Explaining the Magic Color Pie and What All Colors Are Good At 

Blue is very strong at getting your opponent to flip the table in annoyance.

White: I summon 5 Human Soldiers and gain 10 life. Red: Fireball! Black: Oh, you had a powerful creature that could win you the game? It's dead now lmao- Green: Hey, remember that weak Wolf? It's now a 10/10 with Trample. Also, here's 5 Elves. Get fucked- Blue: Who said you could play?

I feel it necessary to point how just *how* red draws cards: Rather than the standard card draw, red gets what we call *impulse draw* - The ability to exile the top few cards of your library, and let you play those cards until a specific time limit is reached, usually the end of either this turn or your next turn.

Another thing Blue is good at: leaving lands open on other players' turns to make them wary.

A quick note on the names of the color pairs: Those names are not arbitrary. There was a block for Ravnica: City of guilds, and Ravnica had ten guilds associated with each color pair. That's where the naming conventions came from. You'll also run into names for color trios on occasion, though those are less common due to slightly worse mana-fixing available for tri-color decks. Those take their names from the Shards of Alara and the clans of Tarkir.

9:03 Red is NOT the color of hate. It is the color of anger. Black is the color of hate. Literally the cards called "Anger" and "Hatred" are red and black cards respectively.

Long before the "formal" color pie (even dating back to the 1990's), I always used to love the color rivalries that I always perceived as: Red (war) vs. White (peace) White (good) vs. Black (evil) Black (death) vs. Green (life) Green (body) vs. Blue (mind) Blue (water) vs. Red (fire) These are gross oversimplifications, of course. But even before this was made more explicit, I loved those contrasts and their symbolisms.

I think a better way to describe the color pie is not WHAT colors do, but HOW colors do stuff. Such as, blue just straight up draws cards, black usually trades life for card draw, green does creature-reliant card draw, red does impulse draws, looting, and rummaging, and white does almost no card draw. The same can be said for removal; green has fight spells, red has burn, black has destroy effects, white has o-ring and exiling, and blue has bouncing. The current way the color pie is set up, its less about what the colors can and cant do, but rather how they go about playing a whole game.

It's hard for me to watch this video without thinking of Tolarian's video. "Green does that, too."

I think the defining weakness of red is that it has no way to play around enemy removal and board wipes. Red creatures are almost never hexproof or indestructible, and almost never have some sort of "sticky" effect. If your creature gets targeted with a murder, every color besides red has instants that can counteract that. Red has to bounce back from its hand.

I feel like an underrepresented color...is colorless. There's a LOT of stuff that colorless mana cards can do or be used for, heck, they even have their own lore and characters!

dark ritual says "am I a joke to you? these kids are named after me" great video was a fun watch.

I sent this to my mom cause she’s a rec therapist who works with American veterans. She knows I like yugioh so showed me some of the guys playing mtg. I think this can help her relate to those people 😁tysm

I think something this is missing is that the color pairs also have "opposite" interpretations to what you said. For example, rather than blue-white being about slowly and peacefully achieving your goals, it can also be about strict order enforced by cold logic. There is no "good" or "evil" in the color pie; everything has a positive and negative side.

This video is a good basic explanation of the color pie, you on missed some things though. A top 10 list of color-pie breaking cards would be an awesome video. It would also be a good idea to to make a video that explains what a color does for each common archetype. For example, blue in a tempo deck helps build small evasive threats while resetting the opponent's progress, while in a combo deck it serves more towards protecting against stack interactions & removals that break the combo and helps drawing cards to find it. Red in an aggro deck helps push out lots of damage and use small, aggressive creatures to push out damage, while in a control deck it gives more reactive decks additional removal and ways to win by using effective end-game threats such as huge dragons and expensive burn spells that can often bring you close to the end of the game.

i literally just started magic for the first time a couple of days ago on arena and after finishing all the color challenges i wasnt sure what direction to specifically start taking my deck...this video was absolutely perfect for me

Yo this video is so good. If this was my introduction to Magic I woulda been mesmerized. I can't wait for new people to find this that's gonna be awesome for them.

I love fist strike lol. I would love to see the tri color color pies as well. As well as the colorless and generic parts of the color pie.

Great video for new players, I think you gave a good overview to get people started. Quick note, rituals are named rituals because of dark ritual, which is black. Black doesn't get as much of it anymore, but in the past they had the first few rituals with dark ritual, cabal ritual, and culling the weak.

For the two-color combos: Look at the names of the 10 Guildgate lands

i love the semiannual experience of stumbling into yet another hirumaredx side channel that specializes in yet another one of my random favorite games

I am not very experienced with Magic yet. But I am loving my blue and red deck. Being able to draw a lot of lands and instants that can damage the other player is awesome.

I think there should be a follow up video to this explaining Colourless (Eldrazi, Artifacts) philosophy, as well as the philosophies of all the combinations of colours beyond doubles (i.e. tri, quad and all five).

This is like astrology for men

Most of the things are right, and the color identity is definitely not exclusive to other colors, but there are some things that were glossed over. White's playstyle comes in two main ways. The one in the video is what the community would call "White Weenies", where you throw efficient early creatures and good board control on the field and start swinging. The other type is "Death and Taxes", and it's important how many floodgates/stax pieces white has that hinders a lot of faster formats like Legacy and Vintage. Older formats have larger pools of faster busted cards, and D&T is basically the way to make your opponents play "Fair Magic", where the plan is putting 1-3 cards a turn at reasonable rates. Stuff like Thalia and Archon shutting down storm decks, Path and Swords to remove cheating creatures, Rest in Peace to stop Dredge/Graveyard, and Esper Sentinel to have some sort of continuous card draw. Only thing about blue that was missed is its tiny mill strat that none of the other colors really have. Not very important, but at least should be mentioned that it's the only color that really uses this strat. Black's focus is also with trading resources for other things, a high risk high reward scenario. Most common ways to see it are trading life for advantage (Thoughtseize, Necropotence) and sacrificing creatures for benefit, seen with zombie and reanimation. With Red, the video says a lot of what the color does, but an important thing about the color is how temporary and blazing fast it is. Red Deck Wins, the deck that best shows off red's nature, is a very all-or-nothing deck, where you win or lose by turn 4 consistently. You slap down your tiny haste creatures for fast damage, temporary buffs that push more damage but don't grow like white's creatures, and burn spells that are fast but single use. Even its "card advantage" makes you empty your hand as fast as possible to make best use. And once you're out of steam, you go to game two if they're not dead. Hazoret the Ferverent, Lava Spike, and Monestary Swiftspear show off how red just goes ape on the board and prays for the win. Edit: Green is green, big stompy and heavy growing. Not much else to say besides life gain is really a side-product of green. Thragtusk was the only real meta-relevant green life gain card, and it was just good as a big pig.

"Blue is the only color that gets access to counter magic" *Laughs in Mana Tithe ans Dash Hopes

Black has rituals aswell. In the form of dark ritual, cabal ritual, songs of the damned, sacrifice, burnt offering, and culling the weak. And even one counter in the form of dash hopes.

Super cool and informative! I like how you included the lore/traits each color represented, and explained how that influenced the cards each color got. Awesome vid!

By far. The best color pie video I've ever seen. Flavour and real data combined.

Laughs in Colorless. Colorless is generally devoid of emotion. It is beyond your petty mana. I'm a big fan of artifacts and the Eldrazi. Colorless has access to most effects that other colors have, just at a higher cost or very specific (Warping Wail is a counterspell, Scoured from Existence can exile anything, etc)

Loved it immensely! If you don't already have plans to include more details that were left out or even cover other aspects such as artifacts and/or the tri color factions please consider. Many 😊 thanks

Maybe a video about the trio color combos. When I was new to magic, I could never figure out why grixis deck lists didn’t have a card named grixis in them.

It's worth noting that the color pie has shifted a lot over time and is much less rigid than it used to be. For example, draw effects used to be nearly nonexistent outside blue and black, but they started adding in rummage to red and green draw linked to having big bodies on board (while black's pay life for cards have dropped off a lot due to generally not being balanced in the past). Black, meanwhile, used to have no answers to artifacts and enchantments and green used to have no way to kill creatures before fighting type effects were added and blue used to have almost no permanent answers to stuff that had resolved and not been countered. Black used to be the fast mana ritual color also before that got shifted more to red and also now is just rare due to generally enabling silly strats. Also about Simic. Besides just turboing fatties, the blue side tends to add evasion and tricks to the fatties they produces while providing protection. Countermagic is great for forcing through your bomb that might otherwise be stopped or removed and also stopping your opponent's bomb or answers. Green, meanwhile, gives the faster mana for more draw that blue tends to lack as well as some more ability to deal with resolved permanents. About Orzhov. They also tend to focus on either draining life and nickle and diming opponents with taxation sort of effects or combine white's swarming and token production with blacks love of sacrificing creatures/gaining value from creatures dying. These both help them with the whole midrange thing, able to maintain a lead in the life point race both by draining enemy life and maintaining theirs despite not having the biggest bodies as well as not suffering losses as badly for losing troops. Basically, white tends to produce the resources that black love spending for value, such as life and spare creatures.

in addition to being the best color for drawing cards, blue is also by far the best color for top deck manipulation, usually via Scry, a mechanic found almost exclusively in the color

I love hearing about the color pie, its ideas and combinations. This is my favorite video you've ever made.

Great video! Loved how clear it was and how well it was put together!

I would love to see a video explaining the 3 color worlds like Bant and Jund, and explaining their strengths and weakness!

A breakdown on the colourless cards could be cool, thinking mostly about Eldrazi here

This was awesome! I'd love to see all the other color combinations evaluated sometime.

As a beginner of MTG this was quite helpfull to get a general idea of all the colors, thanks!

Well, obviously with going over the two-color combinations, this'll necessitate going over the _three-color_ combos at some point.

7:56 Is one of the few cards for black to interact with enchantments this directly, even with the cost. Black used to be the main color for rituals.

Just got into TMG this past week. After a few Magic Online tutorials and color challenges, this video paired very, very well for new players and beginners who’ve gotten a feel for the game and their colors they’ve either used and come against online. Thanks for the insight info!

Great work on this video and thanks for the info! Really puts things into a nice perspective for me, as I'm new to MTG.

4:25 Blue isn't the only color that gets counters it's the only color that gets GOOD counters

@ 9:39 correcting your mistake. Black has "Dark Ritual" which is actually just a better Seething Song but for black mana

I was trying to find more specific magic the gathering RU-vidrs to cover what you did, especially for the dual color However, most of them focus too much on the lore, not on the gameplay This video just proves that The___Logs is still the overall GOAT card game channels Can't wait for you to make The Digi logs for Digimon TCG

Amazing summary! Love your lists, but looking forward to other more design philosophy focused vids like this.

Red isn’t the only color with ritual effects. Black gets them too, I.e. Cabal Ritual and Dark Ritual

My fave is boros.

I liked this one a lot! You should do one going over the philosophy of tge three color combo groups too!

For all the talk about white not being good and black not being evil, the cards in print really don't back that up. Red was supposed to be the color of independence, which almost never shows up in print. Green and blue have swapped which color embodies mysticism and have split curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge, which used to be blue traits. Understanding the color pie won't help you understand the cards all that much.

I never knew why they were called ally and enemy colors until today. I've been playing for over 10 years

You should totally make a video (series) going more into detail of the philosophy of the colours up to 3 colours

When I was most into MTG, I grew very keen on Red/Blue (if I recall, Izzet was still rather new at the time, as were noggles) as a deck combo for the sheer number of counter and burn spells at my disposal. I really liked the idea of keeping an opponent at bay and damaging them at the same time while never really leaning much into creatures myself.

BLUE IS THE ONLY COLOR TO HAVE COUNTER SPELLS... laughs in red elemental blast😂😂😂

"Black has no artifact removal..." other than Gate to Phyrexia.

Amazing analysis on the colors and their meaning!✨

Thank you SO MUCH for this, came right when I needed it most!

Can't wait for the shards and the wedges review like this. Should be very interesting.

Just started getting back into magic and bought the Prismari performance commander deck. Gotta say, your explanation of red/blue combo fits perfectly with that deck and with the commander Zaffai, thunder conductor

I dig this video!! Very informative… i played many years ago but back into collecting and a friend wants to learn to play so this will be good to show him!

A future video idea could’ve going over the 3 color interactions, how the combos seem to hyper focus on what their individual colors have in common often times disregarding the other aspects. Like how Jeskai made up of red, white, and blue, is a very spell heavy trio focusing on casting instants and sorceries and caring a little less about the creatures they have. Red likes burn spells, blue likes draw and counter spells, white has removal spells, and when they come together there’s a big focus in casting non-creature spells, especially with the Prowess keyword on their creatures…

Great video overall! Loved the interpretation and gave me some things to think about. One thing I think you missed on mentioning is Blue's Mill capabilities and how that sorta dives into the "mind and sanity" (or whatever) aspect of blue. I also have to disagree on Green hating that Black brings things back from the graveyard. Green has tons of effects to return things from the graveyard to play or to hand. (Bala-Ged, Regrowth, Recollect, heck they have a card called Reincarnation). Also would mention that green is proficient at creating tokens (Saprolings, Plants, plus things like Doubling Season and Parallel Lives).

I'd love to see a similar video on the three-color and four-color identities. Maybe even a mention on how five-color is portrayed!

I needed this for a friend!! Thank you.

Back when Ravnica came out it was wild to see all those enemy paired Guild but they do tend to stand out. The Boros Legion having angels fighting alongside goblins. The galaxy-brain madness of the Izzet. Golgari themes of life and death. Simics wonders of the unnatural. Orzovs' crushing fist in a golden gauntlet. A really good primer video for this. Only thing I would have added is maybe some examples of the creatures that each color gets but that's a minor thing. Hope we get a series of best of/most iconic card for each color pairing and maybe a video talking about shards and wedges later on.

I’m relatively knew to the game and was not aware that there were ally and enemy colors. Interestingly enough, each of the two-colored decks i’ve built is comprised of ally colors

Dude you must have more channels than there are days in th week! :) Appreciate the grind

I had to learn this from articles, so it's nice seeing this now, even if we don't have the roleplayed colors here :D

I think the colors also can go with your personality, which will affect your "play style". I didn't know I needed this video. Thanks for sharing.

Very interesting video that provides a decent amount of base knowledge for the color pie.

Didn't know that you had an mtg channel apart from the Yu-Gi-Oh one! I really enjoy your videos cause you have a great way to let the people understand easy what you say 😊

Okay analysis video! Thanks for uploading!

Great informative video. Very easy to comprehend as well.

A good idea for a similar video would be the three color combinations. Like these pairs were named after that pair's guild, the three color combos all have tribes they're named after

Oh what a F'in delight to hear hirus voice at the start. Came in completely unknowing. Incredible

Interesting video enjoyed it, the only thing I think that was really important that was missed is that Red lacks enchantment removal (I think you said removal but it wasn’t very specific) my friend plays mono red aggro and he loses constantly to me simply because he can’t deal with enchantments that change the game and give me the advantage, he has recently changed it to red/green so its improved but otherwise great content ty for sharing

I just clicked on the video out of curiosity and was not expecting your voice. Great vid hope this channel takes off too.

The design of Magic is amazing. Every single color has multiple meaningful choices and overlap with other colors, allowing multicolor decks to be not only possible but actively generally better than monocolors. And yet, despite that, there are enough mechanics in the game that each color still manages to be unique and have strong indentities, sometimes multiple depending on the color. White is good at both lifegain and high aggro. Blue is good at both counterspells and at using artifacts to gain effects. Black is good at low-power swarming with zombies, good at getting out big powerful monsters (specifically in effect, not stat line), and good at life drain. Honestly, black is just pretty good at most things. Red is good at swarming, burning, and combat, and is very good at being all around aggressive and dealing with the opponents before they can deal with you. Green is by far the most single-focussed of the colors, being generally based on getting out big monsters with big stat lines, as well as buffing those monsters, but it also has lots of effects to cheat cards out, recurring cards from the grave, and even decent at lifegain. Theres overlap, definitely, but somehow each can still feel completely unique depending on the situation. Truly amazing game design.

10:53 @TheManaLogs , I think it would help elaborate on the flavor or Red if it were noted that while red is bad at specifically drawing a card. It is because card draw is seen as knowledge gain and that’s why blue is so good at by it. Red being impertinent and passionate has either impulse draw (this knowledge or this emotion you’ve drawn on can only be used in the moment), or looting (forget something, to learn something new). So while it is not real draw filling or adding to your hand, it is still effective card advantage.

Can you make a video on 3+ colored decks with their personalities and gameplay strategy? I would love to see all those combos as well and then the ultimate 5 color personality types

This type of video (and formats) should be in other channels to promote this game and channel. Very good and concise 👍🏻

"Red is the only color that gets rituals" Dark ritual: Imma pretend I didn't see that

Been playing off and on for years and never knew this. I'm pretty sure my deck building will benefit greatly

Great video! However, I noticed that blue's snares were missing along with black's rituals (at least their old ones I suppose).

As a returning player this is so helpful thankyouthankyouthankyouuuu

Jajaja yo man I came from you WoW and Yugioh videos and started playing Magic now is nice to hear a Familiar voice keep the awesome content

You sound so much like CGP Grey and I'm so stoked on it. It mskes me wanna watch every single one of your videos now lol

Black also has quite a bit ritual effects as well, generally just having additional conditions

There should probably be a follow up video about color trios (Grixis, Jund, Bant, etc.) quartets and cap it off with Five Color United and Colorless.

Technically, there can be a guide for three color decks, because not everyone knows these archetypes as much as others. Grixis, for example, being a combination of red, blue, and black, has the abilities of chaos, prevention, and removal, making it an easy pick for some; even with the numerous Bolas decks that can be made. The bigger situation is that blue and red are usually enemy colors to each other, as black would be the only ally color to both.

Oh god I clicked on this thinking it was a random magic video And got absolutely whiplashed when duellogs started talking. Thought I pressed the wrong video

I feel one of the parts forgotten about Black is the fact that they also represent death to some degree, as where there is life there is death. however death doesn't have to be an evil thing as it is natural, all things die. That is where the Golgari come into play with the death and decay of nature at the end of its life and how nature eventually turns that death into new life. After all, Lion King taught us all about this fact, it's the circle of life.

Verry good explanation of the color pie. Liked the part about white not being the good guys. One thing id add is that each color represents a "thing" or concept. Like white and black are both two sides of the same coin human nature. Selfishness and selflessness. Both colors are willing to sacrifice themselves and others but white does it for the greater good or balance while black does it out of fanatical devotion or for greater power. Both colors gain life but black usually steals it from things and both have great creature recursion but white also does all permanets while black does creature reanimation the best. Black kinda does everything but for a cost and they usually demand some sort devotion to black. Black cards are the most pip dense cards they want to be played with other black cards and kinda make it harder to splash other colors. While they arent inheritly good like 90% of white cards are selfless heros benevolent angels healing clerics they really embody the stronger together mentality, and black doesnt see its actions as evil they dont believe in the traditional moral compass of right and wrong so they dont hate you nesessarily they just dont value life the same. Blue represents time and space not just like water or thought. They manipulate space by copying creatures changing characteristics of the card polymorphing things they can change anything about you and boucing permanents which they can hit lands and time through extra turns additional upkeep phases or other weird rule interactions and phasing untapping permanents countering spells ect. They manipulate the fabric of reality and its why its probably the most popular color. Red isn't jus emotions they represent energy itself. Fire and lightning primordial forces that explode with power but disapear in a flash. Red decks almost always start out fast and either go out with a bang out or fizzle out and run outta steam. They are passionate fast acting and impulsive risk taking and the red players themselves truly embody the color philsophy. Green represents nature itself. Its about abundance growth life itself growing from death nuturing other life and believing in the idea that the strongest survive and trample over the weak while also protecting and nurturing the weak so it has a balance. Green is fundamentally connected to the land which is the basic resource in magic so they are actually a strong contender for best color. Green doesnt nessesarily care about what your doing they think im gonna do my thing and hopefully its bigger and better than your thing if not i mean the strongest win. Green does have interaction but the best green decks forgo all that stuff so they can do what they do best make a bunch o mana. Green really represents the timmy player the guy that just wants to cast the biggest fattest creature, not the best creature but what they see as the coolest creature.

Just starting this game and realising how deep it goes is crazy.

Known in a lot of the community, but I'd add to your assessment of white that it's also the worst at keeping up with mana and mana ramping. With the strong draw in green, blue, and black making sure they can hit regular land drops, green's ability to get extra lands into play, and red's access to rituals, white just doesn't have anything similar to help it keep up. Wizards is starting to address this more by letting white find plains cards provided an opponent has more land than you, but this is also a pretty recent development.

Although it isn't relevant currently, white used to have a lot more shadow creatures than everyone else. I had an extended format mono-white deck back in the day that revolved around cataclysm, land tax, empyrial armor and cheap shadow creatures. Actually had tournament success with it.

Woah first video I've seen on this channel and hearing the duel logs voice got me shook but looking at the name it makes sense

*Laughs in infect* this is a really great video and I now understand some of the colors better, moreso in their combinations. Thank you for this video.