Snes wrote: ↑3 years ago
That can't be correct. The specific wording of the current rule is "a card's colour identity is its color plus the colour of any mana symbols in the card's rules text." If the rules text is only the text box and not the mana cost in the top right, then Ghostfire and all spells with devoid would be considered colorless under current EDH rules, as they are colorless spells with no colored mana symbols in the text box. I can only conclude that "rules text" includes the card's casting cost.
You're seriously overthinking this. Nobody said we have to change the comprehensive rules to make all hybrid cards mono-colored for this to work. Dominus can be a blue/red card that has a color identity that is either blue or red, depending on what deck it's in. A card's color identity is already divorced from its actual colors. Nobody argued that we had to change the comprehensive rules to make it so Bosh could be targeted by Celestial Purge because his identity is red, or that Alesha could get +1/+1 from Honor of the Pure because her identity includes white.
The specific wording of the current rule is "a card's colour identity is
its color plus the colour of any
mana symbols in the card's rules text."
I bolded the parts for you. "Its color" refers to the CR color of the card itself, as defined by the comprehensive rules.
Also, Identity is only defined by the color of mana symbols in the card's rules text, not any other text, devoid has no mana symbols, it's just words, which Identity does not take into account.* That being said I do agree it's an unintuitive part of the ruling, one I hope the RC eventually gets to rectifying, it's awkward when the CR acknowledges the words, but Identity doesn't.
*EDIT: Upon some research actually it's not because Devoid has no mana symbols, it's because 903.4 defines Identity as mana cost plus Characteristic-Defining Abilities (CDA), so Devoid is considered, but because it's added with the mana cost instead of overriding it like it's supposed to do, it essentially becomes worthless/nonfunctional, since Colorless isn't an identity. Doesn't change my view that it's unintuitive, except now it should simply fix around CDAs to overwrite mana costs like it does for Color (not Identity), because unlike hybrid, the CR also recognizes the override as functional (you can't Pyroblast
Benthic Infiltrator).
Color Identity (deck-building) is only divorced from color by addition, never by subtraction. This creates a reverse effect in-game, where in-game color-matters interactions will only result in it being possible a card's colors is a subset of its identities (therefore following the spirit of the rule being there in the first place), and not "magically conjure" an additional color not part of its Identity out of nowhere.
If Color Identity is divorced by subtraction without any CR changes to hybrid, the reverse effect triggers, where you put a Dominus into a Mardu deck because it's identity is Red, cast it and it gets countered by a Pyroblast despite its identity being Red, creating a dissonance, because the comprehensive rules of color still sees it as a blue card, even if Identity doesn't. The Identity becomes a subset of its CR Colors, but the gameplay doesn't reflect that, making Identity feel like it was a way to sneak in gold cards functionally.
There's no elegant solution to that, because even if we attempt to trying to alter color-choices to affect Color Identity instead of Color to fix that problem (so that Mardu Dominus can't be Pyroblast'ed aligns correctly), we end up with the Bosh/Alesha problem, now
Memnarch can be countered by Pyroblast.
The spirit/flavor/whole point of Color Identity is that the Mardu deck cannot possibly draw/cast a blue card out of its own deck, even if it can produce the mana to cast it, because it cannot divorce the blue-aspect of the card in-game (which in turn requires CR-level erratas). "Because it was meant to be mono-red at times" means nothing if the CR itself is incapable of distinguishing that. Functionally the times it can actually work as mono-red in a game proper is the same as
Fierce Guardianship and
Pact of Negation.
I understand the rule isn't perfect, fetchlands are currently free-roaming the space Hybrids wish they were at, but if anything, I would support reinforcing the rule to kick out off-color fetchlands out than to undermine the purpose of Color Identity further, which Hybrids, as long as the CR regarding them remains the same, essentially does. In fact, I like to call them "gold hybrids", because only their costs are flexible, not their colors.