Oh, okay then.

I try to stay out of color pie discourse because I don't think its really very useful, but this take really annoys me.

1/ https://twitter.com/SixthComma/status/1345818532081250307

I'm sure somewhere at the WotC there's a giant board subdivided by WUBRG with sticky notes on it that defines the color pie, and white might have more sticky note on it than other colors, but that doesn't mean it has "a bigger slice of pie", at least in the ways that matter.

2/

The problem is that white has a lot of weird situational abilities and rider-like combat abilities that don't actually matter to the average player.

Lifegain? Famously bad. Damage prevention? Whatever.

First strike? Vigilance? Anthems? Nobody cares.

3/

White doesn't have abilities that people actually care about. Primarily, this means abilities that result in card advantage or somehow stopping the opponent in what they're doing. Magic is after all a game played with multiple people, and interaction is important.

4/

Historically, the way that White best interacts is through two ways.

The first is rules-setting abilities that either don't affect you, or are meant to affect the opponent much more harshly than yourself.

5/

Not to say that all White cards in this category must be Legacy and Vintage powerhouses. There have been plenty of White cards like this that have seen play in rotating formats but are not quite good enough to make the cut in current Death and Taxes builds.

6/

They just have to have effects that people are likely to care about. After all, it only matters that you're setting a rule if your opponent was likely to break that rule in the first place.

Many recent White cards in this category fail this test.

7/

The other issue is that white shares this effect with artifacts, which also often set rules text. And in many cases, these artifacts are just as aggressively costed as the white cards.

8/

Obviously, "cards that set rules" covers a lot of the pie, so it makes sense that WotC might want to give that to other colors.

But when White lacks in good effects, and other colors get busted effects, then it leaves people wondering if the effects are still white.

9/

After all, the color pie isn't defined by what Maro says. Its defined by how players experience Magic. You might say W can do X and Y, but if X never actually comes up in most games and you don't print a playable card that does Y, then it functionally doesn't do X and Y.

10/

It gets worse when you print cards of another color- say, Green- doing Y, but you say its a bend and you won't do it often- but if the cards that have G doing Y come up a lot and the W cards don't, then that means G is primary in Y and W is not, no matter what WotC says.

11/

So yeah, you might have a checklist that says White has a bigger part of the color pie, and I believe that you're maintaining that in good faith. But you have to understand that your players don't experience the color pie in that same way.

12

I could go on about other parts of White's identity- how O-ring plays the same as Vindicate except worse and more expensive, for example. but it just rehashes the same point, which is that white's space in the color pie is functionally not unique, except the cards are worse.

13/

Obviously my view of this is colored by all my DnT friends, but I also feel that in the identity of the colors that I play. Why should I play White for Jeskai, if all the other URx splashes get so much better toys?

Think about it.

14/14

I just realized I said "in two ways" and only talked about one thing.

The other thing was supposed to be through O-ring type things but I got bored and the point would have been the same