have no mechanical value.
When looking for what is actually important vs what has been made important its very simple: Mana Cost, Card Type, P/T, Rules Text.
Everything else, even the name, can be swapped out without any loss of function. Of course this changes when other cards care about those extra characteristics.
- On one hand you have it for card mechanics, representing what certain cards should be able to do and thus limiting potential for certain strategies and allowing for variance. Imagine if there were no colors but it was all colorless mana... Everyone would play the exact same deck.
- On the other hand you have it for flavor, representing what cards can do based on their ideals, themes, etc.
So far Wizards has done a good job of describing the color pie (I actually really loved Mark Rosewater's articles Revisiting each color and what that color represents), but occasionally there are cards that make people turn their heads and wonder if that color should be allowed to do that.
In my honest opinion, I like it when the color pie gets bent a little bit due to the flavor represented on the card. Every red card does not have to be a haste card or deal damage, and every blue card does not have to draw cards or counter spells. I'm not saying that Lightning Bolt in Blue is okay, but I do think that when a card makes sense despite it bending the color pie a bit, then it works.
I want to make it clear that I'm not talking about the five colors of mana. Color requirement for casting spells is not in question here, but rather the actual color of the card.
For example, when Doom Blade refers to "nonblack" creatures, it isn't talking specifically about the creature's mana cost, but rather the creature's color. While the two are typically linked, they are separate elements of a card and can act separately.
What I'm arguing is that the color of the card is unnecessary while the color requirement for paying mana costs remains essential.
I wonder if this thread has anything to do with the Fight Spell thread and the color issues presented there.
In any case, the color itself isn't a mechanical trait, but a "flavour" trait. This trait determines what cards in the different colors are allowed to do, and what they can't do or do well. While the game can technically survive without these distinctions, this actually greatly influences deckbuilding, as if you want certain abilities or benefits without shoving in artifacts that are typically limited in how well they can do those tasks, you need to splash in the colors that do the job well.
This has its benefits and drawbacks, with the main benefit being that you help to facilitate an environment where multiple deck archetypes can compete with each other (This isn't always the case, of course, but no-one said the system is perfect.), and the main drawback is that your favourite color may be inadequate for a certain environment if you try to run it on its own.
I wonder if this thread has anything to do with the Fight Spell thread and the color issues presented there.
In any case, the color itself isn't a mechanical trait, but a "flavour" trait. This trait determines what cards in the different colors are allowed to do, and what they can't do or do well. While the game can technically survive without these distinctions, this actually greatly influences deckbuilding, as if you want certain abilities or benefits without shoving in artifacts that are typically limited in how well they can do those tasks, you need to splash in the colors that do the job well.
This has its benefits and drawbacks, with the main benefit being that you help to facilitate an environment where multiple deck archetypes can compete with each other (This isn't always the case, of course, but no-one said the system is perfect.), and the main drawback is that your favourite color may be inadequate for a certain environment if you try to run it on its own.
Again, I'm not talking about mana requirements. please read my previous posts. I don't intend to dismantle the color pie.
I wonder if this thread has anything to do with the Fight Spell thread and the color issues presented there.
In any case, the color itself isn't a mechanical trait, but a "flavour" trait. This trait determines what cards in the different colors are allowed to do, and what they can't do or do well. While the game can technically survive without these distinctions, this actually greatly influences deckbuilding, as if you want certain abilities or benefits without shoving in artifacts that are typically limited in how well they can do those tasks, you need to splash in the colors that do the job well.
This has its benefits and drawbacks, with the main benefit being that you help to facilitate an environment where multiple deck archetypes can compete with each other (This isn't always the case, of course, but no-one said the system is perfect.), and the main drawback is that your favourite color may be inadequate for a certain environment if you try to run it on its own.
Again, I'm not talking about mana requirements. please read my previous posts. I don't intend to dismantle the color pie.
So if I'm understanding what you're saying, you want to find a way around the issues associated with referring to color in rules text?
If that's the case, I'm not sure if that's really something to consider removing in a hypothetical reboot, since it may be inevitable that the colors in the mana cost would be referenced in some way for effects, and having the color trait is a clean way of addressing that.
So if I'm understanding what you're saying, you want to find a way around the issues associated with referring to color in rules text?
If that's the case, I'm not sure if that's really something to consider removing in a hypothetical reboot, since it may be inevitable that the colors in the mana cost would be referenced in some way for effects, and having the color trait is a clean way of addressing that.
It's more that I'm trying to find a way around having to cleanly represent color on the card face. Again, with one color, that's pretty easy, but with two or more colors it requires a gold frame, a learned visual cue that the card has more than one color. It's messy in my opinion.
Not only that, but conveying card color expends more resources than one would think, limiting space on the card frame, and I'm not sure that's worth the potential design space of referring to cards by their color, especially seeing how scarce that kind of effect is nowadays. I would rather keep the mana cost the same (requiring different colors of mana to play cards is important), but use the card frame to express other details about the card, like what card type it is, or if it's instant speed, or whatever.
Even looking at other card games, it seems like most of them have already dropped the concept of "color" (or whatever that games equivalent would be) in lieu of more important things.
It's more that I'm trying to find a way around having to cleanly represent color on the card face. Again, with one color, that's pretty easy, but with two or more colors it requires a gold frame, a learned visual cue that the card has more than one color.
Multicolor cards would probably convey card color better if their frames used more space for a hybrid-style frame treatment
Problem solved?
Really, if you want to change the game just because you are not good at designing the visuals of a card face, then you are approaching the problem from the wrong direction. Just use one of the many unintrusive options that are already present on modern card faces and use a variant of that.
Not only that, but conveying card color expends more resources than one would think, limiting space on the card frame, and I'm not sure that's worth the potential design space of referring to cards by their color, especially seeing how scarce that kind of effect is nowadays. I would rather keep the mana cost the same (requiring different colors of mana to play cards is important), but use the card frame to express other details about the card, like what card type it is, or if it's instant speed, or whatever.
That already happens. Actually card color appears most consistently in places where it takes up almost no space: The background of the text box and pin lines. Just look at colore artifacts.
Even looking at other card games, it seems like most of them have already dropped the concept of "color" (or whatever that games equivalent would be) in lieu of more important things.
Examples of games that do so would be nice. After all when I refered to games that have similar concepts I provided an example. Note also how many of them have a similar system of colored costs (which you want to keep) and an equivalent of the associated color pie.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
Really, if you want to change the game just because you are not good at designing the visuals of a card face, then you are approaching the problem from the wrong direction. Just use one of the many unintrusive options that are already present on modern card faces and use a variant of that.
That already happens. Actually card color appears most consistently in places where it takes up almost no space: The background of the text box and pin lines. Just look at colore artifacts.
Examples of games that do so would be nice. After all when I refered to games that have similar concepts I provided an example. Note also how many of them have a similar system of colored costs (which you want to keep) and an equivalent of the associated color pie.
Using the hybrid card frame for cards with three or more colors is even more messy than the gold frame.
Every card has a set of characteristics: Name, type, mana cost, converted mana cost, etc. One of those characteristics is color, something usually associated, but not inherently connected to mana cost. While the other card characteristics serve really important purposes either mechanically or logistically, I don't think color does. What I am looking for is a compelling reason to keep it.
I want to give an example of a card which doesn't prioritize color, but still signals it for drafting purposes. I know the text boxes are really bland, but they're temporary until I can find a cooler style. I want to aim for something as flavorful as the flip-land frame from Ixalan.
Also, yeah, the collector/copyright info is missing, but that's unimportant.
Using the hybrid card frame for cards with three or more colors is even more messy than the gold frame.
Can you please go into more detail what you mean with "messy"? I have been using three-colored pinlines for years and if anything they are an improvement over the card face design used by Wizards atm. I'd extend it even more if starting from scratch e. g. the aforementioned nameline and typeline, probably the text box.
What I am looking for is a compelling reason to keep it.
Deck construction. More specifically: Limited, where it is time sensitive, but it is relevant in general. Have you read the article linked by SavannahLion? You want a preattentive visual feature that works however your player is likely to hold the cards - the card frame is a distributed feature with a large area - more likely to be processed preconsciously than mana cost alone.
Compare this with e. g. Seven Wonders where the card frame serves to separate cards into victory point categories rather than by card cost (since all players (can) have access to all resource types over the course of the game). It is easy to sort these by victory point category due to frame treatment, but hard to sort the by cost.
For deck building the need to quickly recognize which cards share a card type is less important than the need to group cards by color. Color is one of the first things you hear people mention when they talk about their deck - we have gotten twenty additional color terms to describe card- and deck-color when it comes to combinations. The first frames that don't distinguish cards by color distinguish between artifacts and lands - another clearly helpful tool for deck building.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
Full art cards have been a thing for quite some time. I own quite a few and enjoy them. The issue is that literal card color (designwise) and card mana cost go hand in hand to aid players (emphasis on new players).
For most of my decks, I could identify the card name, tell you what it does, and if I'm running 1 or a playset in said deck. My opponents however don't have the luxury of looking at my decks as often as I do, so as far as Doom Blade or Pyroblast it is important that they can identify the color(s) of my card quickly and easily.
A reboot has to consider not only veteran players, but also new ones. Look at Forest. Do you see that? Just a symbol? The old ones used to say T:add G to your mana pool. Do you know how many new players I have come across in the past six years that get those new Forests and an Elvish Mystic and think that tapping that elf lets them search their library for a Forest? It was NEVER an issue back when lands said what they did, but when they veteran's won out with a style change, the victims were the newbies and the people playing with them. No, a Dark Ritual doesn't get you three swamps, put your library down!
WotC has been experimenting with how to show what color(s) cards are when they have no CMC by using colored circles on the flip side of transform cards. Arlinn Kord and Garruk Veil Cursed both use methods similar to your Marath, but have them down at the card type level instead of at mana cost height.
Now, to move away from this and address the second part of your question: Art. If you take away the art, the game is still 100% playable. It won't be nearly as enjoyable, but it will still be playable. Same with flavor text (and to an extent, reminder text). These are things that many players love, and I'd wager over 99% enjoy, but they aren't "necessary".
Hope that helps.
Card color is the first and most identifiable characteristic of Magic. It helps new players answer the question "what sort of player am I?" without really knowing anything about the game, and to a lesser degree helps experienced players answer "how can I build a deck that does what I want?". It only stands to reason that it should be a large part of the card's visual design.
Oppositional cards that care about color, like Pyroblast, are definitely becoming less common. On the other hand, collaborative cards like Paragon of New Dawns, Woodland Bellower, and Kefnet's Monument all serve to make 'depth-versus-breadth' strategies more viable; i.e. focusing on a single color for power at the expense of versatility. They aren't going anywhere any time soon, and for as long as effects like those exist it is very important to be able to tell, at a glance, the color of a card.
Color is especially important for flip cards and tokens, which have no mana cost (on at least one side). The dual-color indication on cards like Samut, the Tested are adequate for establishing color at a glance, while cards with three or more colors tend to be defined more by the presence of many colors than what any of those specific colors are (e.g. cards like Ultimate Price and Maze Sentinel don't care about specific colors). In sets where certain color combinations come up a lot (Kahns wedges, Alara shards, Ravnica guilds) we get watermarks on the cards to help keep them readily identifiable instead.
3+ color cards are still a bit harder to immediately recognize the colors of, which is a problem when considering other cards that care only about the presence or absence of a specific color. The answer there is that I don't think there's a simple and better way to do it, and the majority of Magic cards are monocolor or colorless anyways.
It's probably worth separating out the mechanical and UI aspects of your question. You could remove mechanical color (in the narrow sense that you're asking about) and keep color cues on the card frame - and in fact, keeping color cues would be just as important, because references to mechanical color come up immeasurably less often than wanting to quickly know what kind of mana something costs in limited. (And note that, even if there were no cards that referred to mechanical color, and narrow mechanical color wasn't defined in the comprehensive rules, everyone would still talk about what color things were.) Likewise, you could remove color cues from the card frame and keep mechanical color.
My view on these is:
1) Mechanical color isn't essential, but will appear intuitively obvious in most cases, so the cognitive burden is much less than with many mechanical hooks. I think the design space is worth it, but that's a subjective decision, and either way one that won't affect play a great deal.
2) Card frame cues about what color something is - including in the colloquial "what mana do I use to cast this" sense - are indispensable. It's useful for the pro player who needs to shave off microseconds of filtering out irrelevant information when drafting, it's useful for the newbie playing Magic League whose knowledge of deckbuilding is "pick two colors and a bit of a third and make your deck out of those," it's useful for people sorting the cards they drafted into their deck boxes, it's useful useful useful.
Now, it is true that cards that are a different mechanical color from the color required to cast them have a frame that indicates the mechanical color. But these are rare, and most of the time the difference is one implemented for flavor reasons. It's neat to see cool, collected Dr. Jeckle become the raging read Mr. Hyde, or the sweet little girl become the evil demon - but that's also something where the presence of color on the frame helps tell the story.
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If, while the mana system still dictates that a card must be cast with a certain color or colors of mana, those cards had no characteristic called "color" that could be referrenced by the rules and effects of the game, would that be in any way detrimental to the game itself?
Obviously, assuming the answer would be no, color can't simply be removed from the game at this point, so this is only relevant to a hypothetical reboot of the game.
I ask in the interest of determining what the most important aspects of a card are, and how to most efficiently and cleanly convey those things on a card frame. MTG conveys color really well on monocolor cards, but with cards of two or more color, it gets muddier. I want to try to avoid that issue if possible, and I believe that the color of a card (again, not the mana system) is unimportant enough that it could be left out entirely.
Card color also adds texture and works as a shortcut to flavor. Cards like Bad Moon derive their flavor directly from card color. And the above-mentioned ease to refer to a card by color rather than taking the long way of saying "creatures with a black mana symbol in their mana cost" allows to actually make these designs without overloading anyone's brains.
Card color is a shortcut that is easily grokkable terminology with an simple unintrusive visual representation. It's a freebie that you get with colored mana costs. You cannot actually take it out of the game while retaining the mana costs as much as you can decide not to refer to it - and deliberately cutting yourself off of a design tool that way.
Multicolor cards would probably convey card color better if their frames used more space for a hybrid-style frame treatment, but I think the variant frame with colored pinlines in MSE does a good job at this if you are familiar with it.
You might also want to look at other games that have similar concepts to colors e. g. the Pokémon TCG which also approaches multiple "colors" (there called "types"). It's a really natural way to categorize stuff and people will automatically go there.
Asking whether card color is important in the game when you already have mana color and cards with colored mana costs is like saking whether the concept of "up" and "down" is important once you have gravity. It's an emergent property not something arbitrarily added. You would have a better case asking whether creature types are important.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
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- On one hand you have it for card mechanics, representing what certain cards should be able to do and thus limiting potential for certain strategies and allowing for variance. Imagine if there were no colors but it was all colorless mana... Everyone would play the exact same deck.
- On the other hand you have it for flavor, representing what cards can do based on their ideals, themes, etc.
So far Wizards has done a good job of describing the color pie (I actually really loved Mark Rosewater's articles Revisiting each color and what that color represents), but occasionally there are cards that make people turn their heads and wonder if that color should be allowed to do that.
In my honest opinion, I like it when the color pie gets bent a little bit due to the flavor represented on the card. Every red card does not have to be a haste card or deal damage, and every blue card does not have to draw cards or counter spells. I'm not saying that Lightning Bolt in Blue is okay, but I do think that when a card makes sense despite it bending the color pie a bit, then it works.
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When looking for what is actually important vs what has been made important its very simple: Mana Cost, Card Type, P/T, Rules Text.
Everything else, even the name, can be swapped out without any loss of function. Of course this changes when other cards care about those extra characteristics.
For example, when Doom Blade refers to "nonblack" creatures, it isn't talking specifically about the creature's mana cost, but rather the creature's color. While the two are typically linked, they are separate elements of a card and can act separately.
What I'm arguing is that the color of the card is unnecessary while the color requirement for paying mana costs remains essential.
I think it's important to keep previous experiences as the lessons.
In any case, the color itself isn't a mechanical trait, but a "flavour" trait. This trait determines what cards in the different colors are allowed to do, and what they can't do or do well. While the game can technically survive without these distinctions, this actually greatly influences deckbuilding, as if you want certain abilities or benefits without shoving in artifacts that are typically limited in how well they can do those tasks, you need to splash in the colors that do the job well.
This has its benefits and drawbacks, with the main benefit being that you help to facilitate an environment where multiple deck archetypes can compete with each other (This isn't always the case, of course, but no-one said the system is perfect.), and the main drawback is that your favourite color may be inadequate for a certain environment if you try to run it on its own.
So if I'm understanding what you're saying, you want to find a way around the issues associated with referring to color in rules text?
If that's the case, I'm not sure if that's really something to consider removing in a hypothetical reboot, since it may be inevitable that the colors in the mana cost would be referenced in some way for effects, and having the color trait is a clean way of addressing that.
Not only that, but conveying card color expends more resources than one would think, limiting space on the card frame, and I'm not sure that's worth the potential design space of referring to cards by their color, especially seeing how scarce that kind of effect is nowadays. I would rather keep the mana cost the same (requiring different colors of mana to play cards is important), but use the card frame to express other details about the card, like what card type it is, or if it's instant speed, or whatever.
Even looking at other card games, it seems like most of them have already dropped the concept of "color" (or whatever that games equivalent would be) in lieu of more important things.
Problem solved?
Really, if you want to change the game just because you are not good at designing the visuals of a card face, then you are approaching the problem from the wrong direction. Just use one of the many unintrusive options that are already present on modern card faces and use a variant of that.
That already happens. Actually card color appears most consistently in places where it takes up almost no space: The background of the text box and pin lines. Just look at colore artifacts.
Examples of games that do so would be nice. After all when I refered to games that have similar concepts I provided an example. Note also how many of them have a similar system of colored costs (which you want to keep) and an equivalent of the associated color pie.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
Every card has a set of characteristics: Name, type, mana cost, converted mana cost, etc. One of those characteristics is color, something usually associated, but not inherently connected to mana cost. While the other card characteristics serve really important purposes either mechanically or logistically, I don't think color does. What I am looking for is a compelling reason to keep it.
Also, yeah, the collector/copyright info is missing, but that's unimportant.
Can you please go into more detail what you mean with "messy"? I have been using three-colored pinlines for years and if anything they are an improvement over the card face design used by Wizards atm. I'd extend it even more if starting from scratch e. g. the aforementioned nameline and typeline, probably the text box.
Deck construction. More specifically: Limited, where it is time sensitive, but it is relevant in general. Have you read the article linked by SavannahLion? You want a preattentive visual feature that works however your player is likely to hold the cards - the card frame is a distributed feature with a large area - more likely to be processed preconsciously than mana cost alone.
Compare this with e. g. Seven Wonders where the card frame serves to separate cards into victory point categories rather than by card cost (since all players (can) have access to all resource types over the course of the game). It is easy to sort these by victory point category due to frame treatment, but hard to sort the by cost.
For deck building the need to quickly recognize which cards share a card type is less important than the need to group cards by color. Color is one of the first things you hear people mention when they talk about their deck - we have gotten twenty additional color terms to describe card- and deck-color when it comes to combinations. The first frames that don't distinguish cards by color distinguish between artifacts and lands - another clearly helpful tool for deck building.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
For most of my decks, I could identify the card name, tell you what it does, and if I'm running 1 or a playset in said deck. My opponents however don't have the luxury of looking at my decks as often as I do, so as far as Doom Blade or Pyroblast it is important that they can identify the color(s) of my card quickly and easily.
A reboot has to consider not only veteran players, but also new ones. Look at Forest. Do you see that? Just a symbol? The old ones used to say T:add G to your mana pool. Do you know how many new players I have come across in the past six years that get those new Forests and an Elvish Mystic and think that tapping that elf lets them search their library for a Forest? It was NEVER an issue back when lands said what they did, but when they veteran's won out with a style change, the victims were the newbies and the people playing with them. No, a Dark Ritual doesn't get you three swamps, put your library down!
WotC has been experimenting with how to show what color(s) cards are when they have no CMC by using colored circles on the flip side of transform cards. Arlinn Kord and Garruk Veil Cursed both use methods similar to your Marath, but have them down at the card type level instead of at mana cost height.
Now, to move away from this and address the second part of your question: Art. If you take away the art, the game is still 100% playable. It won't be nearly as enjoyable, but it will still be playable. Same with flavor text (and to an extent, reminder text). These are things that many players love, and I'd wager over 99% enjoy, but they aren't "necessary".
Hope that helps.
Oppositional cards that care about color, like Pyroblast, are definitely becoming less common. On the other hand, collaborative cards like Paragon of New Dawns, Woodland Bellower, and Kefnet's Monument all serve to make 'depth-versus-breadth' strategies more viable; i.e. focusing on a single color for power at the expense of versatility. They aren't going anywhere any time soon, and for as long as effects like those exist it is very important to be able to tell, at a glance, the color of a card.
Color is especially important for flip cards and tokens, which have no mana cost (on at least one side). The dual-color indication on cards like Samut, the Tested are adequate for establishing color at a glance, while cards with three or more colors tend to be defined more by the presence of many colors than what any of those specific colors are (e.g. cards like Ultimate Price and Maze Sentinel don't care about specific colors). In sets where certain color combinations come up a lot (Kahns wedges, Alara shards, Ravnica guilds) we get watermarks on the cards to help keep them readily identifiable instead.
3+ color cards are still a bit harder to immediately recognize the colors of, which is a problem when considering other cards that care only about the presence or absence of a specific color. The answer there is that I don't think there's a simple and better way to do it, and the majority of Magic cards are monocolor or colorless anyways.
- Rabid Wombat
My view on these is:
1) Mechanical color isn't essential, but will appear intuitively obvious in most cases, so the cognitive burden is much less than with many mechanical hooks. I think the design space is worth it, but that's a subjective decision, and either way one that won't affect play a great deal.
2) Card frame cues about what color something is - including in the colloquial "what mana do I use to cast this" sense - are indispensable. It's useful for the pro player who needs to shave off microseconds of filtering out irrelevant information when drafting, it's useful for the newbie playing Magic League whose knowledge of deckbuilding is "pick two colors and a bit of a third and make your deck out of those," it's useful for people sorting the cards they drafted into their deck boxes, it's useful useful useful.
Now, it is true that cards that are a different mechanical color from the color required to cast them have a frame that indicates the mechanical color. But these are rare, and most of the time the difference is one implemented for flavor reasons. It's neat to see cool, collected Dr. Jeckle become the raging read Mr. Hyde, or the sweet little girl become the evil demon - but that's also something where the presence of color on the frame helps tell the story.