Hey there! I’m Scott from the top four of last year’s Great Designer Search 3. Welcome back to another installment of Deadly Designs, where we talk about Magic card design from an outsider’s perspective.
Last time we looked at my picks for the top 10 best designed cards in Throne of Eldraine, but now that the set has been released for a while, it seems that we have a bit of a problem on our hands: the color pie.
Used as a way to balance the mechanics of the game across all five colors, the color pie helps ensure a relatively stable metagame. But recently there have been two big issues: green’s section of the pie has grown too big, and white’s has shrunk too small.
Let’s take a look at each issue individually, and give some suggestions for how they could be fixed, starting with green’s dominance.
Part 1: Green’s Slice is Too Big
Much has already been written about green’s current seat at the head of the colors (I’d highly recommend checking out Brian Braun-Duin’s article on the topic if you haven’t already), so we’ll keep this section shorter.
Right now, green is by far the most-played color. Not only does it have the best cards in its own section of the color pie with the best ramp (Golden Goose, Nissa) and the best big creatures (Questing Beast, Hydroid Krasis), but it also has the best cards out of it section of the color pie too: the best card selection (Once Upon a Time) which blue should have, the best removal spell (Wicked Wolf) which black/red should have, and the best “counterspell” (Veil of Summer) which again blue should have.
Hyrdroid Krasis is at least blue/green, but combined with green’s other pushes/breaks, it feels like part of the problem too.
Green’s dominance of the color pie needs to be reigned back in. Thankfully, the fixes are simple:
#1. One-mana ramp needs to go. One-mana ramp is a relic of Magic’s past, back when green did not have access to the great creatures it has today. In the days of Birds of Paradise and Llanowar Elves, green needed the one-mana ramp to stay on pace with the other colors. Nowadays though, one-mana ramp is too overpowered in combination with green’s good spells, often ending the game on turn two. It’s fine for eternal formats, but just like how Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, and Counterspell are too much for standard, so is one-mana ramp.
#2. Enters-the-battlefield fight on creatures needs to be significantly nerfed. Even Mark Rosewater has admitted that this is an issue. He’s famously said before that a 1/1 with deathtouch that enters the battlefield and fights is theoretically possible within green’s color pie, but should never actually be done because it’s essentially just a removal spell. Cards like Wicked Wolf, and to a lesser Extent Voracious Hydra, are not only just as good as that theoretical card, but usually quite better.
Green’s fighting should be limited to spells that already require a creature in play, and/or higher-costed creatures
#3. Card selection in green needs to be more limited. Green should have access to card selection, but it needs to be more limited compared to blue’s. Blue should get the Once Upon a Time cards, and green should get cards more akin to Oath of Nissa (only digging 3 deep) or Commune with the Gods (have a decent chance of whiffing unless they’re built around).
#4. Green’s card draw should be toned down. Veil of Summer is essentially Cryptic Command for one mana, and it’s responsible for the lack of control cards being able to fight against green’s current dominance. Why bother trying to Murderous Rider an Oko or Nissa when you’re just going to get two-for-oned for one mana? Looking at the cycle of other color hate cards from M20, it’s clear that Veil of Summer is egregious.
When the “extra bonus” on white’s hate card is scry 1, black’s is gain one life, and green’s is “replace itself,” something is wrong.
And that’s about it for green, which brings us to the other problem: white’s identity crisis.
Part 2: White’s Slice is Too Small
For years now, it’s felt like white has been the odd child out. For the past several draft sets it’s consistently been the worst color, and all of the best white cards in standard are multicolored.
Aside from the brief time when white weenie was a good deck before M20, white has struggled to stay as relevant as the other colors. Even worse than its level of playability, it’s felt like it has no identity.
For example, if we were to come up with two main game mechanics for each of the colors (ignoring evergreen creature abilities), they might look something like this:
- Blue: card draw & counterspells
- Black: kill spells & discard
- Red: burn & fast mana
- Green: big creatures & ramp
But what does white have? Lifegain? That’s not super relevant for winning, and even then green/black do it just as well. Weenies? Not really, since every color has good one and two drops these days. Wraths? Maybe, but all of the other colors have mechanical identities across all rarities, and white wraths are almost always rare. Prison and taxing? Not only has blue been stepping on white’s toes in that category with cards like Narset and Ashiok, but those strategies aren’t particularly fun to play against either, especially at common.
What I propose to fix white is to strengthen up two of its mechanical identities:
- White: weenies & exile
Let’s start with weenies. White should have the best one and two drops. White is the ideal color for having good low-cost creatures because it plays them the most fairly. In red, burn can still finish off the opponent after they’ve killed the creatures, blue and black have access to discard and counterspells to disrupt removal/wraths, and green should not have both the best big and small creatures.
If the best one/two drops are in white, then aggressive black/red decks or tempo-y blue decks will need to splash to get them.
Currently black has the best one drop. What if white had the best one drop instead?
Here’s another hypothetical weenie. Something like Loyal Silencer could be a way to deal with Field of the Dead and planeswalkers. Just like how red gets better direct damage than Scalding Cauldron, and blue gets better card draw than Hedron Archive, white should get a better Phyrexian Revoker.
And here, Field Supplier gives white card-flow that feels fair. Red’s card draw with Bedlam Reveler and Light Up the Stage turned out fine, now it’s white’s turn.
Going along with the weenie theme, white could have more anthem effects and cards that take advantage of wider boards. Common anthems could incentivize more white drafting, and white’s removal could also do more than just the usual hitting attacking/blocking creatures.
For example, instead of only having creatures at common like Inspiring Captain that give temporary bonuses…
…cards like Motivating Leader could give a permanent bonus. Only pumping power keeps the complexity lower for common.
And a card like Band Together feels right at home in white: lots of little creatures working together to take down a bigger one.
Now let’s talk about exile. Exiling is something that all the colors have some access to, but white is the one that does is the most; it should also do it the best. Just like how all colors have some card draw but blue does it best, white should get by far the most exiling, and the others should do it sparingly.
Like Brian Braun-Duin wrote in his article, white’s current enchantment/artifact-based removal is extremely risky. The risk of using cards like Glass Casket or Conclave Tribunal and getting blown out by artifact/enchant removal or a bounce spell is too huge to rely on them.
There are some corner cases where Glass Casket is better, but compared to Legion’s End/Tyrant’s Scorn and other removal, it’s just laughable.
Instead, white’s exiling should be on the same level as red’s burn or black’s kill spells. I think one way to do that would be to give the opponent other benefits than simply just getting the exiled card back if they destroy the artifact/enchantment, and trying out some other exile spells that feel white.
Since artifacts are easier to destroy than enchantments, giving a lesser bonus to your opponent than straight up getting their card back feels appropriate.
Something like Royal Taxation is powerful if the opponent taps out, but later in the game it can get expensive. Letting white have many answers to any “nonland permanent” helps prevent any one card from taking over the format.
Similarly, white’s exile doesn’t have to just be limited to removal. White also has a long history of blinking effects.
Something like Swim Through Exile doubles up enters-the-battlefield abilities, answers problematic permanents, and plays with white’s underused sacrifice theme like Angelic Purge that we haven’t seen nearly enough.
Would these changes to green and white fix all of Magic’s current issues? I don’t know, but I think it would be a step in the right direction. Mistakes like Oko are going to happen again in the future, and aiming to have more diverse threats and answers by bringing white up to speed with the other colors would likely help.
Maybe cards like these could have helped keep Oko in check?
So what do you think about the current color pie? Do you think anything should be changed?
Let me know, and as always feel free to say hi on Twitter or on Twitch!