If you could change anything in the color pie, ignoring White, what would it be?

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Venedrex
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Post by Venedrex » 2 years ago

Basically, outside of changes to White (because that is a whole topic unto itself), what are some things you think would be interested in seeing shifted between the other four colors?

I'll start with a fiery hot take: Make Blue primary in tutoring, and Black secondary. To compensate, make Black primary in stealing permanents, and Blue tertiary.

I don't dispute the logic of Black having power at any price tutoring but I don't think Black should tutor without paying an additional cost such as life or sacrificing creatures. Additionally, I'm not suggesting Blue should get old school busted tutors, just tutors that are well balanced, such as Mastermind's Acquisition. Fae of Wishes // Granted is already half of that effect, and that is what I propose for Blue. 4 or greater mana value unconditional tutors, as well as more specific tutors at three mana such as Solve the Equation

They wouldn't be super strong, or break formats like Standard or Commander, but it would be very flavorful and fitting that the color of knowledge, research and learning, gets to find something in the library without paying life or sacrificing creatures. Even if Black got tutors a little less often under this new plan, they would still often be more powerful because they'd be cheaper mana value, such as Grim Tutor.

To compensate Black for this shift, it would get effects such as Agent of Treachery. I mean, why does blue, the color of trickiness and knowledge, permanently steal things. Could you imagine someone stealing your card collection and being like: "Just a prank bro lol haha already sold it." Doesn't feel very much like a clever trick or a cunning move to me. It does however feel like greed, ruthlessness, taking what you want when you want it etc etc. And sure, I get it it's flavored as mind control, but why can't Black have mind control effects. It already rips things out of enemies brains, so I don't think mind control is that much of a stretch.

Just my two cents, would appreciate everyone else's pet peeves or ideas for changes to the pie.
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Krishnath
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Post by Krishnath » 2 years ago

Blue is already second best at tutoring, it doesn't need to be best, particularly not with all the card draw and library manipulation it gets.

Honestly, the only major change i would do is to allow each of the different races to bleed into secondary and tertiary colors more. We need more green and black goblins, we need more white and black merfolk, we need more white elves. We need more green and black orcs. It makes the races feel more dynamic instead of: This is world A, the goblins are stupid and chaotic, the elves live in forests and are sometimes evil, and the merfolk only live in the ocean. This is world B, the goblins are stupid and chaotic but have a shell, the elves live in forests but practice dark magic, and the merfolk are all wizards that live in their city on a remote island in the ocean.

It gets really, really samey after a while, particularly when the game has been around for as long as it has.
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folding_music
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Post by folding_music » 2 years ago

If it was under my control I'd deprioritize artifacts with coloured mana costs; only about a quarter of those cards ever really convince me that they need to be a particular colour, and I have a fondness for old sets which are deep bronze. I feel like a majority of cards released could be colorless, to be honest, and I'm happiest when there's a lot of robots every player can access.

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Venedrex
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Post by Venedrex » 2 years ago

Krishnath wrote:
2 years ago
Blue is already second best at tutoring, it doesn't need to be best, particularly not with all the card draw and library manipulation it gets.

Honestly, the only major change i would do is to allow each of the different races to bleed into secondary and tertiary colors more. We need more green and black goblins, we need more white and black merfolk, we need more white elves. We need more green and black orcs. It makes the races feel more dynamic instead of: This is world A, the goblins are stupid and chaotic, the elves live in forests and are sometimes evil, and the merfolk only live in the ocean. This is world B, the goblins are stupid and chaotic but have a shell, the elves live in forests but practice dark magic, and the merfolk are all wizards that live in their city on a remote island in the ocean.

It gets really, really samey after a while, particularly when the game has been around for as long as it has.
Yeah, I do like seeing creatures expand into other colors. I personally really liked the green merfolk in the jungle from Ixalan, the white vampires, and black goblins from MH1.
folding_music wrote:
2 years ago
If it was under my control I'd deprioritize artifacts with coloured mana costs; only about a quarter of those cards ever really convince me that they need to be a particular colour, and I have a fondness for old sets which are deep bronze. I feel like a majority of cards released could be colorless, to be honest, and I'm happiest when there's a lot of robots every player can access.
We may see a set with a lot of colorless artifacts here soon I suspect, whether Return to Kaladesh or another Phyrexia/Mirrodin set.
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pokken
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

I would like to see stack interaction in every color as a general theme of magic. Every color should get countermagic for spells and abilities, it should just cost more and have different downsides.

Red countermagic should damage you or require discarding, black pay life or cards or sacrificing creatures, white require giving someone else resources or similar, or follow the delaying theme (Lapse of Certainty, and green require sacrificing creatures or lands or giving people creatures (e.g. Beast Within).

The game has gotten to the point where only blue having stack interaction is a blight on commander games, as people drift more and more toward things that win the game if they resolve.

Edit - a more robust list of potential costs for each color and potential "restrictions" - Just brainstorming stuff really.

red: self-damage, sacrifice/damage own creatures, return own creatures to hand, exile cards from library, exile cards from hand, discard, give treasure tokens
black: sacrifice creature, discard, pay life, exile creatures from graveyard, reanimating creature for opponen
green: regrowthing opponent, sacrifice creature(s), give opponent creatures/lands/treasures
white: give opponent treasures, lands, creatures, card draw, sacrifice enchantment, tap untapped white creatures

"primary"/"secondary"

Red - primary instant/sorcery/enchantment, land abilities, artifact abilities. Secondary artifacts, triggered abilities
Black - primary creatures, planeswalkers, artifacts, creature abilities planeswalker abilities, secondary enchantments
Green - primary enchantments/artifacts, all activated abilities, secondary triggered abilities, secondary: instants/sorceries that target things you own
White - primary enchantments, triggered abilities, secondary: universal (currently tertiary)

Everyone gets "universal" as tertiary - basically every color should get a 3 mana rare universal counterspell that's a "bad" version of Cancel with some kind of annoying negative on-theme negative cost, and then an array of modal specific counterspells.

Green could get "counter target enchantment, artifact or activated ability, the card/ability's owner may put a 4/4 beast token into play." or whatever.

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Post by motleyslayer » 2 years ago

I'd like to see green and white getting different ways of removing enchantments. While the enchantment removal in those colours doesn't seem as similar as it has in the past, I've always found it weird Disenchant and Naturalize are pretty much the same.

also I kinda like how red got Chaos Warp and Tibalt's Trickery , so I'd like to see red get more universal answers with downside essentially

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Post by EonAon » 2 years ago

@Motleyslayer that actually is something only found from the last 15+ years of magic in that they decided to branch out whites disenchant effect. Before it was very spotty and high CC stuff that green got and honestly nobody played it. The only time green got decent removal was when it got paired with another color like Hull Breach. Its also the reason white got Demystify as its non creatures removal for a set of years before they decided both could reasonably share the card.

Honestly Red is still the most hosed in some ways color wise since direct damage takes so much of its design space that its been generally Pidgeon holed for years. It used to have mana generation and thankfully for treasure, that is coming back (admittedly coming to most the other colors as well). The looting is decent to have since draw used to be wholly under blue. I could actually see them adding a bit more relevant counter spells to the red side of the equation if only in moderation since legacy wise it and white are the tertiary colors for it. Admittedly once you start to collect the entirety of magic red does start to get really abusive, but its like blue in that respect.

Green in some ways has gotten better over the years though I'm getting really annoyed that they don't try more with curiosity style card draw there since its the tertiary color. Another thing that annoys is they need to either stop making fight cards or add more death touch or wither (not infect) to better creatures. I get that in limited fight is more useful, but in more constructive formats playing mono green and trying to remove a opposing creature gets frustrating since the most direct kill spell is Plummet.

Blue is hard to say anything about. In standard its getting much better. In modern its always got tools from its box. In older formats its essentially broken. The latter is why it sporadically gets new good things spaced well away from each other. I lived through caw blade, I also lived through u/b Fae. The biggest flaws of both eras was a lack of efficient response for any color that the tools in blues chest could not just say nope to. The problem is like Pokken said, unless you play blue you just cannot fight the counter war efficiently enough.

Blacks problem is honestly that it was the catchall color for a horribly long time and really didnt get a lot of definition till after they started removing ritual/mana generation away from it. Black back in the day was really it can do most of what the other colors could (barring artifact or enchantment removal with a few statistical outliers) but at a much higher cost overall. Then the problem was it took so very long to recall that the higher mana costs they had appended to it needed to be lowered so that it could be more than a flavor color. It didnt help that blacks removal is very splash able in older formats. I think of all the colors that have changed over the years black has finally settled down in a good design space, but we still see glitches where modern design philosophy and old design philosophy kinda get in each others way.

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