Hi, I'm Shingo Suzuki, also known as Suzushin.
If you're reading this, you're probably interested in Magic: The Gathering (MTG)—or at least a little curious.
I understand! Winning with a deck you've built your own way feels wonderful. The rules are complex, but it's a deeply rewarding trading card game enjoyed around the world.
Playing MTG can also involve logical thinking and deciding how to use limited resources. Perhaps it's a little workout for the mind too?
I plan to write more about MTG here. First, let's look at the five colors and their playstyles. I've also included a small checklist to help you find a color based on the cards and approaches you enjoy. By the end, I hope you'll know what you'd like to try.
The five colors: strengths, weaknesses, and playstyles
MTG has five colors: white, blue, black, red, and green. Each has different ideals and different tactical strengths and weaknesses.
⚪️ White: order, equality, and rules
White values organization and absolute law. Rather than relying on individual strength, it controls the battlefield through collective power and enforced rules.
- Strengths: systems and defense
- Weenie strategies: Deploy many low-cost creatures, then overwhelm the opponent with team-wide buffs.
- Versatile removal: Exile powerful cards from the battlefield to neutralize them.
- Rule-setting: “Hatebears” restrict actions, for example by limiting players to one spell each turn.
- Weakness: running out of resources
- Its straightforward standalone card draw is the weakest of the colors, making it prone to running out of cards in a long game.
- Typical wins
- Overwhelm the opponent with tokens, or lock down the battlefield with legendary creatures whose effects influence the whole board.
🔵 Blue: knowledge and control of the mind
Blue is the color of intellect and information. It avoids brute-force combat, predicts and disrupts the opponent's plans, and gradually wins through an advantage in cards.
- Strengths: control and draw
- Counterspells: Stop powerful spells before they reach the battlefield.
- Outstanding draw: Lead the colors in replenishing hands and manipulating the library.
- Buying time: Return cards to hand with bounce effects, or tap them and keep them from untapping, to gain tempo.
- Weakness: immediate battlefield answers
- It can rarely destroy creatures or other permanents once they've resolved; instead, it generally returns them to hand.
- Typical wins: Counter the opponent's actions while drawing more cards, then win with hard-to-answer large creatures such as Hullbreaker Horror, or by milling the opponent's library away.
⚫️ Black: self-serving ambition
Black is the color of doing whatever it takes to achieve its ends. Life, cards, the graveyard, and even its own creatures can become resources to sacrifice for power.
- Strengths: destruction at a price
- Powerful targeted removal: A wide range of unconditional creature-destruction spells.
- Discard: Look at an opponent's hand and make them discard a threat before it becomes a problem.
- Weaknesses: limited answers and self-inflicted damage
- It struggles badly with noncreature permanents such as artifacts and enchantments. Paying life for strong effects also risks defeating yourself.
- Typical wins
- Clear away disruption, then maintain a threat such as Sheoldred, the Apocalypse that drains the opponent's life simply by remaining in play.
🔴 Red: impulse and destructive passion
Red is the color of emotion, speed, and chaos. It is aggressively focused on the present, putting everything into dealing those 20 points of damage.
- Strengths: overwhelming speed
- Burn: Spells such as Shock deal damage to creatures or directly to an opponent.
- Haste: Many creatures can attack the turn they enter, dealing substantial damage in the first few turns.
- Weakness: running out of steam
- Red spends cards quickly. If it fails to win early, weaker card quality can leave it struggling later, especially against high-toughness creatures.
- Typical wins
- Finish quickly with cheap creatures and burn, or deliver the final blow with a powerful hasty Dragon.
🟢 Green: life, growth, and size
Green values nature, survival of the fittest, and growth. It favors a direct fight, rapidly increasing mana to cast enormous creatures that outsize those of other colors.
- Strengths: size and ramp
- Mana ramp: Put extra lands into play beyond the normal one-per-turn pace, or deploy mana-producing Elves, to cast expensive cards several turns earlier.
- Raw stats: At the same mana cost, green's creatures offer the greatest power and toughness.
- Weakness: dependence on creatures
- Removal such as fight spells needs your own creature in play. Rebuilding after a board wipe can take time.
- Typical wins
- Use abundant mana for huge Hydras and Dinosaurs, or boost an entire team with a spell such as Overwhelming Stampede and aim for a decisive attack with trample.
A checklist to find your color
For each question, Q1 through Q5, choose the one answer closest to your instincts or personality. Your most frequent letter, A through E, gives the result.
📋 Playstyle and personality checklist
Q1. What feels best at the moment you win?
- A. Winning exactly as planned after completely shutting down the opponent.
- B. Crushing everything with an unstoppable, gigantic monster.
- C. A lightning-fast attack that makes the opponent's life vanish.
- D. Calling in lots of allies and winning through teamwork.
- E. Taking personal risks to overpower the opponent with tremendous strength.
Q2. Your opponent has an incredibly powerful trump card. What's your ideal answer?
- A. Make sure it never reaches the battlefield by countering it when cast.
- B. Play an even larger creature and beat it head-on.
- C. Win the race and reduce their life to zero before such a slow card appears.
- D. Neutralize it with rules and restrictions, or exile it elsewhere.
- E. Strike directly at the opponent, or take the card's life and turn it into your servant.
Q3. Your hand is running low. What would you like to do?
- A. Draw through the library like turning pages, always keeping plenty of choices.
- B. Rely on the resources nature has already provided: mana and lands on the battlefield.
- C. Finish before running out, or even throw cards away to turn them into damage.
- D. Trust united allies, the graveyard, and a wide battlefield to make up for an empty hand.
- E. Pay life or another price to drag the cards you need out of your library.
Q4. Which best describes you in everyday life, work, or school?
- A. Calm and analytical, choosing efficient solutions over emotion.
- B. Easygoing and natural, steadily growing in harmony with your surroundings.
- C. Passionate and active, quick to act and impatient with boredom and restrictive rules.
- D. A peace-loving person who values discipline, harmony, and teamwork.
- E. Ambitious and practical, prioritizing results and benefits over what others think.
Q5. In a fantasy world, which creature would you choose as a companion?
- A. An intelligent Sphinx or graceful Faerie.
- B. An ancient Dinosaur or enormous Beast.
- C. A wild, fiery Dragon or Goblin.
- D. A noble Angel or Paladin representing justice and order.
- E. A Demon or Vampire ruling from the shadows with ruthless magic.
📊 Results
The letter you chose most often gives your personal color.
Mostly A: 🔵 Blue
- Type: The cool-headed strategist.
- Blue suits you if you enjoy thinking carefully and controlling an opponent. You're an intellectual player who may take a little pleasure in their frustration.
Mostly B: 🟢 Green
- Type: Master of the wild.
- Green suits straightforward power. Producing enormous amounts of mana and filling the battlefield with creatures from a monster movie feels irresistible.
Mostly C: 🔴 Red
- Type: The passionate speedster.
- Red suits fast, thrilling games. You enjoy short battles, lightning attacks, and fiery spells that overwhelm an opponent.
Mostly D: ⚪️ White
- Type: Guardian of order.
- White suits teamwork and control through rules. Build a small army and strengthen everyone, or restrict the opponent's actions to secure a safe victory.
Mostly E: ⚫️ Black
- Type: The ruthless opportunist.
- Black suits an appetite for victory without fear of risk. Turn even your own life into a weapon and tear apart the opponent's hand and creatures, like a dark hero.
If two or more choices tie, a two-color deck combining those colors may fit your ideal playstyle.
My particular favorite is blue!
To me, blue is MTG's ultimate expression of knowledge and control. Taking command of the battlefield and directing the opponent's options captures its appeal.
👁️ Control: never hand over the initiative
Blue's counterspells can stop an opponent's powerful spell from reaching the battlefield at all. For threats already in play, bounce or effects that keep them tapped can shut them down. Removing choices until the opponent can do almost nothing is the main attraction of this style.
🃏 Card draw: building an overwhelming resource advantage
Maintaining control takes information and enough cards to stay ahead. Blue has the strongest card-drawing ability of the colors. Keeping a full hand and an appropriate answer ready for any attack lets you control the game's tempo.
🦈 The perfect finish after complete control
Once you've answered every attack and exhausted the opponent's resources, the real show begins. You finally deploy a large creature or a powerful finisher such as Hullbreaker Horror, which can't be countered and triggers a bounce ability whenever you cast a spell. In a beautifully secure position, quietly and reliably delivering the final blow to an opponent with no resistance left is a blue player's bliss.
That ability to produce a complete shutout is blue's greatest appeal for me. It's tricky to learn, but piloting the deck successfully feels wonderful!
Have you found your favorite color?
MTG has five colors—white, blue, black, red, and green—with different strengths, favored tactics, and weaknesses. I've tried to explain them accessibly. What did you think?
Blue is my favorite. Which color do you like, and which seems to fit your playstyle? Give the checklist a try.
I plan to write more about MTG's appeal and specific tactics. If you're interested, please watch for future articles!