[Theory] Color Pie Discussion: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to [Theory] Color Pie Discussion: (Generated at 2024-05-04 18:50:54)
See Red: Bounce creatures.
Red bounce as drawback has much potential without stepping on other color's piece of the pie.
Red is about giving up long term benefit for short term gain. Return your permanent to hand could be red (instead of blue Moonfolk).
See Red: Bounce creatures.
Red bounce as drawback has much potential without stepping on other color's piece of the pie.
This creature trades tempo for bigger hit.
Bounce is already very well established and prolific part of blue and white. That there isn't much to go around for new design space.
Instead look at and expand less used forms of red trickery that it can claim as its own. Such as swapping cards or permanents.
Tuck permanent, put target permanent on bottom of library. Perhaps compensate former owner with draw a card. Ex. Leave
Swap control of permanents. Alternatively, steal, then compensate former controller with token or equivalent.
More taunt / provoke, I agree. Force opponent into unfavorable combat situations.
I'm gonna bite.
Does red need more options? It's got the best option. It gets to blow stuff up. If it has a physical existence, be it land, artifact, creature - or your opponents face - you get to make it go boom.
Why would you ever have "Return target creature of power 2 or less to its owners hand" when you can have "Deal 3 damage to target creature or player"?
@Amuseum The "red expansion", since I started playing (Gatecrash), has been limited to the following: draw variants (rummaging, impulsive draw), land freeze, prowess, one-sided fight, "make a small creature unblockable", menace... and that's pretty much it.
Out of these...
Basically, once you've got your single common rummager, your block mechanic stuff and your lone prowess card... well, it doesn't matter if the set was designed today or eight years ago, your options are no less limited today then they were before Innistrad came out (and that actually adds Fight as new!).
's situation has improved slightly over the years. Maybe the following 'statistics' will show what I find so problematic about 's current affairs...
Seventh Edition (2001)
Red noncreature spells roughly categorized:
Percentages
Magic Origins (2015)
Red noncreature spells roughly categorized:
Percentages
It's really, really sad that I have to yield a planeswalker (of all things) into the strictly "deal(s) N damage" category.
... and what I would like the distribution of effects in to be closer to...
Silmarillion: The War of the Jewels
Red noncreature spells roughly categorized:
Percentages
You say red has become stale, yet it has had the most expansion of all the colors in the last few years. Perhaps your problem lies elsewhere than more stealing of another color's main mechanics.
Temporary stuff is red losing its identity by getting softer. Red used to do hardcore destruction, but you want it be more gimmicky with softer versions of what other colors get.
Probably the whole game seems getting softer and neutered. Land destruction became land tap or bounce. Removal became more situational and conditional. Maybe that's why no matter how much red has gained in the last decade, it's never enough.
Don't confuse temporal and temporary!
@Mal:
It seems indeed fitting for land disruption though it doesn't mechanically change that much in nature - only in execution.
Hmm, this certainly needs some prototyping...
@amuseum:
Red as it is, is stale. Where else could it expand but outwards? Temporal effects have been by convention listed as something red can do: temporal card draw, reanimation, cloning, ramp, etc...
the real issue is why people keep trying to make red become more like other colors, especially blue.
I really like slowblinking lands as an alternative to "freezing" lands as seen in Reduce // Rubble. Mirage Maker would be a perfect name for a creature that did that on ETB. I can get behind slowblinking instead of bounce.
Hmm, could it be slightly modified to be used for land disruption as well? Ie. A sorcery with "Exile target land an opponent controls until your next turn."
It's an interesting angle. I added Mirage Maker as an 'example'.
I prefer "slowblink" for red (exile creature opp controls UEOT). Makes the return of the creature that much more inevitable, maybe with a nontoken rider for good form.
@Mal:
You make it sound as though red bounce wouldn't need any other restriction than targeting stuff you don't control. I kinda like that thought. It reminds me of that one rare custom red card that could deal with enchantments. Something like mana cost with "exile target permanent you don't control; at the beginning of the next end step, the controller of that permanent creates two tokens that are copies of it".
Certainly the question remains as to what to do with in regards to this. It's a pretty big stretch of the pie and I would assume such a change would come with some sort of a shift instead of a straight-up spread.
> I'm in favor of red getting bounce (with restrictions) as a way to explore the nonaggressive, nonviolent side of red that doesn't involve blowing things up.
Hear hear.
The issue is that self-bounce comes in two categories - one as a drawback, which is what red already does in Dash and cards like Archwing Dragon and Glitterfang. The other is self-bounce on reactive spells, like Alley Evasion or Kami of Twisted Reflection, which is more protective or evasive than what lines up with Red's philosophy.
That's my main problem when people talk about self-bounce in Red - either it already has it, or it's not something Red really wants to do. I can see it on a sort of Berserk variant, where you return the creature to your hand instead of sacrificing it, but that's not exactly new ground and not a big design space.
Personally I feel that bouncing opponent's creatures lines up well with red, whether it's tapped, untapped, or has some other restriction on it. I can see the flavor in all of it. When people say "How does Red deal with certain things that it normally can't deal with?", it's usually one of two answers: it can't, or it "kills them before it matters". This is often used in the enchantment argument, which is why I think nonland permanent bounce could be something Red can explore. Other colors have ways to deal with every problem in their own ways - Black deals with cards before they become threats by way of discard. Blue deals with problems by anticipating their cast and countering them. White has taxing, imprisoning, and protective effects to deal with every type of card. Green has bigger creatures and spell resistance, and they can cleanly and directly deal with all noncreature threats. By shoehorning Red's response as "kill it before it matters", you're essentially condemning red to be the aggressive, fast color for all of eternity. Red's creative aspects - something that is woefully unexplored - shouldn't accept this as its only answer. Red shouldn't have straightforward ways of dealing with problems, but it should have a suite of tools that it can use to deal with problems creatively. Bouncing something and then casting Wheel of Fortune - that's a creative solution to a problem. Polymorphing something into something a bit more manageable - that's a creative solution to a problem. In other words, I'm in favor of red getting bounce (with restrictions) as a way to explore the nonaggressive, nonviolent side of red that doesn't involve blowing things up.
Aye, self-bounce is something I could see red having, executed in a Nor in the Wary type flavor or like dash.
Only self bounce, thats it. Can't be controlled by player. No bouncing other stuff: thats strictly blue.
Ex. Viashino, Dash
Premise
Time Spiral alluded to this, but nothing came of it.
MaRo has talked about the possibility of this in the future:
The real question here is how it would exactly be restricted. Also, would this affect in any way? I don't think 's self bouncing cares about this shift.
Flavor
??? Up for grabs. I don't think even "normal" () bouncing is that flavorful - or at least it isn't a constant as it's seemingly different from card to card.
Color Shifts
Notes
The off-topic section of this MTG Salvation thread has some additional examples and concepts:
Precedent
Examples
I think draining life for is a classic effect... See Debt to the Deathless.
Death Grasp seems to leave something to be desired. Because there are multiple kinds of burn effects and derived drain effects.
The difference is distinguishing between whether saying an effect is "in pie" means to you "not a color pie break" or "a comfortable fit for a commonly used effect".
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.
agreed with CF: colorless and generic need to be considered separately - though I think Wizards is just winging it. ;)
I don't know if I would actually agree that is closer to than . The hybrid cost is very happy being played in a monoR deck or a monoW deck. The goldbrid cost really wants to be played in a red and white deck, like the cost requires. Additionally, the hybrid cost functions like generic in a RW deck, while gold and goldbrid both require your lands to line up correctly to be played on turn 2.
--CF
I think the blue-black example mentioned above has the problem that it does not actually fulfill the "significant upcost" criteria I mention in the parallel discussion.
It also does not fit the criteria: "As long as each cost that is not working in-pie costs at least as much as the colorless version the monocolor hybrid mana costs on spells like this are justified." since the colorless (or better generic) cost shouldn't be below , so a converted mana cost of less than 4 for either monocolored payment is too cheap.
I addition (or as an effect of the above criteria in effect) there is a threshold when the minimum required cost gets too low when spells with multiple different monocolored hybrid mana symbols must be considered like a hybrid cost.
I.E. is closer to than to , but as you add more generic mana the fact that you have a lot of generic cost spells that cover effects softens this and can get you effects that would get if also would get them.
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
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, it probably shouldn't be too surprising that I think this is fine :p
I think one important reason that Scour can be fine while 5GG desert twister is not fine is a matter of what colors you're incentivizing other decks to run if they want this effect. In a format just with just Scour, a monoU deck that wants to hard remove any permanent type will just run Scour and stay monoU, and a G deck will play Scour and stay monoG. In a format with 5GG twister, the monoG deck just jams the twister and stays monoG, so no difference from Scour -- but the monoU deck needs to splash G and become simic in order to use the effect. It is not merely that 5GG twister is a pie problem because it lets green decks do that thing (generic costs already let them), but because it pulls other decks that want that effect into becoming more G to get it. A twister also pulls the monoU deck into Simic. Not as strongly as 5GG but I think that phenomenon of actively pulling you into G to get the effect is what makes Twister such a no-no.
This incentivizes you to play W and B to get this WB effect. If you do half of the work, it gives you half credit. In a monoW deck it won't perform any better than Scour for you, unless you dip your toe a little into producing black mana.
Using twobrid for modal spells like Consult the Necrosages is a little weird, but if you were determined to do so I think is okay but is problematic.
I would definitely appreciate a frame option for these that was somewhere between pure gold and pure hybrid.
--CF
Neither do I normally, but I like it as an example of of how two colour spells can work with colour pie. How would you think of it?
Ooh. You're breaking Vindicate down into its component parts, Disenchant plus Ruinous Path plus Sinkhole? Interesting. That's not really how I think about Vindicate.
Good question. I mostly agree with your stance on colorless pie. My first reaction was that this card was fine. If it works according to the colour pie, I'm fond of playing in unusual spaces like twobrid.
But on reflection, I'm not sure this specific spell works.
My rule of thumb for how wizards choose mana for a spell is that there's two requirements. (a) color pie mechanics, "destroy target enchantment" can't cost or because it allows black to destroy enchantments for which it shouldn't be able to do. (b) color pie philosophy. "counter target spell" isn't green, and it would be wrong to print it even at , which isn't too strong, it's the wrong color.
(I'm not sure what I mean by "the color". It's partly what color you need to cast it, partly what color it looks like you need to cast it, and partly the color identity)
So usually dual color spells are doing something from both colours, or doing something either colour can do more cheaply than either could alone. In that case, replacing a coloured mana with a hybrid is usually fine in both senses (assuming the spell isn't too strong).
But in this case, it's doing something from one colour or the other. The balance may be about right, but it's not right that black gets a discount on destroying an enchantment when green doesn't.
Now you can push the boundary a bit if it looks right. I think there's a very slightly larger latitude allowed to hybrid spells than mono colour spells even though in theory there shouldn't be. Some people might include this spell. I think that's a stretch just slightly too far, although I'm not certain.
For a similar question, would you allow "choose one - draw two cards or target player discards two cards" for or ? That's costed about right, but it seems odd that any colour can do it for but you can make people discard for or can draw for .
The reason this seems alright at the given cost but not at is that a colored mana symbol will indicate a card as belonging to that color even if that mana symbol does not need to be paid. This is also how Norn's Annex(which doesn't try to emulate a green effect or it would cost ) and co. should work.
An issue with phyrexian mana was that there was a blatant disregard for the balance. While monocolored hybrid mana gets cheaper when paid colored, phyrexian mana works the other way around and spells including it must be priced as colorless spells with a life loss which can be "paid off".
As long as each cost that is not working in-pie costs at least as much as the colorless version the monocolor hybrid mana costs on spells like this are justified.
I sure would like monocolor hybrid to use a separate frame though to drive home its special position regarding those situations.
There is probably a whole separate discussion to be had regarding the difference between a spell with multiple moncolor hybrid mana of the same color or different colors in its cost.