A Blue Wizard is a resilient wizard.  By their very nature they are ready, willing and able to deal with anything that comes their way.  As Magic the Gathering expansions come and go each of the colors has been transformed and reworked over the years, this is to be expected.  But nothing in my years of MTG experience can compare to what has recently been happening to the blue spell library.

Each block brings with it some sort of theme.  As the Mirrodin block was heavily focused on artifacts, Alara seems to be focused on multi-colored cards, shards and... artifacts?.   Okay, I like artifacts, I can dig that.  Every set needs a few colorless spells that can be played in any deck or even some artifact specific cards.  If only that were the case here.  Unfortunately, Alara seems intent on injecting another "artifact shard" into the game at the expense of an entire color.

[caption id="attachment_332" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Could this not have been colorless?"][/caption]

It seems Wizards has decided that, for a period of what looks to be three entire expansion sets, "blue spells" will now be synonymous with "artifact spells".  A quick glance at the blue rare list for Alara will reveal a myriad of spells that will only work in an artifact deck.  No, not "a deck that has artifacts in it" but an artifact theme deck.  Several Conflux cards read the same way.

My problem is not with change in general.  I welcome sets such as Planar Chaos, Time Spiral etc. that completely throw a rule or two out the window for a brief time.  My beef is with the complete transformation of an entire color in the most recent block.  With other expansions, there are changes across the board, to each of the colors and while each of the colors has their minor tweaks, each still holds true to their original archetype on the color wheel.  You can point to each of the mono-colored rares and find a way to use them in any blue deck.  The travesty here is that, even if you love artifact theme decks, those of us who love playing with traditional blue cards have little to look forward to in the Alara block.

Artifact and colorless spells have always been an important part of the game.  They can supplement any color deck and some great theme decks can be made with "artifact only" cards such as those found in Alara.  Unfortunately, many of these spells have been inserted into this block in place of the more classic blue spells we all know, love and expect from any magic expansion.  I feel as though Wizards wanted to introduce this artifact element but couldn't cram it into their new 145 card set restriction so they decided to gimp the normal allotment of blue spells to make room for cards that could have easily just been colorless.

[caption id="attachment_343" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="The Alara color Wheel"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Conflux brings more of the same..."][/caption]

Fortunately, Alara has a lot of other things going for it.  With Conflux now fully revealed, the block is an interesting new direction for the standard format, particularly for lovers of multi-colored magic.  I'd only hope that MTG not forget the casual player (or even the not so casual player) who wants to put together a simple mono-colored deck that encapsulates what he or she loves about a Magic color shard.  I have been slightly frustrated with the "multi-color only" mantra of the Alara block on the whole but what has become of blue specifically is nothing short of a tragedy.

I only ask that we casual magic players be thrown a bone or two in each set.  The color pentagon is the backbone of the game.  Mono and two-colored decks will always reign supreme in casual play due to the often difficult nature of trying to get the right land combo out quickly.  Many casual players cannot afford a playset of $15 special lands and/or are not advanced enough to get the right mana out quick enough.  Still, there are those of us who are advanced enough and do have the $15 lands who would simply love to add some new cards to their classic mono-colored decks.

[caption id="attachment_330" align="alignright" width="250" caption="A bone, if you would?"][/caption]

Look, I didn't want this to turn into a "casual vs hardcore" thing, because its not.  Its about keeping MTG a game that has five different colors ruled by what they can and cannot do.  Bending, changing, and altering rules is welcomed and refreshes the game for everyone with each new set.   It just saddens me that blue spell lovers such as myself have to sit on the sidelines for an entire block while our color is overrun by artifact only spells.  As a famous Evil Doctor once put it: "Throw me a frickin' bone here!".