Published as mtgnexus Card of the Day 2019-07-11.

Huh, lord of the artifact-ball. Myrran-warlord?

Seems a bit good for its cost; I mean - does even white get ", X/X X = white permanents you control" ?

But on the flip side; it's a bit of a trap. Since you actually want to avoid dropping this too soon to avoid it getting easily killed off. I dunno; maybe? Is colourless going to be the colour of "The blob"?

It's also a pretty restrictive cost. on turn one makes casting other spells tough on turns two and three

Well, this card basically predicts becoming the sixth colour.

It's no more of a trap that way than is. (Though yeah, only non-basic lands currently makes it tougher)

Does it? I don't see that at all

Only in the way that introducing in casting costs did that from the start. I've thought of it, if not as a full "sixth color," as at least close to being one, ever since it was first previewed.

> Huh, lord of the artifact-ball. Myrran-warlord?

The card is not an artifact and doesn't count colored artifacts. Which is one of the reasons I believe it is not all that problematic in future environments and why this card is not really going to work with a (future) Mirran faction, I suppose.

This is deliberately not an artifact nor Eldrazi. It's not even Ugin-themed, though I imagine it would work nicely on Tarkir if we get more face-down treats there.

> Seems a bit good for its cost; I mean - does even white get ", X/X X = white permanents you control" ?

I do consider a more restrictive cost than and playing a lot of colorless nonland permanents is a lot harder than playing a lot of colored permanents. You gotta draft those mana sources or rely on generically costed stuff that usually is less efficient.

> Well, this card basically predicts becoming the sixth colour.

No. It says "colorless" right on the card. This card doesn't even predict Wastes in the same environment - which is one of the reasons one would consider this a sixth color.

Colorless mana sources compete with colored mana sources more so than snow does, so the analogy is better than the same comment about Icehide Golem, but what is interesting about colorless is that it actually still is the default identity of cards with entirely generic costs. No color can claim that.

I really didn't think I was reinventing the (color) wheel here.

Well, I mean; the colours are now . competes with other colours, in the same way as competes with . And yes, the 'colour' has the very confusing name of 'colourless'. This naming is... dumb.

But has to stand for something; maybe it stands for "Big blob"?

What the fuck are you talking about, Vitenka? Colorless is not a color and will never be a color. Are you unable to comprehend the design space of artifacts and lands because they don't cost colored mana either?

By adding a new resource, colourless mana; you have added a thing that is in all ways identical to coloured mana except the name. Explicit colourless ( as opposed to ) needs to be generated by specific sources, is used by specific things; can't substitute for or be substituted for by the other colours. It looks, smells, walks and acts like a colour. It is a colour.

Artifacts, meanwhile, those costing non-explicit-colourless, can be cast entirely using coloured (or indeed explicit-colourless) mana. So they're more like hybrid.

If was named, I dunno, purple - this wouldn't even be a point of contention. It's plainly a new sixth colour; with a really weird name and an unfortunate pre-existing interaction with cards that don't know about it. (Though I guess it saves us from the potential horror of 'basic colour' phrasing...)

Honestly im kinda with vitenka here

like if it has a basic land its a fricking color lmao

it's design space is miniature in comparison to the other colors, and also a wild west with tons of complications with lands, artifacts, morph. what permanents can or cannot be colorless? which ones feel okay.

Honestly i think its' a huge mistake and i hate it

it's ugly aesthetically and mechanically.

I'm with Vitenka in some ways as well. as an explicit casting cost functions in all ways like a new color. It was the best possible solution to introducing a new color into the game without actually adding a color, since it has existed in the game from the start without being labelled explicitly. It's one of the most exciting things I've seen the do in the last few years, and I thought it was creative and relatively elegant.

Obviously it's not a "color," in the strictest sense, dude1818. It's explicitly not one. It just happens to function like one, in that it has its own basic lands, requires mana bases to be built to accommodate it, and could have its own slice of the color pie, if Wizards chose to define one.

To be honest, dude1818, I'm as confounded that you don't see this as you seem to be that we do. Also, I've not known you to be quite so vulgar and rude in the past. It hardly seems appropriate here.

Colorless has a meaning. It's relevant for plenty of things. A purple card or a black card cannot go into a Urza, Master Artificer EDH deck. A colorless card can provided we talk about color identity. Colorless cannot be chosen for Story Circle etc.

If all it takes to be less wrong is to differentiate between something that acts like a color and something that is a color, I don't see the appeal in willfully going the other way.

You just make it harder for everyone to communicate, and increase the chance to be seen as either uninformed or malicious.

Just look at this part of an earlier statement:

> competes with other colours, in the same way as competes with .

How do you get to that if instead you could follow the example of others right around you and get to

> competes with colors, in the same way as competes with .

And be shorter and less wrong?

How about you don't use a metaphor when a simile keeps the conversation on track? Metaphors create noise.

Another thing that is worth paying attention to is that the colorless mana symbol "" is not the same as "colorless" the adjective. The adjective "colorless" actually has multiple meanings as I acknowledge all the way back in the first paragraph of this comment.