Colour pips position on cards

[Avacyn Believer]

Last year I've started to colour code my deck boxes with stickers to match the colour pips on the commander, and as I am looking all my deck boxes I've noticed there is no pattern I can identify that determines the position of the colours. It got me thinking, is there a reason for this?

All the WUBRG commanders follow the same colour order:

So in my mind, any combination of fewer pips would follow that order, just remove the colours not in use, but that is not the case. From my three colour decks, only Abzan and Esper follow the WUBRG:

Esper:
Naya:
Bant:
Abzan:
Mardu:

Most of the two colours don't follow this either, and only two of the four colours do.

Granted on cards with the same colour pips the order doesn't seem to change, like all Naya cards follow the same colour order.

Could the reason be because the colours are in order of importance for that set? Like Esper being Azorious with a splash of Black; or is the reason that whomever designed the cards first made the order up randomly and they just stuck with it?

[void_nothing]

There is a logic to it involving taking the shortest clockwise path around the color wheel (in WUBRG order). This actually applies to two, three, and four-color orders. For tricolor, you can also think about it as the color that is allied/enemy to both others goes in the center and the other two go in whichever order they normally would in a two-color combo. So GWU is just like GW and WU. RWB, meanwhile, is RW plus WB.

[Avacyn Believer]

Fair one, the allied/enemy reason is cool.

[Mookie]

I'll note that wedge color ordering was changed back in Khans block - compare Butcher of the Horde (rwb) vs Fervent Charge (wbr). The old ordering minimized the clockwise distance, while the new ordering intentionally makes the enemy color the center / focus.

[Avacyn Believer]

I'll note that wedge color ordering was changed back in Khans block - compare Butcher of the Horde (rwb) vs Fervent Charge (wbr). The old ordering minimized the clockwise distance, while the new ordering intentionally makes the enemy color the center / focus.

Oh cool, interesting bit of card design history

[Mookie]

Oh cool, interesting bit of card design history

Weirdly, while the focus is on the enemy (center) color, all the KTK factions were actually centered on the first color - Mardu is base red (not white), Jeskai is base blue (not red), etc. That meant they could drop the enemy color and be reflected as an ally-colored faction in DTK.