How important is color in terms of power level?

[AznSeal]

The question is would cards be banned if it was the exact same card but different color? What got me thinking was I was playing with my Elves deck and I realized Natural Order is basically Tinker, but because green has much less library manipulation, it remains unbanned. This got me thinking that what other cards which are really powerful now would be banned if it was a different color?

[Meekrab]

Natural Order is basically a more expensive Tinker that can only find 1/5th of artifacts, sure.

To answer your question, I think the fact that NO costs 4 and two colored mana is more important than the fact that it's green versus blue.

[amalek0]

The question does have some merit. For example, I don't believe anyone would even call for bans on true-name nemesis if it were white, and deathrite shaman being black AND green was a big part of why it got banned in modern, were it playable only with green mana it might've been less-oppressive. Certainly creatures like ethersworn canonist would be bannable if they were blue, despite its ability not being outside the realm of possibility for blue. and delver of secrets being red would be a hugely different power level. Hell, imagine tarmogoyf in blue. THAT card even used to be referred to as the "best blue creature".

[Aggro_zombies]

Meekrab is generally correct when it comes to NO, though I would add that there are also historical considerations (NO has never been part of a broken, format-defining deck, while Tinker has done so multiple times) as well as the fact that creatures are generally easier to answer than artifacts.

That said, there are plenty of cards that would be valued and played differently if they were in different colors. Such are the wonders of context, I suppose.

[trollking21]

That said, there are plenty of cards that would be valued and played differently if they were in different colors. Such are the wonders of context, I suppose.

Makes you wonder how ubiquitous brainstorm and force would be if split between 2 colors

[Serbitar]

I don't believe TNN being white would have made much of a difference (except for DnT being able to run it and Merfolk not), as TNN decks are usually Stoneforge Mystic decks anyway. People would just skew their manabases a little towards white (UWR running a Plateau, Stone-/Deathblade more Tundras and Scrublands). It being something like black would be much different though.

[amalek0]

I don't believe TNN being white would have made much of a difference (except for DnT being able to run it and Merfolk not), as TNN decks are usually Stoneforge Mystic decks anyway. People would just skew their manabases a little towards white (UWR running a Plateau, Stone-/Deathblade more Tundras and Scrublands). It being something like black would be much different though.

I agree that it wouldn't have been as-big of a difference if it were white as versus black, but consider this: The number one complaint is that blue now has the best creature--TNN being blue means it pitches to force of will, it means that the super-blue mana base preferred by tempo lists can still run it, and it means it still fits easily into the cantrip cartel. It'd be a very different deck if esper/deathblade had to run more B/W dual lands, because that makes it all the less resilient of a mana base. Three color decks are strong in legacy typically because you can function off of a primary color and have all your fetchable lands produce that color. The biggest problem with BUrg delver lists in Europe is that they have to run so many non-island duals that the ability to sequence spells AND cast daze is problematic. TNN being another color would make it that much harder to fit it into the tempo shells where it does the most damage.

[TsumiBand]

If you can shift a card into another color and its potency can be re-evaluated in a different way, then I would argue that this is a real thing and it plays into a lot of the decision-making that goes into deckbuilding and card choices.

For example, it's arguable that Black is second-best at direct damage, though really the most playable burn is almost strictly Red or Red/x now. But Black does a lot of it too, and classically effects like Soul Burn and Drain Life and Corrupt were used to end games (if not in Legacy; Extended/Standard when I started did have MBC decks using such cards as potential game-enders in concert with other jank). So what happens when a spell like Black Chain Lightning is printed?

B-C-Lightning
Sorcery

-this- deals 3 damage to target creature or player. That player may pay to copy this spell and choose new targets for that copy.

Does this card have a home? Does it matter? What's the upshot to having a Black Chain Lightning, as opposed to a Red one? Which decks would drop Red considering this spell? Which ones might be compelled to play more Swamps? Can you say either way whether or not this card is fundamentally better or worse than real Chain Lightning?

How about moving a card into entirely the wrong color.

Delver of Sucrets

Creature - Ninja Durdle
-this- card has Delver's text on both sides. (You know what this card says.)

Do the tools exist in Green to make this spell as potent as the original Blue one? If they do not, and one chooses to build around it, how does the deck change from the current RUG Delver lists? Would it have lead people into different colors? Would we be playing Bant Delver instead, because Noble Hierarch and 'Green Delver' had a perceived synergy that was worth building against (whether in error, or otherwise)?

Consider this - Merfolk used to/still could run Dismember because the strength of staying mono-Blue could be considered worth the 4 life; it wasn't considered worth the risk of splashing, say… White, for Path to Exile/Swords to Plowshares. It was stronger to keep the mana curve as low as splashing for StP, without actually splashing. This was a situation where adding another color, combined with the already-present concerns about non-basic hate and other factors, precluded a longstanding creature removal staple from being played. Pound per pound, arguably Dismember is not that much stronger than Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile; it has an upper bound, it costs the caster 4 life (or 3 mana), and so on. Yet - Dismember was often considered over StP because it could be cast with basic Islands. It wasn't Blue, but it was Blue-by-proxy, so in it went.

Think also about the recent gifts from RtR. DRS and Abrupt Decay are both incredibly potent cards that essentially kicked BG decks in the ass in Legacy and made it A Real Thing. Putting those cards into different colors for a moment -- let's make them RB -- would that not have prompted players to see how far Rakdos would have taken them, in the same way as it did Golgari? We might end up playing similar decks, but the interplay would be very different, and the evolution of the metagame and what become solid card choices in the main and sideboard would change. For example; does Silver Knight become any better in a world with Red-Abrupt Decay? (probably not, it isn't like White Knight offers itself up as a hero against BUG Delver, but then - would we even be playing Delver? Would Red-Abrupt Decay and Red-DRS be played in Goblins? Shit, would DRS be a Goblin?? It wouldn't be an Elf, that's for sure… ARGH, FUCK YOU, INTANGIBLES)

I mean really most of the conversation can be shunted through a tired example -- if one were to move Force of Will into any other color and out of Blue entirely - what would the current metagame look like?

So, I would say that yes, color matters a great deal.

[Finn]

Color is very important to the context of a card's place in the format/game. You have:

Stuff with only blue mana symbols: very fucking powerful
Stuff with a blue mana symbol and one other color: very powerful
Stuff with no colored mana symbol: powerful
Stuff with only one nonblue colored mana symbol: still kinda good. Gotta have fetchlands anyway.
Stuff with two nonblue mana symbols: damn, this strains my mana base
Stuff with more than two nonblue colored mana symbols: bloody worthless. I will never actually cast this.

Then you have the secondary concern of how objectively powerful the card actually is, I suppose. But the most important part is "can I use it in my tidy blue shell?"

[slave]

Color is very important to the context of a card's place in the format/game. You have:

Stuff with only blue mana symbols: very fucking powerful
Stuff with a blue mana symbol and one other color: very powerful
Stuff with no colored mana symbol: powerful
Stuff with only one nonblue colored mana symbol: still kinda good. Gotta have fetchlands anyway.
Stuff with two nonblue mana symbols: damn, this strains my mana base
Stuff with more than two nonblue colored mana symbols: bloody worthless. I will never actually cast this.

Then you have the secondary concern of how objectively powerful the card actually is, I suppose. But the most important part is "can I use it in my tidy blue shell?"

LOL. Yeah blue gets all the toys.
Blue is glue for many decks, but if the question was > Which colour could make the strongest mono-coloured deck? > Would your opinion change?

Seriously though, I feel that some cards would just make certain decks viable in a certain colour, although is that the direction WotC want the game to head to?
Delver would have been so much better in Red. Red needs more cards like this.
Burn would have to be a better deck for it, but WotC decided to make it blue > build around it they said, instead of just plopping it mindlessly into a deck that already has a fairly solid list. Oh wait.... that's exactly what happened in blue aswell. Should have been red. Red is just a shit colour in eternal formats in general, and WotC should address that.
TNN is a different beast for me.
For it's ability, it think it should have been 4cmc, or a mix of G/U, U/x. As it is, it's still just a dumb creature, but within legacy it's a gamechanger and so much better than Geist of St.T.

[apple713]

LOL. Yeah blue gets all the toys.
Blue is glue for many decks, but if the question was > Which colour could make the strongest mono-coloured deck? > Would your opinion change?

Seriously though, I feel that some cards would just make certain decks viable in a certain colour, although is that the direction WotC want the game to head to?
Delver would have been so much better in Red. Red needs more cards like this.
Burn would have to be a better deck for it, but WotC decided to make it blue > build around it they said, instead of just plopping it mindlessly into a deck that already has a fairly solid list. Oh wait.... that's exactly what happened in blue aswell. Should have been red. Red is just a shit colour in eternal formats in general, and WotC should address that.
TNN is a different beast for me.
For it's ability, it think it should have been 4cmc, or a mix of G/U, U/x. As it is, it's still just a dumb creature, but within legacy it's a gamechanger and so much better than Geist of St.T.

protection is inherently white, it should be UUW at the very least. Really WW1 would have been more appropriate. red is in a very bad place because its just not good enough for top tier play but does alright if you just want to play legacy. If red had a few more cards with the power level of TNN and delver i think it could be top tier material.

[Dzra]

The cost and color of TNN isn't the problem... it's its clunky and unintuitive design.

Back to the point, I think color is a tricky thing when considering a spell's power. I think the more visible implications are what colors can most strategically benefit from the card. For example, a Blue Natural Order would be unimpressive since the support just isn't there (both in terms of creatures to sacrifice as well as creatures to tutor). A Red Natural Order has several big bombs, but the lack of GSZ and other accelerators makes it difficult to set up. Etc. Etc.

Makes you wonder how ubiquitous brainstorm and force would be if split between 2 colors

Since the Brainstorm + Force of Will is the backbone of so many decks, I would say that if Brainstorm were a Red card for example then most likely we would still see a large presence of Brainstorm/FoW decks... the difference is that the BUG, UG, UB, UW, etc varients would disappear and we would simply see a bunch of URx BS/FoW decks instead. Likewise, if Delver had been Green then we wouldn't be seeing a bunch of GW and GB Delver decks, we'd be seeing almost exclusively UGx Delver decks, effectively limiting the number of archtypes to Green + Blue + Splash rather then Blue + Anything.

I think the key then is to put cards in colors that will be most guaranteed to use them. Spreading things out from Blue is good, but mindlessly putting cards in other colors simply because they are good will limit the meta, not help it grow. Thalia is a great card, placed in a great color for her. I believe Deathrite is also well done. It's a tricky balance to encourage non-Blue decks without simply limiting the number of viable Blue decks.

[Echelon]

I think the key then is to put cards in colors that will be most guaranteed to use them.

That's a rather dangerous thought... WotC makes a better stick then TNN -> Make it blue, 'cause blue'll want to use it. WotC makes a Lightning Bolt that does 4 damage instead of 3 for 1 mana -> Make it blue, they'll want to drop red and so on.

The color pie is there to prevent such silly things. That doesn't mean that WotC never messes up, but still. I think more clearly defining the color pie and more strictly adhering to that definition would benefit MtG more then just making stuff a color needs. That being said, it, in theory, would only limit future screw ups to a degree but still leaves us with the already existing screw ups, which unfortunately can't be undone unless through rigorous banning. This, by the way, isn't a statement saying specific cards should be banned or not, these are just my thoughts on the matter.

[Dzra]

That's a rather dangerous thought... WotC makes a better stick then TNN -> Make it blue, 'cause blue'll want to use it. WotC makes a Lightning Bolt that does 4 damage instead of 3 for 1 mana -> Make it blue, they'll want to drop red and so on.

More of what I mean would be put a "Mega Bolt" in Red because it is already full of Bolt effects. Put a spell that hates on card draw in a color that doesn't draw many cards. Put a creature that requires a lot of Instants and Sorceries in a color that uses a lot of Instants and Sorceries. Put big unstoppable creatures in a color with big unstoppable creatures. I'm only saying that the goal of making more non-Blue decks viable without simply making only Blue + X color decks viable is a tricky one. Sorry if I wasn't as clear.

[Echelon]

I figured as much . What you're trying to say is "Stick to the color pie" . It seems we're on the same page on this

[TsumiBand]

Since the Brainstorm + Force of Will is the backbone of so many decks, I would say that if Brainstorm were a Red card for example then most likely we would still see a large presence of Brainstorm/FoW decks... the difference is that the BUG, UG, UB, UW, etc varients would disappear and we would simply see a bunch of URx BS/FoW decks instead. Likewise, if Delver had been Green then we wouldn't be seeing a bunch of GW and GB Delver decks, we'd be seeing almost exclusively UGx Delver decks, effectively limiting the number of archtypes to Green + Blue + Splash rather then Blue + Anything.

I think the key then is to put cards in colors that will be most guaranteed to use them. Spreading things out from Blue is good, but mindlessly putting cards in other colors simply because they are good will limit the meta, not help it grow. Thalia is a great card, placed in a great color for her. I believe Deathrite is also well done. It's a tricky balance to encourage non-Blue decks without simply limiting the number of viable Blue decks.

Right, I mean for my part, keep in mind that I was just kind of spitballing, right -- DRS isn't necessarily *correctly* colorshifted into Rakdos, it's more of a thought experiment than anything else. Honestly it was prompted by a discussion that was going on in the EDH board a while back about the banning of Sylvan Primordial; part of the discussion that arose was whether or not it would have been banned if it were in other colors instead of Green, because UG is pretty much the best thing going in EDH due to which mechanics are encouraged and which are discouraged.

I think it's a good thing to consider, though it's not the end-all of a conversation, clearly. For one - shifting Delver into Green is neither the most correct color to move it to without reworking it, nor that damning for the card considering RUG Delver is already a thing. On the flipside of this, think about what Delver did to Zoo. Wild Nacatl is an amazing 1 drop; it's pretty much always a 3/3, quote-unquote, and it gels with the "spells that deal 3 damage for 1 mana" plan that Red fosters, so Naya Zoo pretty much builds itself, right? But remember that Delver suddenly had people trying to use both Nacatls; they wanted their 3/3 for G and their 3/2 flyer for U, and in the end? Flying + Blue stuff was shown to be more attractive and more potent than toughness + White spells. So by dropping Nacatl, the deck loses motivation to run White, and you end up with this weird path from Naya Zoo > 4-color Zoo > RUG Zoo featuring Delver > wherever RUG is currently at now after merging branches with, like, UR Counterburn that happened to have Delver in it but should have been trying to be a Zoo deck.

That Blue fucker pushed a Green card out, so naturally the deck dropped all the Plains cards. I know right.

But I mean really, think about what effect Green Delver theoretically would have had in Legacy. Zoo decks would have had access to several playable 3-power guys for G and it may never have flirted with Blue at all. I would hazard a guess that people would have toyed with Sylvan Library and maybe even Magma Jet before looking at another color to stack the deck in favor of Delver. Hell, even SDT would have been looked at before adding a color and dropping White. Theoretically. Putatively. Clearly this is just mirror-universe speculation on my part, but I don't think I'm totally off-base here.

So when one says something like…

The cost and color of TNN isn't the problem... it's its clunky and unintuitive design.

...I have to disagree and say that the problem is all of the above. Like Delver of Secrets, it carries its environment around with it; the mistake of jamming a Blue card into Naya Zoo was righted by rebuilding the deck to favor Blue, as the potency of Delver could not be ignored and was worth losing White and Nacatl. Cards carry their local environment around with them. Let's put it in exactly the wrong color for a minute and call it 1BB; who plays Black-TNN? What actual deck wants that card?

[FTW]

Delver of Sucrets

Creature - Ninja Durdle
-this- card has Delver's text on both sides. (You know what this card says.)

Do the tools exist in Green to make this spell as potent as the original Blue one? If they do not, and one chooses to build around it, how does the deck change from the current RUG Delver lists? Would it have lead people into different colors? Would we be playing Bant Delver instead, because Noble Hierarch and 'Green Delver' had a perceived synergy that was worth building against (whether in error, or otherwise)?

Easy to run in RUG Delver or BUG Delver without even changing the manabase. Just need to be careful to include enough other blue cards to support FoW. IMO that's the only marginal difference that would make. BS, FoW, Spell Pierce, Stifle, Daze, Ponder... oh wait, that's an easy 16. It also would make Scryb Ranger marginally worse if anyone still runs that as a 1-of in Maverick (or even runs Maverick).

TNN being white would make a big enough difference I think:
-destablizing Esper manabase
-makes Merfolk tier 2, easily stompable by Goblins and other aggro again
-makes D&T even freaking better
-cannot pitch to FoW, maybe straining some of those 3-color UWx blade decks on their blue count
-forces people to play Sword of Light and Shadow instead of SoFaI

But most importantly, it would be significantly easier to kill with: Dread of Night and Sulfur Elemental. In fact, those would probably become 4-ofs in all aggro-control sideboards that can support them.

[TsumiBand]

Easy to run in RUG Delver or BUG Delver without even changing the manabase. Just need to be careful to include enough other blue cards to support FoW. IMO that's the only marginal difference that would make. BS, FoW, Spell Pierce, Stifle, Daze, Ponder... oh wait, that's an easy 16. It also would make Scryb Ranger marginally worse if anyone still runs that as a 1-of in Maverick (or even runs Maverick).

Right, but that assumes we would have gotten to BUG. I don't think we would have. I think Zoo would have just gone "hey cool, a 3/2 flyer." and then maybe we would have adjusted the burn/guys ratio a little bit or played around with Top/Magma Jet and then dropped the idea altogether.

Or, if not dropped it -- it would have taken much longer to actually get to BUG Delver from there, right? Like, historically speaking here, people looking at a Green Delver of Secrets would have tried to fit it into decks that actually existed, I think.

I mean it's the same as when people say "argh fml Snapcaster shoulda been Red" - I don't think we can have the same decks as we do now, if we look at the cause and effect of which decks would try it and which would eschew it. Developmentally the format plays out differently, I mean it has to have, right?

[Barook]

Color especially matters when it does powerful stuff that a color isn't supposed to do.

Prime example: Vendilion Clique - not only gets blue a highly-efficient, evasive flash beater, it also gives blue hand disruption, something it should never get, especially at instant speed. Black would kill to get such a card, instead it gets a watered down Lifebane Zombie.

I don't think that I need to mention why Delver and TNN are major "Fuck you!"s to both the color pie and card design.

Giving colors off-color stuff homogenizes the colors and makes the game boring. Good thing they only do that with blue *sarcasm*.

[FTW]

Right, but that assumes we would have gotten to BUG. I don't think we would have. I think Zoo would have just gone "hey cool, a 3/2 flyer." and then maybe we would have adjusted the burn/guys ratio a little bit or played around with Top/Magma Jet and then dropped the idea altogether.

Or, if not dropped it -- it would have taken much longer to actually get to BUG Delver from there, right? Like, historically speaking here, people looking at a Green Delver of Secrets would have tried to fit it into decks that actually existed, I think.

I mean it's the same as when people say "argh fml Snapcaster shoulda been Red" - I don't think we can have the same decks as we do now, if we look at the cause and effect of which decks would try it and which would eschew it. Developmentally the format plays out differently, I mean it has to have, right?

The thing is, RUG Delver and BUG Delver aren't really new decks. RUG Tempo and BUG Tempo have been around forever (Canadian Thresh and Team America). It wouldn't be a stretch to take the spell base and game plan of those decks and try splashing a green 3/2 flyer. Those archetypes certainly don't exist only because of Delver, they've just adapted a bit because of it. Stuff like UR Delver is different, but RUG has always been a deck.

Sure, maybe some aggro players would have tried it in green decks like Goyf found its way into burn-heavy Goyf sligh. People would be brewing. But green decks don't want to run lots of instants and sorceries. The mechanic just wouldn't be as conducive to designing competitive green decks, with the exception of maybe some kind of Goyf Sligh deck still existing with 20 Lightning Bolts + Green Delver + Goyf + GG + Fireblast, but that might just be worse than straight burn or Zoo.

People eventually figured out Goyf was really blue and was amazing in blue decks. And since then, it seems like people have figured out that sort of thing sooner. Blue decks had no problem finding Stoneforge Mystic, again easy to splash. I think a 3/2 flyer for G that synergizes with spell-dense decks would have easily found its way into RUG right after printing. Most blue decks that run Goyf would love green Delver for the same reasons. Especially when Delver's best friend is Brainstorm/Ponder.