Colors of Magic

**Daquinus** Sam 26 Ian 2013, 11:42

Most spells come in one of five colors. The colors can be seen on the back of the cards, in a pentagonal design, called the "Color Wheel" or "Pentagon of Colors". Clockwise from the top, they are: white, blue, black, red, and green, respectively abbreviated WUBRG (often pronounced "woo-berg" by players and designers). ("U" for "blue" comes from the fact that the mana symbols were typeset by their initials, and "B" was used for black. These same letter codes were used when Wizards released official card lists; also see Anatomy of a Magic Card.) To play a spell of a given color, at least one mana of that color is required. This mana is normally generated by a basic land: plains for white, island for blue, swamp for black, mountain for red, and forest for green. The balances and distinctions among the five colors form one of the defining aspects of the game. Each color has strengths and weaknesses based on the "style" of magic it represents.

White is the color of order, equality, righteousness, healing, law, community, peace, absolutism/totalitarianism, and light. White's strengths are a roster of small creatures that are strong collectively; protecting those creatures with enchantments; gaining life; preventing damage to creatures or players; imposing restrictions on players; reducing the capabilities of opposing creatures, and powerful spells that "equalize" the playing field by destroying all cards of a given type. White creatures are known for their "Protection" from various other colors or even types of card, rendering them nearly impervious to harm from those things. Numerous white creatures also have "First Strike", "Lifelink", and "Vigilance". White's weaknesses include a focus on creatures, its unwillingness to simply kill creatures outright (instead hobbling them with restrictions that can be undone), and the fact that many of its most powerful spells affect all players equally—including the casting player.
Flavor
White puts value in the group, the community, and its civilization as a whole. White's ultimate goal is peace, harmony, and perfection — a world where everyone gets along and no one seeks to disturb the bonds of unity that White had worked so long to forge. To govern and protect its community, White makes use of and puts value in a number of broad concepts; morality (ethics, grace, truth), order (law, discipline, duty), uniformity (conformity, religion), and structure (government, planning, reason).
Mechanics
Damage prevention and life gain: White is a protector first; it has many cards that prevent damage to itself and/or its creatures ("healing"). In addition, White places great emphasis on the continuity of life, and endurance. It can restore life to a player, allowing that player to shake off the attacks of the opponent. To contrast, whereas Green life gain cards always have life gain as the main effect, there are White cards whose principal effect is not life gain but have that as an added bonus, making White the best choice for keeping up a life total while fighting off the opponent. Note the keyword ability lifelink, primary in White. Examples: Healing Salve, Angel of Salvation, Ancestor's Chosen, Reverse Damage.
Total protection: White is an inherently defensive color, various protective mechanics supports defensive strategies. White's protective abilities ranging from universal protection abilities (colors or creature types), defensive combat abilities (flanking, exalted) and global creature boosting. Examples: Bathe in Light, Spare from Evil, Benalish Cavalry, Aven Squire, Glorious Anthem.
Small creatures (Weenies): White uses the strength of cooperation and discipline to assemble a powerful army out of small creatures. Often these creatures have abilities (banding, first strike, vigilance) that make the whole group stronger. Examples: Benalish Hero, Knight of Meadowgrain, Steadfast Guard, Veteran Armorer.
Rules-setting and "Taxing": White values order and law, and so it has ways of restricting the actions of players so that they do not do anything which White considers unnecessary or unfair. This can be outright denial of privileges (rules), or an imposition of some form of "cost" on a regular part of game play (taxing). Rules-setting on players is commonly symmetric, while taxation is asymmetric. Examples: Rule of Law, Humility, Windborn Muse, Ghostly Prison, Land Tax.
Artifact and enchantment destruction: Although White is attached to both these types, it sees vice in their excess. White mana has the ability to purge what is false, to take away the vestments in which wickedness hides. Recently (with the rotation of Disenchant from Standard), White is able to destroy enchantments with much less effort (less mana) than for artifacts. Examples: Demystify, Tempest of Light, Dispeller's Capsule.
Balance and uniformity: White has a sense of honor and fair play, which is seen in its use of mass destruction effects, and other 'equality' spells. "Mass destruction" spells reduce all players to possessing no more of any resource than that of the player with the least, and oftentimes, they set that quantity to zero. In addition, White believes in making the world uniform. Differences cause individuals to dissent and dislike one another. Differences only allow for unrest. In sameness, there is fairness, and the way to consider a person justly is clearer. Examples: Wrath of God, Balance, Mirror Entity.
Peacemaking: White is a peacemaker, the first step of maintaining peace is to avoid combat. Peacemaking can be presented by prohibition in attacking/blocking, activated ability lockdown and converting hostility to peace. Examples: Pacifism, Recumbent Bliss, Arrest, Condemn, Swords to Plowshares.
Combat superiority: Ultimately, White wants to create peace. It has no interest in prolonging warfare and hates to kill even its enemies. As a result, White emphasizes the need for strong, effective methods to bring an engagement to a close - or at least bring the enemies offensives, and resistance, to an end. In addition to spells which banish or utterly destroy attackers or blockers, White has creatures with abilities representing skills (e.g., "archery") that allow White's team to break up stalemates, protect each other from the enemy, and in general, facilitate the end of the hostilities. Examples: Hail of Arrows, Ballista Squad, Loxodon Mystic.
Total defense: Above and beyond the degree to which White seeks options to expedite combat, it has every ability to stop attackers and other aggressors in their tracks. It will punish anything which causes - or even threatens to cause - pain. In this way, White magic sends a clear message, and it is that those who dare to inflict harm, will soon meet their maker. Examples: Chastise, Neck Snap, Reciprocate, Retaliate.

Blue is the color of intellect, reason, illusion, logic, knowledge, manipulation, and trickery, as well as the classical elements of air and water. Blue's cards are best at letting a player draw additional cards; permanently taking control of an opponent's cards; returning cards to their owner's hand; and countering spells, causing them to be discarded and the mana used to pay them wasted. Blue's creatures tend to be weaker than creatures of other colors, but commonly have abilities and traits which make them difficult to damage or block, particularly "Flying" and to a lesser extent "Shroud" or "Hexproof". Blue's weaknesses include having trouble permanently dealing with spells that have already been played, the reactive nature of most of its spells, and a small (and expensive) roster of creatures.
Flavor
Blue is the color that looks on the world and sees opportunity. For Blue, life is a chance to contemplate oneself, and what is possible, and to bring about the best of both. Implicitly, in that general world view, Blue believes in tabula rasa: it sees in each thing, the potential for being anything. One need only understand how, to make the change. So with this ill-formed goal before it, Blue reasons that if it is to make itself better, it must become capable of everything it could be capable of, for that is to "merely add" to its own capabilities. Blue believes it can't possibly be bad to acquire the potential for any conscious action. Thus, Blue, believing it is capable of changing anything if it understands the change, and believing it is imperative that it acquire every capability it could have, concludes that it is imperative that it understand change. Moreover, Blue decides that it must understand everything; for truly, understanding can only improve one's effectiveness in any task. To gain understanding, Blue must acquire knowledge. Since knowledge itself will inform every other decision, Blue forms its principle goal: omniscience, the knowledge of all.
Mechanics
Card drawing: Blue is the color of knowledge and research. As such, it is the best at expanding its mind, represented by unconditional drawing additional cards by minimum mana cost. This also comes about via card selection (i.e. the "looter" ability), which enables Blue to keep its ideas and plans relevant and up to date. Examples: Inspiration, Telling Time, Merfolk Looter.
Counterspells: Blue is disposed to deny or reverse its opponents' actions, rather than take actions of its own. Blue's logic empowers it to prevent others from taking actions it deems foolish. The use of "countermagic" reflects Blue's understanding of magic itself: dismantling opposing spells at their fundamental level. Examples: Cancel, Mana Leak.
Mimicry: Blue is the color of knowledge, where imitation of other cards can reflect its nature of desire to learn. Blue's mimicry effects are spell duplication and cloning. Examples: Twincast, Clone, Shape Stealer.
"Return to hand" ("Bounce") effects: Blue is the color most adept at manipulating time. The use of bounce effects net crucial tempo for Blue, slowing its opponents long enough for a permanent solution to be found. It is an element of Blue's technological aspect: changing the environment, in precise ways, to its advantage, such as by removing an attacker or blocker, or preserving one of its own permanents. Examples: Boomerang, Evacuation.
Tapping and untapping permanents: These effects come from Blue's tricky nature. The untapped status is necessary for certain actions, and for some of those, it is expended (the permanent becomes tapped). Due to this, Blue can slow or disrupt its opponent with tap effects, or untap its own permanents for extra and perhaps unexpected uses. Examples: Dehydration, Stasis, Twitch, Puppeteer.
Gain control ("Stealing") effects: Blue is a controlling color. It believes it knows best how to use others' resources. It is also very practical about combat, turning its knowledge of the mind toward controlling it. Examples: Persuasion, Take Possession, Annex.
Trickery tactics: Blue's tricky nature also reflected by various tactical skills, including library destruction (milling), power reduction and power/toughness switching. Examples: Traumatize, Meishin, the Mind Cage, Merfolk Thaumaturgist.
Combat trickery: Besides tactical skills, trickery attributes (unblockable) or combat abilities (flying, shroud, phasing) also mostly possess or grant by blue creatures and spells. Examples: Infiltrate, Jump, Spectral Cloak, Cloak of Invisibility.
Reality changing: Blue is the color of changing things at will. Reality changing can be reflected by changing text, color, creature and land type of the caster's choice. Examples: Mind Bend, Quickchange, Mistform Mask, Shimmering Mirage.

Black is the color of power, ambition, greed, death, illness, corruption, selfishness, amorality, and sacrifice; it is not necessarily evil, though many of its cards refer directly or indirectly to this concept. Black cards are best at destroying creatures, forcing players to discard cards from their hand, making players lose life, and returning creatures from the players' graveyards. Furthermore, because Black seeks to win at all costs, it has limited access to many abilities or effects that are normally available only to one of the other colors; but these abilities often require large sacrifices of life totals, creatures, cards in hand, cards in library, and other difficult-to-replace resources. Black is known for having creatures with the ability "Intimidate", making them difficult to block. Lesser black abilities include "Deathtouch" and "Regeneration". Black's main weaknesses are an almost complete inability to deal with enchantments and artifacts, its tendency to hurt itself almost as badly as it hurts the opponent, and difficulties in removing other Black creatures.
Flavor
Black is the color of self-indulgence, parasitism, amorality and unfettered desire for power. It believes that the world is made for its taking and that the weak exist to be exploited by the strong. The essence of Black is to see one's own ego[1] as so supremely invaluable, that the prospect of enslavement, of subordinating that ego to another, is utterly inadmissible. So, to be in accord with its perceptions and beliefs, Black simply must discard all obligations but to acquire power for itself. It can be no less than the one supreme being who is subordinate to no other, the possessor of all power in the universe - it must become omnipotent.
Mechanics
Creature destruction: Black is the color that most embraces death as a tool. It sees the ability to take a life as exerting the greatest power over others, and so will ruthlessly demonstrate this power against its enemies. Homicidal effects are exemplified by deadly spells, creatures have lethal activated abilities and deathtouch. Examples: Terror, Royal Assassin, Avatar of Woe, Dark Banishing, Giant Scorpion.
Weakness: Black is the color of disease and infection. Creatures get -X/-X results as weakening or even death. Additionally poison counters are bonus mechanic brings "poisoned" player closer to the losing condition. Weakening effects can be presented by plauge-like spells and creatures have infect. Examples: Weakness, Mutilate, Dark Banishing, Plague Stinger.
Discarding: Black is able and willing to cause mental trauma to others. As a result, black can cause its opponents to discard cards. Examples: Mind Rot, Hypnotic Specter.
Dark evasion: Black is a color that values secrecy and using evasion to circumvent opponents' creatures. Black creatures have several evasion ability like flying, shadow and fear. Examples: Abyssal Specter, Dauthi Slayer, Razortooth Rats, Intimidation.
Infernal benefits: Black-aligned tribes can gain benefits due to its dark nature. Regeneration is possessed by zombies, skeletons and other living dead. Lifelink is possessed by vampires, strengthening themselves through bloodsucking. Examples: Deepwood Ghoul, Drudge Skeletons, Child of Night.
Reanimating creatures: Black has no compassion for the dead, nor any moral inhibitions about exploiting them. As a result, black will force its creatures (or even those of its enemies) to serve it even from beyond the grave. Examples: Zombify, Animate Dead.
Sacrifice utilizing: Black will not turn down any opportunity to gain power, even if it comes at great personal risk. As a result, black will enter into agreements with powers other colors would never go near. This gives black access both to under-costed creatures and powerful effects such as card drawing, but they are balanced with dangerous drawbacks. Black not only sacrificing its own creatures and life for power, but also forcing opponents to sacrifice their resources. Examples: Dark Confidant, Lord of the Pit, Pox, Cruel Edict.
Parasitism: Black is parasitic in nature, growing through taking (draining life) from others. Its ability to siphon life from creatures and players is reflective of this. Examples: Drain Life, Soul Feast, Consume Spirit.

Red is the color of freedom, chaos, passion, creativity, impulse, fury, warfare, lightning, the classical element of fire, and the non-living geological aspects of the classical element earth. Red's strengths include destroying opposing lands and artifacts, sacrificing permanent resources for temporary but great power, and playing spells that deal "direct damage" to creatures or players, usually via applications of fire. Red has a wide array of creatures, but with the exception of extremely powerful dragons, most are fast and weak, or with low toughness, rendering them easier to destroy. Some of Red's cards can turn against or hurt their owner in return for being more powerful for their cost. Red also shares the trickery theme with Blue and can temporarily steal opponents' creatures or divert spells, although generally not permanently. Many of Red's most famous creatures have the "Haste" trait, which lets them attack and use many abilities earlier. The ability to raise a creature's power temporarily is also common among Red's creatures. Red's weaknesses include its inability to destroy enchantments, the self-destructive nature of many of its spells, and the way in which it trades early-game speed at the cost of late-game staying power. Red also has the vast majority of cards that involve random chance.
Flavor
Above all else, red values freedom of expression. It wants to do what it wants, when it wants, to whom it wants, and nobody can tell it otherwise. It believes that life would be much more fun if everyone stopped caring about rules, laws and personal appearances and just spent their time indulging their desires. This leads into red's other core value: chaos. Red sees order of any kind as pointlessly inhibiting, believing that only through embracing anarchy could everyone really be free to enjoy life to the fullest. Finally, red is the color of immediate action and immediate gratification. If it wants something it will act on its impulses and take it, regardless of the consequences.
Mechanics
Direct damage (Burn): Red favors direct action. It doesn't waste time looking for ways 'around' a problem - it blasts a path clean through. When the obstacle is a physical thing, Red employs this solution literally, throwing fire, rocks, or anything else at the problem until it goes away. Examples: Shock, Pyroclasm, Char, Fireball, Barbed Lightning.
Artifact and land destruction: Red's use of destruction goes to a deep philosophical origin, although it is frequently explained as unthinking glee. Briefly put, order arises from tradition, which occurs when some things are constant or expected. Chaos is the counter to order because chaos is change - unsettling change. When everything is changing, people are free, because there is no tie to "the way things were." Since Red wants freedom, it uses chaos. Destruction is clearly a force of chaos; it changes the world by removing something from it. Additionally, since Red is in every other respect a short-term thinker, the disruption effect of destroying your opponent's resources before they are used can be quite valuable. Examples: Shattering Spree, Manic Vandal, Volcanic Awakening.
Aggressive creatures: Red is capable of mounting a quick offensive, hoping to blitz its opponents before they have a chance to react. Unlike White, Red's creatures are focused almost entirely on the attack; little to no thought is given to blocking or endurance. Red creatures can be fast, at the cost of consistency, long term resources, or harm to the controller. Examples: Ball Lightning, Jackal Pup, Goblin Cohort.
Martial superiority: Red is the color of action, red creatures possess several aggressive fighting abilities which shows speed (first strike, double strike), prowess (flanking), aggression (haste), overwhelming (trample), blind rage (rampage) and power enhancing (firebreathing). Examples: Anaba Bodyguard, Ridgeline Raptor, Agility, Fervor, Sunrise Sovereign, Ærathi Berserker, Fatal Frenzy.
Gambits and short-term mana acceleration: Red wants to act on its desires without delay, whatever the cost. As such, its magic can give itself sudden, potent, but short-lived boosts of energy, or create high-risk-high-reward effects. This enables Red to do powerful things quickly and easily, though they carry the risk that, if the opponent recovers, Red's resources will "burn out." Examples: Fiery Gambit, Final Fortune, Seething Song, Desperate Ritual.
Randomness: Red is the color of chaos, it can hurt itself and others randomly. Randomness spells can be reflected through coin flips and random card discard. Examples: Tide of War, Mana Clash, Barbarian Bully, Gamble.
Trickery: Red is the color of pranksters; Red enjoys playing tricks on its enemies and changing the effects of their magic. Blue interferes with magic also, but it specifically controls the magic for its own long-term profit. Red is concerned more with taking control away from its enemies - forcing them to deal with the unexpected. Sometimes Red can dictate the new effect, sometimes it is random. Such trickery includes temporarily gaining control of permanents, preventing creatures from blocking ("Panic"), and changing the targets of spells, though some cards in this category are truly unique. Examples: Threaten, Stun, Reroute, Confusion in the Ranks.

Green is the color of life, nature, reality, evolution/adaptability, ecology, interdependence, instinct, and indulgence. Green's strengths are on the battlefield, usually winning through combat with creatures, of which it has a broad menagerie. These tend to be strong for their cost and have abilities that make them more survivable like Regenerate and Hexproof. Green creatures also often have "Trample", an ability which allows them to deal attack damage to an opponent if blocked by a weaker creature. Many Green spells bolster its creatures' potency, both permanently and temporarily. Green spells often focus on growth, such as regaining life points and getting lands faster, thus allowing the player more resources and the capacity to get strong creatures on the battlefield faster. Green's weakness is an inability to defend against indirect attacks. It has few cards that allow it to counter attacks against the hand, library, or graveyard; Green also has few defenses against creatures that bypass its own powerful creatures when attacking, via abilities like Flying, Landwalk, or Intimidate.
Flavor
Green is the color of nature, growth, interdependence and instinct. It believes that obedience the natural order alone is the best way to exist and thus favors a simplistic way of living in harmony with the rest of the world. This can often lead to it be perceived as a pacifistic color, as it does not seek to make conflict with the other colors as long as they leave it alone and do not disrespect nature. However, it is fierce when it feels threatened and can be predatory and aggressive if its instincts dictate.
Mechanics
Powerful creatures: As the color of nature and growth, green is able to field mighty creatures with ease. Although other colors have access to cheap creatures or strong creatures, Green alone has access to efficiently-costed creatures at any cost. Examples: Elvish Warrior, Leatherback Baloth, Verdant Force.
Token creatures: Tying in with green's creature focus and emphasis on growth is its ability to generate large numbers of token creatures. In green, these effects are often repeatable and represent an ever-expanding community of creatures. Examples: Thallid, Centaur Glade.
"Pump" effects: Green's philosophies of growth and strength both mean it can boost the power and toughness of its creatures, making them more effective in combat. These boosts can either be temporary, through instants and sorceries, or permanent through enchantments and +1/+1 counters. Green also has creatures can provide temporary boost to another creature or gain temporary boost when blocking. Examples: Giant Growth, Thrive, Briarhorn, Giant Badger.
Instinct attack: Green relies on instinct, which reflecting on the tactics of combating. Excess damage to creatures and its controller results as trample and even extreme as super trample. Luring is a passive ability to force opposing creatures to block, making smaller creatures to be killed by the larger creatures. Examples: Endless Wurm, Rhox, Lure, Elvish Bard, Hunt Down.
Natural evasion: Green creates its own way to achieve evasion to prevent damage from the other colors. Ability to be "uncounterable" and "untargetable" (reflected by shroud and ultimately hexproof) by spells or abilities. Unique "anti-flying" tactics including deal damage/destroy creatures with flying, removal of flying ability, punishing opponent for having flying creatures and keyword abilty reach. Examples: Argothian Enchantress, Plated Slagwurm, Hurricane, Canopy Claws, Wing Storm, Giant Spider.
Natural blessing: Green-aligned tribes can gain benefits from the nature. Regeneration is a protective ability for survival. On the other hand, offensive abilities as lethal damage from nature like deathtouch, "venom" ability and using poison counters. Examples: Gorilla Chieftain, Acidic Slime, Venom, Thicket Basilisk, Marsh Viper
Permanent mana acceleration: Green's focus on growth enables it to permanently expand its mana base, varying from creatures that produce mana, enchantments that generate additional mana, land tutors and putting additional lands into play. Examples: Llanowar Elves, Overgrowth, Sylvan Ranger, Exploration.
Mana fixing: Green's community aspect means it is the best color at creating other colors of mana, either through being able to search for other lands or through changing one color of mana into another. Examples: Birds of Paradise, Farseek, Orochi Leafcaller.
Artifact and enchantment destruction: Green hates illusions and the artificial, seeing them as perversions of the natural world. Thus, green actively works to destroy such things. Examples: Naturalize, Viridian Shaman.

The colors adjacent to each other on the pentagon are "allied" and often have similar, complementary abilities. For example, Blue has a relatively large number of flying creatures, as do White and Black, which are next to it. The two non-adjacent colors to a particular color are "enemy" colors, and are thematically opposed. For instance, Red tends to be very aggressive, while White and Blue are often more defensive in nature. The Research and Development (R&D) team at Wizards of the Coast aims to balance power and abilities among the five colors by using the "Color Pie" to differentiate the strengths and weaknesses of each. This guideline lays out the capabilities, themes, and mechanics of each color and allows for every color to have its own distinct attributes and gameplay. The Color Pie is used to ensure new cards are thematically in the correct color and do not infringe on the territory of other colors.
Multi-color cards were introduced in the Legends set and typically use a gold frame to distinguish them from mono-color cards. These cards require mana from two or more different colors to be played and count as belonging to each of the colors used to play them. Multi-color cards typically combine the philosophy and mechanics of all the colors used in the spell's cost, and tend to be proportionally more powerful compared to single-color or hybrid cards, as requiring multiple colors of mana makes them harder to cast. More recently, two-color "hybrid" cards were introduced in the Ravnica set, and appeared extensively throughout the Shadowmoor and Eventide sets. Hybrid cards are distinguished by a gradient frame with those two colors, and can be paid with either of the card's colors; for instance, a card with two hybrid-red/white icons can be cast using two red mana, two white mana, or one of each.
Colorless cards belong to no color, and most often appear in the form of Lands and Artifacts. Unlike the five colors, Colorless cards do not have a specific personality or style of play. Sometimes, colorless cards will imitate the mechanics of a particular color, though in a less-efficient manner than a similar colored card. Often colorless cards are linked to one or more colors via their abilities, through story references, or through flavor text on the cards themselves. With the Rise of the Eldrazi expansion, however, colorless cards that are neither artifacts nor lands have been introduced for the first time in larger quantities.

**tyco** Sam 26 Ian 2013, 12:53

Interesant subiectul. Pana acuma ziceam ca vreau deck rosu de foc, insa sincer nu e stilul meu de joc. Imi placea deck-ul negru cu albastru, merge pe stilul meu. Asa jucam si in yu-gi-oh. Multe magii ce ma lasa sa prelucrez deck-ul, sau dau damage direct la oponent sau readuc la viata ceva din graveyard sau ma scap de un monstru inamic, cativa monstrii slabio, da nu multi si cativa monstrii tari.
Pe scurt strategia mea ar fi cu putini monstrii,da tari, si cu abilitatile de a ii readuce prin magie, Un deck bazat pe spell-uri instante,artefacte, etc.
Cam ce tip de deck recomandati pentru asa ceva?
Toate cele bune!

**daniel M** Sam 26 Ian 2013, 14:13

Cam fiecare deck are vraji sau abilitati din cele pe care le-ai amintit, atat ca unele se bazeaza mai mult sau mai putin pe tipul ala. Deck-ul rosu abunda in vraji care fac damage direct la adversar sau la creaturi, deck-ul verde are cam cele mai puternice creaturi, cel albastru se bazeaza pe manipularea adversarului, multe spelluri care ii contreaza actiunile. Despre cel alb nu pot spune prea multe pentru ca nu am unul majoritar alb, insa are multi oameni,ingeri si enchantmenturi care imbunatatesc creaturile.
De recomandat, as recomanda ceva intre negru(creaturi care fac mult deranj si vraji directe),rosu(multe instanturi care fac damage direct la adversar sau creatura) sau verde(creaturi puternice).

Continut sponsorizat

Colors of Magic

Colors of Magic

Re: Colors of Magic

Re: Colors of Magic

Re: Colors of Magic