Community

GoTexans, I agree with you a lot.  The Evergreen stuff does need to see more regular print.  The thing is, that we'll get maybe one or two wierd things that each colour does per block, which makes getting to all of them almost impossible in any regular form...  One of my favorites is that Red normally needs some sort of Ball Lightning .  Unfortunately this has been Arc Runner or Spark Elemental most of the time these days.  My personal favorites are Splinter Twin and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker .  They make Ball Lightning Clone s.  Red should get more clones, but as they've already been showed, they are unstable and go "pop".

Blue and Black get almost all of their colour pie each block (even if not well), which leaves them with pleanty of diversity (which also makes them the best colours for combo), while the other colours seem afraid to try anything different.

I don't think that green exactly needs a good instant or sorcery to kill though.  I think the occasional creature form of removal would do great.  Like a Cudgle Troll with a fight ability, or some sort of Ambush Viper who can fight instead of flash (It's green Doom Blade and I love it).

I don't waqnt to spend too much time arguing about corner cases, but I think that you're looking at the specific mechanic a little too broadly.

For the most part, in order from greatest to least, the colours that care about life totals are: White, Black, Green, Red and lastly, Blue.  We're ignoring artifacts, because they can do almost anything, just poorly.

White does everything involving life.  It sets life totals (typically to twenty ), doubles life or life gian , balances  as well as prevents damage and gains life.  You even have stuff like Serra Avatar which reflect your life total, or Test of Endurance which will win for you if your have enough life.

Next up is black.  Black steals life, occasionally has lifelink and  swaps life totals, typically in the flavour of vampirism.  Then Black also sets life totals (typically to ten ) and makes everybody balanced in life.  It also makes people lose life as one of the "anti-white" colours.

Green and red both hardly care about life totals.  Green being the colour of "life" cares a little bit more though, especially in modern magic (we can see this in Wellwisher , Leyline of Vitality , Hunter's Feast and Nourish .)

Red then hardly cares about its own life total, but does set a baseline for you.  You can make it in the flavour of chaos, luck, determination, etc, but you do have cards that make you stick to 1, or 5 life.

Blue then cares the least.  The only life-based card in blue that I can think of is Magister Sphinx which gets its life ability from both white and black, not from blue.  In mono-blue, there are 38 cards that include the word "life", typically coming from "Proliferate" or Phyrexian Mana.  Otherwise this is in reference to paying life.


This is actually a great example of stuff that is/is not part of colour pie vs. what sees print.  A lot of people who either don't research Magic, aren't Melvins, or haven't been around since pre-Time Spiral don't notice a lot of what is missing from the colour pie.  Things get put under the heading of "life" which makes it white or black, and not how each colour handles things.  Most colours have something to do with all magor points of the game, but to different degrees.  White is the master of life, and the weakest link in card draw , while blue is the opposite.  Thank you for helping me point that out.

Fortune Thief and Ali from Cairo really can't be used. Arabian Nights was top-down, and when talking about the color pie, if you cite the Time Spiral block, a general rule is Planar Chaos > Time Spiral > Future Sight. Form of the Dragon is flavor, and basically Worldfire is supposed to be a Johnny version of "Flip a coin. The winner wins the game.", usually by some Oblivion Ring / Blisterstick Shaman combo.

Setting life totals has been white and green . Black has more recently used this mechanic too.

The mantle is the interesting part. I've always said white should have creature steal, flavored as indoctrination. tortures you (without actually "torturing you" under its own, ah, tortured definition) until you denounce the evil that is , or infiltrate your own side, Manchurian Candidate-style.

In command zone sets, white gets "teammate" effects and inherently political mechanics like join forces.

White's removal, besides stealing, is basically temporary, has a "nonwhite" (often "black or red") requirement, or is Divine Verdict -type things.

On green, I say just give green flying. It's a creature mechanic, and bees and hummingbirds are at the very least central to the reproduction of most angiosperms. Leaf Arrow falls into "stupid card is stupid". You can't say green gets "the best" anti-flying, when red gets a strictly better card in the same Standard. You can't say green gets "the best" creatures when blue gets a strictly better card in the same Core Set at common! If you have to give green removal, the two options are fight and Drop of Honey -like effects. (You could move -X/-X, flavored still as plague, to green, but that's just splitting hairs.) Hurricane is close to green, honestly, but not for the "each creature with flying" as much as the "deals X damage to each creature".

White can also get sweepers in any permanent type and Balance -like effects, but the latter only affect one advantage at a time, to avoid why Balance is so bonkers.

Green also gets any form of ramp it wants, and can steal lands, but no other permanent type. Also, Disciple of the Vault -type effects that trigger whenever an opponent's artifact is destroyed.

An aside: I want green to have lifelink more than white. White can get it at uncommon, but green should get it at common, flavored as packs of predators (wolves, lions, pygmy chimpanzees) sharing game. (Black gets it at common, flavored as sadism.)

Green should not get positive, linear artifact interaction. This includes golem/myr/construct tribal, Tempered Steel -like effects, artifact counting, etc. Green does get affinity, but only for creatures, green enchantments, forests (and other basic land types in a multicolor set, and even a domain form à la Draco ), and the graveyard.

Interestingly, I disagree with MaRo about change. Retroviruses are very green; they don't think and basically just reproduce. They also mutate so rapidly that they overwhelm your immune system.

On red, I say just give us better land destruction. Seriously. Craterize is stupid because Demolish exists, and was LD really ripping up Standard in recent history? Other red effects might include copying instants and sorceries and creatures but only temporarily . The downside of "sacrifice at EOT" is clearly red. I might also suggest self-mill (and only self-mill), to be used with reanimation effects! Red can also get blinking and bouncing of opponent's creatures.

Red should also, like white, benefit from being behind in some way. This is more because of red's masochistic streak.

Black can get paying life for mana, but here's the trick: It can't be all life possible . Black can also sacrifice creatures for mana, and again, this should be limited by tapping or sacrificing the mana source.

Blue can synergize with artifacts in any way it wants.

I'll have more later.