Cards From Recent Sets that Violate the Color Pie
General forum
Posted on Feb. 24, 2019, 12:25 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
The color pie is one of the central aspects of this game, and various employees of WotC, most notably Mark Rosewater, have emphasized its importance.
In the early days of this game, the color pie was not well-defined, resulting in cards that would be very weird, today, such as Prodigal Sorcerer or Psionic Blast . However, the color pie now better defined, although there still are occasional cards that violate it, so I wish to discuss cards from recent sets that bend or outright break the color pie, and, for the purposes of this thread, I shall define "recent" as originating in Eighth Edition or later, as that was when the new card frames were introduced.
The first card that I wish to mention is Beast Within , because green is not supposed to have unconditional creature destruction; the fact that it generates a token does not balance the fact that it is a monocolored and instant version of Vindicate , in my mind.
Feed the Clan and Gnaw to the Bone are not outright breaks, but I feel that they are severe bends, because green is not supposed to have lifegain that efficient; only black and white are supposed to be able to do that.
Bearer of the Heavens and Worldfire are breaks, because red is not supposed to be able to destroy enchantments, nor have unconditional creature destruction, nor exile cards from hands or graveyards; if those cards were white or red/white, they would be acceptable. Also, red is not supposed to be able to directly set life totals to a specific value (again, only black and white can do that), which also makes Sway of the Stars a break, or at least a bend; SotS is almost entirely within blue's section of the color pie, except for the life total effect.
Dawn of Hope is a severe bend, and Mark Rosewater agrees with that idea, because white is not supposed to be able to draw cards with such great efficiency; white is allowed to have card advantage, but usually through methods other than card drawing.
What does everyone else say about this? What are some cards from recent sets that outright violate the color pie?
I nominate Gruul Spellbreaker --while the green part makes sense, there is no part of the card that is independently red. It should have been mono-green, not red-green.
February 24, 2019 8:57 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #5
legendofa, my presumption is that being multicolored is what allows it to cost only 3 mana overall; if it were mono-green, it likely would cost 4 mana. I remember Mark Rosewater saying on his Tumblr account that being multicolored allows cards to have a lower overall mana cost compared to monocolored cards that are otherwise identical.
February 24, 2019 9:29 p.m.
Honestly a lot of the cards break it but in a way that's within their color though. Especially in recent sets. They're hard bends, but not necessarily full breaks.
Also, every break generally ends up being pretty decent cards.
February 25, 2019 8:13 a.m.
By design a break would be a good or decent card as it's doing something outside it's color. If we had a Lightning Strike in Blue it would be Modern playable probably; at least a lot closer then it is in Red.
Dawn of Hope I think is WotC playing with card draw in white and as such I think it's perfectly fine as it is far from efficient as you have to jump through a hoop then pay mana just to get the card draw just like Mentor of the Meek .
February 25, 2019 10:08 a.m.
DemonDragonJ Sure, but that doesn't seems to be the case for Frenzied Arynx , which is on-color, more expensive, and a common. These two cards side-by-side annoys me. The message I'm getting is that a card can have an off-color ability at a discount as long as it's rare or mythic rare. I'm not up on Mark Rosewater's Tumblr, but I remember articles essentially saying that quality would not be affected by rarity and that they try not to make multicolor cards that could be made as a single color. Seeing Frenzied Arynx and Gruul Spellbreaker side by side, and keeping this information in mind, what I see is that granting hexproof to a creature's controller is becoming a red ability.
I tried not to turn this into an all-out rant.
legendofa says... #2
I nominate Gruul Spellbreaker --while the green part makes sense, there is no part of the card that is independently red. It should have been mono-green, not red-green.
February 24, 2019 8:53 p.m.