Should snow CMC spells show up on the deck's color wheel?
TappedOut forum
Posted on July 24, 2019, 8:37 p.m. by StopShot
As of Modern Horizons (1), two cards were printed with snow () converted mana costs: Arcum's Astrolabe and Icehide Golem . When the set Oath of the Gatewatch first came out only 9 cards were printed that had colorless-required () CMC spells. After this standard set was revealed Tappedout.net included a colorless-specific CMC-total into each deck's color wheel if any of those 9 colorless cards were being used in a deck. Shouldn't the same be made for decks that run spells with snow mana CMC's in order to give a fairer representation of that deck's colored CMC distribution?
@enpc, While you do have a point when it comes to the differences between colorless and snow mana, the same can still be said for spells like Flame Javelin and Beseech the Queen . Both of those spells are listed as triple red or triple black on tappedout, but any kind of mana can be spent into them. Snow mana spells are more restrictive in comparison to those hybrid spells, but less restrictive than colorless-required spells, so I don't think mana restriction should be what qualifies the legitimacy of having snow mana listed on the color wheel or not.
July 24, 2019 9:37 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #4
I thought this was already implemented. I think yeaGO forgot from when I suggested it to him. Snow mana should be easy to implement, since it is a seperate symbol, S. I had suggested a "pale light blue colour" to him.
RGB Values: 165, 235, 227
July 24, 2019 10:38 p.m.
@Femme_Fatale, I was thinking the same thing about what color to make it. While light blue would seem fitting for the theme of snow mana I am worried that the color might look rather garish when wedged together with the other five colors. I was wondering if instead of the same uniform color if it could perhaps be textured. The actual symbol is pretty speckled which is it's most defining quality rather than the color(s). I wouldn't make the texture pattern too distinct either as that can stand out too much as well - instead maybe some faint and grainy black-and-white pattern. Something maybe like the texture of these trees? 
enpc says... #2
So there are two things to unpack here:
Colourless mana cost actually require colourless mana to pay for them, whereas Arcum's Astrolabe for example costs generic snow mana. So I could use Snow-Covered Island to pay for it, but I could also use Boreal Druid to pay for it. The same is not true for Kozilek, the Great Distortion .
I'm no sure if T/O currently has a differentiation between regualr mana and snow mana produced. I'm not saying that adding this would be a bad thing (after all more accurate data is more accurate), however this would also require implementation if it had not been already.
Edit (forgot to mention): I think it would be good to see colourless mana produced in the mana wheel, even if your deck doesn't contain colourless cards (as in non-generic colourless).
July 24, 2019 8:44 p.m. Edited.