Magic: The Gathering is one of the most popular trading card games of the modern age, and as of today, it’s 30 years old. It has remained fresh through constant updates and revisions over the years, but the core and its 5 main colors have remained the same. In my last article, I attempted to rank the colors based on their offensive potential. After brainstorming with my friends on how I can rank these based on how well they defend led to some very productive talks. So, armed with knowledge, let’s dive into the unique colors and their survivability in the face of an attack!
Red Are The Fires of Offense, Just Not a Wall
As I mentioned in my previous article, red is a fantastic color for offense. Defensively, however, it isn’t nearly as strong. This color has summons that must attack every round it can, which leads to having fewer summons on the field to block attackers. A good offense may be a good defense, but it doesn’t matter if you can’t defend against an attack if you fail to defeat your opponent. However, this color isn’t completely defenseless.
This color has the benefit of having tons of cards that can deal with direct damage. Combined with a few summons, one of these cards may dissuade anyone from attacking you. The problem is that this method cannot be sustained in the long term. If you play red, you know that you don’t want to play the long game; you want to get the game over quickly.
Black is the Color of Despair
I ranked this color pretty high on the list of offensive colors, and while it is no slouch, it can’t quite compete with the others. This color does have a lot going for it, though, including tools to destroy summons, deal direct damage, protection from colors, and things like deathtouch. Deathtouch alone makes me want to rank this higher, but my good friend, who has a lot of experience with this color, tells me it’s also not sustainable.
While, yes, deathtouch and lifelink are fantastic abilities. Deathtouch is beaten out by first strike and double strike, making the ability useless. There is also a rarer ability, indestructible, that deathtouch is useless against, but then again, there are only a few ways to counter that. Ultimately, this color is all about sacrifice, so defense isn’t necessary to stay alive; sometimes, you need to give something up for power.
Green are the Forests of Sustainability
Apparently, I wasn’t too kind to green in my last color ranking. I was looking through the lens of my Wurm deck when the superior elf build existed. So, to make up for that, I’m placing it here. Let’s talk about what this color gets right and how it regenerates. So many summons and sorcery cards allow a summon to regenerate. This ability functions as a temporary indestructible. Essentially, whenever you take damage that would destroy the summon, you can tap the summon to remove any damage instead.
This can be incredibly useful when defending. However, without reach, this isn’t as useful. As I noted in my last ranking, green gets reach, which is useless offensively. What it does is that it allows your summon to block a creature with flying. This covers the one gripe I had with this color. The problem is that this ability doesn’t appear as often as I feel it should.
White are the Walls of Security
I have a lot of experience with this color; white is a defensive monster. This color gives you plentiful means of gaining life; Safe passage can prevent all combat damage, and it has access to vigilance and plenty of other ways to ward off an attack. White also has access to flying, lifelink, first strike, and even idestructible.
Let’s talk about the angel deck, one of my favorite decks. I have multiple angels in my deck that give me life for just summoning them. I also have an angelic sanctuary that gives me life whenever an angel enters the battlefield. I also have multiple angels that have lifelink, adding to the amount of life I can gain. Avacyn makes all of my permanents indestructible, adding to their defensive abilities.
My deck has one flaw: It can take a while to get going with high-mana-cost summons. Although it has other sustainability features that’ll help me get there, Celestial Mantel is such a card in my deck. This is a fantastic card, especially in double head. Not only does it boost your attack and defense by three, but it also doubles your life total by just attacking. It doesn’t have to deal damage; it just has to attack. This card can easily run away with the game, making it impossible to defeat you if it’s not dealt with.
Pair this with Avacyn, and you can count the game as a win unless Avacyn gets exiled or is destroyed via negative counters. This strategy also doesn’t help against poison counters. There isn’t much this deck isn’t prepared to deal with, provided you’re getting the cards you need.
Blue are the Islands of Comfort
It’s time for this color to shine, and oh boy, does it! While blue doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that some of the other colors use, it does have one very important feature: cancel. If you want a deck built around denying everyone a chance to do anything, play this deck. It has counterspells galore and then some. It has counter cards that require the user to pay extra mana to get a spell off; it has counter spells that just invalidate the card; it has specific counters towards summoning creatures.
That scary creature with hexproof? Don’t let the summon resolve with counter creature spell. Wrath of god? There’s a low-cost counter for that. Do you want to invoke caution in your opponent? Keep an island untapped and see what happens. How sustainable is this strategy? It honestly doesn’t matter because this color also has ways to return spent sorcery and instant cards back to your hand. While this will use up a ton of mana, it is worth it.
Not only will your opponent know that you have a cancel card in your hand, but you can cause them to use one of their sorcery cards to get you to play it, using valuable resources and mana, or watch them try and pick their time to attack. Blue is all about winning through cunning and deceit, and if you can pull that off, you’re in the clear. The object is to make them think you don’t have a cancel card, maybe even let them get some spells off. Once you hit them with the cancel card, the fear sets in.
Now that we’ve completed ranking these colors by their offensive and defensive potential, feel free to experiment and find other ways to play the game. The beauty of Magic is that there is no one way to win a game. Games can be over in a flash or last for literal hours of exhausting back-and-forth. This is what makes this game timeless.
So grab your friends, grab your decks, and have a great time! That’s what it’s all about, right? If you feel like I missed some potential or certain colors have more to offer, let me know! While I’m talking through the lens of my experiences, they will likely differ from yours, and that’s a beautiful thing.
For More Great Content
If you enjoyed a trip down memory road with me, check out 10 of the most powerful swords in The Legend of Zelda Series! For other content by me, click here. I would greatly appreciate it! You should also check out more content on Magic: The Gathering as well!
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