Warning! – Magical Rant Approaching!

While I generally approve of the course Magic the Gathering has been taking over the years, I often yearn for a simpler time;  a time when each color had its strengths and limitations.  Certain boundaries could never be broken, the color wheel was firmly in place and each color had its enemies and each its allies.  But alas, that world of order and balance has long since left us behind for more rainbow colored pastures.

Let me take you back… waaaay back to 1995.  To a time when a blue mage could never heal himself.  A red mage wouldn’t be caught dead using control magic.  And you’d be hard pressed to find a green wizard drawing multiple cards.  If they paid through the nose they could craft an artifact to do the job, but it was often impossible to perform certain tasks in mono-colored decks.  Today, all of these things are possible, if not simple to integrate into any mono-colored deck.

The next logical step

Of course, 10,000 new magic cards later, Wizards was bound to break the rules a few times, but many of these cards, in this humble wizard’s opinion, have gotten out of control.  I understand that the game is now divided into Classic, Extended, and Standard play types.  But this is little consolation to the “casual” magic player buying a few packs and trying to play with some friends (which usually ends up becoming “anything goes” play type.)  “Anything Goes” used to be fine!  The lines were firm and the classic “Paper, Rock, Scissors” balance was firmly in place.  I knew the strengths and weaknesses of each color and so did my opponent.

Take a look at the past few expansion sets.  The Lorwyn block started off wonderfully divided with a planeswalker embodying each color to a T.  Huge creatures for each color and some classic color balance.  But the sets that followed systematically blurred the lines between each of the colors.  At least half of the spells in Shadowmoor and Eventide were split mana meaning they were essentially playable in either color deck.  Shards of Alara and now Conflux are both turning out to be more of this color blending,  forcing wizards to use more than one (and often more than two!) colors in their decks.

Whatever happened to the hallowed black vs green rivalry?  Or the classic blue vs red?  While I welcome change and certainly love some of the interesting new rules and cards, I often find myself longing for those simple duels between two skilled wizards who understood their own color and strategy and could anticipate their opponent’s.  It wasn’t about using as many rare lands as possible to crank out multi-color cards or mono-colored decks with individual cards that defy their color’s own natural limitations.

The old world order

I want to be clear,  most of my favorite cards are in the newer sets.  I think the designers over at WotC are wonderfully creative and have brought some great new mechanics to the game.  I simply find myself longing for a time when a wizard chose a color that often represented their own personality and challenged another wizard of a rival color to a glorious duel!!

Jace vs Chandra boxset was one of my favorite items to come out of MTG in the past five years.  I hope wizards keeps items like these flowing and for future sets takes into consideration the classic color balance that made the game great.  I’m in love with some of the new things a wizard can do in the more recent versions of Magic the Gathering ie. suspending cards, planeswalkers etc.  But oftentimes a game isn’t defined by what you can do as a player but by what you can’t.

Like this article? Try these:

1. Feeling Blue over Artifacts
2. Magic 2010 – Modern Control and the Fleecing of Blue
3. Why you gotta (color) hate?
4. Alara Reborn is Golden – Reactions and Analysis
5. Alara Reborn – Predictions and Conjectures