While I believe Magic, as a whole, should always have answers, I really don’t believe that giving red enchantment destruction
then we are on the same page I think red should get either the ability to temporally "shut off" an enchantment for a turn or just exile it until the end phase, not strong enough for it to invalidate white as a color but not worthless enough to where mono red isn't viable.
Likewise for artifacts and black maybe temporary theft?
Well red does have the ability to steal enchantments via Frenzied Fugue or Word of Seizing then sacrifice them through means like Crack the Earth. Though admittedly, those cards are a tad costly.
Someone earlier mentioned reds inability to deal with whites CoP. Yeah, that’s never actually been a real problem, especially with sheer hate cards like Oman of Fire or just laying waste to the field with Jokulhaups.
As for black dealing with artifacts. Nevinyrral's Disk has been a black staple for so long, I’m quite frankly surprised that similar “destroy everything that’s X and everything else be damned” haven’t already appeared more often for black.
Because whats the point of having different colours if they aren't different? May as well just play something like hearthstone where everything costs generic mana. It's one of the many distinct features what makes magic the game it is. The more contrasting the colours are, the more complex the game becomes. The more one colour bleeds into another's territory, the more simple the game becomes. Complexity is what makes magic the tcg king imo.
Also, its not like destroying enchantments is impossible in red as suggested. There are plently of colourless things that any deck can dip into to overcome any challenge but with greater effort than a colour that has it in it's pie
Turn to Frog, Diminish, Kasmina's Transmutation all fit a similar design, just on a single target basis (and this design space is shared by Snakeform and Godhead of Awe, even though they are multicolor). I'm sure we'll continue to get more of these in the future.
I was talking about more in the sense of a card that is a "board wipe but shapeshifting instead of blowing" when I said "only card that does what it does" but I didn't know diminish or transmutation were cards so thanks for pointing those out to me.
I have no issues with blue except for the fact polymorphist's jest is the only card that does what it does in blue.
When you made that statement, were you upset that blue has one spell like no other (that it shouldn't have), or were you saying blue should have more spells like that?
I noticed the color pie causes a lot of issues game play wise for the game specifically when talking about the competitive side of the game in eternal and semi eternal formats. I'll just say modern is the format I notice this the most
Specifically the issues I've noticed are:
Why doesn't red have a way to deal with enchantments that stop damage? (Scour from existence does not count for this discussion unless you can point me to a really slow competitively viable mono red deck). Why not give red a way to temporarily remove the effects from enchantments?(like an instant that last until the end of turn or an aura with vanishing).
Red has tonnes of way to temporarily deal with enchantments that stop damage.
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Other people have answered, but I'll just skip it and explain it in my own words.
If you want every color to do everything, the colors become meaningless.
Magic's colors are integral to its design and you can't equalize the colors without necessiating some basic restructuring in the game design where you might as well just play a different game altogether. Those lands that you put into your deck? Each color having a weakness pushing you towards playing more colors to cover all of your weaknesses - but playing more colors puts you into a position where you get easily color screwed. This push and pull is integral to deckbuilding and is the major reason the game works so well. The fact that you have to carefully select and balance your mana base is a fundamental element of Magic play. Sure, you'll get annoyed when you face stuff that your color has problems with but if a color has access to every tool the game becomes stale and stupid. For example, think of what white would play like if it had real card draw. A single color answering everything and being able to replenish itself. Yawn.
Remember that when you play a game, you actually don't want to automatically solve everything and/or win. You want to be presented with a puzzle that demands stuff of you, but which is simultaneously exciting to solve. The fewer obstacles you face, the less of a game it is. There's a reason why turning on a lamp isn't normally considered playing a game. So whenever you face Leyline of Sanctity as red burn, that's annoying, but then you should have added another color to answer it - but wouldn't that make you weaker to decks that don't play Leyline?
Yes. That's the point. This tension is why deckbuilding is something you actively try and do and solve.
Now, cards that massively screw over colors are kinda dumb. Stuff like Choke and Chill and Kor Firewalker and Light of Day are stupid. Leyline is less so because even if red has problems with enchantments, it can still land creatures and fight the opponent that way. But there's a reason WotC has pulled back on harsh color hosers recently - because they have - so: the tension built in designing your mana base is more often than not enough to keep you back from going more colors.
Your particular single issues - red's answer to enchantments, white's bad card draw - are particular mechanical designs that WotC is evaluating constantly. For example, recently, they're thinking about doing black enchantment removal due to the push for more colored artifacts. (Mind you: I'm not sure how the two, colored artifacts and black enchantment removal, connect but they've talked about that a few times, and regardless of the logic it is a major restructuring of black as a color.) Certain effects are slowly getting changed all the time, in particular monocolored problems in Commander have caused them to look into how to do some effects different.
That said, if you dislike color restrictions... Go play Yu Gi Oh. Or something else. There are plenty of games that don't use a Magicesque mana system. But you can't do Magic without restricting colors, otherwise colors would be meaningless.
EDIT: I now read a few more posts - so you're noting that you're ok with color restrictions but would like more in-color solutions to certain problems. Like how you think it's OK that blue can't remove stuff but can polymorph if everything else goes wrong. Now, I agree - but it still does mean that certain things will never be efficient enough. If polymorphing became too good, you wouldn't have to add colors to a blue deck. For red enchantments, stuff like Chaos Warp is a nogo (it's an active break) but some very inefficient temporary permanent stealing exist. I think this is a good solution, but I don't believe you'd be happy, because the cards are simply too bad for stuff like Modern most of the time, a format you have appealed to in this thread as a reason to push these things. Remember, you don't want red solutions to enchantments to be too good, otherwise you aren't pushed to add another color to your deck.
I'll give a very simple answer, since others have given complex ones.
We defend the color pie because we know what it is. We understand that black can't kill enchantments, and we accept that if we build a monoblack deck. Changing the basics of the color pie would be like changing knights to elephants in chess. Yeah, it's still a fine game, but it's not the same game.
That doesn't mean that an enchantment removal spell can't ever be printed in black, but it would have to be printed in such a way as to work within the color pie. Remember, colorless can do anything, just at a higher cost.
I too would be happy to see another Planar Chaos, but Planar Chaos wasn't random. It had some serious color pie bends, but they did keep an eye on the color pie, and it's important not to make these kinds of breaches too often.
The color pie is one of the most important balances in the game of Magic. It's one of the foundational designs that Richard Garfield himself set the basics for. Why wouldn't we defend something that's more fundamental to Magic than seven card hands?
How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
There was another card from C18 that also gave red some enchantment response.
EDIT: Found it. Enchanter’s Bane
Chaos Warp is red’s Counterspell. It is the color’s catch all.
Speaking about warping, chaos effects where the control of the Enchantment changes is also an option.
Lastly, what non-red enchantment is dealing damage to you that out damages your red deck? Honestly red is the color of direct damage and haste and should be winning the damage race against something as slow as enchantment based damage.
Worse comes to worse, it has been said in this thread already but I will try it a different way:
Artifacts exist to fill the gaps that each color has.
That being said Fountain of Renewal is a relatively recent card that you can play first turn to mitigate what ever enchantment damage is coming your way.
If one color did everything best, every Spike (tournament player) would automatically have it as their focused color and maybe augment their deck with the other colors. That means seeing the same deck type more and more often which gets boring and makes people not want to play a boring game.
This is also why, when one card does everything and in a color it normally shouldn’t it gets really expensive because it fills that gap the color has and everyone wants to have it. Supply and Demand dictates that this card gets to be expensive and this break in the color pie hurts the player base’s collective wallet.
So back to this enchantment, what color is it? I’ve been here since 4th edition and the only damage dealing enchantments my burn deck would be wary of that I can think of are Zendikar based and gain life at the same time.
Unless this enchantment can change the life difference by over 2 points (be it by lifegain or lifeloss) I can totally out race the damage because I am playing red.
Commander product cards really dont take the color pie serious, they are more cards made that simply fit the theme of a product.
Chaos Warp is a odd exception to red , and almost any color has such a card that does something that actually really hurts and breaks the color pie ; mistakes of the creators of the cards.
The color pie only really matters for limited, in any other product they just slam whatever they want and do pretty much whatever they want and only remotely check for the color pie ; the theme of a product like a commander preconstructed deck is much more important for them (which can lead to super off cards like True-Name Nemesis giving colors abilities that are completely out of its color pie).
These offenders dont really hurt the game crazy, but the small bleeds to the color pie can and will add up over time and that is bad for the game, as the identity of the colors is so important ; but to be true, right now, its more about a theme of a deck, as they are almost always 2+ colors as its so easy to splash for a color and use multicolored cards, which is almost free as your mana base isnt even worse than a mono colored one if all your lands tap for your 2 colors anyway and do so with minimal drawbacks if any at all.
Red does have answers to enchsntments thst orevent dame with damage effects that can't be prevent. Effects that make damage non precentable and even prevent life gain, also kost of those prevent enchantments are older and require mana investments so red had very aggresdove land destruction so a player could not pay for these effects.
The color pie is mainly about flavor. Each color represents immaterial concepts, which the game attempts to express through concrete mechanics. Blue likes forethought; what's more forward-thinking than preventing a problem from ever happening in the first place? Red likes fire, which manifests in game mechanics as direct damage effects.
To begin with, colors are prevented from doing certain things for largely flavorful reasons, not balance reasons. Frankly, I don't agree on what the magic design team has decided is the best mechanical way to represent each color's concept. For example I think black should have a lot more interaction with artifacts, as the color that most craves power and wealth, among other changes. But ultimately it's all a question of how you express each color, and what things each color isn't allowed to do so that the other colors are more distinct by comparison.
And from that flavorful choice, they then have to create balance. They want each color to be as distinct competitively as it is thematically; Magic wouldn't be Magic without all five colors being represented. The exact things that each color does are arbitrary, but each color needs to be balanced in accordance to its shortcomings. Therein lies the balance problem. If you suddenly give a color the option to remove one of its shortcomings, that prior cards made were balanced around it having, that color may become too powerful compared to the others and crowd them out, thus ruining the central concept of Magic as a game of five equally-important colors.
For short-term formats, it doesn't really matter what any given color is or isn't able to do so long as it matches the concept for the color and the cards in that format are balanced around what each color can and can't do. But for eternal formats, you also have to keep in mind every prior card printed as well, or else one of them might allow a color to ignore its intended shortcomings. That's fairly readily seen in red: burn spells are red's thing, and they're scary efficient in modern. So, the logic is that it needs more restrictions than most other colors because of the power and versatility of burn. White gets great creature removal because Swords to Plowshares existed and influenced future card design, even though white in concept seems like it should be bad at efficiently removing just a single creature.
The simplest way to account for old cards is to be consistent across sets about what colors can and can't do. This means blue gets to do almost everything, because it was the original self-insert color for nerds, and that red is very limited, because very efficient burn spells exist to be abused if red ever gets good card draw.
Whether they need to be quite so strict as most people say? I don't think so, as long as they maintain the conceptual flavor of each color. It makes sense to me that black should be able to Steal Artifacts, but perhaps they still can't destroy them because they're simply too precious to lose, and so they lack any cheap ways of dealing with artifacts (and often in competitive games you don't benefit as much as they do for just having the artifact). I think red could have a lot more Enchanter's Bane-type effects, as long as they always offer that choice of sacrificing the enchantment and so are made less attractive than a similarly-costed white spell that removes enchantments. 'Off-color' cards should have a cost and power according to the relative difficulty of just splashing another color and using that color's effects instead. If it's done correctly then each color will still retain its flavor and competitive balance would be improved.
But, I'm not in charge of card design, nor am I the most experienced in professional magic. I would like to say that I would do better than most, but I can't deny that there are people out there with more qualified opinions than mine.
To begin with, colors are prevented from doing certain things for largely flavorful reasons, not balance reasons. Frankly, I don't agree on what the magic design team has decided is the best mechanical way to represent each color's concept. For example I think black should have a lot more interaction with artifacts, as the color that most craves power and wealth, among other changes. But ultimately it's all a question of how you express each color, and what things each color isn't allowed to do so that the other colors are more distinct by comparison.
The flavor/balance relation is more complex than you make it out to be, and your misunderstanding of this basic property of Magic is part of your problem of understanding how the game is designed - and why, for example, that black isn't able to deal with artifacts.
The mechanical reason colors are restricted is because of Magic's land based mana system. The colors being restricted pushes you to include more colors when building a deck, but it makes your deck inconsistent and therefore weaker against more focused strategies if you do so. It's the primary reason the game works so well.
It's true that the basic idea of the five colors and their approaches and wants is based upon five relatively complex outlines of several interacting ideas. White being about structure and red being about freedom, for example. But the thing is, as Mark Rosewater has said a thousand times at this point, flavor can legitimize pretty much anything. Song of the Dryads make intuitive sense, but is a major color break as it undercuts green's basic weakness - being overtly reliant on creatures. The idea that black is greedy and materialistic isn't wrong, but to go from there and believe that black should be a primary interactor with artifacts undercut the mechanical identities of the Jeskai colors, particularly blue. And the colors need to be separated for the game to be mechanically meaningful. The moment you abandon the principles of rigid mechanical division, you might as well just abandon the colors - something other games have done, like Yu Gi Oh, a game that doesn't use colors at all. The moment you stop doing colors the way Magic does, it's no longer Magic, and you might as well play something different. Which is fine, by the way.
Here's some things that also make sense through flavor and should never be allowed in new designs:
White doing a "pure" rampant growth effect based on its emphasis on civilization and growth.
Blue having a frostbolt or an ice nova dealing direct damage.
Black gaining control of an enemy noncreature artifact already in play because black steals.
Red making an opponent discard cards because it can inspire madness or spontaneous, reckless intuition.
Green drawing cards based on its emphasis on wisdom.
White can however do effects like Knight of the White Orchid.
Blue can tap down permanents with frost effects intead of doing direct damage.
Black can "steal" artifacts from graveyards.
Red can cause each player to discard some cards then draw some cards, based on driven characters, chance and spontainty.
Green can draw its cards of wisdom as long as the card draw is connected to its creatures.
All of these are OK because they don't undercut some of the base restrictions of the colors.
The second issue you bring up, the problem with eternal formats having mechanics in wrong colors, and that blue is kind of ridiculous in eternal formats, doesn't really counteract this basic premise of mechanical color division. The problems with blue's massive mechanical arsenal and cards like Swords to Plowshares/Path to Exile being more efficient than black removal - these problems are a seriously hurtful element to the game's long term health and are something that has necessiated several WotC policies to prevent future mechanical bleeds, such as Mark Rosewater's push for the Council of Colors. Using the game's inherited problems as an argument to further muddy the mechanical identities of the colors... It is like saying that since a leg has a wound, we might as well break it.
The third issue you bring up, that stuff like Enchanter's Bane should be made more of - well, I agree. But the thing is that Enchanter's Bane is not a break at all. Red is allowed deal direct damage and "punisher" effects that would otherwise be mechanical breaks (effects that allow your opponent to choose between two bad options; look at Browbeat as an example). The problem is the moment one argues that stuff like Desert Twister is OK, even if it's less efficient than say Vindicate. It's true that stuff like Sorcerer's Strongbox exists for green, but it being an artifact is very much not irrelevant here, allowing white, red and green to destroy it, blue to steal it, and black to discard it (Note: Black can discard everything, but certain cards allow the discard of artifacts in particular). Also do note that cards like Enchanter's Bane are quite novel. They don't mass print stuff like it because it's new mechanical space (still well within the color mechanics mind you), and each release has to cover bread and butter effects, which fills up a lot of slots.
In general the cards in commander products really dont honor the color pie much, they just make some cards for a theme that feel like fitting that theme and "remotely" do stuff that fit the color, but thats only secondary.
If the game would in its entirely give as much about the color pie as the commander products do, the game would suffer in a major way.
To begin with, colors are prevented from doing certain things for largely flavorful reasons, not balance reasons. Frankly, I don't agree on what the magic design team has decided is the best mechanical way to represent each color's concept. For example I think black should have a lot more interaction with artifacts, as the color that most craves power and wealth, among other changes. But ultimately it's all a question of how you express each color, and what things each color isn't allowed to do so that the other colors are more distinct by comparison.
The flavor/balance relation is more complex than you make it out to be, and your misunderstanding of this basic property of Magic is part of your problem of understanding how the game is designed - and why, for example, that black isn't able to deal with artifacts.
The mechanical reason colors are restricted is because of Magic's land based mana system. The colors being restricted pushes you to include more colors when building a deck, but it makes your deck inconsistent and therefore weaker against more focused strategies if you do so. It's the primary reason the game works so well.
It's true that the basic idea of the five colors and their approaches and wants is based upon five relatively complex outlines of several interacting ideas. White being about structure and red being about freedom, for example. But the thing is, as Mark Rosewater has said a thousand times at this point, flavor can legitimize pretty much anything. Song of the Dryads make intuitive sense, but is a major color break as it undercuts green's basic weakness - being overtly reliant on creatures. The idea that black is greedy and materialistic isn't wrong, but to go from there and believe that black should be a primary interactor with artifacts undercut the mechanical identities of the Jeskai colors, particularly blue. And the colors need to be separated for the game to be mechanically meaningful. The moment you abandon the principles of rigid mechanical division, you might as well just abandon the colors - something other games have done, like Yu Gi Oh, a game that doesn't use colors at all. The moment you stop doing colors the way Magic does, it's no longer Magic, and you might as well play something different. Which is fine, by the way.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I'm attempting to establish a very general chronology of how designing the colors might have gone. When I said "To begin with", I meant "Before taking into account everything that exists currently".
I'm saying that mechanical color division exists and is good, but the exact mechanics that were chosen for each color in the first place were mostly arbitrary, specifically because flavor can be used to justify anything.
If you can flavorfully justify something then it can work for a given color in a vacuum, so long as each color remains distinct in some way and no one color crowds out the rest. In a world where blue gets direct damage, perhaps it can't draw cards so easily to reinforce its steady, deliberate nature while the obvious connection between red and fire is instead expressed by causing 'fiery' effects to discard cards, in the sense of burning books or embodying loss.
And from that flavorful choice, they then have to create balance.
This means that a version of green that has great, non-creature-based card draw can't also have great creatures and also-also good nonspecific removal. Perhaps this new green can't handle enchantments well because it's content to let things be 'as they always have been' (i.e. one of green's conceptual flaws is that it is too 'traditional). But the final takeaway is that if green had been made around good creatureless card draw then it would need to have been balanced very differently as a color than it is now.
And if you didn't need to worry about pre-existing cards, then you would be free to re-imagine each color anew within each block. But you can't. Because the traits, characteristics, and strengths of each color has already been determined. Those cards already exist. If you try to take a color in a new direction and ignore the old cards, then it will end up having both the strengths of the old cards and the new cards, which will diminish the importance of there being five colors.
Red never had to have great burn to start with, but it does now for the sole reason that the old great burn exists. It can't be good at something new now that it wasn't good at before or else it will have both and no longer need any other colors.
But I think that the existing colors can still be bad at something new, because doing so won't upset that mechanical balance. Desert Twister is totally fine because it costs 6 mana. This is blatantly true when they've shown they're willing to print Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, Scour from Existence, or Karn Liberated at only 1 or 2 mana more. Nobody is complaining about The Great Aurora being able to directly remove creatures and planeswalkers or for infringing on red's wheelhouse of destroying all the things because it's almost completely unplayable anyways. They gave black Enslave even though it had never previously had anything of the sort and even though it's outside of what black's colors were previously allowed to do, and nobody cared because it's not worth 4 extra mana (or, by today's standards, 5 extra mana) to steal the thing instead of just killing it.
From my view point, your argument is one of those yes but no situations. My playgroup has pulled some nifty tricks when it comes to color pie issues. Red has situational enchantment removal with chaos warp. Black can answer artifacts with disposes. Green can beat storm by using weather the storm. My own blue decks has infinite reflections to answer anti blue cards. White also has ways to draw cards, my personal favorite being mentor of the meek. The color pie is a key concept for magic, but if you look hard enough, you can see where the color pie breaks down in some interesting ways.
Because blue is the colour of both transmutation and non-creature solutions, but green's key weakness and simultaneous strength is an (over?)reliance on creatures. So blue having a non-permanent spell that can pop one opposing creature and give its controller another creature fits the theme.
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Because blue is the colour of both transmutation and non-creature solutions
And draw, and stack interaction, and creature removal, and non-creature removal, and small evasive creatures, and large evasive creatures, and tempo creatures, and the best planeswalkers, and mill, and protection from the opponent, and extra turns, and wheels, and resets...
Blue doesn't have weaknesses. It's time we stop pretending the color pie is anything but a crutch that keeps blue as the best support color and the other four playing musical chairs to see who gets to not be crap this season.
One of the reasons the early color pie is akward was that Richard Garfield gaveceach color thectools of its enemies to use against them, like Black getting Gloom, Blue getting Volcanic Eruption etc. The Elemental Blasts were the most egregious where it took eachothers strengths and weaknesses and made 2 cards that optimized both.
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in modern though?
Covered both of these above not repeating myself
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Red has tonnes of way to temporarily deal with enchantments that stop damage.
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If you want every color to do everything, the colors become meaningless.
Magic's colors are integral to its design and you can't equalize the colors without necessiating some basic restructuring in the game design where you might as well just play a different game altogether. Those lands that you put into your deck? Each color having a weakness pushing you towards playing more colors to cover all of your weaknesses - but playing more colors puts you into a position where you get easily color screwed. This push and pull is integral to deckbuilding and is the major reason the game works so well. The fact that you have to carefully select and balance your mana base is a fundamental element of Magic play. Sure, you'll get annoyed when you face stuff that your color has problems with but if a color has access to every tool the game becomes stale and stupid. For example, think of what white would play like if it had real card draw. A single color answering everything and being able to replenish itself. Yawn.
Remember that when you play a game, you actually don't want to automatically solve everything and/or win. You want to be presented with a puzzle that demands stuff of you, but which is simultaneously exciting to solve. The fewer obstacles you face, the less of a game it is. There's a reason why turning on a lamp isn't normally considered playing a game. So whenever you face Leyline of Sanctity as red burn, that's annoying, but then you should have added another color to answer it - but wouldn't that make you weaker to decks that don't play Leyline?
Yes. That's the point. This tension is why deckbuilding is something you actively try and do and solve.
Now, cards that massively screw over colors are kinda dumb. Stuff like Choke and Chill and Kor Firewalker and Light of Day are stupid. Leyline is less so because even if red has problems with enchantments, it can still land creatures and fight the opponent that way. But there's a reason WotC has pulled back on harsh color hosers recently - because they have - so: the tension built in designing your mana base is more often than not enough to keep you back from going more colors.
Your particular single issues - red's answer to enchantments, white's bad card draw - are particular mechanical designs that WotC is evaluating constantly. For example, recently, they're thinking about doing black enchantment removal due to the push for more colored artifacts. (Mind you: I'm not sure how the two, colored artifacts and black enchantment removal, connect but they've talked about that a few times, and regardless of the logic it is a major restructuring of black as a color.) Certain effects are slowly getting changed all the time, in particular monocolored problems in Commander have caused them to look into how to do some effects different.
That said, if you dislike color restrictions... Go play Yu Gi Oh. Or something else. There are plenty of games that don't use a Magicesque mana system. But you can't do Magic without restricting colors, otherwise colors would be meaningless.
EDIT: I now read a few more posts - so you're noting that you're ok with color restrictions but would like more in-color solutions to certain problems. Like how you think it's OK that blue can't remove stuff but can polymorph if everything else goes wrong. Now, I agree - but it still does mean that certain things will never be efficient enough. If polymorphing became too good, you wouldn't have to add colors to a blue deck. For red enchantments, stuff like Chaos Warp is a nogo (it's an active break) but some very inefficient temporary permanent stealing exist. I think this is a good solution, but I don't believe you'd be happy, because the cards are simply too bad for stuff like Modern most of the time, a format you have appealed to in this thread as a reason to push these things. Remember, you don't want red solutions to enchantments to be too good, otherwise you aren't pushed to add another color to your deck.
We defend the color pie because we know what it is. We understand that black can't kill enchantments, and we accept that if we build a monoblack deck. Changing the basics of the color pie would be like changing knights to elephants in chess. Yeah, it's still a fine game, but it's not the same game.
That doesn't mean that an enchantment removal spell can't ever be printed in black, but it would have to be printed in such a way as to work within the color pie. Remember, colorless can do anything, just at a higher cost.
I too would be happy to see another Planar Chaos, but Planar Chaos wasn't random. It had some serious color pie bends, but they did keep an eye on the color pie, and it's important not to make these kinds of breaches too often.
The color pie is one of the most important balances in the game of Magic. It's one of the foundational designs that Richard Garfield himself set the basics for. Why wouldn't we defend something that's more fundamental to Magic than seven card hands?
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making one color able to do everything would make this game boring.
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This makes me chuckle
There was another card from C18 that also gave red some enchantment response.
EDIT: Found it. Enchanter’s Bane
Chaos Warp is red’s Counterspell. It is the color’s catch all.
Speaking about warping, chaos effects where the control of the Enchantment changes is also an option.
Lastly, what non-red enchantment is dealing damage to you that out damages your red deck? Honestly red is the color of direct damage and haste and should be winning the damage race against something as slow as enchantment based damage.
Worse comes to worse, it has been said in this thread already but I will try it a different way:
Artifacts exist to fill the gaps that each color has.
That being said Fountain of Renewal is a relatively recent card that you can play first turn to mitigate what ever enchantment damage is coming your way.
If one color did everything best, every Spike (tournament player) would automatically have it as their focused color and maybe augment their deck with the other colors. That means seeing the same deck type more and more often which gets boring and makes people not want to play a boring game.
This is also why, when one card does everything and in a color it normally shouldn’t it gets really expensive because it fills that gap the color has and everyone wants to have it. Supply and Demand dictates that this card gets to be expensive and this break in the color pie hurts the player base’s collective wallet.
So back to this enchantment, what color is it? I’ve been here since 4th edition and the only damage dealing enchantments my burn deck would be wary of that I can think of are Zendikar based and gain life at the same time.
Unless this enchantment can change the life difference by over 2 points (be it by lifegain or lifeloss) I can totally out race the damage because I am playing red.
Chaos Warp is a odd exception to red , and almost any color has such a card that does something that actually really hurts and breaks the color pie ; mistakes of the creators of the cards.
The color pie only really matters for limited, in any other product they just slam whatever they want and do pretty much whatever they want and only remotely check for the color pie ; the theme of a product like a commander preconstructed deck is much more important for them (which can lead to super off cards like True-Name Nemesis giving colors abilities that are completely out of its color pie).
These offenders dont really hurt the game crazy, but the small bleeds to the color pie can and will add up over time and that is bad for the game, as the identity of the colors is so important ; but to be true, right now, its more about a theme of a deck, as they are almost always 2+ colors as its so easy to splash for a color and use multicolored cards, which is almost free as your mana base isnt even worse than a mono colored one if all your lands tap for your 2 colors anyway and do so with minimal drawbacks if any at all.
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To begin with, colors are prevented from doing certain things for largely flavorful reasons, not balance reasons. Frankly, I don't agree on what the magic design team has decided is the best mechanical way to represent each color's concept. For example I think black should have a lot more interaction with artifacts, as the color that most craves power and wealth, among other changes. But ultimately it's all a question of how you express each color, and what things each color isn't allowed to do so that the other colors are more distinct by comparison.
And from that flavorful choice, they then have to create balance. They want each color to be as distinct competitively as it is thematically; Magic wouldn't be Magic without all five colors being represented. The exact things that each color does are arbitrary, but each color needs to be balanced in accordance to its shortcomings. Therein lies the balance problem. If you suddenly give a color the option to remove one of its shortcomings, that prior cards made were balanced around it having, that color may become too powerful compared to the others and crowd them out, thus ruining the central concept of Magic as a game of five equally-important colors.
For short-term formats, it doesn't really matter what any given color is or isn't able to do so long as it matches the concept for the color and the cards in that format are balanced around what each color can and can't do. But for eternal formats, you also have to keep in mind every prior card printed as well, or else one of them might allow a color to ignore its intended shortcomings. That's fairly readily seen in red: burn spells are red's thing, and they're scary efficient in modern. So, the logic is that it needs more restrictions than most other colors because of the power and versatility of burn. White gets great creature removal because Swords to Plowshares existed and influenced future card design, even though white in concept seems like it should be bad at efficiently removing just a single creature.
The simplest way to account for old cards is to be consistent across sets about what colors can and can't do. This means blue gets to do almost everything, because it was the original self-insert color for nerds, and that red is very limited, because very efficient burn spells exist to be abused if red ever gets good card draw.
Whether they need to be quite so strict as most people say? I don't think so, as long as they maintain the conceptual flavor of each color. It makes sense to me that black should be able to Steal Artifacts, but perhaps they still can't destroy them because they're simply too precious to lose, and so they lack any cheap ways of dealing with artifacts (and often in competitive games you don't benefit as much as they do for just having the artifact). I think red could have a lot more Enchanter's Bane-type effects, as long as they always offer that choice of sacrificing the enchantment and so are made less attractive than a similarly-costed white spell that removes enchantments. 'Off-color' cards should have a cost and power according to the relative difficulty of just splashing another color and using that color's effects instead. If it's done correctly then each color will still retain its flavor and competitive balance would be improved.
But, I'm not in charge of card design, nor am I the most experienced in professional magic. I would like to say that I would do better than most, but I can't deny that there are people out there with more qualified opinions than mine.
- Rabid Wombat
The flavor/balance relation is more complex than you make it out to be, and your misunderstanding of this basic property of Magic is part of your problem of understanding how the game is designed - and why, for example, that black isn't able to deal with artifacts.
The mechanical reason colors are restricted is because of Magic's land based mana system. The colors being restricted pushes you to include more colors when building a deck, but it makes your deck inconsistent and therefore weaker against more focused strategies if you do so. It's the primary reason the game works so well.
It's true that the basic idea of the five colors and their approaches and wants is based upon five relatively complex outlines of several interacting ideas. White being about structure and red being about freedom, for example. But the thing is, as Mark Rosewater has said a thousand times at this point, flavor can legitimize pretty much anything. Song of the Dryads make intuitive sense, but is a major color break as it undercuts green's basic weakness - being overtly reliant on creatures. The idea that black is greedy and materialistic isn't wrong, but to go from there and believe that black should be a primary interactor with artifacts undercut the mechanical identities of the Jeskai colors, particularly blue. And the colors need to be separated for the game to be mechanically meaningful. The moment you abandon the principles of rigid mechanical division, you might as well just abandon the colors - something other games have done, like Yu Gi Oh, a game that doesn't use colors at all. The moment you stop doing colors the way Magic does, it's no longer Magic, and you might as well play something different. Which is fine, by the way.
Here's some things that also make sense through flavor and should never be allowed in new designs:
White doing a "pure" rampant growth effect based on its emphasis on civilization and growth.
Blue having a frostbolt or an ice nova dealing direct damage.
Black gaining control of an enemy noncreature artifact already in play because black steals.
Red making an opponent discard cards because it can inspire madness or spontaneous, reckless intuition.
Green drawing cards based on its emphasis on wisdom.
White can however do effects like Knight of the White Orchid.
Blue can tap down permanents with frost effects intead of doing direct damage.
Black can "steal" artifacts from graveyards.
Red can cause each player to discard some cards then draw some cards, based on driven characters, chance and spontainty.
Green can draw its cards of wisdom as long as the card draw is connected to its creatures.
All of these are OK because they don't undercut some of the base restrictions of the colors.
The second issue you bring up, the problem with eternal formats having mechanics in wrong colors, and that blue is kind of ridiculous in eternal formats, doesn't really counteract this basic premise of mechanical color division. The problems with blue's massive mechanical arsenal and cards like Swords to Plowshares/Path to Exile being more efficient than black removal - these problems are a seriously hurtful element to the game's long term health and are something that has necessiated several WotC policies to prevent future mechanical bleeds, such as Mark Rosewater's push for the Council of Colors. Using the game's inherited problems as an argument to further muddy the mechanical identities of the colors... It is like saying that since a leg has a wound, we might as well break it.
The third issue you bring up, that stuff like Enchanter's Bane should be made more of - well, I agree. But the thing is that Enchanter's Bane is not a break at all. Red is allowed deal direct damage and "punisher" effects that would otherwise be mechanical breaks (effects that allow your opponent to choose between two bad options; look at Browbeat as an example). The problem is the moment one argues that stuff like Desert Twister is OK, even if it's less efficient than say Vindicate. It's true that stuff like Sorcerer's Strongbox exists for green, but it being an artifact is very much not irrelevant here, allowing white, red and green to destroy it, blue to steal it, and black to discard it (Note: Black can discard everything, but certain cards allow the discard of artifacts in particular). Also do note that cards like Enchanter's Bane are quite novel. They don't mass print stuff like it because it's new mechanical space (still well within the color mechanics mind you), and each release has to cover bread and butter effects, which fills up a lot of slots.
If the game would in its entirely give as much about the color pie as the commander products do, the game would suffer in a major way.
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I'm saying that mechanical color division exists and is good, but the exact mechanics that were chosen for each color in the first place were mostly arbitrary, specifically because flavor can be used to justify anything.
If you can flavorfully justify something then it can work for a given color in a vacuum, so long as each color remains distinct in some way and no one color crowds out the rest. In a world where blue gets direct damage, perhaps it can't draw cards so easily to reinforce its steady, deliberate nature while the obvious connection between red and fire is instead expressed by causing 'fiery' effects to discard cards, in the sense of burning books or embodying loss.
And from that flavorful choice, they then have to create balance.
This means that a version of green that has great, non-creature-based card draw can't also have great creatures and also-also good nonspecific removal. Perhaps this new green can't handle enchantments well because it's content to let things be 'as they always have been' (i.e. one of green's conceptual flaws is that it is too 'traditional). But the final takeaway is that if green had been made around good creatureless card draw then it would need to have been balanced very differently as a color than it is now.
And if you didn't need to worry about pre-existing cards, then you would be free to re-imagine each color anew within each block. But you can't. Because the traits, characteristics, and strengths of each color has already been determined. Those cards already exist. If you try to take a color in a new direction and ignore the old cards, then it will end up having both the strengths of the old cards and the new cards, which will diminish the importance of there being five colors.
Red never had to have great burn to start with, but it does now for the sole reason that the old great burn exists. It can't be good at something new now that it wasn't good at before or else it will have both and no longer need any other colors.
But I think that the existing colors can still be bad at something new, because doing so won't upset that mechanical balance. Desert Twister is totally fine because it costs 6 mana. This is blatantly true when they've shown they're willing to print Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, Scour from Existence, or Karn Liberated at only 1 or 2 mana more. Nobody is complaining about The Great Aurora being able to directly remove creatures and planeswalkers or for infringing on red's wheelhouse of destroying all the things because it's almost completely unplayable anyways. They gave black Enslave even though it had never previously had anything of the sort and even though it's outside of what black's colors were previously allowed to do, and nobody cared because it's not worth 4 extra mana (or, by today's standards, 5 extra mana) to steal the thing instead of just killing it.
- Rabid Wombat
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Blue doesn't have weaknesses. It's time we stop pretending the color pie is anything but a crutch that keeps blue as the best support color and the other four playing musical chairs to see who gets to not be crap this season.