If you had to remove a color from Magic, which would you choose, and why?

>Targeted Removal
Already in white and red
>Discard
Red, or blue for psychic flavor.

I would argue that black's flavor isn't super necessary, given we've had sets like Shadowmoor, New Phyrexia, and Eldritch Moon where every color feels black.

G makes a way better earth element than B does.

Removing black also removes the obvious bad guy colour over to blue

So which colors get what user?
So if red gets targeted removal, can burn only hit players? Having bolt And red doom blade seems slightly redundant.
Interesting to scrap discard, I've always considered it a fairly balanced action

What about simple discard and targeted discard for blue (mind fight) and random discard to red (shock and confusion)?

Blue.

Because of flavor, or because of mechanics? Because greens flavor is the earth color, but red could just as easily get land ramp via volcanic upheavals and magma flow. Blue could have it restricted to islands flavored as flooding, or temporary boosts a la high tide. White can have nomads discovering new plains. So basically, why have green be the land searching color when flavor is easy enough to justify for each color searching up its own lands?

Targeted removal can go into white. Since red has burn that is good at dealing with little creatures, give white more ways to deal with creatures restricted to having high power/toughness/CMC. Also solidifies white as the weenie color, by giving it ways to force everyone down to its level.

Seems fine.

I like the flavor justification for targeted discard in blue, but having counters in the same color as discard seemsechanically unsound, I don't like the idea if giving one color the means of universal 1 for 1 rival across two zones.
I like your justifications for white targeted removal, since it already often comes with qualifiers I'm not seeing a huge problem to tweaking those qualifiers to care about "bigness" and letting red be the versatile little guy remover.

Well removing a colour is bound to bring mechanical issue I suppose.

>So red gets counterspells, bounce, high density of flyers, deck manipulation, and burn? Seems a bit imbalanced no?
But the genius of it is that you can't use everything at once. The added mechanics won't have any effect on RDW.

Brown
fuck colorless

Of course, and this thread is really meant as more of a thought exercise with regards to the system than to create a coherent whole on its own anyways. Personally I'd like to see blues stack interaction spread out across the colors in general.

Remove Red. It is the most shallow of the colors and all of its mechanics basically already exist in at least one of the other 4.

Blue.

Because the other player in a Blue vs anyone match should be allowed to have fun too.

As is, blue is the color that is best at the Meta game. Best card draw, deck manipulation and counterspelling.

All those mechanics get shared by the other colors, with a twist to fit that color. Like altar's reap it sign in blood.

What if all colors had access to counterspells and discard, but only with regards to the card types they typically interact with? For example, black can counter creature spells, green can make you discard artifacts/enchantments and so on

White's top-tier hate for certain threats would be moved to more relevant colors. Enchantment hate I could stand going to Blue so they have hard removal for at least 1 type of thing. Green gets graveyard hate, and Red and Black gets more variety in how they can murder creatures.

Enchantment style defensive play can,be moved to Blue, as it's the color of spells and illusions. Green can get the ones moee focused on protection, while Red can pick up some Anthems. Red can get White's more efficient weenies, so it can get a 2/1 for R more readily.

Direct lifegain becomes Green's major thing, and Red also gets White's Planeswalker support it has been getting lately.

This might expand some toolboxes drastically, though Blue being able,to get some harder removal means it's less reliant on counterspells for everything, so those can be more expensive without making the color garbage.

Blue. Rather than having one control color, split it up into the other four so all of them have some control aspects.

Remove Druid, give ramp to Warrior

Blue. Not even a question.

Pretty sure ponder/preordain/visions would see play in burn, but sure on the rest. Sligh and tempo would be nightmares with all those effects though.
Interesting, but why? As it stands artifacts are the stopgap measure that allow mono colored decks to have access to effects outside their slice of the pie.
But who gets burn user?
But what specifically goes where, blue-hating anons?
I can see blue getting to be the enchantment -hating- color, but it being both the artifact and the enchantment color seems stronk. And why do you differentiate between "defensive" enchantment playstyles for blue and "protection" enchantments for green?

I suppose by Defensive I mean in the sense of things more based around toughness anthems or effects that tax or punish opponents from attacking you. In terms of protection, I refer to things that more penalize spells being cast on your creatures or let them resist getting removed. Black could also get a portion of tax effects that are more based around punishing your opponent even if they leave you alone, and more general tax effects.

In regards to which color is the new enchantment color, i think you're right that giving it to Blue would essentially make it dominate in terms of all noncreature spells. I think Black would be the only candidate without a predefined type though, which I think actually works better. Black does enjoy tyranny and curses, and it also leads to a dynamic where Green likes creatures but isn't the best at removing them, just like Blue with artifacts, Red with Instants/Sorceries, and now Black with Enchantments.

I'm not a blue-hating person, blue is probably one of my favorite colors. Unfortunately, the way it's designed nowadays, it probably makes the least sense of the colors.

>Counters would be spread over to white and black
>Unsummon/bounce would be moved to red because of the tempo aspect
>Artifact love could get moved to red and white
>Card drawing should be spread out over all the colors anyway. Doesn't make sense to have just one color for efficient card draw
>Huge creatures/sea monsters easily moved over to green and/or black

Green. Its identity is weak and boring. 'Big creatures' is just really boring and non-interactive. Enchantment and artifact hate are both also in other colors. Green has some token creation but it's mainly in white anyway.

Elves can move to white. Enchantment matters stuff can move to white. Most combat tricks and fight can move to red. Big creatures should just be distributed among red and black. Flyer hate could move to red as well I guess. Not sure where to put ramp, there's no color it really fits very well. Maybe blue but that sounds a bit cancerous.

I think Black could be a good place for Ramp. They seem to get it a lot compared to Green, and having more mana to spend isn't quite as outrageous when all your best cards cost life or creatures to use anyway. Plus Land-searching works well with Black's love of swamps and tutoring.

I think another color could snag the color-fixing aspects of Green's mana making though.

>Interesting, but why? As it stands artifacts are the stopgap measure that allow mono colored decks to have access to effects outside their slice of the pie.

eldrazi destroyed the meta

Flavor-wise? Black or white. I really hate the idea of a "good" and "bad" color. The other three feel like more neutral parties.

Well, Blue, Green, and Red are the most 'elemental' of the three colors. Blue is Water and Air, Red is Fire and Lightning, Green is Wood and Earth. There is a bit of overlap here and there, but they have basically all of them covered.

Of note, they also cover the span of time. Green cares about tradition and the past, Red cares about impulses and the present, and Blue cares about progress and the future.

Both of these add up to why the Temur from Tarkir are so cool.

>dump RED
No blocking, ground hate, -> black
Pinging, exile spells, damage -> blue
Haste, aggression, fire breathing -> green
Just change it so that green hits artifacts Nd white hits enchantments more.

>dump BLACK
Graveyard, necromancy/regen -> green
Kill spells, ambition, draw-for-life -> red
Discard, mass removal -> blue
White's fine. Maybe add more drain effects to "Deal damage to attacking creature" cards in the Plane Shifted/New Phyrexia style.

brown refers to artifacts, in reference to the old card frames. you weren't >implying colorless is a color, were you? :^)

>Forests and plant life broke up along plains, mountains, swamps (wet forests), and island plants.

I've kind of wanted to see colorless as its own color. Not artifacts, and not Eldrazi. A set that had a fully implemented "sixth" color as Colorless could be cool if they found new things for it to do other than just be shittier versions of shock and counterspell, or Titans.

Eh, the problem with any sort of sixth color is that there isn't a lot of design space for it. I'd argue they already did as much as they could in that regard with the Exile themes Eldrazi had going on.

Green.

Fuck Green.

Remove Green
>land search moved to white and blue, limited to plains and islands respectively (nomads/sailors exploring)
>blue gets heartbeat of spring effects limited to islands and land untaps on creatures
>red has rituals, and can sac permanents for mana
>black gets rituals and can sac creatures for mana

>big creatures at lower rarities moved to black and red
>flying hate moved to blue and red
>artifact destruct for red
>enchantment removal for white (no more artifact hate)
>black gets greens enchantments and regrowth effects

Ofc most of you babies want blue gone. Why is tg so shit at mtg?

Never they realized they are basically elements. So the color pie is an elemental rock-paper-scissors mashed with a good vs evil ying-yang thing? Never noticed.

Only aesthetically.

either blue
why? so it's haters will stop whining

or red
why? so it's players would stop whining.

>white and blue get nomad/sea exploration.
I like this. Black should get a reprint of Rampant Growth and the other basic land searched, but with a cost. Discarding a card or playing life. Also, just a functional reprint of Harrow. Sac for more is really black.
>no more artifact removal in white
I feel like they should do this with either green or white anyway.

I kind of agree, but think it might play out different if the whole "color" had a traditional curve like other colors. Bleeding some mechanics like enchantment removal or phasing. Protection from colored spells and/or "counter anything targeting this unless 1 is paid" kind of effects.
>start rant
They have the fucking colorless symbol there now. I want to see what could be done with it other than 8/8s. Hybrid mana got an entire plane, got mixed into Alara costs, and reprised in Ravnica. Would you rather get another cartouche/gate mechanic and another shittier Hero's Downfall, or see a team flex the color pie and possibly give us something as good as Time Spiral.
>end rant

I'd kill to see this happen just so I could come to Veeky Forums and read all the "Why is white so overpowered" and "Why does Wizards hate attacks now" threads.

Reminds me of this.

I think the rival pair translated as
blue v red = water v fire
red v white = chaos v order
white v black = good v evil
black v green = death v life
green v blue = natural v unnatural

I made an elemental chart like this in high school. Fire across from water. Earth from air. Lightning from flora. "Balance" was in the center and light and dark kinda flirted with fire and water.

Black.

Thematically it is just kinda being self interested at best and a complete monster at worst, meaning that we haven't been able to move black out of being just the token evil color. Furthermore the themes of great sacrifice for your own interests are already represented in White, Blue, and Red very heavily, and the idea of lacking empathy or concern for things outside your own interests are literally part of every color. Like the fundemental difference between other colors and black doesn't really exist which is why for example Zombies are starting to enter blue and Demons red. Lore wise almost every faction splashed with black expresses their black nature by just being assholes. The Orzhov syndicate basically could be thematically identical even if it was mono white for example. Off the top of my head the only faction I can recall that was seriously colored by splashing into black that didn't get colored in such a way by just being lol evil which every other color is capable of anyway was Dimir because their Black aspects were melded with their blue so well it was hard to really seperate them out, you couldn't imagine monoblue OR monoblack acting like how Dimir did.

Mechanically it is cohesive, but thematically black hasn't move out of being this shit tier "evil' color. We need a set which really plays up the "good" aspects of black by having the primary black faction of the set be people willing to go to the line for their cause, rather than having pretty much every black faction just be "lol we are dickasses." The idea of mono-black creatures that are, if not unambiguously goodguys, aren't demons, lemurs, unread, or apologetically evil people is one that needs to be explored, maybe with a new keyword revolving around their willingness to die for what they believe in, a sort of "Likes to be sacrificed" effect.

This thread reminds me of that Community episode that shows 7 different timelines, with each one different depending who leaves to get the pizza. I like to imagine 5 Planeswalkers playing a game, and when each one leaves to grab the pizza, the color pie breaks apart and everything goes into chaos.

I get what you mean. I think thus far the And an were the closest we had to a good-aligned Black faction, and that was counterbalanced with its two enemy colors, and the extent of their Black coloring was being mercantile, using necromancy, and having a lot of pride and prestige associated with family names.

*Abzan

I would have to reimagine the colors completely. I would go with the Earth, Moon, and Sun. Earth would be mostly green, a lot of red, and some black. It's about materialism and the self, graveyard shenanigans, good creatures, the best spells that deal with empowering your own board state.

Sun is about the energies of change. Board wipes, Lord creatures, direct damage/removal, combat tricks, the beats spells for changing the board in general.

The Moon is about the mind, and potential. Deals with the contents of the hands of all players, fixing, tutoring, Mana ramp, counterspells, bounce, restarts, events that deal mostly with what's not on the board.

I've been thinking of a plane where red was the weakest color, and before an oldwalker terraformed the plan to include more red for his own goals, the factions formed and thousands of years later don't include red. BW, BG, and BU respectively are the merchants, builders, and record keepers, and involves ruthless social tactics more than bloodshed and sacrifice. Tricking someone out of money or land for profit, making sure your historical records are as accurate as possible by stealing the witness's memories, keeping someone around Orzhov-style after death so they can pay off their debt and move on.

I think writers forget that ambition and survival can sit on a smaller scale than vampirism and feeding off others because an accountant or thug stealing to feed his family doesn't play as interesting in web shorts than demons and zombies and mana vampires do.

Its more than that though.

Every other color already contains overtones of being selfish. White is their way or the highway, red is shortsighted, and blue is just an all encompassing hunger that makes you ignore your better judgement.

Black isn't "Special" in being able to enable bad behaviors, but the problem is the only thing noteworthy about it is bad behavior.

Your plane isn't unique, not all black factions in MTG are grand necromancers, many of the black ones in Ravnica weren't, with one literally being black because it levied tariffs and taxes on merchants.

But the mana wheel is interesting because it is clear why ever mana symbol needs to exist BESIDES black. Sure, it NOMINALLY contains ambition, but that is clearly bogus because Red, White, and Blue clearly are more motivated colors than even black. Black just sits there and has about as much depth as a Captain Planet villain because it doesn't really... bring anything to the table.

There are totally stand up monocolor people in every faction EXCEPT black. There is no representation of a driven martyr in black, because that is explicitly white. No one driven to destroy a system that hurts everyone, because that is red. No one has ambition for real personal growth and power because that is already more in blue's wheelhouse than black.

Black is just stereotypical villainy for villainy's sake. It is a dark side in a setting where there are 4 other power sources just as strong as the dark side, and the dark side as a concept doesn't work if it isn't offering even the perception of a gain, so it really doesn't make sense for anyone to be aligned to black anyway.

Yeah, as far as representation in cards goes, Black's Amorality, willingness to kill, and generally paying more for more power doesnt really come across. The last one really only comes across in extra costd like life loss or saving, and Red does that just fine. In terms of using magic to kill people easily, imagine what the average Blue bounce spell does when someone doesnt have a Planeswalker waiting to summon them back.

While Blue does focus more on things like knowledge or progress over raw power, the two go hand in hand in a lot of ways. About the only unique motive Black really has going for it is Greed, and even that's rather tame.

I feel like Black especially needs more to put it at odds with Green. Both are all about power and survival of the fittest. Black just tries to cheat a bit more and applies it to civilization as well.

>Black just tries to cheat a bit more and applies it to civilization as well.
I'd argue it was more that green is survival of the fittest in the naturalist sense, and black is that in the "I burned my enemies' crops so they'll die and we won't." Animals don't burn homes or sow salt or exploit economics. "Cheating" requires a system and rules, where animals don't have those things.

>with one literally being black because it levied tariffs and taxes on merchants
I mentioned them already, and I'd like Magic to explore more themes like this instead of all black characters being cartoons.

>Black isn't "Special" in being able to enable bad behaviors, but the problem is the only thing noteworthy about it is bad behavior.
Yeah
>Black just sits there and has about as much depth as a Captain Planet villain because it doesn't really... bring anything to the table.
True
>Black is just stereotypical villainy for villainy's sake.
Mostly true.

But yeah you're right.
Pure black is as cartoony as the other colors, and only "makes sense" as a fantasy. The vampire driven to consume. The angel that is magically bound to act (white). The force of nature. People and well written characters have depth. That's why Wizards insists Urza is "all five colors" because he's got the most depth of any Magic character. Real people don't lack a "color" unless you took a part of their brain out, or they had a disorder. They balance ambition, devotion, passion, curiosity, and everything else, with certain aspects being more pronounced.

Can I use this to post my dream set?

>dominaria set
>uses watermarks
>each mark represents a different timelines
>each timeline is dominaria without one of the five mana colors

Would make for some interesting stories. Want to see the creative team get pushed to their limits with world building. Also would make for some cool looks at color theory.

Blue. Shroud effects and one-sided counters go to Green, general counters and lockdown go to White, artifact interaction goes to Red and draw power + control effects go to Black.

t. UG player

>Animals don't burn homes or sow salt or exploit economics.

You'd be surprised

>"Cheating" requires a system and rules

Rules or nature, as it were. Green definitely does have a preference for a 'fair fight' of sorts, which is why its removal is creature based or hates on flying.

Plus, Black isn't always proactive or focused on society in that regard. Take the Black aspects of Jund, which mostly boil down to scavengers and ambush predators. They get their meals in a more selfish and opportunistic way that risks themselves less, but it's still very natural behavior.

There's a reason both colors have Deathtouch. Because venom is a viable method of strength and power to both.

Bounce to white or red?

Bounce is obviously red.

red vs blue is logic vs passion

They're already pushed to their limit.
Multiple worlds a year plus writing the stories plus not really increasing the size of the creative staff is why post-Tarkir has been the way it's been.

>Blue
fuck you and your counter, countering, counters bullshitery.

milling can also get fucked

>milling can also get fucked

Where did mill touch you user?

Black.

Discard goes to Red.

Green gains access to all of blacks suicidal creatures (green should always have the best creatures but has been a dog to black and colorless for years.)

The pain-draws are blue, and sacrifices and life drain effects are white.

>t. buttblasted by a fucking Timmy

>Discard goes to Red
>The pain-draws are blue
I'd switch those since blue already draws cards, but I see what you're going for.

Blue by far. It has the most easy access to card advantage AND counterspell, two extremely potent mechanics of the game.

It's been a completely broken color since the beginning, and even more than 20 years later the damage is still there in every format outside of standard.

green into red; both are ctually nature themed

Blue needs to go.
But instead of one color getting all of the remains, let's be somewhat fair about it.
White gets powerful card draw, propaganda effects, alternate costs for big things (dream halls, Show and Tell) and more mana tithe effects
Red gets bounce and shit-ass overpowered fatties with drawbacks that aren't drawbacks, Flash (and Snappy), unblockable and some more fliers
Black gets Mill and mutation-themed destruction, as well as hard counterspells, though at a life cost
Green gets uncounterable/shroud/hexproof and freeze effects

Blue.
All the others.

If control is so damn interesting to play, let everyone get in on that shit.

Maybe a supplemental set. I think MaRo likes the ideas in Planer Chaos, but it doesn't work well in standard.

Probably Green. Since you can role everything it does into either Red or White respectively.

Mechanically green as it's uninteresting. and the neatest things you can do with it seem to be "Cast creatures a different way."
(The elf tribe is an exception, but it's not enough to hold a whole color up.)

Flavor? Red. All the good attributes in red (Passion love etc) are all very white things, and all the war like or harmful attributes are all black.

Red could take big creatures, because red is aggressive. White would take ramp, because it's thematically about life. Flyer hate would go to black, being removal. Graveyard shenanigans would obviously just go to black. All the crazy green draw would go to blue.

I like it. Light/dark and passionate/contemplative.