The Colours of "Magic: The Gathering" Quiz

Answer: Green

Green is a simple but strong colour. It is often considered the easiest colour for new players learning "Magic: The Gathering".

Green is all about large creatures. They usually don't do anything special, but they can be big and scary. Big creatures are difficult to deal with conventionally, and other colours will usually have to choose between losing their own creatures, or losing a lot of personal life.

Trample is an ability often associated with green. A creature with Trample that is blocked will still have any extra damage carry through to the defending player.

Green's weakness is that it does not have strong non-creature spells to deal with non-conventional situations. If the other colours start getting combos off, green will be powerless to stop it. Green usually has cards designed to remove fliers, or cards like "Naturalize" to destroy enchantments and artifacts.

Answer: White

White is the colour of purity and order. White is known for having angels and deeply religious creatures, devoted to their gods and causes. This does not make white "good", though. White can be dictatorial, and will harshly suppress heresy and dissent.

Abilities often associated with white are Lifelink and Defender. White plays a slower, longer game than the other colours. It gains life easily, and has creatures and other methods explicitly designed to prevent enemies from attacking.

White creatures are usually quite weak individually, but can be improved en masse to be scary. A classic white card is "Honor of the Pure", which gives all white creatures +1/+1.

White usually stalls the game while building up a large, strong army, or to bring in powerful angels, and then attacks with large waves of creatures. White's weakness is that it may become too defensive, and lack any offence to finish the game.

Answer: Black

Black is the colour of ambition and personal power, no matter the cost. It has relatively strong cards, but the costs are usually quite steep. Black cards will often have additional costs to play them, such as paying life, or sacrificing a creature. This is usually not a problem, because black can also easily return cards from the graveyard.

Abilities seen on many black creatures include Fear and Deathtouch, which makes black able to kill creatures and players with ease. An example of a strong black card is "Murder", which simply destroys any target creature, regardless of how strong it might be.

Black's weakness is that its high costs, and disregard for personal safety may weaken itself. A player could then sneak through a small amount of damage to finish a player using a black deck.

Answer: Blue

Blue is a slower, more reactionary colour. It focuses on controlling the battlefield, and preventing other players from doing what they would like to. It is the colour of mechanical devices and controlling/taming nature.

Abilities often associated with blue are Unblockable and Flying, which usually means the defending player cannot block attacks. To offset this, blue creatures are usually weaker and more expensive than those of other colours.

The poster card for blue is "Cancel", which costs three mana to simply counter any spell that another player might play. This lets blue players stop other players from completing their otherwise terrifying combos. Blue can also take control of enemy creatures, and can even attack a player's library directly.

Blue's weakness is the early game. Blue's cards are usually expensive, and its creatures are weak. Faster colours might destroy blue before it can even get off the ground.

Answer: Red

Red is known for being very fast, strong, impulsive, and a bit reckless. According to the developer diaries, Red is also the colour of love, passion, poetry, and art. These concepts are difficult to translate into game mechanics, though. Red is usually associated with abilities such as First Strike and Haste.

Red creatures often do lots of damage, but are also fragile, such as the 4/1 Lightning Elemental.

The epitome of a red card is "Lightning Bolt", which is an instant that costs only one red mana, and can deal three damage to any creature or player. It is quite strong, can be played at any time, in response to anything, and is very cheap.

Another chaotic red card is Sulpheric Vortex, which prevents players from gaining life, and deals two damage to each player (even the one who played it) every turn.

Red is weaker than the other colours in the late game. If red does not win fast, it will have a much harder time.

Answer: Ravnica

Ravnica was a plane that was covered by a single enormous city. It was first seen in 2005 in the "Ravnica: City of Guilds" set, the first in the "Ravnica" block. Ravnica was visited again in 2012 in the "Return to Ravnica" block. In the city of Ravnica, ten guilds appeared: one for each of the two-colour combinations possible. The guilds were:

Dimir: Black/Blue
Golgari: Black/Green
Rakdos: Black/Red
Orzhov: Black/White
Simic: Blue/Green
Izzet: Blue/Red
Azorius: Blue/White
Gruul: Green/Red
Selesnya: Green/White
Boros: Red/White

Having multiple colours represented in a deck is a useful strategy. You can call upon the strengths of multiple colours to make your deck more versatile, and to cover the weaknesses of any one colour. The trade-off is that you have to make sure you get the correct mana in order to play the different coloured cards.

Answer: Alara

The "Shards of Alara" set was released in 2008, and focused on the three-colour combos. The plane of Alara had been split into five shards, in any of which, two colours of mana were missing. The block was set during the reunion of the five shards, and the conflict that arose. Each of the different shards had a theme or keyword associated with it.

The five shards were:
Bant: Green/White/Blue
Esper: White/Blue/Black
Grixis: Blue/Black/Red
Jund: Black/Red/Green
Naya: Red/Green/White

Answer: Tarkir

The "Khans of Tarkir" set was released in 2014. It had five clans, each based on an ancient Asian society, such as the Mongol Empire, Ottoman Empire, and the Shaolin Monks. The five clans were:

Abzan: White/Black/Green
Jeskai: Blue/Red/White
Sultai: Black/Green/Blue
Mardu: Red/White/Black
Temur: Green/Blue/Red

Like the Ravnica guilds and the Alara shards, each clan had its own theme and game mechanics. The wedge synergies were more difficult to develop than the shards because there were two enemy colour sets in each wedge, as opposed to just one set in each shard. The designers at Wizards of the Coast are very aware of how each colour interacts with its allies and enemies. The designers especially put a lot of thought into the opposing colour Ravnica guilds, and the wedges, to make sure they were still functional colour combinations.

Answer: Nephilim

There were only five four-coloured creatures released in Guildpact; one for each possible combination. These creatures were the Nephilim. In the lore, the Nephilim were ancient beings in Ravnica, sealed away thousands of years before the Guildpact.

While the Nephilim were unique, their usefulness was often less than the hassle to get the mana to play them. Four-colour decks were often difficult to manage, and most people considering a four-coloured deck would elect to take the relatively small step to just use all five.

Answer: Sliver

The first five-coloured card to ever be created was actually called 1996 World Champion. There was only one ever printed, and it was encased in the trophy.

The first five-coloured creature to be released to the public was Sliver Queen. Slivers were a hive-minded race with text that followed the form "All Slivers have ..." Slivers first appeared in 1997, in the Tempest set, with ten mono-coloured different creatures and an artifact. This encouraged players to try different colour combinations when making a Sliver deck. In the Stronghold set, which followed the Tempest set, five two-coloured Slivers were released, and the Sliver Queen, which was all five colours.

Since Stronghold, Wizards of the Coast has created more five-coloured cards, and created more mana sources that can provide any colour of mana, to facilitate multi-coloured decks.