I mentioned in my first post that I would likely do a series of posts on the color system in Magic: the Gathering, and I decided hey, no time like the present, right? The color system - or the color pie, as it is generally called - is one of my favorite aspects of Magic, and it's something I really enjoy talking about. So I figure what I'll do is I'll write one post for each color and talk about what the color represents, what it means in terms of gameplay, and my opinions on it.
But before I jump into that, a word about the color system in general. In Magic, cards are assigned one of five colors - white, blue, black, red, or green. (There are also multicolored cards, as well as colorless cards, but for now we're going to ignore those.) Each color represents mana, the magical power used in the game to cast spells, and corresponds to a certain type of land - so plains provide white mana, islands provide blue, swamps provide black, mountains provide red, and forests provide green. But what I really like about the color pie is that each color represents certain values and principles, which tend to be reflected in the cards themselves. (This also makes Magic colors a pretty decent personality test - my friends and I have often sat around assigning people colors for fun.) Plus, the system is really what makes Magic, Magic. By mixing and matching which colors you use, you can create a huge variety of deck styles and gameplay patterns.
So without any further ado, let's jump into our first color - white!
I'd make a Here Comes the Sun reference, but I'm not a huge fan
of white. They don't deserve the honor.
What does white represent?
In Magic, white is the broadest color in terms of meaning. But if a card is white, it generally represents something about order, purity, community, or life. White is the color of harmony, really. In D&D alignment terms, things that are white will almost always be lawful, and they will tend to be good. White isn't always good, though, which is a fairly common misconception about the color - you could easily have a lawful evil being that is white in nature, looking out for its community but at the expense of others. You could make the argument that if Hitler had a card, he would be at least partially white, and it would be a fairly compelling argument. I mean, let's look at the Nazis. Order? Check. Purity? Well, that was pretty much their whole goal, so check. Community? They were their own party, all working together, so I'd say a check for that too. Life? Well, maybe not so much, but three out of four ain't bad.
But evil white entities tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Oftentimes, the creatures depicted on white cards are representative of moral goodness, or truly concerned about community for the sake of the health of all involved. Hitler may be white, but so is Captain America. They're two sides to the same coin. So let's get into...
What does this mean for gameplay?
What you'll see in white decks is generally a lot of little creatures working together. This is where you'll find your humans, your soldiers, your large armies of little dudes all working toward the same goal, really to embody that sense of community. If you get a big, stompy creature, it'll typically be something like an angel or a spirit, working to guide the smaller creatures to victory.
As the color typically associated with life, you'll also find a lot of healing effects - giving life back to the player, preventing damage to your creatures, stuff like that. Clerics are a big creature type for white.
And as the color associated with order, white has a lot of control, and a lot of "laws". What do I mean by that? Well, white is where you'll find cards that say "creatures your opponents control can't attack you unless _____," or similar effects. If you're going to remove a creature with white cards, it'll typically be an "exile" effect, or one that completely removes the creature from the game. Banisher Priest is a good example of the two above effects - it's a card that exiles a creature, but only for as long as Banisher Priest is alive. In other words, this priest comes onto the battlefield and uses her powers of law and order to hold an opposing creature in stasis. Which is pretty cool.
You gotta hand it to them - if there's one thing white does well, it's
making creatures that look like badasses.
My opinions on the color:
I have to say, in terms of gameplay, white is my least favorite color. At least to play against. White is the color that has an answer to everything - it can deal with big stompy creature decks just as easily as decks that build an army of tiny creatures, it can deal with control decks as easily as it can deal with decks that are heavy with enchantments or artifacts or what have you. And the biggest thing with white cards is that they're usually very cheap to play, which means you can get powerful effects onto the board very quickly - especially when you're paired up with another color, like green. In general, white has always struck me as packing just a bit too much of a punch in slightly too small a package, and it sometimes feels like the only way to beat a well-constructed white deck is to play white yourself. To reference my first post, white can often have very little interaction, especially when players build a pillow fort of defensive creatures and just sit there gaining life. Not every white deck is like this, of course, but enough of them are that it taints the way I view the color.
But on the flip side of things, I think white is really awesome from a thematic standpoint. There's something to be said for the army of otherwise-useless little humans standing against hydras, demons, krakens, dragons, and the like. White can be a lot of fun to play (even if boring to play against, sometimes), and like I said earlier, it's pretty much the color of the badasses. You get knights and soldiers and angels and such, and the flavor of a white deck just makes it really cool to play.
I mean, just look at this guy. He's a Fiendslayer Paladin, and he looks
like an utter badass. You really can't top that.
So that about wraps things up on white! It's a really cool color, with a lot of interesting thematic aspects to it, but I just find it to be a bit stale when it comes to gameplay.
Stay tuned - in two weeks, I will be posting up the next article in this series! To read more about white's place in the color pie, a series of articles was written by Mark Rosewater, Magic's current head designer, on the subject of the color pie. Which is really where I got a lot of my information about the colors anyway. You can find his article about white by clicking here.
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