White: I summon 5 Human Soldiers and gain 10 life. Red: Fireball! Black: Oh, you had a powerful creature that could win you the game? It's dead now lmao- Green: Hey, remember that weak Wolf? It's now a 10/10 with Trample. Also, here's 5 Elves. Get fucked- Blue: Who said you could play?
@@smoker6683 I remove all blue control/tempo decks from my play ground. If you want to ruin the game for everyone, go do it elsewhere. Edit: thank you for validating my disdain of blue players. You hit all the check marks of being an annoyance.
@@jml6263 and that's the big thing, blue players are aware of it. Green players on the other hand, seem to be completely unaware of the torment they inflict on others. Stop blowing up my robots! Leave my graveyard alone! Get that gigantic monstrosity that's been squishing all my creatures out of here!
I feel it necessary to point how just *how* red draws cards: Rather than the standard card draw, red gets what we call *impulse draw* - The ability to exile the top few cards of your library, and let you play those cards until a specific time limit is reached, usually the end of either this turn or your next turn.
While this is one of the main ways for red to draw, it also has a lot of what I'd call card replacement, where it gets to draw cards, but with a discard cost attached, like wheel effects and Faithless Looting, for example.
That and gambling with big draws, that involve discarding your entire hand to draw a new hand, or using tutors like gamble to search for a card, but the huge downside of having to discard a card at random from your hand.
@@MagicalEmma6 Yes, but in terms of the term card draw, people generally refer to getting card advantage. I neglected to mention loot and rummage effects as those are generally either card neutral or are actually card disadvantage.
Impulse Draw isn't a new mechanic in itself, but it has become part of red's identity fairly recently. A few years ago, red's draw power mainly focused on looting (draw then discard) or rummaging (discard then draw). The first impulse draw card was Prophetic Flamespeaker in the Theros block, then M15 brought Act on Impulse. The most known of the older ones is the third: Chandra, Torch of Defiance. There were only 5 more of those until Eldraine. There are about 80-100 now, meaning the vast majority of the mechanic was added to the pie in the last 2-3 years. Also, most of the older ones only let you play the cards the same turn they get exiled.
@@MrZerodaim Actually, the first impulse draw card I could find was in Visions: Three Wishes exiled the top three cards of your library, and you could play them until your next turn. It was actually a blue spell. But you are correct in that Prophetic Flamespeaker is the first *red* impulse draw card, and impulse draw has since remained firmly in red, with only one or two exceptions.
A quick note on the names of the color pairs: Those names are not arbitrary. There was a block for Ravnica: City of guilds, and Ravnica had ten guilds associated with each color pair. That's where the naming conventions came from. You'll also run into names for color trios on occasion, though those are less common due to slightly worse mana-fixing available for tri-color decks. Those take their names from the Shards of Alara and the clans of Tarkir.
@@nowaynowaynottoday those aren't likely to take off in terms of naming conventions for players. None are as "snappy" as the shorter, more elegant Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, and Naya
@@nowaynowaynottoday MtG tends to name things after the first thing to do it. The gangs are unlikely to supplant the shards for the same reason any of the groups in 2 color sets like the colleges in Strixhaven haven't replaced the guilds.
Long before the "formal" color pie (even dating back to the 1990's), I always used to love the color rivalries that I always perceived as: Red (war) vs. White (peace) White (good) vs. Black (evil) Black (death) vs. Green (life) Green (body) vs. Blue (mind) Blue (water) vs. Red (fire) These are gross oversimplifications, of course. But even before this was made more explicit, I loved those contrasts and their symbolisms.
@@nurikhsanfikriawan9662 they literally have cards called "Sword of Fire and Ice" and "Sword of Body and Mind" that give protection from the respective colors and effects related to them.
9:03 Red is NOT the color of hate. It is the color of anger. Black is the color of hate. Literally the cards called "Anger" and "Hatred" are red and black cards respectively.
I don't think any color is "the" color of hate because hate exist only if you hate "something" and each color has something it hates (white with chaos, blue with imperfection, etc). But I would argue red is closest to pure "hatred" simply because it hates anything that confines them (which is almost everything that has to do with society) whereas black is mostly indifferent as long as it doesn't matter to their calculated goals. But yea, I think "instinct" is probably a better characterization
@@magicalgirlanime and @Zack Z I think there's room for hate in both Red and Black. There are valid arguments for either. We shouldn't be surprised anyway since Black and Red are good buddies. Think of it this way: You can say hate is in Red in the sense of, "They're pissing me off!" It's the emotion. Hate is in Black in the sense of, "I want them to suffer and die!" This is hate as malice.
I think the defining weakness of red is that it has no way to play around enemy removal and board wipes. Red creatures are almost never hexproof or indestructible, and almost never have some sort of "sticky" effect. If your creature gets targeted with a murder, every color besides red has instants that can counteract that. Red has to bounce back from its hand.
Red's approach where others find way to not die is sort of "why fight the inevitable, when you can go out in a blaze of glory." (Often also an actual blaze to accompany that)
I think a better way to describe the color pie is not WHAT colors do, but HOW colors do stuff. Such as, blue just straight up draws cards, black usually trades life for card draw, green does creature-reliant card draw, red does impulse draws, looting, and rummaging, and white does almost no card draw. The same can be said for removal; green has fight spells, red has burn, black has destroy effects, white has o-ring and exiling, and blue has bouncing. The current way the color pie is set up, its less about what the colors can and cant do, but rather how they go about playing a whole game.
I feel like an underrepresented color...is colorless. There's a LOT of stuff that colorless mana cards can do or be used for, heck, they even have their own lore and characters!
Typically colorless cards just have access to a small selection of abilities that other colors have natively, but do their effect at a dramatically increased cost. For example, Utter End verses Introduction to Annihilation. The later costs 1 extra mana, is demoted from instant to sorcery speed, and gives the controller of the exiled permanent a card, making it significantly worse than its colored counterpart.
Given that Mark Rosewater (Magic's lead designer) has cards based on himself, the "Maro" cards, which every single one has ever been green... it's pretty obvious he has a favorite color. And it shows as well. Green is clearly WotC's "golden child" based on how many times green is better than other colors at doing what they do. Retrieve resources from grave like black and white can? Basically anything you want (Regrowth-style effects) instead of only creatures, and usually for less mana, though it does go to hand instead of to board. Killing creatures like black and red? They just have bigger creatures, and thus cards that force-fight or even outright just damage based on their biggest creature are straight-up removal. Gaining life? Usually, green's as good at it as white is, if not better. As for the most important one... drawing cards? White doesn't even get card draw, and blue has to actually pay mana for their draw. Red and black have to pay resources to draw. Green just... draws cards on triggers by playing cards. Cast a creature spell? Draw. Have creatures enter the battlefield? Draw. These issues only get compounded even further if green is combined with other colors, which led to issues like Oko, Omnath, Once Upon a Time, and basically half the other cards banned in Standard in the last couple years all being green, or used in a deck where the secondary color was green. And that's ignoring incredibly frustrating cards that SHOULD have been banned but never were, such as Hydroid Krasis and The Great Henge. Green is just... the color allowed to do almost anything except outright counter spells, and the blatant favoritism is painful to see.
@@zexionfan15 you sound bitter lol. But I agree. Even if blue and black are historically the best color combo. And green DOES get some stark few counter spells, like avoid fate.
Lol. Sh÷+s so funny. Let's have Red destroy an enchantment or 2. Can we have Blue deal straight damage with telekinesis? Artifacts that have a structural damage defense. What ya think?
Great video for new players, I think you gave a good overview to get people started. Quick note, rituals are named rituals because of dark ritual, which is black. Black doesn't get as much of it anymore, but in the past they had the first few rituals with dark ritual, cabal ritual, and culling the weak.
I think something this is missing is that the color pairs also have "opposite" interpretations to what you said. For example, rather than blue-white being about slowly and peacefully achieving your goals, it can also be about strict order enforced by cold logic. There is no "good" or "evil" in the color pie; everything has a positive and negative side.
This video is a good basic explanation of the color pie, you on missed some things though. A top 10 list of color-pie breaking cards would be an awesome video. It would also be a good idea to to make a video that explains what a color does for each common archetype. For example, blue in a tempo deck helps build small evasive threats while resetting the opponent's progress, while in a combo deck it serves more towards protecting against stack interactions & removals that break the combo and helps drawing cards to find it. Red in an aggro deck helps push out lots of damage and use small, aggressive creatures to push out damage, while in a control deck it gives more reactive decks additional removal and ways to win by using effective end-game threats such as huge dragons and expensive burn spells that can often bring you close to the end of the game.
i literally just started magic for the first time a couple of days ago on arena and after finishing all the color challenges i wasnt sure what direction to specifically start taking my deck...this video was absolutely perfect for me
Assuming you're playing on Arena, the 'starter decks' while not the greatest things in existence can give a good grounding on each color (and their general go to partners). Don't be afraid to experiment. . .and remember to have fun. If you end up building a deck you love that only works some of the time and you still absolutely love it. . .don't be discouraged and don't let any one player bully you into the 'best and only proper way to play'
Welcome to the game! Probably the best way to pick a direction is to figure out which of the main 3 archetypes you like best: aggro, control, or combo. Once you know which of those you like, you can narrow down to colors that are good at that archetype, then use your favorite combination of those. It's usually a good idea to start with a 2 color deck since they can cover each other's weaknesses without making it too hard to get the right colors of mana going.
Yo this video is so good. If this was my introduction to Magic I woulda been mesmerized. I can't wait for new people to find this that's gonna be awesome for them.
@@hhaavvvvii The Nephilim. The old Gods of Ravnica. Their mere presence drives mortals to worship them, not for any gain, but purely in awe of their incomprehensible might. They're 4 colors, none of them are above a 3/3, they all have 0 innate protection, and their abilities suck.
I am not very experienced with Magic yet. But I am loving my blue and red deck. Being able to draw a lot of lands and instants that can damage the other player is awesome.
Also a newbie, but from what I gather, your Blue and Red Izzet deck definitely is a problem for my White and Green Selesneya deck, being instantly able to shut out my creatures is dangerous. Good thing I also like Blue and Green Simic decks, big creatures with the power to protect them helps.
I sent this to my mom cause she’s a rec therapist who works with American veterans. She knows I like yugioh so showed me some of the guys playing mtg. I think this can help her relate to those people 😁tysm
Most of the things are right, and the color identity is definitely not exclusive to other colors, but there are some things that were glossed over. White's playstyle comes in two main ways. The one in the video is what the community would call "White Weenies", where you throw efficient early creatures and good board control on the field and start swinging. The other type is "Death and Taxes", and it's important how many floodgates/stax pieces white has that hinders a lot of faster formats like Legacy and Vintage. Older formats have larger pools of faster busted cards, and D&T is basically the way to make your opponents play "Fair Magic", where the plan is putting 1-3 cards a turn at reasonable rates. Stuff like Thalia and Archon shutting down storm decks, Path and Swords to remove cheating creatures, Rest in Peace to stop Dredge/Graveyard, and Esper Sentinel to have some sort of continuous card draw. Only thing about blue that was missed is its tiny mill strat that none of the other colors really have. Not very important, but at least should be mentioned that it's the only color that really uses this strat. Black's focus is also with trading resources for other things, a high risk high reward scenario. Most common ways to see it are trading life for advantage (Thoughtseize, Necropotence) and sacrificing creatures for benefit, seen with zombie and reanimation. With Red, the video says a lot of what the color does, but an important thing about the color is how temporary and blazing fast it is. Red Deck Wins, the deck that best shows off red's nature, is a very all-or-nothing deck, where you win or lose by turn 4 consistently. You slap down your tiny haste creatures for fast damage, temporary buffs that push more damage but don't grow like white's creatures, and burn spells that are fast but single use. Even its "card advantage" makes you empty your hand as fast as possible to make best use. And once you're out of steam, you go to game two if they're not dead. Hazoret the Ferverent, Lava Spike, and Monestary Swiftspear show off how red just goes ape on the board and prays for the win. Edit: Green is green, big stompy and heavy growing. Not much else to say besides life gain is really a side-product of green. Thragtusk was the only real meta-relevant green life gain card, and it was just good as a big pig.
I think there should be a follow up video to this explaining Colourless (Eldrazi, Artifacts) philosophy, as well as the philosophies of all the combinations of colours beyond doubles (i.e. tri, quad and all five).
Super cool and informative! I like how you included the lore/traits each color represented, and explained how that influenced the cards each color got. Awesome vid!
It's worth noting that the color pie has shifted a lot over time and is much less rigid than it used to be. For example, draw effects used to be nearly nonexistent outside blue and black, but they started adding in rummage to red and green draw linked to having big bodies on board (while black's pay life for cards have dropped off a lot due to generally not being balanced in the past). Black, meanwhile, used to have no answers to artifacts and enchantments and green used to have no way to kill creatures before fighting type effects were added and blue used to have almost no permanent answers to stuff that had resolved and not been countered. Black used to be the fast mana ritual color also before that got shifted more to red and also now is just rare due to generally enabling silly strats. Also about Simic. Besides just turboing fatties, the blue side tends to add evasion and tricks to the fatties they produces while providing protection. Countermagic is great for forcing through your bomb that might otherwise be stopped or removed and also stopping your opponent's bomb or answers. Green, meanwhile, gives the faster mana for more draw that blue tends to lack as well as some more ability to deal with resolved permanents. About Orzhov. They also tend to focus on either draining life and nickle and diming opponents with taxation sort of effects or combine white's swarming and token production with blacks love of sacrificing creatures/gaining value from creatures dying. These both help them with the whole midrange thing, able to maintain a lead in the life point race both by draining enemy life and maintaining theirs despite not having the biggest bodies as well as not suffering losses as badly for losing troops. Basically, white tends to produce the resources that black love spending for value, such as life and spare creatures.
Blue has always had answers to stuff, Blue never had any problems at all. Blue had Unsummon effects, Tap effects. STASIS ffs. Blue was the best color always. And it hasn't changed. And yes U/G is a good strategy in general, as having access to ramp and counters, big fatties and evasion, makes for not the fastest games but unless your opponents can somehow 2 for 1 you, there's no chance they'll win against you. B/W is a nice color mix, but it's mostly only good in the early game, and in the early midrange, after that if the opponent is still alive, you've got a lot of things to worry about. And I can add that U/W is probably the strongest color combination, as Blue has Counterspells, Bounce, Draw, and White has Artifact/Enchantment/Creature Hate... White is a strictly better at destroying things than both black and red. Both of which have been nerfed into the ground. I remember Lightning Bolt the good days of Red, Lightning Strike sucks and is generally unplayable, 2 mana to deal 3 damage to your opponent is wasteful. A red deck should be filled with 53 Lightning Bolts and 7 lands. It's such a shame that they love to give white creatures and blue creatures all the love in the world, but continue to hate on red and black. If we were to RBG are the worst colors in the game. And Green is just not reactive enough, Black hasn't got enough mana to react as all the spells cost too much, the creatures are too shite, and red well red has suffered ever since the R&D went to nerf all colors but Blue. I mean when was the last time, Blue got nerfed? Blues counterspells got slightly hit, but what do they care, oh no you had a monster I couldn't counter, oh no, unsummon. My Turn, play a land, your move, oh you tried to play it, Counterspell.
@@livedandletdie your objectivly wrong on so many levels. BRG are all insanly powerfull colors R is arguably the strongest color in the game right now with ragavan and the red delver dominating multiple formats. In commander dockside is UNARGUABLY the most powerfull card in the commander format. Red has been getting so much love its always been in the top decks izzet pheonix friggin storm faithless looting being banned like R and U are the strongest colors currently. G is actually amazing prime time decks still remain at the top tier collected company has been puttin in work in pioneer elfs have always been a staple and utopia sprawl is probably one the best t1 plays for any deck. Yorrian piles are abusing land ramp enchantments with cantrips oko and uro and growth spiral once upon a time that 5 drop RG ramp spell all banned cus greens downside of having big fatties an ramp but litttle card draw was nonexistant and they jus had all the tempo and card advantage. B is probably the strogest color of all time the reason blue free counters are so good is cus black decks are trying to combo off with reanimation spells and other broken combos turn 1. B has the best discard spells that have always seen consistent play and lilliana saw play for a long ass time lurrus was banned in basicly every format even after its errata necropotence changed the meta and some of the most busted cards ever are black.
@@livedandletdie I will point out that Stasis was an alpha card, which was before they really hammered out the initial color pie concept and there were tons of oddities and mistakes that were never repeated. Bounce, tapping and other temporary stun/stall effects were covered in the initial video so I didn't bring them up. They aren't hard answers though. They serve to keep pressure off you long enough to like combo off or outrace but they aren't permanent solutions. Blue has definitely been the strongest color in the older sets, although not because the bounce spells and such gave them answers to everything. Counters serve just fine as omin answers as long a they are cheap and abundant enough, which is what old magic was like. As for the power of other color combos. I really wasn't ever commenting on their raw power, more just the themes that I think he had missed in the duos. Their objective power varies wildly depending on era, format, etc.
Mechanical pie only become smaller not stricter Red was always good at drawing cards, but wotc nerf it to the ground by removing wheels, red was the combo color due it ability to generate fast mana and its big spells, wotc nerfed by removing both big spells and red ramps
Maybe a video about the trio color combos. When I was new to magic, I could never figure out why grixis deck lists didn’t have a card named grixis in them.
Well so that comes from shards of alara a planet broken into 5 pieces each only having 3 colours of mana available to them making them each distinct. Like grixis without having green or white it doesnt have new life everithing is undead and the energy just recycles
Also there are a couple of cards that have the shard names on them such as the panoramas but most of them are just not close to good enough to be played in constructed formats.
Black has rituals aswell. In the form of dark ritual, cabal ritual, songs of the damned, sacrifice, burnt offering, and culling the weak. And even one counter in the form of dash hopes.
That's correct, but only in old school MTG. At a certain point, they stopped printing that ability in Standard sets in Black and moved it to Red. You'll still see Dark Ritual being reprinted in non-Standard sets, especially in recognition of MTG history, but one-shot fast mana is now a Red ability. The reason for this is that it fits more with Red's impulsive, short-term nature. It was originally in Black in the sense of "Dark magic means forbidden power!" where "power" was interpreted as "lots of quick mana", but it's not really that "dark" if you think about it.
@@javierpatag3609 yea thats true but liliana of the dark realms was probably the last true black ramp they also kinda moved away from cards like that cause they were broken
@@symbs Dash Hopes isn't too flimsy. It came out in Planar Chaos, whose schtick was "parallel universe" with the Color Pie. They moved abilities around to show they could fit in with other colors. Black and White got counterspells; Blue got discard.
in addition to being the best color for drawing cards, blue is also by far the best color for top deck manipulation, usually via Scry, a mechanic found almost exclusively in the color
@@cinderheart2720 okay "almost exclusively" was definitely an overstatement; however, it would be more correct to say that the vast majority of scry effects are found in blue and blue-associated colors (dimir in particular), followed by red, white, black and then green. scry is also fairly common in colorless but since that isnt applicable to the color pie we can set that aside. it makes sense, though; blue being the color of insight and knowledge, being able to see and manipulate your next draws slots comfortably into its wheelhouse.
Loved it immensely! If you don't already have plans to include more details that were left out or even cover other aspects such as artifacts and/or the tri color factions please consider. Many 😊 thanks
Man, I ran a mono-W deck against a friend once, and he got SO MAD that I used my one-of Mana Tithe on his full-tap creature cast, because it's literally a color-shifted Force Spike. I'm sorry, it's not like you're playing Rakdos aggro and have been killing all my creatures with Murders and Shocks and Bolts before their Anthem effects go live.
I run Illumination in my non-blue commander decks. No one expects you to counter their artifact/enchantment when you're just sitting with two white open. Also there are other conditional counters in red and green, but they feel more like they operate as preemptive removal just the same as Illumination is.
Laughs in Colorless. Colorless is generally devoid of emotion. It is beyond your petty mana. I'm a big fan of artifacts and the Eldrazi. Colorless has access to most effects that other colors have, just at a higher cost or very specific (Warping Wail is a counterspell, Scoured from Existence can exile anything, etc)
Tbh my first deck was a Myr deck and that got me mostly pretty far with colorless, save for the extreme few that were white or blue. But they were mostly colorless artifacts which made me happy.
Colorless are WEIRD. Like...they hate everything and seek to return the world to the void...but they also effectively get along with everything. EVERY deck benefits from colorless in some way, whether it be from shapechangers, equipment, mana rocks, or even things like protection.
Didn't know that you had an mtg channel apart from the Yu-Gi-Oh one! I really enjoy your videos cause you have a great way to let the people understand easy what you say 😊
this is because wotc moved rituals to red, meaning they will almost certainly never print any black rituals again. A similar situation to this is blue's direct damage/pingers like Psionic Blast and prodigal sorcerer.
When I was most into MTG, I grew very keen on Red/Blue (if I recall, Izzet was still rather new at the time, as were noggles) as a deck combo for the sheer number of counter and burn spells at my disposal. I really liked the idea of keeping an opponent at bay and damaging them at the same time while never really leaning much into creatures myself.
Izzet has always been my go-to color, honestly. First in highschool when red/blue helped deal with the decks that anyone brought to the table, then later on (after losing my original deck, sadly) I picked up a red/blue/colorless with a few more expensive cards XD
I was trying to find more specific magic the gathering UA-camrs to cover what you did, especially for the dual color However, most of them focus too much on the lore, not on the gameplay This video just proves that The___Logs is still the overall GOAT card game channels Can't wait for you to make The Digi logs for Digimon TCG
Okay, so, I know this is an essay, so I wanna start with this: I think it's natural and awesome that you wanna look up this stuff!! Whether you're brand new or have been playing for years, the color identities are fun to look into!! Having played for almost twenty-five years now, I'm always happy to talk about this stuff!! Here's the thing. This video isn't a very good overview of what the colors do, especially when paired together. It isn't broad, it's vague. And at times, it's VERY misleading. As an example: This video makes White sound like the go-to for token decks. Meanwhile, my Commander deck is a Green/Red token-generator capable of spewing out hundreds of tokens per turn. There's a reason that (as you found out) a lot of longtime MtG players don't focus on the color wheel to carve out restrictive identities for their decks. The real meat of the game is in the mechanics (land playing, deck milling, token generation, burn spells, etc), and these mechanics aren't tied as specifically to each color as this video would lead one to believe. Each color and combination of colors has unique approaches to each mechanic-- and while some don't have access to that mechanic at all, there are almost always ways to approach every mechanic in any color identity. Let's go to another example: Mana Ramp (getting more mana on your turn). As the video says, green is the best go-to for land ramping (playing more than one land per turn), but that isn't the only way to get extra mana on your turn. Almost every color or combination of colors has access to mana ramp-- though it'll look wildly different depending on the color/combination. Black might have you gaining mana in small bursts (Dark Ritual), from dead creatures (Black Market), or by simply adding a black mana to your Swamp uses (Crypt Ghast). Red might give you a bunch of mana specifically for short-term gains, like casting creatures/artifacts (Geosurge, Vessel of Volatility, Desperate Ritual). White might let you play additional lands or gain additional mana specifically to keep up with your opponents (Land Tax, Archaeomancer's Map, Light Ritual). These are simply examples, but they're meant to illustrate the real reason that a video like this might needlessly constrain or confuse players old and new: the REAL flavor of the game is in how each color approaches mechanics, not which mechanics it does or doesnt do well/have access to. That's why, I think, a lot of the videos you could find about the color combinations focused on lore-- that lore informs the approaches that each combination takes to the in-game mechanics. Orzhov is a church that demands tithes in the form of life-- so a lot of their cards focus on opponents paying you their life, as an example. All told, the video isn't bad-- it's just misleading, and it certainly seems like the person who made it doesn't have a very deep familiarity with Magic: the Gathering. The colors ARE important, but they aren't important in the ways that the video seems to think they are.
Great video overall! Loved the interpretation and gave me some things to think about. One thing I think you missed on mentioning is Blue's Mill capabilities and how that sorta dives into the "mind and sanity" (or whatever) aspect of blue. I also have to disagree on Green hating that Black brings things back from the graveyard. Green has tons of effects to return things from the graveyard to play or to hand. (Bala-Ged, Regrowth, Recollect, heck they have a card called Reincarnation). Also would mention that green is proficient at creating tokens (Saprolings, Plants, plus things like Doubling Season and Parallel Lives).
For all the talk about white not being good and black not being evil, the cards in print really don't back that up. Red was supposed to be the color of independence, which almost never shows up in print. Green and blue have swapped which color embodies mysticism and have split curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge, which used to be blue traits. Understanding the color pie won't help you understand the cards all that much.
I dig this video!! Very informative… i played many years ago but back into collecting and a friend wants to learn to play so this will be good to show him!
They also use the same mechanic in identifying Three Colors (Wedges vs Shards). It became easier for me to identify them and the arrangement of their colors after learning the pentagon thing.
10:53 @TheManaLogs , I think it would help elaborate on the flavor or Red if it were noted that while red is bad at specifically drawing a card. It is because card draw is seen as knowledge gain and that’s why blue is so good at by it. Red being impertinent and passionate has either impulse draw (this knowledge or this emotion you’ve drawn on can only be used in the moment), or looting (forget something, to learn something new). So while it is not real draw filling or adding to your hand, it is still effective card advantage.
Red is the only colour that gets ritual effects, besides dark ritual, oh and cabal ritual and culling the weak, sacrifice, burnt offering and the other 900trillion black ritual cards...
Just started getting back into magic and bought the Prismari performance commander deck. Gotta say, your explanation of red/blue combo fits perfectly with that deck and with the commander Zaffai, thunder conductor
Am sad and felt a little cheated. Where was the pie? I appreciate knowing the 5 fillings, don't get me wrong. Just wanted to see the full depiction of the supposed pie mostly shown in the thumbnail
Cool video. A great follow up would be doing a similar video with all of the two color combinations! Maybe broken into allied and opposing combinations
Can you make a video on 3+ colored decks with their personalities and gameplay strategy? I would love to see all those combos as well and then the ultimate 5 color personality types
The three color combinations aren't as well definied, partially because adding an extra color opens up a lot more options, and also because we just don't see them as often. 4-color is even harder since there are only (I think) 11 cards in the entire game that are 4-color. But typically they're defined as what they are not rather than what they are. 5-color is usually reserved to show off a creature or effect that is powerful as they can wield every color. This is why someone like Jodah is 5-color, he's incredibly smart, very old, and very powerful.
A future video idea could’ve going over the 3 color interactions, how the combos seem to hyper focus on what their individual colors have in common often times disregarding the other aspects. Like how Jeskai made up of red, white, and blue, is a very spell heavy trio focusing on casting instants and sorceries and caring a little less about the creatures they have. Red likes burn spells, blue likes draw and counter spells, white has removal spells, and when they come together there’s a big focus in casting non-creature spells, especially with the Prowess keyword on their creatures…
I’m relatively knew to the game and was not aware that there were ally and enemy colors. Interestingly enough, each of the two-colored decks i’ve built is comprised of ally colors
@4:31 Either I missed something, or this is completely misleading, or just pure ignorance because blue CAN bounce lands! Boomerang (with isochron scepter this can just win) Cryptic Command Wipe Away Upheaval Sunder (literally returns ALL lands) This is just a short list of the more common land bouncers in MTG. If you play commander at all (which most people do or have), then your odds of seeing a land bounced goes up dramatically.
I'll be real with you, I shit my pants when I heard the voice and just thought of all the WoW videos you make!! Glad to find this channel too and binge Mtg content!
The design of Magic is amazing. Every single color has multiple meaningful choices and overlap with other colors, allowing multicolor decks to be not only possible but actively generally better than monocolors. And yet, despite that, there are enough mechanics in the game that each color still manages to be unique and have strong indentities, sometimes multiple depending on the color. White is good at both lifegain and high aggro. Blue is good at both counterspells and at using artifacts to gain effects. Black is good at low-power swarming with zombies, good at getting out big powerful monsters (specifically in effect, not stat line), and good at life drain. Honestly, black is just pretty good at most things. Red is good at swarming, burning, and combat, and is very good at being all around aggressive and dealing with the opponents before they can deal with you. Green is by far the most single-focussed of the colors, being generally based on getting out big monsters with big stat lines, as well as buffing those monsters, but it also has lots of effects to cheat cards out, recurring cards from the grave, and even decent at lifegain. Theres overlap, definitely, but somehow each can still feel completely unique depending on the situation. Truly amazing game design.
9:40 doesn't black get any rituals anymore? I've always thought black was that kind of Color with Dark Ritual (or Calling the Weak) being straight up better than pyretic Ritual but I'm not sure about recent developments of the color pie
Back when Ravnica came out it was wild to see all those enemy paired Guild but they do tend to stand out. The Boros Legion having angels fighting alongside goblins. The galaxy-brain madness of the Izzet. Golgari themes of life and death. Simics wonders of the unnatural. Orzovs' crushing fist in a golden gauntlet. A really good primer video for this. Only thing I would have added is maybe some examples of the creatures that each color gets but that's a minor thing. Hope we get a series of best of/most iconic card for each color pairing and maybe a video talking about shards and wedges later on.
Ravnica is great... but I do wish the designers would remember sometimes that we're not on Ravnica when we're... not on Ravnica. A lot of two-color cards feel like extensions of guild cards rather than exploring other things the colors can do together. Strixhaven was refreshing in that regard since none of the colleges felt like the guilds they shared colors with.
Im relatively new to Magic and trying to find the combo i like best. So far i have two commander decks: a green white and a blue black. Ive had significantly better luck with my green white. Today i plan on purchasing a red green deck. After watching a couple videos like this I'm considering making a three-color deck of red green and black. Thoughts from more experienced players?
9:42 black has Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Songs of the Damned, etc. they also have Cabal Stronghold, Cabal Coffers, Crypt of Agadeem, etc. which are ritual-ish effects on lands
*had It's true those cards exist, but in the current iteration of the color pie, they've been moving those temporary mana effects out of black and into red.
@@anthonydelfino6171 wdym had? they still have them, and wizards hasn't printed any ritual effects in a long time. If you're referring to red having a lot of treasure support, that isn't a temporary mana effect. A ritual adds the mana now, a treasure is an artifact token (hence why black doesn't get as much support) that can be activated and sacrificed (another thing red likes, sacrificing artifacts) later. It's like the difference between Mana Drain and Spell Swindle, and why one of them is twice as expensive to play.
Verry good explanation of the color pie. Liked the part about white not being the good guys. One thing id add is that each color represents a "thing" or concept. Like white and black are both two sides of the same coin human nature. Selfishness and selflessness. Both colors are willing to sacrifice themselves and others but white does it for the greater good or balance while black does it out of fanatical devotion or for greater power. Both colors gain life but black usually steals it from things and both have great creature recursion but white also does all permanets while black does creature reanimation the best. Black kinda does everything but for a cost and they usually demand some sort devotion to black. Black cards are the most pip dense cards they want to be played with other black cards and kinda make it harder to splash other colors. While they arent inheritly good like 90% of white cards are selfless heros benevolent angels healing clerics they really embody the stronger together mentality, and black doesnt see its actions as evil they dont believe in the traditional moral compass of right and wrong so they dont hate you nesessarily they just dont value life the same. Blue represents time and space not just like water or thought. They manipulate space by copying creatures changing characteristics of the card polymorphing things they can change anything about you and boucing permanents which they can hit lands and time through extra turns additional upkeep phases or other weird rule interactions and phasing untapping permanents countering spells ect. They manipulate the fabric of reality and its why its probably the most popular color. Red isn't jus emotions they represent energy itself. Fire and lightning primordial forces that explode with power but disapear in a flash. Red decks almost always start out fast and either go out with a bang out or fizzle out and run outta steam. They are passionate fast acting and impulsive risk taking and the red players themselves truly embody the color philsophy. Green represents nature itself. Its about abundance growth life itself growing from death nuturing other life and believing in the idea that the strongest survive and trample over the weak while also protecting and nurturing the weak so it has a balance. Green is fundamentally connected to the land which is the basic resource in magic so they are actually a strong contender for best color. Green doesnt nessesarily care about what your doing they think im gonna do my thing and hopefully its bigger and better than your thing if not i mean the strongest win. Green does have interaction but the best green decks forgo all that stuff so they can do what they do best make a bunch o mana. Green really represents the timmy player the guy that just wants to cast the biggest fattest creature, not the best creature but what they see as the coolest creature.
Interesting video enjoyed it, the only thing I think that was really important that was missed is that Red lacks enchantment removal (I think you said removal but it wasn’t very specific) my friend plays mono red aggro and he loses constantly to me simply because he can’t deal with enchantments that change the game and give me the advantage, he has recently changed it to red/green so its improved but otherwise great content ty for sharing
White: I summon 5 Human Soldiers and gain 10 life.
Red: Fireball!
Black: Oh, you had a powerful creature that could win you the game? It's dead now lmao-
Green: Hey, remember that weak Wolf? It's now a 10/10 with Trample. Also, here's 5 Elves. Get fucked-
Blue: Who said you could play?
For blue change it to:Who said you could Play?
Blue's card "didn't say please" best encapsulates this sentiment
That's why I love red. One word describes it so well lmao.
Black: I know this is the seventh time you killed it, but would you like to fight my 7/7 zombie with death touch again?
Yes that is true
Blue is very strong at getting your opponent to flip the table in annoyance.
And that is why I love playing it
@@smoker6683 Blue players definitely know what they are doing lol.
@@smoker6683 I remove all blue control/tempo decks from my play ground.
If you want to ruin the game for everyone, go do it elsewhere.
Edit: thank you for validating my disdain of blue players. You hit all the check marks of being an annoyance.
@@jml6263 and that's the big thing, blue players are aware of it.
Green players on the other hand, seem to be completely unaware of the torment they inflict on others. Stop blowing up my robots! Leave my graveyard alone! Get that gigantic monstrosity that's been squishing all my creatures out of here!
Sometimes with just "Island, pass."
I feel it necessary to point how just *how* red draws cards: Rather than the standard card draw, red gets what we call *impulse draw* - The ability to exile the top few cards of your library, and let you play those cards until a specific time limit is reached, usually the end of either this turn or your next turn.
While this is one of the main ways for red to draw, it also has a lot of what I'd call card replacement, where it gets to draw cards, but with a discard cost attached, like wheel effects and Faithless Looting, for example.
That and gambling with big draws, that involve discarding your entire hand to draw a new hand, or using tutors like gamble to search for a card, but the huge downside of having to discard a card at random from your hand.
@@MagicalEmma6 Yes, but in terms of the term card draw, people generally refer to getting card advantage. I neglected to mention loot and rummage effects as those are generally either card neutral or are actually card disadvantage.
Impulse Draw isn't a new mechanic in itself, but it has become part of red's identity fairly recently. A few years ago, red's draw power mainly focused on looting (draw then discard) or rummaging (discard then draw). The first impulse draw card was Prophetic Flamespeaker in the Theros block, then M15 brought Act on Impulse. The most known of the older ones is the third: Chandra, Torch of Defiance. There were only 5 more of those until Eldraine. There are about 80-100 now, meaning the vast majority of the mechanic was added to the pie in the last 2-3 years. Also, most of the older ones only let you play the cards the same turn they get exiled.
@@MrZerodaim Actually, the first impulse draw card I could find was in Visions: Three Wishes exiled the top three cards of your library, and you could play them until your next turn. It was actually a blue spell. But you are correct in that Prophetic Flamespeaker is the first *red* impulse draw card, and impulse draw has since remained firmly in red, with only one or two exceptions.
Another thing Blue is good at: leaving lands open on other players' turns to make them wary.
exactly i see islands untapped im just thinking counter he has a counter
@@justlonely7580 And worse, if they begin smiling every time you add something to the stack. If they have a Whirlwind Denial, you're f*cked!
Also, if they're tapped out, you know you can play something good :)
The power of crippling paranoia
Yes.@@sirreginaldfishingtonxvii6149
A quick note on the names of the color pairs: Those names are not arbitrary. There was a block for Ravnica: City of guilds, and Ravnica had ten guilds associated with each color pair. That's where the naming conventions came from. You'll also run into names for color trios on occasion, though those are less common due to slightly worse mana-fixing available for tri-color decks. Those take their names from the Shards of Alara and the clans of Tarkir.
Don't forget the gangs of new capenna 😬😬
@@nowaynowaynottoday those aren't likely to take off in terms of naming conventions for players. None are as "snappy" as the shorter, more elegant Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, and Naya
@@nowaynowaynottoday If you want to count those, there are also the triomes of Ikoria to consider.
@@christopherb501 Yes all of these ideas please MANA make it happen
@@nowaynowaynottoday MtG tends to name things after the first thing to do it. The gangs are unlikely to supplant the shards for the same reason any of the groups in 2 color sets like the colleges in Strixhaven haven't replaced the guilds.
Long before the "formal" color pie (even dating back to the 1990's), I always used to love the color rivalries that I always perceived as:
Red (war) vs. White (peace)
White (good) vs. Black (evil)
Black (death) vs. Green (life)
Green (body) vs. Blue (mind)
Blue (water) vs. Red (fire)
These are gross oversimplifications, of course. But even before this was made more explicit, I loved those contrasts and their symbolisms.
You really got the spirit of the original color pie!
IMO,
Blue vs Red is "Logic vs Emotion", while Green vs Blue is "Nature vs Technology"
@@nurikhsanfikriawan9662 they literally have cards called "Sword of Fire and Ice" and "Sword of Body and Mind" that give protection from the respective colors and effects related to them.
W/B is socialism/free-market.
@@NoLongerBreathedIn W/B is late-stage Capitalism. They're a freaking Cartel / Mafia. That's the literal opposite of free market concept.
9:03 Red is NOT the color of hate. It is the color of anger. Black is the color of hate. Literally the cards called "Anger" and "Hatred" are red and black cards respectively.
I'd rather call it passion or emotions, but that could be covered with chaos/instinct.
Red is definitely the colour of hate. And all other strong emotions but still. Black is the "fuck you, got mine" colour.
Agreed
I don't think any color is "the" color of hate because hate exist only if you hate "something" and each color has something it hates (white with chaos, blue with imperfection, etc). But I would argue red is closest to pure "hatred" simply because it hates anything that confines them (which is almost everything that has to do with society) whereas black is mostly indifferent as long as it doesn't matter to their calculated goals.
But yea, I think "instinct" is probably a better characterization
@@magicalgirlanime and @Zack Z I think there's room for hate in both Red and Black. There are valid arguments for either. We shouldn't be surprised anyway since Black and Red are good buddies.
Think of it this way: You can say hate is in Red in the sense of, "They're pissing me off!" It's the emotion. Hate is in Black in the sense of, "I want them to suffer and die!" This is hate as malice.
I think the defining weakness of red is that it has no way to play around enemy removal and board wipes. Red creatures are almost never hexproof or indestructible, and almost never have some sort of "sticky" effect. If your creature gets targeted with a murder, every color besides red has instants that can counteract that. Red has to bounce back from its hand.
But red is also really good at punishing removal spells with effects that deal damage when stuff dies
@@lord_wyran Not to the extent they're weak to board wipes.
It's nowhere near as balanced.
@@lord_wyran Red has lots of creatures which generate value or damage when they die, but very very few which maintain board presence.
Red's approach where others find way to not die is sort of "why fight the inevitable, when you can go out in a blaze of glory." (Often also an actual blaze to accompany that)
@@junkmail2223 i never said it maintained presence, but when your board wipe is going to cost you the game youre probably not going to drop it
I think a better way to describe the color pie is not WHAT colors do, but HOW colors do stuff. Such as, blue just straight up draws cards, black usually trades life for card draw, green does creature-reliant card draw, red does impulse draws, looting, and rummaging, and white does almost no card draw. The same can be said for removal; green has fight spells, red has burn, black has destroy effects, white has o-ring and exiling, and blue has bouncing. The current way the color pie is set up, its less about what the colors can and cant do, but rather how they go about playing a whole game.
it’s the same thing. you just used another word
He mentioned all of these in the video
I feel like an underrepresented color...is colorless. There's a LOT of stuff that colorless mana cards can do or be used for, heck, they even have their own lore and characters!
Do you mean actual colorless or just generic. They are two separate things. And colorless is exclusive to Eldrazi.
Typically colorless cards just have access to a small selection of abilities that other colors have natively, but do their effect at a dramatically increased cost. For example, Utter End verses Introduction to Annihilation. The later costs 1 extra mana, is demoted from instant to sorcery speed, and gives the controller of the exiled permanent a card, making it significantly worse than its colored counterpart.
@@--CHARLIE-- *Ugin as well*
ulamog and ugin lol
I rock a deck of 250 cards in mtg arena of which only bout 35ish are colored
It's hard for me to watch this video without thinking of Tolarian's video.
"Green does that, too."
Given that Mark Rosewater (Magic's lead designer) has cards based on himself, the "Maro" cards, which every single one has ever been green... it's pretty obvious he has a favorite color. And it shows as well. Green is clearly WotC's "golden child" based on how many times green is better than other colors at doing what they do. Retrieve resources from grave like black and white can? Basically anything you want (Regrowth-style effects) instead of only creatures, and usually for less mana, though it does go to hand instead of to board. Killing creatures like black and red? They just have bigger creatures, and thus cards that force-fight or even outright just damage based on their biggest creature are straight-up removal. Gaining life? Usually, green's as good at it as white is, if not better.
As for the most important one... drawing cards? White doesn't even get card draw, and blue has to actually pay mana for their draw. Red and black have to pay resources to draw. Green just... draws cards on triggers by playing cards. Cast a creature spell? Draw. Have creatures enter the battlefield? Draw. These issues only get compounded even further if green is combined with other colors, which led to issues like Oko, Omnath, Once Upon a Time, and basically half the other cards banned in Standard in the last couple years all being green, or used in a deck where the secondary color was green. And that's ignoring incredibly frustrating cards that SHOULD have been banned but never were, such as Hydroid Krasis and The Great Henge.
Green is just... the color allowed to do almost anything except outright counter spells, and the blatant favoritism is painful to see.
@@zexionfan15 so... Green Deck Wins?
@@zexionfan15 you sound bitter lol. But I agree. Even if blue and black are historically the best color combo. And green DOES get some stark few counter spells, like avoid fate.
Lol. Sh÷+s so funny. Let's have Red destroy an enchantment or 2. Can we have Blue deal straight damage with telekinesis? Artifacts that have a structural damage defense. What ya think?
@@HispanicatthediscoMTG I thought the general best color combo was Simic aka U/G? Though I might be colored by all the Ravnica cards.
Great video for new players, I think you gave a good overview to get people started. Quick note, rituals are named rituals because of dark ritual, which is black. Black doesn't get as much of it anymore, but in the past they had the first few rituals with dark ritual, cabal ritual, and culling the weak.
Yes ..black is huge on rituals and red gets some too ... Many ritual effect cards in black
I think something this is missing is that the color pairs also have "opposite" interpretations to what you said.
For example, rather than blue-white being about slowly and peacefully achieving your goals, it can also be about strict order enforced by cold logic.
There is no "good" or "evil" in the color pie; everything has a positive and negative side.
This video is a good basic explanation of the color pie, you on missed some things though. A top 10 list of color-pie breaking cards would be an awesome video.
It would also be a good idea to to make a video that explains what a color does for each common archetype.
For example, blue in a tempo deck helps build small evasive threats while resetting the opponent's progress, while in a combo deck it serves more towards protecting against stack interactions & removals that break the combo and helps drawing cards to find it.
Red in an aggro deck helps push out lots of damage and use small, aggressive creatures to push out damage, while in a control deck it gives more reactive decks additional removal and ways to win by using effective end-game threats such as huge dragons and expensive burn spells that can often bring you close to the end of the game.
i literally just started magic for the first time a couple of days ago on arena and after finishing all the color challenges i wasnt sure what direction to specifically start taking my deck...this video was absolutely perfect for me
Assuming you're playing on Arena, the 'starter decks' while not the greatest things in existence can give a good grounding on each color (and their general go to partners). Don't be afraid to experiment. . .and remember to have fun. If you end up building a deck you love that only works some of the time and you still absolutely love it. . .don't be discouraged and don't let any one player bully you into the 'best and only proper way to play'
If u like to improve watch cbt and lvd, there real good at deck building
Welcome to the game! Probably the best way to pick a direction is to figure out which of the main 3 archetypes you like best: aggro, control, or combo. Once you know which of those you like, you can narrow down to colors that are good at that archetype, then use your favorite combination of those. It's usually a good idea to start with a 2 color deck since they can cover each other's weaknesses without making it too hard to get the right colors of mana going.
You found the wrong video. You might want to check the videos of someone with more than a passing familiarity with magic.
Yo this video is so good. If this was my introduction to Magic I woulda been mesmerized. I can't wait for new people to find this that's gonna be awesome for them.
I watched this and I don't even play magic. Is the app store game any good?
@@juanquntos7123 if you referring to magic arena, yeah it's pretty decent. Many people play almost exclusively through that app.
I love fist strike lol.
I would love to see the tri color color pies as well. As well as the colorless and generic parts of the color pie.
Fifteen down, seventeen to go.
And then there's the 4 colors, represented by possibly the most disappointing cards, lore wise.
@@calemr Which cards?
@@hhaavvvvii The Nephilim.
The old Gods of Ravnica.
Their mere presence drives mortals to worship them, not for any gain, but purely in awe of their incomprehensible might.
They're 4 colors, none of them are above a 3/3, they all have 0 innate protection, and their abilities suck.
@@hhaavvvvii the Nephilim from the Guild pact
I am not very experienced with Magic yet. But I am loving my blue and red deck. Being able to draw a lot of lands and instants that can damage the other player is awesome.
Also a newbie, but from what I gather, your Blue and Red Izzet deck definitely is a problem for my White and Green Selesneya deck, being instantly able to shut out my creatures is dangerous.
Good thing I also like Blue and Green Simic decks, big creatures with the power to protect them helps.
I sent this to my mom cause she’s a rec therapist who works with American veterans. She knows I like yugioh so showed me some of the guys playing mtg. I think this can help her relate to those people 😁tysm
i love the semiannual experience of stumbling into yet another hirumaredx side channel that specializes in yet another one of my random favorite games
Most of the things are right, and the color identity is definitely not exclusive to other colors, but there are some things that were glossed over.
White's playstyle comes in two main ways. The one in the video is what the community would call "White Weenies", where you throw efficient early creatures and good board control on the field and start swinging.
The other type is "Death and Taxes", and it's important how many floodgates/stax pieces white has that hinders a lot of faster formats like Legacy and Vintage. Older formats have larger pools of faster busted cards, and D&T is basically the way to make your opponents play "Fair Magic", where the plan is putting 1-3 cards a turn at reasonable rates. Stuff like Thalia and Archon shutting down storm decks, Path and Swords to remove cheating creatures, Rest in Peace to stop Dredge/Graveyard, and Esper Sentinel to have some sort of continuous card draw.
Only thing about blue that was missed is its tiny mill strat that none of the other colors really have. Not very important, but at least should be mentioned that it's the only color that really uses this strat.
Black's focus is also with trading resources for other things, a high risk high reward scenario. Most common ways to see it are trading life for advantage (Thoughtseize, Necropotence) and sacrificing creatures for benefit, seen with zombie and reanimation.
With Red, the video says a lot of what the color does, but an important thing about the color is how temporary and blazing fast it is. Red Deck Wins, the deck that best shows off red's nature, is a very all-or-nothing deck, where you win or lose by turn 4 consistently. You slap down your tiny haste creatures for fast damage, temporary buffs that push more damage but don't grow like white's creatures, and burn spells that are fast but single use. Even its "card advantage" makes you empty your hand as fast as possible to make best use. And once you're out of steam, you go to game two if they're not dead. Hazoret the Ferverent, Lava Spike, and Monestary Swiftspear show off how red just goes ape on the board and prays for the win.
Edit: Green is green, big stompy and heavy growing. Not much else to say besides life gain is really a side-product of green. Thragtusk was the only real meta-relevant green life gain card, and it was just good as a big pig.
I think there should be a follow up video to this explaining Colourless (Eldrazi, Artifacts) philosophy, as well as the philosophies of all the combinations of colours beyond doubles (i.e. tri, quad and all five).
For the two-color combos: Look at the names of the 10 Guildgate lands
Super cool and informative! I like how you included the lore/traits each color represented, and explained how that influenced the cards each color got. Awesome vid!
It's worth noting that the color pie has shifted a lot over time and is much less rigid than it used to be. For example, draw effects used to be nearly nonexistent outside blue and black, but they started adding in rummage to red and green draw linked to having big bodies on board (while black's pay life for cards have dropped off a lot due to generally not being balanced in the past). Black, meanwhile, used to have no answers to artifacts and enchantments and green used to have no way to kill creatures before fighting type effects were added and blue used to have almost no permanent answers to stuff that had resolved and not been countered. Black used to be the fast mana ritual color also before that got shifted more to red and also now is just rare due to generally enabling silly strats.
Also about Simic. Besides just turboing fatties, the blue side tends to add evasion and tricks to the fatties they produces while providing protection. Countermagic is great for forcing through your bomb that might otherwise be stopped or removed and also stopping your opponent's bomb or answers. Green, meanwhile, gives the faster mana for more draw that blue tends to lack as well as some more ability to deal with resolved permanents.
About Orzhov. They also tend to focus on either draining life and nickle and diming opponents with taxation sort of effects or combine white's swarming and token production with blacks love of sacrificing creatures/gaining value from creatures dying. These both help them with the whole midrange thing, able to maintain a lead in the life point race both by draining enemy life and maintaining theirs despite not having the biggest bodies as well as not suffering losses as badly for losing troops. Basically, white tends to produce the resources that black love spending for value, such as life and spare creatures.
Blue has always had answers to stuff, Blue never had any problems at all. Blue had Unsummon effects, Tap effects. STASIS ffs. Blue was the best color always. And it hasn't changed.
And yes U/G is a good strategy in general, as having access to ramp and counters, big fatties and evasion, makes for not the fastest games but unless your opponents can somehow 2 for 1 you, there's no chance they'll win against you.
B/W is a nice color mix, but it's mostly only good in the early game, and in the early midrange, after that if the opponent is still alive, you've got a lot of things to worry about.
And I can add that U/W is probably the strongest color combination, as Blue has Counterspells, Bounce, Draw, and White has Artifact/Enchantment/Creature Hate... White is a strictly better at destroying things than both black and red. Both of which have been nerfed into the ground. I remember Lightning Bolt the good days of Red, Lightning Strike sucks and is generally unplayable, 2 mana to deal 3 damage to your opponent is wasteful. A red deck should be filled with 53 Lightning Bolts and 7 lands. It's such a shame that they love to give white creatures and blue creatures all the love in the world, but continue to hate on red and black.
If we were to RBG are the worst colors in the game. And Green is just not reactive enough, Black hasn't got enough mana to react as all the spells cost too much, the creatures are too shite, and red well red has suffered ever since the R&D went to nerf all colors but Blue.
I mean when was the last time, Blue got nerfed? Blues counterspells got slightly hit, but what do they care, oh no you had a monster I couldn't counter, oh no, unsummon. My Turn, play a land, your move, oh you tried to play it, Counterspell.
@@livedandletdie your objectivly wrong on so many levels. BRG are all insanly powerfull colors R is arguably the strongest color in the game right now with ragavan and the red delver dominating multiple formats. In commander dockside is UNARGUABLY the most powerfull card in the commander format. Red has been getting so much love its always been in the top decks izzet pheonix friggin storm faithless looting being banned like R and U are the strongest colors currently. G is actually amazing prime time decks still remain at the top tier collected company has been puttin in work in pioneer elfs have always been a staple and utopia sprawl is probably one the best t1 plays for any deck. Yorrian piles are abusing land ramp enchantments with cantrips oko and uro and growth spiral once upon a time that 5 drop RG ramp spell all banned cus greens downside of having big fatties an ramp but litttle card draw was nonexistant and they jus had all the tempo and card advantage. B is probably the strogest color of all time the reason blue free counters are so good is cus black decks are trying to combo off with reanimation spells and other broken combos turn 1. B has the best discard spells that have always seen consistent play and lilliana saw play for a long ass time lurrus was banned in basicly every format even after its errata necropotence changed the meta and some of the most busted cards ever are black.
@@livedandletdie I will point out that Stasis was an alpha card, which was before they really hammered out the initial color pie concept and there were tons of oddities and mistakes that were never repeated. Bounce, tapping and other temporary stun/stall effects were covered in the initial video so I didn't bring them up. They aren't hard answers though. They serve to keep pressure off you long enough to like combo off or outrace but they aren't permanent solutions. Blue has definitely been the strongest color in the older sets, although not because the bounce spells and such gave them answers to everything. Counters serve just fine as omin answers as long a they are cheap and abundant enough, which is what old magic was like.
As for the power of other color combos. I really wasn't ever commenting on their raw power, more just the themes that I think he had missed in the duos. Their objective power varies wildly depending on era, format, etc.
Mechanical pie only become smaller not stricter
Red was always good at drawing cards, but wotc nerf it to the ground by removing wheels, red was the combo color due it ability to generate fast mana and its big spells, wotc nerfed by removing both big spells and red ramps
@@connoringram4948 no one cares about commanders, blue is the strongest color period, not even a question
Maybe a video about the trio color combos. When I was new to magic, I could never figure out why grixis deck lists didn’t have a card named grixis in them.
Well so that comes from shards of alara a planet broken into 5 pieces each only having 3 colours of mana available to them making them each distinct. Like grixis without having green or white it doesnt have new life everithing is undead and the energy just recycles
Also there are a couple of cards that have the shard names on them such as the panoramas but most of them are just not close to good enough to be played in constructed formats.
I would love to see a video explaining the 3 color worlds like Bant and Jund, and explaining their strengths and weakness!
Black has rituals aswell. In the form of dark ritual, cabal ritual, songs of the damned, sacrifice, burnt offering, and culling the weak. And even one counter in the form of dash hopes.
Well black was once the second best at ramping but only restricted to itself also black has withering boon aswell
That's correct, but only in old school MTG. At a certain point, they stopped printing that ability in Standard sets in Black and moved it to Red. You'll still see Dark Ritual being reprinted in non-Standard sets, especially in recognition of MTG history, but one-shot fast mana is now a Red ability.
The reason for this is that it fits more with Red's impulsive, short-term nature. It was originally in Black in the sense of "Dark magic means forbidden power!" where "power" was interpreted as "lots of quick mana", but it's not really that "dark" if you think about it.
@@javierpatag3609 yea thats true but liliana of the dark realms was probably the last true black ramp they also kinda moved away from cards like that cause they were broken
Withering Boon actually counters a spell, Dash Hopes is pretty flimsy.
@@symbs Dash Hopes isn't too flimsy. It came out in Planar Chaos, whose schtick was "parallel universe" with the Color Pie. They moved abilities around to show they could fit in with other colors. Black and White got counterspells; Blue got discard.
in addition to being the best color for drawing cards, blue is also by far the best color for top deck manipulation, usually via Scry, a mechanic found almost exclusively in the color
Huh? Scry is in every colour.
@@cinderheart2720 okay "almost exclusively" was definitely an overstatement; however, it would be more correct to say that the vast majority of scry effects are found in blue and blue-associated colors (dimir in particular), followed by red, white, black and then green. scry is also fairly common in colorless but since that isnt applicable to the color pie we can set that aside.
it makes sense, though; blue being the color of insight and knowledge, being able to see and manipulate your next draws slots comfortably into its wheelhouse.
As a beginner of MTG this was quite helpfull to get a general idea of all the colors, thanks!
A breakdown on the colourless cards could be cool, thinking mostly about Eldrazi here
By far. The best color pie video I've ever seen. Flavour and real data combined.
Loved it immensely! If you don't already have plans to include more details that were left out or even cover other aspects such as artifacts and/or the tri color factions please consider. Many 😊 thanks
"Blue is the only color that gets access to counter magic"
*Laughs in Mana Tithe ans Dash Hopes
Man, I ran a mono-W deck against a friend once, and he got SO MAD that I used my one-of Mana Tithe on his full-tap creature cast, because it's literally a color-shifted Force Spike. I'm sorry, it's not like you're playing Rakdos aggro and have been killing all my creatures with Murders and Shocks and Bolts before their Anthem effects go live.
There's also red counter to counter blue spells
Yeah. Was going to mention this. Connor spells are just very very rare outside of blue but they do exist
I run Illumination in my non-blue commander decks. No one expects you to counter their artifact/enchantment when you're just sitting with two white open.
Also there are other conditional counters in red and green, but they feel more like they operate as preemptive removal just the same as Illumination is.
Laughs in Tibalts Trickery
7:56 Is one of the few cards for black to interact with enchantments this directly, even with the cost.
Black used to be the main color for rituals.
Yeah, but they moved the ritual effect to red, which kind of fits better with red's "use it or lose it" philosophy
Great video! Loved how clear it was and how well it was put together!
Laughs in Colorless. Colorless is generally devoid of emotion. It is beyond your petty mana.
I'm a big fan of artifacts and the Eldrazi. Colorless has access to most effects that other colors have, just at a higher cost or very specific (Warping Wail is a counterspell, Scoured from Existence can exile anything, etc)
Tbh my first deck was a Myr deck and that got me mostly pretty far with colorless, save for the extreme few that were white or blue.
But they were mostly colorless artifacts which made me happy.
Thank you. I don't get why people just forget about colorless faction. Sure its mostly artefacts but Eldrazi are a thing.
Colorless are WEIRD. Like...they hate everything and seek to return the world to the void...but they also effectively get along with everything. EVERY deck benefits from colorless in some way, whether it be from shapechangers, equipment, mana rocks, or even things like protection.
@@SnivyTries All are welcome. All is dust.
Great work on this video and thanks for the info! Really puts things into a nice perspective for me, as I'm new to MTG.
Well, obviously with going over the two-color combinations, this'll necessitate going over the _three-color_ combos at some point.
Didn't know that you had an mtg channel apart from the Yu-Gi-Oh one!
I really enjoy your videos cause you have a great way to let the people understand easy what you say 😊
4:25
Blue isn't the only color that gets counters it's the only color that gets GOOD counters
It's all fun and game until you full tap against Mono White and they Mana Thite your 8 Mana Spell
I love hearing about the color pie, its ideas and combinations. This is my favorite video you've ever made.
@ 9:39 correcting your mistake. Black has "Dark Ritual" which is actually just a better Seething Song but for black mana
Also Cabal Ritual and Culling Ritual
this is because wotc moved rituals to red, meaning they will almost certainly never print any black rituals again. A similar situation to this is blue's direct damage/pingers like Psionic Blast and prodigal sorcerer.
When I was most into MTG, I grew very keen on Red/Blue (if I recall, Izzet was still rather new at the time, as were noggles) as a deck combo for the sheer number of counter and burn spells at my disposal. I really liked the idea of keeping an opponent at bay and damaging them at the same time while never really leaning much into creatures myself.
Izzet has always been my go-to color, honestly. First in highschool when red/blue helped deal with the decks that anyone brought to the table, then later on (after losing my original deck, sadly) I picked up a red/blue/colorless with a few more expensive cards XD
Red isn’t the only color with ritual effects. Black gets them too, I.e. Cabal Ritual and Dark Ritual
I was trying to find more specific magic the gathering UA-camrs to cover what you did, especially for the dual color
However, most of them focus too much on the lore, not on the gameplay
This video just proves that The___Logs is still the overall GOAT card game channels
Can't wait for you to make The Digi logs for Digimon TCG
Okay, so, I know this is an essay, so I wanna start with this: I think it's natural and awesome that you wanna look up this stuff!! Whether you're brand new or have been playing for years, the color identities are fun to look into!! Having played for almost twenty-five years now, I'm always happy to talk about this stuff!!
Here's the thing. This video isn't a very good overview of what the colors do, especially when paired together. It isn't broad, it's vague. And at times, it's VERY misleading.
As an example: This video makes White sound like the go-to for token decks. Meanwhile, my Commander deck is a Green/Red token-generator capable of spewing out hundreds of tokens per turn.
There's a reason that (as you found out) a lot of longtime MtG players don't focus on the color wheel to carve out restrictive identities for their decks. The real meat of the game is in the mechanics (land playing, deck milling, token generation, burn spells, etc), and these mechanics aren't tied as specifically to each color as this video would lead one to believe. Each color and combination of colors has unique approaches to each mechanic-- and while some don't have access to that mechanic at all, there are almost always ways to approach every mechanic in any color identity.
Let's go to another example: Mana Ramp (getting more mana on your turn). As the video says, green is the best go-to for land ramping (playing more than one land per turn), but that isn't the only way to get extra mana on your turn. Almost every color or combination of colors has access to mana ramp-- though it'll look wildly different depending on the color/combination.
Black might have you gaining mana in small bursts (Dark Ritual), from dead creatures (Black Market), or by simply adding a black mana to your Swamp uses (Crypt Ghast). Red might give you a bunch of mana specifically for short-term gains, like casting creatures/artifacts (Geosurge, Vessel of Volatility, Desperate Ritual). White might let you play additional lands or gain additional mana specifically to keep up with your opponents (Land Tax, Archaeomancer's Map, Light Ritual).
These are simply examples, but they're meant to illustrate the real reason that a video like this might needlessly constrain or confuse players old and new: the REAL flavor of the game is in how each color approaches mechanics, not which mechanics it does or doesnt do well/have access to.
That's why, I think, a lot of the videos you could find about the color combinations focused on lore-- that lore informs the approaches that each combination takes to the in-game mechanics. Orzhov is a church that demands tithes in the form of life-- so a lot of their cards focus on opponents paying you their life, as an example.
All told, the video isn't bad-- it's just misleading, and it certainly seems like the person who made it doesn't have a very deep familiarity with Magic: the Gathering. The colors ARE important, but they aren't important in the ways that the video seems to think they are.
so glad I'm a colorless mage
I just clicked on the video out of curiosity and was not expecting your voice. Great vid hope this channel takes off too.
My fave is boros.
Grixis here
Jeskai Enjoyer here.
Selesneya and Golgari are my faves!
Great video overall! Loved the interpretation and gave me some things to think about.
One thing I think you missed on mentioning is Blue's Mill capabilities and how that sorta dives into the "mind and sanity" (or whatever) aspect of blue.
I also have to disagree on Green hating that Black brings things back from the graveyard. Green has tons of effects to return things from the graveyard to play or to hand. (Bala-Ged, Regrowth, Recollect, heck they have a card called Reincarnation).
Also would mention that green is proficient at creating tokens (Saprolings, Plants, plus things like Doubling Season and Parallel Lives).
For all the talk about white not being good and black not being evil, the cards in print really don't back that up. Red was supposed to be the color of independence, which almost never shows up in print. Green and blue have swapped which color embodies mysticism and have split curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge, which used to be blue traits. Understanding the color pie won't help you understand the cards all that much.
I dig this video!! Very informative… i played many years ago but back into collecting and a friend wants to learn to play so this will be good to show him!
I never knew why they were called ally and enemy colors until today. I've been playing for over 10 years
They also use the same mechanic in identifying Three Colors (Wedges vs Shards). It became easier for me to identify them and the arrangement of their colors after learning the pentagon thing.
I think the colors also can go with your personality, which will affect your "play style". I didn't know I needed this video. Thanks for sharing.
This is like astrology for men
Yeah I base my day off of...magic cards?
*geeks
Ehh not really
10:53 @TheManaLogs , I think it would help elaborate on the flavor or Red if it were noted that while red is bad at specifically drawing a card. It is because card draw is seen as knowledge gain and that’s why blue is so good at by it.
Red being impertinent and passionate has either impulse draw (this knowledge or this emotion you’ve drawn on can only be used in the moment), or looting (forget something, to learn something new). So while it is not real draw filling or adding to your hand, it is still effective card advantage.
Blue is really good at making other people not want to play with you.
And if they still want to play anyway, blue won't let them
wait this IS hirumared! i thought i recognized your voice from your wow videos 😂 great wow videos and great mtg videos man, super helpful as a newbie
BLUE IS THE ONLY COLOR TO HAVE COUNTER SPELLS... laughs in red elemental blast😂😂😂
*Give stink eye with plethora of more counter spells*
This was awesome! I'd love to see all the other color combinations evaluated sometime.
Red is the only colour that gets ritual effects, besides dark ritual, oh and cabal ritual and culling the weak, sacrifice, burnt offering and the other 900trillion black ritual cards...
Oh what a F'in delight to hear hirus voice at the start. Came in completely unknowing. Incredible
We need purple. It’s 20 years too late. Wait, purple or tan, or purple and tan.
Just started getting back into magic and bought the Prismari performance commander deck. Gotta say, your explanation of red/blue combo fits perfectly with that deck and with the commander Zaffai, thunder conductor
Colorless gang here
Dude you must have more channels than there are days in th week! :) Appreciate the grind
Incorrect
Green does everything
You should totally make a video (series) going more into detail of the philosophy of the colours up to 3 colours
Am sad and felt a little cheated. Where was the pie? I appreciate knowing the 5 fillings, don't get me wrong. Just wanted to see the full depiction of the supposed pie mostly shown in the thumbnail
Go read your picture book
Amazing summary! Love your lists, but looking forward to other more design philosophy focused vids like this.
Cool video. A great follow up would be doing a similar video with all of the two color combinations! Maybe broken into allied and opposing combinations
"Black has no artifact removal..." other than Gate to Phyrexia.
Can you make a video on 3+ colored decks with their personalities and gameplay strategy? I would love to see all those combos as well and then the ultimate 5 color personality types
The three color combinations aren't as well definied, partially because adding an extra color opens up a lot more options, and also because we just don't see them as often.
4-color is even harder since there are only (I think) 11 cards in the entire game that are 4-color. But typically they're defined as what they are not rather than what they are. 5-color is usually reserved to show off a creature or effect that is powerful as they can wield every color. This is why someone like Jodah is 5-color, he's incredibly smart, very old, and very powerful.
9:38
dark ritual would like to sacrifice you for your statement !
Great video! Just getting back into magic, these videos are all very helpful
A future video idea could’ve going over the 3 color interactions, how the combos seem to hyper focus on what their individual colors have in common often times disregarding the other aspects. Like how Jeskai made up of red, white, and blue, is a very spell heavy trio focusing on casting instants and sorceries and caring a little less about the creatures they have. Red likes burn spells, blue likes draw and counter spells, white has removal spells, and when they come together there’s a big focus in casting non-creature spells, especially with the Prowess keyword on their creatures…
I'd love to see a similar video on the three-color and four-color identities. Maybe even a mention on how five-color is portrayed!
I’m relatively knew to the game and was not aware that there were ally and enemy colors. Interestingly enough, each of the two-colored decks i’ve built is comprised of ally colors
Can't wait for the shards and the wedges review like this. Should be very interesting.
Amazing analysis on the colors and their meaning!✨
@4:31 Either I missed something, or this is completely misleading, or just pure ignorance because blue CAN bounce lands!
Boomerang (with isochron scepter this can just win)
Cryptic Command
Wipe Away
Upheaval
Sunder (literally returns ALL lands)
This is just a short list of the more common land bouncers in MTG. If you play commander at all (which most people do or have), then your odds of seeing a land bounced goes up dramatically.
I'll be real with you, I shit my pants when I heard the voice and just thought of all the WoW videos you make!! Glad to find this channel too and binge Mtg content!
The design of Magic is amazing. Every single color has multiple meaningful choices and overlap with other colors, allowing multicolor decks to be not only possible but actively generally better than monocolors. And yet, despite that, there are enough mechanics in the game that each color still manages to be unique and have strong indentities, sometimes multiple depending on the color. White is good at both lifegain and high aggro. Blue is good at both counterspells and at using artifacts to gain effects. Black is good at low-power swarming with zombies, good at getting out big powerful monsters (specifically in effect, not stat line), and good at life drain. Honestly, black is just pretty good at most things. Red is good at swarming, burning, and combat, and is very good at being all around aggressive and dealing with the opponents before they can deal with you. Green is by far the most single-focussed of the colors, being generally based on getting out big monsters with big stat lines, as well as buffing those monsters, but it also has lots of effects to cheat cards out, recurring cards from the grave, and even decent at lifegain. Theres overlap, definitely, but somehow each can still feel completely unique depending on the situation. Truly amazing game design.
9:40 doesn't black get any rituals anymore? I've always thought black was that kind of Color with Dark Ritual (or Calling the Weak) being straight up better than pyretic Ritual but I'm not sure about recent developments of the color pie
You sound so much like CGP Grey and I'm so stoked on it. It mskes me wanna watch every single one of your videos now lol
I liked this one a lot! You should do one going over the philosophy of tge three color combo groups too!
Back when Ravnica came out it was wild to see all those enemy paired Guild but they do tend to stand out.
The Boros Legion having angels fighting alongside goblins. The galaxy-brain madness of the Izzet. Golgari themes of life and death. Simics wonders of the unnatural.
Orzovs' crushing fist in a golden gauntlet.
A really good primer video for this. Only thing I would have added is maybe some examples of the creatures that each color gets but that's a minor thing.
Hope we get a series of best of/most iconic card for each color pairing and maybe a video talking about shards and wedges later on.
Ravnica is great... but I do wish the designers would remember sometimes that we're not on Ravnica when we're... not on Ravnica. A lot of two-color cards feel like extensions of guild cards rather than exploring other things the colors can do together.
Strixhaven was refreshing in that regard since none of the colleges felt like the guilds they shared colors with.
I had to learn this from articles, so it's nice seeing this now, even if we don't have the roleplayed colors here :D
Im relatively new to Magic and trying to find the combo i like best. So far i have two commander decks: a green white and a blue black. Ive had significantly better luck with my green white. Today i plan on purchasing a red green deck. After watching a couple videos like this I'm considering making a three-color deck of red green and black. Thoughts from more experienced players?
Very interesting video that provides a decent amount of base knowledge for the color pie.
9:42 black has Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Songs of the Damned, etc. they also have Cabal Stronghold, Cabal Coffers, Crypt of Agadeem, etc. which are ritual-ish effects on lands
*had
It's true those cards exist, but in the current iteration of the color pie, they've been moving those temporary mana effects out of black and into red.
@@anthonydelfino6171 wdym had? they still have them, and wizards hasn't printed any ritual effects in a long time. If you're referring to red having a lot of treasure support, that isn't a temporary mana effect. A ritual adds the mana now, a treasure is an artifact token (hence why black doesn't get as much support) that can be activated and sacrificed (another thing red likes, sacrificing artifacts) later. It's like the difference between Mana Drain and Spell Swindle, and why one of them is twice as expensive to play.
Thank you SO MUCH for this, came right when I needed it most!
Verry good explanation of the color pie. Liked the part about white not being the good guys.
One thing id add is that each color represents a "thing" or concept.
Like white and black are both two sides of the same coin human nature. Selfishness and selflessness. Both colors are willing to sacrifice themselves and others but white does it for the greater good or balance while black does it out of fanatical devotion or for greater power. Both colors gain life but black usually steals it from things and both have great creature recursion but white also does all permanets while black does creature reanimation the best. Black kinda does everything but for a cost and they usually demand some sort devotion to black. Black cards are the most pip dense cards they want to be played with other black cards and kinda make it harder to splash other colors.
While they arent inheritly good like 90% of white cards are selfless heros benevolent angels healing clerics they really embody the stronger together mentality, and black doesnt see its actions as evil they dont believe in the traditional moral compass of right and wrong so they dont hate you nesessarily they just dont value life the same.
Blue represents time and space not just like water or thought. They manipulate space by copying creatures changing characteristics of the card polymorphing things they can change anything about you and boucing permanents which they can hit lands and time through extra turns additional upkeep phases or other weird rule interactions and phasing untapping permanents countering spells ect. They manipulate the fabric of reality and its why its probably the most popular color.
Red isn't jus emotions they represent energy itself. Fire and lightning primordial forces that explode with power but disapear in a flash. Red decks almost always start out fast and either go out with a bang out or fizzle out and run outta steam. They are passionate fast acting and impulsive risk taking and the red players themselves truly embody the color philsophy.
Green represents nature itself. Its about abundance growth life itself growing from death nuturing other life and believing in the idea that the strongest survive and trample over the weak while also protecting and nurturing the weak so it has a balance. Green is fundamentally connected to the land which is the basic resource in magic so they are actually a strong contender for best color. Green doesnt nessesarily care about what your doing they think im gonna do my thing and hopefully its bigger and better than your thing if not i mean the strongest win. Green does have interaction but the best green decks forgo all that stuff so they can do what they do best make a bunch o mana. Green really represents the timmy player the guy that just wants to cast the biggest fattest creature, not the best creature but what they see as the coolest creature.
I needed this for a friend!! Thank you.
Hiru doing magic! I had not idea you had a magic channel until I heard your voice. Knew instantly. New obsession
Interesting video enjoyed it, the only thing I think that was really important that was missed is that Red lacks enchantment removal (I think you said removal but it wasn’t very specific) my friend plays mono red aggro and he loses constantly to me simply because he can’t deal with enchantments that change the game and give me the advantage, he has recently changed it to red/green so its improved but otherwise great content ty for sharing
Okay analysis video! Thanks for uploading!
Is there a video going over the three/four color combos?
Jajaja yo man I came from you WoW and Yugioh videos and started playing Magic now is nice to hear a Familiar voice keep the awesome content
This type of video (and formats) should be in other channels to promote this game and channel. Very good and concise 👍🏻