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Feb 15, 2012 -- 12:56PM, ArtVenn wrote:

Kensan_Oni, thank you for saying that it is a mechanic. Please tell me what a mechanic is vs. what I'm thinking. Maybe I can fix what I said. And how would it further restrict the options that players have? Outside of the release, other cards could gain the abilities, mechanics etc.  One colour doesn't have to have the monopoly on a mechanic.

You mus-understand the mechanic. You feel that the Color of Magic Mechanic exists to create themes in magic, when that is only it's surface purpose. It's true purpose is to make it difficult to make exactly the deck you want.

Just for a moment, imagine if the best spell in every color is castable with the same mana. That there were no colors. Games would purely be determined not only by card draw, but by who had figured out the best cards in the game, and played just those. Part of the whole reason for Colored Magic was to separate the best spells out of colors, so that to play the best best deck, you might have to dip into two colors, or three. Thus, the Color Wheel limits players by the mechanic of Colored Mana.

So, any effect you want to have in magic gets filtered by flavor into one of the five colors. The Effect itself isn't horribly important, and the Color Wheel has been shown is flexible enough where any effect you want can end up in a color you want, as long as the flavor of the card works for it.

The biggest effect the Color Wheel currently has is on Limited Magic. Due to lack of Multilands and color filters, choosing a color, knowing when to get out of a color, and being able to evaluate how much of a color is coming to you is important. With just 5 colors, it's quite a balancing and guessing game as to which color is coming your way, especially when one pack ends up "supercharged" with one color.

Adding another color *adds* to this complication, and further restricts the way  Magic is constructed.

a) Another color means that you have yet another box with Effects much be put into. That weakens every color, including the new color, by creating new needs to fill in new design space.

b) Adding another color takes away from Design Space further, by forcing less cards for each color, including our colorless slots, to accommodate for this new color scheme. This is significant, because the Common Diagram is already pretty tight in it's requirements due to the design requirements for Limited.

c) Adding a color fundamentally changes all evaluation of Limited. 6 colors means on average there will be 2 cards a color per pack, instead of the almost average 3 we have now. With distribution variance, you can end up with more people having more unplayable decks, because the 'signals' become weaker due to lack of color variance, and the cards that mean anything now are spread out futher during your sealed events.

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You talk about opening up options. Never mind that I think "Creativity" is already the realm of Blue and White. What you actually are doing, however, is limiting options, and limiting what kinds of decks will be built, By stealing from other colors, and jamming it into a sixth, which you then have to work around.

My prediction is that will lead more players to play 3 color decks, to compensate for the sudden lack of their colors (Into your new Purple, who has the most identity it has to establish), and futher create issues of the "Best Deck" becoming a 2 color powerhouse, that is that way because the answers that are needed to beat the deck are now in three different colors, because you designed Purple that way.

Hence, you add less consistency to the game, and help establish less answers for problem decks because the answers become unplayable due to the spread of powers.

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As an Aside, you can't think of Colors as Factions as you could in, say, Battletech. Battletech shared one resource, and only due to enforced Faction structure, did the game stay somewhat balanced (Although not really). Colors are an inherit division of power in the game of Magic, and creating more colors divides existing power more. It is better to change flavor to distribute existing power, than it is to create a new division, in my opinion.

This is why I feel that you do not understand the purpose and goals of the mecahnic behind the Colors of Magic.