How exactly does Color work in Commander?
Asked by MagicalHacker 12 years ago
Can I play Transguild Courier or Ghostfire in a Kaho, Minamo Historian Commander deck?
Bobgalarneau says... #3
Long answer
In EDH, the colors you can play in a deck is given by the "color identity" of your commander.It is every mana symbol on a card. in you case, it's only blue.
So in your deck, you can only use cards with this color identity.
Note that a card can name other colors on it and still not have the color identity, Farseek is only green and fetchlands like Misty Rainforest are still colorless.
May 25, 2013 11:38 a.m.
The color identity of a card is it's color identity plus any symbols on the card. Both of these are excluded for opposite reason. Even though Ghostfire is colorless because of it's text, it still has Red in its cost and therefore cannot be put in any deck without red. Transguild Courier , while having a colorless casting cost has a color identity of Red, Blue, White, Green and Black and therefore cannot be put in a deck that does not include all five colors.
Also, even if you could include Ghostfire in your deck you would not be able to generate any red mana to cast it.
May 25, 2013 11:46 a.m.
Bobgalarneau says... #5
I'm sure Transguild Courier can only be played in 5 color deck.
Not sure about Ghostfire . Even if the card is colorless, i think it will be ruled as Bosh, Iron Golem
May 25, 2013 11:47 a.m.
As far as I am aware, you could put Ghostfire in, but there is no way to get red mana in a blue EDH deck, as if you would produce mana not in your commander's colour identity you get colourless mana instead
May 25, 2013 11:47 a.m.
Bobgalarneau says... #7
Kaho, Minamo Historian 's ability could enable him to cast Ghostfire . But in the end Ghostfire has a red mana symbol on it making it red color identity...
May 25, 2013 11:58 a.m.
KrazyCaley says... #8
Technically, the EDH rules say that a card's color identity is its actual colors plus any color symbols IN ITS RULES TEXT. Technically Ghostfire 's red symbol is in its casting cost. But still, either way, you couldn't get any red mana to cast it.
May 25, 2013 1:07 p.m.
JUNDISTHEBEST says... #9
Ghostfire works if you can get "add one mana of any color to your mana pool"
May 25, 2013 1:22 p.m.
KrazyCaley says... #10
@JUNDISTHEBEST - That still won't work though. In EDH, if you would generate any color of mana outside your general's colors, you generate colorless mana instead.
May 25, 2013 2:20 p.m.
MagnorCriol says... #11
One of the things that Innistrad's double faced cards brought to the game is the little circle at the end of the type line on the back side called the color indicator. They used it to give the backside of flip cards a color, because otherwise it would've been colorless or have to have the "[CARDNAME] is [color]" text, which is clunky.
They've said that they're going to use them to indicate color from now on on any cards that would otherwise have that color-stating text, like Crimson Kobolds or Ghostfire - a look at the Gatherer entries for those cards show this change already, in fact. And the FTV printing of Dryad Arbor has it.
Transguild Courier is all five colors, and if it's ever reprinted, it would have a five-color color indicator to show it. It can't be played in a deck that's not five colors. Ghostfire has a red mana symbol in its cost, and can't be played in a nonred deck.
May 25, 2013 3:40 p.m.
MagicalHacker says... #12
So, to clarify:
Does rules text overwrite the colors of a card or not?
If it does, then I can play Ghostfire .
If it doesn't, then I can play Transguild Courier .
You can't say it's both, guys.
May 26, 2013 8:47 a.m.
A cards casting cost and it's color identity are two separate things. Color identity looks at both casting cost and any color indicators on the card.
- Ghostfire
has a red casting cost because of the red mana symbol in it's actual casting cost.
- Ghostfire
has a colorless "color indicator" because of it's rules text.
Ghostfire has a Red color identity for the purposes of EDH because the game sees its colorless color indicator and it's Red mana symbol in the cost. It can therefore only be used in a deck that has Red in the Color Identity of it's commander
Transguild Courier has a colorless casting cost because there are no colored symbol in it's actual casting cost.
- Transguild Courier
has a Five Color "color indicator" because of it's rules text
- Transguild Courier has a Five Color color identity for the purposes of EDH because the game sees its colorless cost AND it's Five Color color indicator. It can therefore only be used in a deck that has all Five Colors in the color identity of it's commander.
So you see, it can be both.
903.4. The Commander variant uses color identity to determine what cards can be in a deck with a certain commander. The color identity of a card is the color or colors of any mana symbols in that cards mana cost or rules text, plus any colors defined by its characteristic-defining abilities (see rule 604.3) or color indicator (see rule 204).
May 26, 2013 10:02 a.m.
MagicalHacker says... #14
Wait, I think I see now. Ghostfire doesn't have a color indicator of colorless...
Actually, why doesn't it?
May 26, 2013 10:03 a.m.
MagicalHacker says... #15
Thank you Kirtanian! That really cleared everything up for me!
May 26, 2013 10:05 a.m.
On Gatherer it doesn't actually have a color indicator of colorless which is why I put the quotes around it. It's because Ghostfire 's color identity is Red which is clearly shown by the red symbol in it's mana cost.
May 26, 2013 10:06 a.m.
They are both excluded by the color identity rule but for different reasons. The one is gaining it's identity from its casting cost and the other is gaining it from it's color indicator.
Bobgalarneau says... #1
Short answer, no and no
May 25, 2013 11:32 a.m.