Premise

• The lack of color makes color fixing inherently more powerful in artifacts - to the point where it overpowers in this department. Is this acceptable? Do we even need color fixing in ?
• Artifacts allow each color to circumvent their supposed weaknesses? Is this good design? Is it really important for to not be able to get rid of artifacts if artifacts allow it to do it regardless?
• etc...

Notes

Discussion about this has come up in various places. See "Red: Color Fixing" for example.

Do you mean artifacts or colorless artifacts? Should this talk only about artifacts or also colorless nonartifact spells? What about colorless cards that cannot be spells e. g. lands? What about schemes?

Color fixing is different from ramp. I'm fine with colorless getting the lion's share of color fixing, because color fixing needs to be in colorless in order to make non-green multicolor decks on par with green multicolor ones.

As for ramp, the most egregious of the issues comes from cards like Sol Ring and the Moxes; most of the heavy colorless ramp is from that era. Colorless rarely gets 1-mana ramp and, at best, gets 2 mana ramp that is usually significantly worse than Green's ramp - compare Wayfarer's Bauble, which is arguably one of the best early colorless ramp spells printed originally in the modern frame, to Rampant Growth or Farseek - 3 total mana invested vs. 2. Sylvan Scrying and Expedition Map highlights this discrepancy as well, with both being roughly on the same power level. In order to enable multicolor deckbuilding, either all but one color should have access to fixing, or it should be relegated to colorless.

As for covering each color's weakness, there's obviously a limit. You mentioned this on the other thread, but Staff of Nin is definitely on the stronger side because of that, and there are certain (strong) artifacts that are pretty much autoincludes in every EDH deck that remotely wants them. There's definitely an upper limit for the power of the effects that artifacts should have access to in order to shore up weaknesses, but I don't feel like they should be limited to anything particularly. When a set leans towards a specific color - for example, Innistrad and (Grimoire of the Dead), or Zendikar and (Explorer's Scope) - the artifacts are naturally going to expand their pool of abilities to have access to effects naturally of that color, to give the world a specific feel to it. The important part is limiting that so you can capture the feel of a world that feels more or than others, but still retain the strengths and weaknesses of each color within it. So a non- deck getting access to Shock or Lightning Strike i.e. Flamecast Wheel doesn't bother me, but it shouldn't get access to Explosive Impact.

To address your 2nd point's 3rd question regarding colorless having access to an effect that a color specifically can't do, I also think it's fine. It's not that Black can't destroy artifacts - it's that black can't destroy artifacts via paying black mana for it, so it has to pay a premium for the effect. In artifacts, there are no cards that straight up say "destroy target artifact" that don't cost colored mana, and many of the "Destroy target permanent" effects cost 7 mana (aside from Lux Cannon, which has 3 turns of investment attached to a 4 mana artifact). So, sure, you can make a or a burn deck, but you're probably not going to be as mana efficient as a burn deck due to how many artifacts you're running to shore up your lack of Hornet Sting and Psionic Blast effects. Color pie identity isn't necessarily about what a color can and can't do - it's about what a color is good at and what it's bad at. If you want a color to do something it's bad at, expect bad expensive results. The reasoning is the same behind tertiary effects in the color pie - Green has tertiary access to haste, but don't expect to make a deck full of good hasty beaters in without dipping into for it.

@SecretInfiltrator

I was about name this "colorless artifacts..." but the name was is already long. Eh, I'll change by cutting it from the end.

Colorful artifacts and colorless spells are niche themes and artifacts are defined by their lack of color so I would assume most would presume this to relate to colorless cards.

Lands have always functioned as your way to get mana so any "color fixing" on them is justified to some part at least. However, I still wouldn't put a vindicate on a land with colorless activation cost though. Schemes don't even fit into "normal" MTG play so they aren't relevant.

@Mal:

Good synopsis.

> So a non- deck getting access to Shock or Lightning Strike i.e. Flamecast Wheel doesn't bother me, but it shouldn't get access to Explosive Impact.

You mean Flame Javelin? xD

Your last paragraph is something that's argued over. Ie. from MaRo's perspective Hornet Sting is a mistake since color pie identity isn't about power level and hence, shouldn't get access to burn even if it "pays premium" for the effect. It doesn't take a huge leap of logic to see the contradiction with this statement regarding how artifacts (colorless cards) currently function. IMO it's quite blatant and so far the reasonings have sounded like weak excuses. These two ideologues are hardly compatible.

Now that the topic is better circumscribed: Color fixing is something that green gets to have since it is correlated with mana generating abilities which are a green flagship ability, but in general it is something all colors should have access to.

It is fine to have color fixing on colored cards if it is tailored to the color no matter the color. And color fixing is one of the main abilities that you should have access to from a generic mana cost.

Color fixing is not any colors weakness.

I'm of the opinion that generic-cost artifacts should allow colors access to utility even outside their color pie at a significant upcost.

The problem occurs usually if the "significant upcost" part is ignored.

The goal here should be to always be able to say: A black deck would rather splash red to get access to artifact destruction than play the artifact solution if able.

I agree with SecretInfiltrator. More explicitly:

• I think Universal Solvent / Unstable Obelisk is fine in colourless even though Desert Twister is a pie-break, and would still be bad if printed at . (It'd probably be okay at , interestingly.) So no, in one sense it's "not important" that a mono-black deck can't destroy an artifact. But in another sense it is "important" that a mono-black card can't destroy an artifact, because that kind of distinction is what keeps the colour pie from getting muddied. (And I wish Wizards would stop reprinting things like Chaos Warp and Angelic Edict that break those distinctions.)
• I think green should be the colour that's clearly best at colour fixing and ramp, and in particular, should be clearly better than colourless at it. (And Sol Ring should be banned and forgotten about along with Mana Crypt.) I don't strongly feel that -cost mana artifacts shouldn't ramp any more, but I can see why Wizards feel that way - so that green's Rampant Growth gets to do something that colourless can't do.

Twisting this discussion a little - do we consider the effects of Eldrazi (i.e. Artisan of Kozilek, Thought-Knot Seer, Eternal Scourge, and It That Betrays) part of the "acceptable" realm of effects for colorless permanents to do? I can't help but feel that Thought-Knot and It That Betrays is at least partially black normally, and that Eternal Scourge should be blue...

If so, does colorless's "color pie" portion expand to include "weird effects" like Void Winnower and Kozilek, the Great Distortion's second ability? I know the latter has been done before on a blue card.

Well, Thought-Knot is drawing from the pie, not the generic pie that the others are. They all seem like reasonable effects for colorless at their price to me.

--CF

agreed with CF: colorless and generic need to be considered separately - though I think Wizards is just winging it. ;)

­ should have its own established "pie," in my opinion, but there aren't enough printed cards to create one from what we have, and I honestly don't think that Wizards put as much thought into it as they should have.

I think a lot of what has been said can be summarized by saying that we tend to look more at color identity, rather than mana cost, when determining whether something is appropriate and in-pie.

Okay, first of all, SPOILERS for M19

...

... but have you people seen Meteor Golem? Absolutely reprehensible. At uncommon? With a 3/3 body? Seriously? People are already getting so confused as to why mono- and mono- can Naturalize your stuff like it's nothing.

This backwards logic just isn't gonna fly for most people. "A black card can't, but black deck can." Yeah, sure, just try explaining that to the common folk starting to play MTG.

> "What's the color pie, daddy?"
> "It's this thing that thematically divides the colors and their capabilities with their identities. Expect when some Spine of Ish Sah or whatever comes along and takes a giant dump on it. Then the color pie is nothing to worry about."

And it's not like that there aren't cards that can reduce the cost of artifacts. 'Colorless' really needs to be listed on gatherer as a search option for a color, doesn't it? That's all good and all, expect that we are talking about generic mana card, not .

­Spine of Ish Sah exists. Now Meteor Golem exists. It shows that Wizards consistently creates cards not following your philosophy.

That's it. No new argument or perspective added, right?

I did allude that this philosophy is nonintuitive at the very least. This is constantly being risen as an issue / inconsistency by random players (ie. misunderstood) and that slanders the whole concept of the color pie. The color pie itself is becoming a hypocritical and sanctimonious concept that is being taken less and less seriously as these behemoths of permanent destruction roam around.

Also, Meteor Golem is IMO pushing that concept more as a 3/3 body is a respectable and very easy to flicker. So what I see is WotC doing consistent harm to the game in the long run. The further we go, the farther this trend will likely be pushed. Once the CMC / activation costs of these cards start dropping below it's gonna be all-you-can-take buffet on the color pie.

This is all wrong.

With all of that being said, let me post my mono- enchantment removal card xD (Forget Your Dreams)

When they devolved into the "all upside, all the time" philosophy, it was inevitable that the power creep would rise meteorically. (pun fully intended.)