[Theory] Color Pie Discussion: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to [Theory] Color Pie Discussion: (Generated at 2024-05-04 11:42:22)
Solemn and Bauble are much worse than the rest, but I would argue that their precedent lied in the other cards listed. Burnished Hart is also a thing :(
Sword of the Animist requires you to have a creature and be able to attack with that creature which sounds quite when you think about... but yeah, idk, that card came at a time where it has pretty much reached a point where one has become numb to this bleeding. So the other cards are harder etched on my memory. It's messed up tbh.
: They feed from the same collective pool of abilities as the other colors, but they just do whatever they want with no rime or reason. That's pretty much the definition of undermining the color pie. How could they do it worse?
: Hmmh, that's a fairly recent development, but yes, you're right: it seems to be a tred. For whatever reason my mind keeps going back to Energy Tap, however old it is. Also, I remember Deranged Assistant quite well.
I can see your issue with Solemn Simulacrum and Wayfarer's Bauble, especially since they are both land ramp and color fixing. The others don't bother me as much, especially Prophetic Prism and friends.
You must really dislike Sword of the Animist.
In what ways to you think cards undermine the color pie?
Blue already has limited mana production as part of its mechanical color pie. I'm not saying it needs more, just stating that it already has it: Curious Homunculus, Grand Architect, Qarsi Deceiver, etc.
I can agree with that. To a certain extent this has to do with creature removal which usually is just straight-up better than equivalent effects. still holds its claim on wraths tightly though has gotten a taste of that slice of the pie somewhat nowadays. The reason why it's related is that there are two colors that can remove creatures quite easily (also red with burn) yet not no other color except does counters ( was supposed to be secondary but that idea was abandoned or forgotten). Also, the increase of "exile target creature" effects in is questionable (as it makes and closer when they already share the same tendency for having great creature removal) so this shift could help to rectify that.
As for that "LTBF don't trigger" I included a card with that kind of effect in my Future Sight 2 set: Futile Waste. I found the design on reddit custommagic. Note: That FS2 set is pretty much a compilation of "cool" stuff and doesn't have the qualities to a real contender for a set IMO (no cohesive mechanics for example).
EDIT: Added "Harsh Reality" as an example.
I dunno - that kinda IS the distinction. Black can kill your creature as soon as it appears; blue can stop it appearing in the first place.
Still; I could see "Kill target creature. Exit the battlefield effects don't trigger" as being a thing black could get; distinct from exiling it. I think being vulnerable to the ETB effects is probably a sensible weakness to keep.
Premise
Countering a creature spell isn't that far of from destroying a creature. Also, it further guarantees 's role as the color with best creature removal.
Notes
ETB and "dies" triggers on creatures are becoming so prevalent that having this effect in its repertoire makes sense. With this change it's likely that the number of "exile target creature" could be reduced in since that recent trend might stem from the same issue of ETB/"dies" trigger abundance.
Color Shifts
Precedent
Examples
I too don't mind Unknown Shores / Shimmering Grotto that much as a card. It's pretty much just an extension and/or variation of dual lands and any color lands (City of Brass). Lands producing and handling mana is reasonable: that's why they exist after all.
It's the artifacts specifically that bug me. IMO artifacts having color fixing undermines 's identity of being the best color at it.
Ie.
There's tangible tension there and not in a good way.
could be a nice idea with right implementation, sure. It's just that I find it questionable what kind of effects would make playing stuff like pain lands (Sulfurous Springs) interesting without undermining color pie itself. Are there any? I don't know.
As for mana producing, I'm open to the idea, but like I indicated in the (((Green Cloning))) perhaps it's for the best if for every effect there is at least one color that can't do it. On the other hand, mana is a crucial element in the game...
That Cucoo is actually very close to Sprouting Phytohydra, but much stronger since it replaces/prevents the damage. Gameplay wise I would be concerned: it doesn't take that many blocks before the board is completely locked in the ground by those chickens. That's also a very depressing board to play out.
To be honest, cloning/copying effects are quite complex so can't have that many of them on lower rarities unless you come up with something like populate - and that would likely only be for a single set / block.
So with this shift I could see there being like around 1 green rare per set with a clone/copy effect - similarly to how often currently has clones. Btw, I indicated this by setting this topic's "card"'s rarity to rare - Ie. which rarity this shift would affect the most.
getting big tokens is related to the fact that green in general gets bigger stuff while gets more weenies. This is one attempt to make white and green play differently even though they are both creature centric colors (large percentage of their cards per set are creatures).
I didn't realize there was so much hate. I think it was a great idea that stumbled just slightly in execution.
Blue already produces mana with restrictions. Are you saying you want it to do more of that?
I'm sorry for my lack of clarity. I'm talking about color fixing on permanents versus non-permanents.
I'm also not trying to argue that there are effects that should be moved from generic cards into actual colors. I just think that color fixing is the wrong mechanic to argue over. It would seem odd to me to move an ability focused on mana out of the purview of lands.
I haven't made any references at all to mana. If I had, I would have called it "true/pure colorless" or something like that. Also, I think that idea is pretty much a garbage fire as far as color pie is concerned. They pretty much recycled their abandoned idea of purple they had in Time Spiral for that (a color that does little bit of everything all the other colors do).
Yes, I think that producing colorless mana with restrictions could be a "thing" in . In that's whatever since it can produce color in any amounts and colors already.
@Link:
Wait, so... isn't Manamorphose just a recoloring effect? You would like to see more of that, yet you say that it's unnecessary. I'm confused. What's the difference here that I'm missing?
I think that the colorless discussion is heavily related if say that giving more colors access to color fixing is unnecessary because it's something that colorless already does. IMO in some manner or another all those colorless vindicates had their precedent in artifacts that fetch for and fix mana. Just because there's a longer tradition for mana manipulation in colorless doesn't mean that it isn't heavily related to the discussion about what effects colorless should be doing and how that affects those effects distribution into other colors.
Ie.
That's because introducing it at all was a mistake.
Both green and blue can produce colorless mana. Blue only does it with restrictions for how to spend it, like on artifacts.
I also think you should distinguish between colorless cards that cost generic mana and colorless cards with in their cost. I seem to remember MaRo answering a question about by saying they hadn't really given it a color pie mechanical identity. This is a mistake, to me.
@Vitenka:
Intellectual aspirations aren't combat oriented yet we see plenty of them . IMO one reason for this lack of diversity comes down to 's color pie - dealing damage is perhaps too prevalent and so on.
As for precedent, I did a quick gatherer search.
It happens to be that the new set just dropped a bunch of cards that produce Treasure tokens. Though to be fair, it seems many of the colors get those in that set. (I haven't really gone through that set.)
There were also couple of hybrids that weren't freshly in my memory.
Okay, so how I see color fixing ("washing") being distributed in colors:
Btw, producing colorless mana isn't currently really in any color at the moment. I don't really know where to put that though. I guess colorless (artifacts) is fine for that.
It's like you took my statement in a completely different direction from what I said or intended. Lands and artifacts fixing mana is a big leap from Scour from Existence. I get that you have an agenda that you want to push here, but it's not the proper response to my statement. If you want to talk about reducing the options available to cards with purely genetic mana costs, make a separate discussion place for that.
Red could recolor mana. I have no issue with that. I just think it's unnecessary. Lands already do it plenty, and it belongs with lands and artifacts. It's a part of their identity.
Now, red getting more effects like Manamorphose is a bit different. I'm down with that.
I'd object more; but I just made Cucoo so I have no legs to stand on.
I like the idea of red getting UEOT clones. I also like the idea of green only getting to clone itself - templated as breeding; or growing additional heads hydra-style.
But I don't think this is a thing green should get to do often at all.
Mainly though: Green gets to make big tokens. It used to get swarms of snakes; now it gets elephants and white gets the snakes. So sure, sometimes those tokens can be something else you already have.
Maybe. While this would expand 's pie, this is also about reducing 's monopoly on many of the effects currently available.
There are many effects that appear in different colors determined by the clauses and restrictions. Ie. grave recursion: instant and sorcery in izzet, creature recursion in abzan, any in green, permanent recursion in selesnya, etc...
However, effects like bounce, cloning, counter spells, mind control, etc are something that only is allowed to do. They pretty much have no secondary colors. Only minor exceptions to this exist: can bounce its own stuff, and can Threaten.
So yeah.
As far as expanding cloning in , many of 's abilities are determined by them being temporal (like "impulse" drawing). That still fits nicely into the idea of spreading further different facets of effects between colors.
So:
Indeed. Multiple counter spell ideas in colors other than can be found in SecretInfiltrator's Assorted cards.
Yeah; I'd just like to see a few more such hints. It's not very close to existing mechanical.
Flavour-wise; yes, very much it would be nice to see other emotions than red currently mainly uses. The problem being that, well, it's a combat game. So fighty emotions tend to come up more than fluffy ones.
I guess colour fixing would become "Every colour can wash to its own colour; red can wash to any colour; green can flat out produce any colour as a permanent thing; red can do it as a one-off ritual" ? That seems fine, to me.
@Vitenka:
I wouldn't call the precedent cards as "evidence": It's more like "Oh, and there already hints about this already", but IMO that isn't crucial to justify color shifts. These wouldn't be very "shifty" if they already existed in the current color pie.
WotC is currently testing "freezing lands" mechanic as a soft replacement for LD in : Stensia Innkeeper and Chandra's Revolution.
Actually, I've been thinking about having Spreading Seas color shifted to . So it's land disruption would be characterized that way while could "freeze" lands. Personally, I'm quite fine with nonbasic removal, but I think we could pretty much "do without" basic land destruction.
Also, it's worth of note that this shift would increase the flavor diversity of so that the themes of creativity and such could become more common place in it. Usually those themes remain purely hypothetical while cards flavored as "I'm so very angry" run rampant in .
@Link:
Yes, that can be attributed in some part to the fact that I find the whole concept of "you can do anything if you cost enough mana and don't have a color" very, very disturbing. Like, the whole idea of color pie is founded on the idea of having a color. Colorless cards doing stuff like Scour from Existence / Universal Solvent undermines statements like "Color pie is also about balance meaning that a Naturalize would break this balance". Those kind of statements have become more and more scarce since colorless cards doing whatever have become quite common place now. This suggest that in the future color pie is relegated to flavor alone.
So, I would rather expand colors in ways that they have their own niche ways with effects like color fixing and land searching - and reduce those kind of things (among other effects) from colorless stuff. This gives colors more novelty and makes them play differently. Colorless stuff doing that does the opposite: it makes the colors less relevant and makes them play similarly.
I don't think green needs this. Does it really need to be in three colors? I would rather just see it expanded in red.
See Twinflame, Flameshadow Conjuring, Heat Shimmer, and Tilonalli's Skinshifter.
I think Green is fine with creatures that copy themselves. That's enough.
I can see it.
But I think we'd want to see a bit more evidence than manamorphose. But I could certainly see this being a red bleed. Both from its rituals (perhaps "Gain some red mana, or some less in any colour" or "Gain some red and some wild") and also why not take land-destruction this route?
Land destruction is getting kinda removed from everything; and in its place we get land replacement. Of which Blood Moon is the prototypical example. Could Illusuory Terrain colour shift to red, perhaps?
I'm fine with this, but it seems unnecessary given that it's the domain of lands and artifacts, which are already accessible by any color.
Added Safewright to the list.
Note: Pretty much all those cards listed as "precedents" are more like "quasi-précédents".
When it comes to card draw in I'm definitely not a fan of that: in a sense this is suggested as a replacement for those cards - as an "alternative way". However, all of those draw engines are currently rare since the idea is something that's being tested by WotC. If they were to remain at rare, then it's plausible that this concept could co-exist with them.
IMO "running out of fuel" is like the sole weakness the color currently has since both it's threats are powerful and it's answer are extremely flexible. CA is the only department where it lacks - and this is something that should remain in one manner or other. You know, each color needs a weakness to characterize it.
• White & black soft counters/specific counters
Interesting. White's version of red's card "draw."
TODO list: