General Bad Idea: Cutting Colours

[Lucre]

Whether it be for your mini cubes or just as a neat idea to increase density and increase synergy the notion that white is the least synergistic and most easily replicated colour keeps on becoming apparent to me.

Lets face it white doesn't do anything particularly unique except hit a broad spectrum of permanent types with some removal spells.

For Weenies: All colours but blue do this well and most cubes include a number of these already.
For Point Removal: Red and Black have never have much of a problem here.
For Sweepers: You might want to run more multiples but Red and Black still have you covered.
For Life Gain: Green and Black probably have sufficient sources of this to make your multicolour and control decks more survivable.
For Decisive / Recursive / Resilient Threats: Blue Black and Green already do a better job than white.
For Utility Removal: It would certainly get weaker but I think between Green and Multicolour you are golden.

Geddon is pretty much the only one I can think of that would be a seriously missed effect in some cubes and I can already think of like 4 more reasonable replacements.

I think the only real areas that feel damaged for normal cube magic by removing white would be card availability (corrected with running more copies of certain spells / effects), crappier Utility Removal and multicolour sections would require a little rethinking.

So what do you guys think? Cutting white and cubing an extra damnation, flame slash, doom blade, incinerate, acidic slime type effect, cackler n palz, phyrexian revoker, highland game, green lifegain fatty, unkillable blue or black thing, strong green and red 2/3 drops etc in around the same balance and you've got what is essentially standard cube magic, but now you have a lot more room to play with more archetypes / synergies and interesting new fixing dynamics. Cutting multicolour staples will suck but it's not like we have to cut hybrids!

This is without even talking about custom cards. Anyway what do you think of my bad idea?

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I mean, it would definitely work. White doesn't do anything unique and doesn't really have any unique weakness that makes it intrinsically special. Even its minor niches like lifegain matters, enchantments matter and artifacts matter are squarely covered in black, green and blue respectively. If you wanted to tighten a cube, cutting white makes sense.

Personally I'd cut blue, because fuck stack interaction and card selection, we topdeck like kings and it always resolves!

 

[ahadabans]

I've thought about doing this as well. And white is the color I thought of as well. But then I realized that I can't even convince my group to add an exile/draw step, so I think the odds of me convincing them to exclude an entire color from the game is pretty much zero.

Honestly, I'd miss white anyway. I love angels, white weenie and some of the cool unique effects in that color (parallax wave, armageddon, blink).

But this idea would certainly work. And it cuts down the color combinations by 4 which is huge. You could run triple fetch and still have room for more business spells. You could run more demanding color requirements and run into less color screw.

The real way to do this is to basically port the game of Magic to a custom game with the same basic rule set. Get rid of colors entirely and reboot the whole breakout. Maybe do Air, Earth, Fire, Water. You could make it so blue isn't the best color by taking some of the broken stuff it does and putting it into other areas. Say, Water is your "blue" color. Give it counters but take away all the draw or control magic effects. Maybe those belong in Air?

Whatever, just babbling now. Cool topic though. I'm a fan of messing with the game on a fundamental level because it's a good game but there is plenty of room for improvement still.

 

[Lucre]

I really like blue actually.

Not everything about it, but I find I have a lot of fondness for things like broad spectrum answers and effects that share traditionally blue abilities among the other colours like faithless looting and magma jet, sylvan library or the new green fact or fiction. I just feel like having fewer dead draws and having cards that replace themselves make turns feel more full and games run in a smooth way that is more gratifying.

What I resent is that blue has such a monopoly in the first place and I think removing the colour with the least say over what it draws might be a way to make games more rewarding and smooth even if we have to cut a couple broad spectrum answers to do it.

I know we all looooooove playing white despite it's flaws but I think it's something worth looking into. Tokens might require some work.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I really like blue actually.

You do? I would have never guessed it

One thing you do miss with cutting white are white's pacifism effects and creature exile effects, which are a nice subtle way to provide graveyard hate without running oppressive or narrow cards.

 

[Lucre]

Yeah you might do custom cards for that just use pillar, incinerate and weird black spells but like even blue can pacify especially if you use the hybrid babies.

I don't think I would like blue as much if they made more colours more draw interactive / capable of cultivating card advantage.

I always thought of green as being #2 enabler after blue. It has an easy time cultivating tempo for you instead of taking it from your opponent. It has tonnes of decent tutor and impulse effects and if you need to find a specific colour or shuffle your library it's tops. It plays well with graveyards like blue does and in flat power level cubes it's usually green with it's powered fatties and on board combos enabling the most degenerate things.

etc

 

[James Stevenson]

Oh man dude, white is the color I would never cut! I've got Champion of the Parish and Abzan Falconer for my sweet aggro decks, the best token makers, good removal, the wraths, good cards for pod. I love white.

Maybe I could lose black, but I don't think so. In general I think this is a very interesting idea, like the 3-color cubes, but I certainly couldn't lose a color from my cube. Building a 3 or 4-color cube from the ground up would be great though.