Is it feasible to have a custom mix of focus colors for a hypothetical wedge set?

[Venedrex]

I know that subject sounds confusing, but I guess what I mean is, is it possible from a design standpoint to design a set where the focus colors differ from the established practice?


So for wedges.









So If I'm understanding how this works, technically, in terms of good design, you could only have 3 different sets of focus colors. I presume you can't just zig zag/ping pong across the rows to get the focus colors you want because of enemy and ally colors being there.

W B G
U R W
B G U
R W B
G U R

I just wanted to get confirmation that it would be inadvisable to try and have a weird combination like:

Green focused Abzan
Red focused Mardu
Black focused Sultai
White focused Jeskai
Blue focused Temur

[BeneTleilax]

Nah, not at all. The original Abzan was white focused, and while some people got annoyed with it at the time because it wasn't what they wanted from a wedge set, there was nothing mechanically unbalancing in it. Personally I think it'd be interesting.

[Mookie]

If I'm parsing your question correctly, the concern isn't about having a weird base color for any single wedge - the issue is that the base colors for the different wedges aren't aligned. The default base color for a wedge set is the enemy color, but KTK mixed things up by making one of the allied colors the base color instead. However, you're looking to mix enemy and allied base colors - for example, Temur is base blue (the enemy color), while Abzan is base green (one of the allied colors).

I don't think there is an issue with doing this, although it depends somewhat on how you represent it mechanically. I assume it would be done by increasing the number of cards in the base color of the wedge, and decreasing the number of cards in the other colors - i.e. green-based Abzan would have more green cards, and fewer white and black cards. That's relatively straightforward to represent. However, it may not work if you also want to constrain the two-color cards. In this case, Abzan would have bg gold cards, but not wb because it's base-green. However, with Sultai being base-black, it would also want the bg, gold cards, and red-focused Mardu doesn't want the wb gold cards either. As a result, bg would be over-supported, while wb would be under-supported.

...anyway, I feel like this arrangement (of inconsistent base colors) should be fine if you only focus on monocolor and tricolor cards, but may be difficult to mechanically represent if you want to also support two-color cards, due to some pairs being represented twice and others not being supported at all.

[void_nothing]

As Mookie said, if you focus on monocolor and tricolor cards, you won't have an issue whatever combinations you choose, because by nature every color gets represented once as a focus and twice as a support color.

[Venedrex]

Thanks for all the responses everyone! Now I just need to puzzle out how this will work. My original plan was to do the classic enemy colors as the bridges between wedges, but I'll have to rethink that.


OK, follow up question, do think Abzan focused black could work for an Elf faction, specifically one called the Night Elves? (Lol you see the true nature of this set) I really wanted to put the elf faction in a green focused color but, maybe this way things would make more sense.

I feel like I need to preserve my two color signposts because I want to use them for classes lol.

[Venedrex]

OK, follow up question. Would adding hybrid or MDFCs help the situation at all?

So for instance, if I wanted to do the enemy color archetypes, and I had red focused Mardu, but some of the red cards were MDFCs that were Red on one side and White on the other. Basically making it so there were an even number of red and white Mardu cards. Would something like that balance the drafting issue for having enemy color focus? Alternatively, would it be possible to just not have a focus color and just have an even distribution of colors among the wedges?

In other words, can you just say, Abzan has 10 white cards, 10 green cards, and 10 black cards and then make the draft revolve around enemy colors? Is that possible?

Apologies for the continued questions I'm just really scratching my head on how to do this. My big thing is, I love the wedges for my factions, dwarves, elves, trolls, etc etc. But I really want the elves to be focused in green, the dwarves in red, and so on. I also feel a need for the enemy colors because the plan is to have them be clerics, hunters, druids, to help tie things together. I.e dwarf cleric is Orzhov, elf Cleric is Orzhov.

[Mookie]

Let's define some terms and math out the set a bit.

My personal assumption for a focus color is that the a larger number of cards in that faction will be in that color. Let's arbitrarily say this is in a 10:5:5 ratio, and ignore any gold cards. These are just 'monocolor with watermark' cards.

abzan	5		5		10
sultai		5	10		5
temur		10		5	5
jeskai	10	5		5
mardu	5		5	10

This gives 20 cards in each color - no issues so far. Now, let's check the card counts for the enemy colors between overlapping wedges:

• wb: 10 abzan + 10 mardu
• bg: 15 abzan + 15 sultai
• gu: 10 sultai + 15 temur
• ur: 10 jeskai + 15 temur
• rw: 15 jeskai + 15 mardu

As you can see, the balance is currently off - although each enemy color pair has the same number of total cards, the number of in-wedge cards varies. This is the fundamental problem with using an inconsistent focus. While your Abzan deck can play white Jeskai cards or green Temur cards, I would generally assume them to be less desirable than Mardu or Sultai cards. If you don't want this to be a problem, you'll need to design in such a way that off-wedge cards are just as desirable as on-wedge cards... but then you would probably be muddling the identity of the different factions.

You could theoretically add extra cards in the color combinations with less on-wedge support, but then you'll have differing numbers of cards in each color, which causes its own problems.

Notably, this isn't an issue when factions are focused consistently - if you only focused the enemy color (i.e. black in Abzan), then they'll always get 15+15 cards in the enemy color pairs. Similarly, if you only focus the first ally color (i.e. white in Jeskai), you'll get the following chart, which has 10+15 cards (notice that this is the opposite of KTK, which focused on the other ally color).

abzan	5		5		10
sultai		10	5		5
temur		5		10	5
jeskai	10	5		5
mardu	5		10	5

tl;dr: either have no focus color, or a consistent one. Using the opposite focus colors from KTK could be interesting.

[Venedrex]

Let's define some terms and math out the set a bit.

My personal assumption for a focus color is that the a larger number of cards in that faction will be in that color. Let's arbitrarily say this is in a 10:5:5 ratio, and ignore any gold cards. These are just 'monocolor with watermark' cards.

abzan	5		5		10
sultai		5	10		5
temur		10		5	5
jeskai	10	5		5
mardu	5		5	10

This gives 20 cards in each color - no issues so far. Now, let's check the card counts for the enemy colors between overlapping wedges:

• wb: 10 abzan + 10 mardu
• bg: 15 abzan + 15 sultai
• gu: 10 sultai + 15 temur
• ur: 10 jeskai + 15 temur
• rw: 15 jeskai + 15 mardu

As you can see, the balance is currently off - although each enemy color pair has the same number of total cards, the number of in-wedge cards varies. This is the fundamental problem with using an inconsistent focus. While your Abzan deck can play white Jeskai cards or green Temur cards, I would generally assume them to be less desirable than Mardu or Sultai cards. If you don't want this to be a problem, you'll need to design in such a way that off-wedge cards are just as desirable as on-wedge cards... but then you would probably be muddling the identity of the different factions.

You could theoretically add extra cards in the color combinations with less on-wedge support, but then you'll have differing numbers of cards in each color, which causes its own problems.

Notably, this isn't an issue when factions are focused consistently - if you only focused the enemy color (i.e. black in Abzan), then they'll always get 15+15 cards in the enemy color pairs. Similarly, if you only focus the first ally color (i.e. white in Jeskai), you'll get the following chart, which has 10+15 cards (notice that this is the opposite of KTK, which focused on the other ally color).

abzan	5		5		10
sultai		10	5		5
temur		5		10	5
jeskai	10	5		5
mardu	5		10	5

tl;dr: either have no focus color, or a consistent one. Using the opposite focus colors from KTK could be interesting.

Thanks so much for mathing that out, that was kind of my conclusion as well. So, you could just not have a focus color at all and you would be fine, with something like 7 7 7 Thanks again for putting that together.