MTG Salvation

About the color purple. I do want to go on record saying I think that if a new color were added, it would not just be a sixth spot on the wheel. Rather, it would be in the center, as a kind of "over-color," representing inclusiveness, some place at which all the other colors meet. This would be in direct contrast to artifacts, which are more aptly thought as surrounding the wheel as an accessory as opposed to being a part of it. A new color would be like the "heart" of the wheel.

But theoretically, there could have been a sixth color. What if they'd started with a six-pointed star for the wheel instead of five pointed? I want to contribute to speculation as to what that might have been.

Let's go with the apparent default here and assume that purple would exist between blue and black. I can agree with that, since I've always felt that the greatest gap between ally colors is between those two. I feel that blue and black have less overlap both mechanically and aesthetically than all other ally color pairs do.

This would put enemy colors in the arrangement of White vs. Black, Blue vs. Red, and Green vs. Purple. These would all be fairly palatable and would nicely suit traditional schemes about the colors. To be truthful, most people think of Blue vs. Red and White vs. Black as being more "obvious" enemy pairs, anyway.

We can logically determine the identity of a color in two major ways: top-down, and bottom-up. Top-down would be by establishing an aesthetic feel for the color, what philosophical and moral ideals would be represented by the color, and so on. Bottom-up would be by finding what spot the color would occupy in the color pie in terms of mechanics and strategy, and building from there.

Something can be defined by what it is not as much as by what it is. Purple's enemy would be green. This is important in two ways: Purple would be the logical opposite to green, and it would also be green's compliment. Enemy color pairs always have a place where they meet. Black and green are both graveyard-oriented colors; blue and red both manipulate and benefit from instants and sorceries; white and red are both adept at influencing the nuances of combat; so on in this fashion.

How would purple and green oppose each other? Green excells as amassing resources. Accumulating power is its strong area; drawing cards, accelerating board position, creating mana, creating and summoning strong creatures, gaining a lot of life. Green is also good at projetcing threats - large, cheap creatures that can be "ramped" into quickly set a short clock for most opponents. Many of green's better threats represent inveitably and unsolvability - if they can even be targetted at all, they tend to frustrate attempts to surpress them.

Green's weak area is controlling and manipulating - as a color, it has very little power to disrupt, stunt, or commandeer an opponent's game. Removal of artifacts and enchantents and land destruction is the bulk of green's capability in this area. Black and blue, purple's allies, are very skilled at manipulation and have a wealth of options to mess with opponents. So, purple should probably be a color that is good at control in some way, either through tempo control or board control.

On one side, blue and white both excell at slowing games to a crawl, while black and red on the other side are more geared towards speeding up the situation (for good or ill). This creates a bit of tension, but suggests that purple should probably not be pronouncedly biased toward either tendency - green is the same way. This could be where the enemies overlap. Both colors could be oriented toward mid-range creatures, establishing board position, and control over the mid-game.

I can envision purple as being distinct from blue in that it is less concerned with spells and spellcasting and more with board manipulation. Copying (shapeshifters, etc.) are a possible overlap. Purple should probably make use of some mechanic that is like countermagic or discard in that it suppresses opponents' power, but should be distinguished from both. Purple might be another color that has some limited access to countermagic.

So, purple should have good manipulative power. What else? Should it have strong threats? Good at accessing resources? Purple could be another color that uses life gain.

I think that a top-down approach might be more productive. What does purple tend to represent to most people? In many cultures, purple is a color representing spirituality, mysticism, and higher reality. Purple is associated with royalty, and sometimes with clergy or priesthood. Purple is not a color that occurs too often in nature. Even today, purple tends to be linked to art, artists, poetry, inspiration, romanticism, spirituality, devotion, creativity, intuition, instability, insanity, sensitivity, surrealism, and mystery.

I can envision purple as being mystical where blue is methodical; idealistic where black is pragmatic; spiritual where green is naturalistic; ethereal where red is physical and direct; fantastic and surreal where white is down to earth. Purple would probably be like blue and black in that it values the individual, but less concerned with knowledge or overt power. Purple characters may be very driven by personal goals of a self-actualization nature. A purple villain may be trying to become a god for spiritual enlightenment or subjective happiness ("I will be one with everything") rather than omniscience or omnipotence. Purple heroes would probably be idealistic, even romantic. Ethereal, above the mundane.

This fits as an enemy of green. Green is practical. It represents solidity, groundedness. Earth, as opposed to air or ether.

Let's say blue represents intellect; green represents instinct; red represents impulse and emotionalism; black represents ego and desire; white represents both reason and ideal in action; then purple would represent intuition.

More specifically, I can see purple being oriented towards creation and summoning (another vague overlap with green). Many purple creatures could be flavored to be alien, gruesome and weird, or from another world. A common creature type could be Faerie, or some other creature that is traditionally capricious and esoteric. Also like green, it could have an abundance of symmetrically beneficial effects (I could definitely see a purple Show and Tell, or a purple Awakening).

Does all of this sound like a good start?