Influence of color
In the universe of Magic: The Gathering color isn't just a visual characteristic but a fundamental aspect that shapes the game's mechanics, strategies, and lore. There are five colors in the game, White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green. Cards can also have no color, these cards are colorless. Cards can however also consist of more than one color. These cards are known as multicolored cards. Each color represents distinct philosophies, strengths, and weaknesses, offering players a rich tapestry of choices and strategies to explore. This page will explore how the colors are distributed in the game, and how these colors compare to each other. Finally, the relation between color and card type will be explored.
Card Color Distribution
We will start by looking at the overall distribution of colors in the game. The pie chart below shows how these colors are distributed. The main colors, White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green, seem to be represented equally, with multicolored cards being represented less than cards with a single color and colorless cards being the most common category.
Evolution of color distribution
Not only is it interesting to look at how colors are distributed over all cards, but changes in this distribution over the years also yield very interesting insights. In the plot below we can see that the distribution of single colored cards have stayed relatively stable over the years. However, this has not been the case for colorless and multicolored cards. This is most noteable between 2002 and 2004 where barely any multicolored cards were produced. The lack of multicolored cards was mostly compensated by more colorless cards. Furthermore, in recent years, the proportion of multicolored and colorless cards have increased at the expense of the other colors.
Card Attributes By Color
Different colors focus on different strategies and cards of the same color often have a lot of synergy together. Some colors are more focused on defense, represented by higher average toughness while other colors might be more powerful while attacking using the power attribute. In the plot below, you can select two color categories to compare. Next you can select for which attribute you want to compare the colors. You can look at the difference in toughness, power or mana cost.
Note: attribute values larger than 8, lower than 0 and other special values (like 0.5, ∞, ?,...) have been omitted. We justify this because they are few in number and don't give much insight into color characteristics.
Some insights:
- The distributions have roughly the same shape. This makes sense because the same game is played.
- White has a distribution with lower mana cost. It is caused by white having a focus on smaller creatures that help eachother.
- Black has both a lower toughness and higher power distribution than other colors. It thrives on the death of creatures, even it's own.
- Red is a quick and aggressive color. It has a power distribution that is higher than the other colors.
- The green graph for power/toughness is wider than the other colors. This is because green has a bigger focus on creature cards and has more of them.
- For blue, we see the opposite effect because it focuses less on creature cards.
- Multicolor cards have higher cost and stats. Combining colors leads to more complex cards which skews towards higher stats.
- There are a lot of colorless cards with mana cost of 0. That is because land cards are considered colorless, despite generating mana of a certain color.
- Many more insights are possible.
Number of Cards per Color per Card Type
Below, a heatmap is showing how often a card type occurs in a certain color. It is possible to select a certain set or all sets. Most colored cards are creatures, while most colorless cards are artifacts. Blue cards are the most often instant, while sorcery cards are mostly red and black. Enchantments again are mostly white. This tracks with white cards being more defensive.