Loyal followers of GatheringMagic.com know that this site's founders have always worshiped at the colorpie alter.   The principle that each color should remain a distinct and flavorful shrine to the ideals that are inherent in each slice of the color pie is essential to the success of the game.   So whenever some aspect of Magic the Gathering begins to blur the lines between red and blue or black and green, you can rest assured that this site will stand up for what is right and true.

Magic has returned to the artificial plane of Mirrodin this year and if you've any knowledge of the game's lore you've been shining up your old artifacts since this spring.  I'm sure each and every one of us has had a memorable "magic moment" with an artifact at some point in our gaming careers.  We all love supplementing our decks with great artifacts that "fill in the gaps" that our decks can't due to color pie restrictions.  Can't figure out a way to easily give a creature haste in your black deck?  Try a pair of Lightning Greaves for a mere two mana!  Having trouble mana-accelerating in blue?  Try Sol Ring on for size!  Most artifacts are either color-neutral or literally have color-restrictions built in to them to prevent players from blurring the color-wheel lines too much but every once in a while a few cards sneak through that cause me to scratch my head and wonder just how far Wizards is willing to stretch out the colorpie.

Take the new Steel Hellkite for example.  Surely the first card that comes to mind is Shivan Dragon after a quick glance at this mechanical lizard and this comparison is a great one to look at for my purposes here.  They both cost six mana to cast.  They both have fire-breathing (though the metallic version costs twice as much to activate).  Both are rares and they're both flying dragons, of course.   The Hellkite has an extra ability that could be quite handy if you're able to land a punch.  In my personal, magical opinion, this ability more than makes up for the doubling of the fire-breathing cost.  But if you want to argue about that, fine, let's just call them about even.  This all sounds reasonable upon first look I mean, heck, Shivan Dragon isn't even in standard anymore!  This is the future, right?!   But think about it:  All things being equal, shouldn't the colorless card cost a bit more than the colored version of the same thing?  Isn't that the entire point of the colorpie, and isn't that the way artifacts have always worked within said colorpie?  I mean I'd always wanted to play Shivan Dragon in my mono-blue deck but I didn't imagine it would ever be this easy!

[caption id="attachment_12450" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="I suppose it DOES have green skin..."][/caption]

Now, I'm not saying that a blue or even a green Shivan Dragon is going to "break" the game with it's awesome and all-consuming power but to all you old-schoolers out there who remember when you had to pay extra mana for that equivalently colorless creature- doesn't it feel a little power-creepy to you?   I consider myself to be a pragmatic individual.  So maybe I should just relax.  Perhaps its all in my head and a white Shivan Dragon that will probably never be played outside of limited won't realistically effect anyone or anything as it pertains to this game that I love.  But it does make me worry about the next two sure-to-be-artifact-infused sets within the Mirrodin block that may or may contain a colorless counterspell or a colorless direct damage spell that costs the same or less than it's colored brethren.  Paranoid, slippery slope arguments aside, I do hope that this trend is either discontinued, or somehow explained.

And that's really what it comes down to for me- the need for an explaination.  Alara and Shadowmoor drove me to the brink of insanity with cards like Bloodbraid Elf containing colors that had nothing to do with what was printed on the card.  Which part of BBE is green, again?  Is it the haste?  Maybe it's the cascade?  Shadowmoor wasn't much better with ambiguously colored cards such as Boggart Ram-Gang floating around.  For the life of me, I still can't figure out which part of that card makes it a green card.  Is it the haste?  Maybe the wither?  Or maybe it's the "warrior" creature type?

Take a look at the new Wurmcoil Engine from Scars of Mirrodin.  This card causes one to wonder: What ever happened to the rules governing cards that venture outside the colorpie?  I don't ask for much, I merely require an explanation.  For most of Magic's history there have been rules about which colored cards can do what and if you were going to break those rules you'd probably end up paying more for the card.  It used to be that a colorless creature like Adarkar Sentinel cost a bit more due to its versatility on the color wheel.  And players were willing to pay that price if they needed to squeeze a big creature like Obsianus Golem into their off colored decks.  But today, as with multicolor cards in Alara, there is no need to compromise or worry about how well green cards mix with black cards because competitive decks are simply becoming a list of the top 10 cards in standard.  This is because all cards are so easily entwined together regardless of color or flavor now with multiple sets of multicolored lands, and now an influx of colorless cards with colored abilities such as Deathtouch and Lifelink.

Any fantasy universe is only as strong as the rules the govern it.  What it the Jedi could use force lightning on storm troopers?  What if Frodo could just "learn some magic" and start pwning Orcs?  When a universe's "laws" begin to blur or falter it not only signals desperation on the creators' part, it's also just a bad idea in general.   People need something to hang their hat on when it comes to the MTG universe... something that will always stay true and constant.  If that isn't the colorpie then I don't know what it is in this universe.

If Wizards is interested in ever seeing mono-colored on-theme decks back in competitive standard (which I'm not convinced that they are) they're going to have to start taking a look at the extent to which the colorpie has been abused these past few years.  I can't say for sure which worries me more- multicolored cards run amok with multicolored lands or this upcoming influx of colorless cards with abilities that should stay in their respective corners of the color pie.  Wizards is running out of design space and needs to keep pushing the game forward but to do so at the expense of the colorpie is at too high a cost as far as I'm concerned.   Hopefully Mirrodin: Besieged and the third set in the artifact trilogy will take heed.