Custom 4-Color MtG Set: What is this?

Hey guys, Drion here!

This is my first post about a Custom 4-Color Magic: The Gathering (MtG) set I've been considering creating for a long time.

If you're not familiar with the game, here's a quick rundown of what MtG is:
Magic: The Gathering is the world's most popular trading card game, created by Richard Garfield (who also designed games like King of Tokyo and Bunny Kingdom). The game is currently published and developed by the magical people at Wizards of the Coast (they also own Dungeons & Dragons). In short, it is about wizards fighting each other by draining mana from the lands of the multiverse to fuel their spells and summon creatures from the various planes of existence. The game has an enormous card base (20.000+ unique cards!), and it is only growing with the yearly release of 4 sets of ~250 new cards, as well as several other cards in smaller supplemental products.

So here I will attempt making one of these ~250 card sets, keeping with most of the design principles that Wizards of the Coast employs while making their own. My main focus with this is to try creating a so-called "4-Color Set", which is something that the game hasn't attempted yet.

To understand 4-Color, I will explain what colors mean in Magic: The Gathering. In the game there exists five colors of mana (white, blue, black, red, and green), each of which represent a certain ideology or way of looking at the world. Each color has their own toolset with strengths and weaknesses, and cards of that color need matching color mana to be cast. You can of course use more than one color and its cards, but that will require more kinds of lands that generate all of those colors of mana, which makes it less likely that you can cast your cards of any color!

Red mana for example represents passion, freedom, and directness. Examples of red cards would be a goblin that attacks as soon as it enters play, or a lightning bolt spell that can deal direct damage to anything. To cast these spells you need red mana, which is mainly generated by mountain land cards. So let's say you are playing a red goblin deck, but your opponents keep using spells that destroy all the goblin cards you played, sending them to the graveyard and leaving your hand empty. You could add in some blue cards, the color of knowledge and intrigue, and manipulation which could allow you to simply draw cards, or counter one of those board-wiping spells, nullifying it completely! Any combination of these will require you to include island cards in your deck, which generate blue mana instead of red, that will still help with casting your cards, but can easily result in you getting a bad draw and getting stuck with blue islands and red cards or vice versa. More colors of course give you access to more tools and more versatility, but decrease your deck's consistency.

This concept is beautifully embraced by the game and its designers, and Magic uses this system to make deck building more interesting as well as more self-expressive.

Next time I will delve into why trying to guide players to use four colors at a time is a Very bad idea.

Thank you for your reading this, please leave a comment if you have any questions, suggestions, or thoughts!

Take care and have a great day!