Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 18:03:56 -0400 From: Len Blado Subject: Discussion of 5-color Red OK, this is actually excerpted from a private e-mail exchange prior to Aus. Nationals, and it was suggested I post it to the list... > A challenge for you - First the 5CG, then your own powerful 5CU, can you > come up with a 5 colour red? I spent a considerable amount of time pondering this, and the answer seems to be: no, I can't. Why? The 5-color decks I've seen are designed with some very solid restraints, all based in the necessity for generating 5 colors of mana. First of all, your 'mana load' must be light in all off colors. This means that you can't splash cards with upkeep costs, or use those colors for high throughput spells. This is due to the fact that the repetitive use of Gemstone Mine destroys it, the repetitive use of Undiscovered Paradise kills your development, and the repetitive use of City of Brass kills you. 5-color Green uses it's off colors for one-off removal spells (primarily) that are not really all that necessary in the first few turns of the game, and a very heavy emphasis on it's primary color (green). 5-color Blue accomplishes the low mana load by being extremely reactive and a patience-oriented deck which rarely acts unless absolutely necessary. Second of all, you must gain actual benefits from having 4-5 colors in your deck. Green and Blue are particularly unusual in that their primary weakness (creature removal) is so essential to a modern type II deck. Moreover, due to the diversity of creatures, a diversity of creature removal must be used. If you want to remove any other type of permanent, a single spell will function more or less just as efficiently as any other comparable spell (if you're playing White, why splash Green for Emerald Charm?). With creatures, having Swords, Terror *and* Incinerate provides substantially better removal options. However, this is not better in and off itself to justify splashing- it is merely a good reason to expand from a 2-color or 3-color deck to a rainbow deck, since all of your off-color lands will produce the mana *anyway*. Thirdly, Green and Blue are the two worst colors to splash in many respects. Green's primary strength (creatures) is replicated in most other colors more or less, and many of the best green creatures are multi-Green intensive. Blue's primary strength (countermagic) tends to be very blue mana-intensive. In other words, starting from a base of red, why would you really want to splash these colors, if it means surrendering a considerable amount of mana speed and availability into the late game (it's not unusual, for example, for my 5-color Blue to play the entire game never getting above 4 lands in play... and not by choice, either). Lastly, any rainbow deck must intrinsically be a slow, control deck. Even with 12 multilands, the chances of not drawing the appropriate mana in the early game is just too high for true speed decks (in fact, one of the reasons that 5-color Blue has so *few* lands is to increase the likelihood of drawing one of the 5 multilands in the opening draw, given a mulligan). Even 5cg is merely an aggressive control deck- it can kill quickly when the need arises, but the standard game is much more methodical. Now, don't get me wrong, I think that a rainbow deck based primarily out of red is *possible*... but it probably wouldn't be a 5-color deck along the lines of 5-color Green/Blue- more along the lines of traditional 'splashing' where one or two cards from a color are thrown in, and at most two colors are played as primaries, and two colors are either nonexistant or only exist for certain very specific late game cards (Zur's Weirding, for example). As an example of this style of deck, regard the following: Creatures: (14) 4 Breezekeeper U3 4 Frenetic Efreet UR1 2 Taniwha UU3 4 Varchild's War-riders R1 Removal: (15) 2 Earthquake RX 4 Incinerate R1 3 Jokulhaups RR4 3 Swords to Plowshares W 3 Thunderbolt R1 Disruption: (6) 4 Abeyance W1 2 Elkin Lair R3 Card Superiority: (2) 2 Demonic Consultation B Other: (2) 2 Teferi's Veil U1 Mana: (24) 2 Thawing Glaciers - 2 Squandered Resources BG 4 Undiscovered Paradise - 4 Gemstone Mine - 2 Island - 10 Mountain - Note that all 5 colors are used, but Blue and Red are the primary colors by far. Moreover, while there are spells in each of Green, Black and Red that might be helpful, it's usually just as easy to include a blue or red spell that accomplishes the same task. (Note: the above deck is not 'tuned', and needs considerable work) -Len Blado