(WastesWastes | Art by Raymond Swanland)

What Does It Mean To Be Colorless?

Hey here's a question for you, is colorless a "color" in Magic: The Gathering? Here on The Monolith we talk about monocolored deck building.

And whilst I'm sure you wouldn't bat an eye if I called an all green deck monocolored, would you consider an all colorless deck to be monocolored?

Back in 1997, Inquest Magazine posted an April fools joke announcement with some huge news. A new color was coming to Magic: The Gathering!

Produced from basic portal lands, purple mana was being introduced into Magic's card pool and it would allow players to do strange things like control their opponent's turn and anchor creatures to other permanents. It was all very strange and cryptic and, obviously, complete nonsense.

Planned All Along?

No, Wizards of the Coast didn't have any plans to add a sixth color to the famous 5 pointed star that makes up Magic's core design philosophy. In fact, in the end, they didn't really need to. Magic had given us a sixth color of Magic from the game's very inception.

It was there in Alpha and remains in every set printed since. All the way up to whatever set just released as you're reading this. Colorless mana!

And whilst it did have some key features that separated it from the big five, it wasn't until the dawn of the Eldrazi that we got to see colorless' true colors.

Colorless was now represented by its very nature. Devoid. Inhuman. The spaces between reality. The Eldrazi were a perfect fit for that philosophy.

An unknowable cosmic horror from beyond our understanding. Colorless now had its own kindred strategies. It had mechanical flavor.

Mechanical Mechanics

And this was merely a flourish on what was already there. Colorless was already associated with the machine. Artifacts and Urza's inventions. The Tron lands and mana rocks making for strange, colorless ramp tied to permanents.

Artifact cards in general, whilst playing well with most colors, are predominantly colorless themselves. A few might have a proper pip in them, but for the most part they're all paid for by generic mana.

That is of course then reflected by its sub-type Equipment. Most would associate them with red or white, but equipment cards are overwhelmingly colorless as well.

Colorless had a "vibe" to it that the release of the Eldrazi merely solidified and expanded upon. It was an elegant solution from Magic's designers to fulfill their "what if?" fantasies of a new color. To build on something that was as yet untouched but already bubbling under the surface of the game.

Still Not Enough

But despite all this support for Magic's secret sixth primary, there are still those out there that would say, "No! There are five colors in Magic.

Colorless is not a color, it is merely a supplement to the actual five." And they're not unsupported in that claim. In fact, those are the actual rules of Magic: The Gathering!

'105.1. There are five colors in the Magic game: white, blue, black, red, and green'

'105.4. If a player is asked to choose a color, they must choose one of the five colors. “Multicolored” is
not a color. Neither is “colorless.”'

That's why when this protection spell was printed in March of the Machine, a set that largely revolved around the mechanic of making colorless creature tokens, Angelic InterventionAngelic Intervention had to be worded like this. Mother of RunesMother of Runes can't protect you from a colorless spell.

Then What The Heck is My Eldrazi Deck?

Now whilst I'm sure this was debated for a long time before hand, I think this really became a point of contention when EDH started to gain popularity.

In Commander of course, your deck has a color identity. If your commander is red, you can only include red cards in its deck. Those are the rules of the format.

So what about when I build a deck around Liberator, Urza's BattlethopterLiberator, Urza's Battlethopter? Colorless spells have no color. So they can be included in a Commander deck of any color.

But if my commander itself has no color. Then the color identity of that deck... is colorless. It can only run colorless spells. Does that mean that colorless is a color identity? Or that my deck simply doesn't have one?

The Evidence is There

And that might be a technicality but there's plenty of other things in the game that point toward this point's legitimacy. Colorless, for example, has its own basic land type. The WasteWaste.

That's something that might seem silly or gimmicky until you realize that there are plenty of spells that straight up require colorless mana to cast. In fact, Modern Horizons 3 added a whole heaping of them to the card pool.

The aforementioned Angelic InterventionAngelic Intervention is worded that way because needing to protect yourself from a colorless threat is just as important in the game as any of the main five colors.

There's plenty of colorless creatures, spells, and abilities. You need to be able to protect yourself from them in some way.

Colorless KPIs

So there's a mechanical justification for this aesthetic problem, but what about the actual aesthetics themselves. As our title asks, what does it mean to be colorless? If red is know by its aggression, direct damage, and impulsive draw. What is colorless known for?

The Eldrazi are certainly the poster child creature type, but there's also the robots and automatons as well. The Myr of Mirrodin have plenty of iconic cards without a single colored pip.

Not to mention all the Assembly Workers and Constructs. There's also some incredibly influential characters in Magic's lore who don't identify with any of the five colors.

Ugin has just returned to the fold in Tarkir: Dragonstorm but as the brother of legendary big bad Nicol Bolas, he's been incredibly influential over Magic's history.

Karn is no different, forming Mirrodin itself and inadvertently spreading the curse of the Phyrexians. We've just seen spoilers for Edge of Eternities and Tezzeret has popped once again as well. Despite being largely aligned with blue and black mana in the past, this time around he's completely colorless.

Solid as Darksteel

Being colorless when you're a named character is a big deal as well. There's plenty of Skittering SurveyorSkittering Surveyors that only exist to make draft a little easier and don't really impact the story all that much.

We're trained to think that something being colorless means that it doesn't really matter what color deck you play it in, it's a slightly worse card that anyone can play. Or it's generic enough that anyone would use it.

But when a mainline character who's been in color before, turns up colorless? That means something. It's a statement by Wizards of the Coast. His colorless identity means something stylistically, narratively, and gameplay...ly.

All is Dust

So what does this all really mean? In the end its semantics really. The only reason I brought it up is as a big fan of monocolored decks, I've always drawn to the strange allure of a deck that runs absolutely no colors at all.

But with the amount of support Wizards has printed for that archetype, it seems in my mind like it's an idea that's officially supported. Even if the official rules of the game perhaps state otherwise.

It's also an interesting look at how our patterns of play can change how we see our favorite card game. This thought may have never crossed my mind if Emrakul or the Devoid keyword was never printed.

If the colorless mana symbol was never introduced. Or if the format we all now know and love as Commander never rose to popularity.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Would you die on the hill that wastes produce Magic's sixth color of mana? Or are you staunch five-only truther? If you were going to add a sixth color to MTG which stupid shade would you pick, and why is it Periwinkle?

Regardless, thank you for reading, and I'll see you on the next edition of The Monolith.