Hello readers, and welcome to an article offered as both an elegy and as a hope for a new day. It will simultaneously be the last article on Five Color I will ever write, and the first article on Five Color I will ever write.
As you know, Five Color is/was my favorite format. I love(d) it with every fiber of my being. I worked diligently to bring Five Color to players in my articles, I responded to every Five Color e-mail I ever got, and I carried Five Color decks with me to various events to play in public and demonstrate the power of the format.
How about some history on Five Color, my favorite format?
As readers may know, I was a member of the 5CRC for a long time. How long ago? August, 2002. I was part of a newly revamped Five Color Ruling Council, and we were selected by the big names of Five who wanted a council to determine the format instead of a pure dictatorship. In the early years we really cleaned off a lot of clutter from the B&R list. Cards like Recall, Recurring Nightmare, and Corpse Dance were on there. We did good work, and the 5CRC made good, sensible decisions.
After time, the 5CRC changed people. Different people became unofficial heads of the 5CRC, like John Carter and Brain Epstein and finally Jeremy Bush with the position first unofficially, and then officially after we adopted bylaws.
At first, we didn’t have bylaws. Someone left and made a replacement automatically, and we were flummoxed. How could a member of the 5CRC, by fiat, just add who they wanted in their stead? We reluctantly decided to allow it (MAJOR MISTAKE), but agreed that in the future we’d vote on replacements.
The guy we ended up allowing caused some major friction. One of the major issues came about because we were looking at making some changes, and various members discussed their personal view of things. One member pointed out that he didn’t trust the general public to make the right changes for the format, so he wanted to have us vote on the changes ourselves.
The guy we allowed on started posting our posts in public and tried to embarrass the 5CRC. When did this happen? Well, with our new members, one – Adrian Sullivan – proposed that we make some mammoth changes to the B&R list, and then a bunch of others jumped on board with their own changes — including me, by the way. The result of Adrian’s proposals, plus all of ours, meant a big slate of votes was about to occur. The 5CRC felt that since so many B&R changes were getting voted on, to do them in phases.
The first phase was a vote on the status of tutors in the format. In one sweeping change, the 5CRC banned many tutors that cost one mana from the format completely. Personal Tutor, Imperial Seal, Vampiric Tutor, Mystical Tutor — these cards went bye bye. The ones remaining, Worldy Tutor, Gamble, and Enlightened Tutor, left much to be desired in power level. Although some other cards were voted on and actioned as part of Phase One of the great master plan, none was a contentious as this.
I feel, to this day, that Phase One and the Master Plan were the beginning of the end for Five Color. I would like the record to state that I was one of the few votes against the banning of these tutors. If memory serves correctly, it was just me and Shaun that voted against the Great Tutor Ban. Although I also recognized the growing number of tutors in Magic, I preferred other solutions such as a proposal to limit the number of tutors in a deck through other means.
Phase One was so indigestible to people that many left Five Color. There was a movement to start an Iowa Five Color, I5C, as well as another movement to start Five Color on another site. The format was hurt, permanently, by the defection of many people. The 5CRC had pushed too far, and now the people were pushing back.
Part of the problem came about from a lack of new blood to the format. The format, as a whole, had a vibrant community, but one that did not attract that many new players to it. There were problems with power, ante, and so forth that hurt the format in the eyes of others. The B&R was too big, saying ante scared people, etc.
Since the format had not grown with new blood, when we had a big schism, that was it. Although I believe the alternative formats never really began, the point was that people were so upset that they took their ball and went home, and we didn’t have the means to bring them back.
The 5CRC went through some changes as a result of this too. The Council was so shell shocked that they never finished the Master Plan. There were cards scheduled for removal from the B&R list to remove clutter and make a consistent list. Some of these would not be voted on again for a year or more (such as Bribery).
One of the problems of any eternal format is change. The more cards are in a format, the less a new set impacts it. As a result, newer and newer sets were getting released with perhaps 5 or 10 cards having an impact on tournaments, and often not even that. I had to make my set review articles about more than Five Color just to fill up an article.
Over the years, more and more decisions haunted us. Wishes. Transmute.
The good thing about a Council is that no one player is the dictator of a format. Dan Flood was the dictator of Five Color for a while, and many hated his changes, because your view often disagrees with his. A Council can see things that need to be done better than an individual can, and they take the edge off of any individual member.
However, there is a problem with a Council: Inertia. A Council can fail to make decisions that are consistent. Imagine two cards are up for vote for restriction, and one is obviously more powerful than the other. One person would restrict them both, or restrict neither, or restrict only the most powerful one. Each of these would be logically consistent. A Council, however, may restrict the less powerful one and leave the other alone.
This is especially true over time and as Council members change.
A decision made in February to restrict a certain card with a hypothetical power level of 85 on a scale of 100 is fine on its own. However, after a change, a vote for a newly released card with a power of 89 is taken, and it remains unrestricted. The result is the 85 card on the list and the 89 card running free.
A dictator can see this, and change it immediately. 85 is now unrestricted too. It’s done. On the 5CRC you would have to have a nomination, a second, and then a vote scheduled for next month, and the vote takes a month to do, meaning there may not be any changes for 2 months, and the 5CRC hated voting on cards it already voted on.
A dictator, at least a good one, can also admit mistakes. The 5CRC derestricted Divining Witch for a few months, and it was so bad, we had to reverse course almost immediately. I was one of those in the majority on both decisions. We changed our mind, and that is the only time the 5CRC has ever confessed to a mistake.
For example, I realized after a few months of it being in the format that Glittering Wish did not deserve restriction. I had voted for its restriction upon its release, but after playing with it, its power level was significantly reduced. I wanted to get it pulled off, and get the 5CRC to reverse its decision, but I could not. It was too hard to fight inertia.
We would have long stints where 5CRC members would not answer e-mails or vote on cards and rules. We had a 9 member 5CRC for years, but when a bunch went absent, we decided to drop it to 7 because we hoped that we could find 7 active members instead of 9 sometimes active and often not members.
Even then — failure. Even with 7, we had some members just go incommunicado. If you have an inactive member, it hurts you. Even if you don’t have any votes, it hurts. Who is reading e-mail from players? Who is actively playing the format and looking for changes? Who is reading the forums and seeing how people feel? Who is engaged in the format if you are not?
Our leaders were failing us. The 5CRC was suffered from too much inertia.
The fact was that several members tried to get new rules and cards voted on over the past 18 months or so. I did it once, and it failed. Others did it a few times, and they failed.
The problems are not about any individual rule. I can accept a flawed format if it is dynamic and fun and exciting. The problems were that the Council would not even consider some obvious changes. They would not even discuss the issues and how to fix them.
The most recent change to the B&R list was pulling some spells off in January. Since then, all quiet on the western front.
Since then, the format has slowly stagnated. There were fewer Five Color Qualifiers, fewer posts, fewer decks, and less activity on Five Color. The signs have been there for years. I submit that ever since Phase One of the Master Plan, the format has been dying, slowly. Sometimes is death has been obvious and sometimes it has been under the scenes, but this has been a slow death.
…
Can I tell you a secret? For the past two months, I have been considering creating a new Five Color format with a rejuvenated B&R list and new rules. I have a copy of my new B&R list on my desktop and I was brainstorming new rules to introduce along with my new format. I was going to introduce it here in my column and then begin schilling it out to others, creating a website for it, and so forth, asking the community for help and creating a new format that restored the glory to Five Color.
Then I got an e-mail from Jeremy Bush. And everything changed.
…
It seems that Jeremy and Andrew Cahill (a guy I’ve never met, but he was my personal choice for my replacement should I ever leave the 5CRC and I nominated him twice for membership) had noticed the same thing I had. They had brainstormed new rules for the format, and then Jeremy sent me and fellow 5CRC member Kevin Cron the new rule and asked us if we were in or out.
We were both in. Here we have three 5CRC members, the active ones, plus another person I respect a lot. Now, Andrew and Jeremy already had a B&R list and rules hammered out. I wish I could have been a part of the discussion from the ground up, but I was happy to be part of the early phase. My role is more of an advisor to the new dictator. After years of floundering, we need a dictator to clean things up. Perhaps, after a year or two, it will be time for a 5CRC again. Perhaps not. I guess we’ll see.
A new Five Color is replacing the old, but there are obviously problems. What if you just started playing Five Color? What if your playgroup loved the old format? Well, the good news is that you can still play it. That format is now etched in stone, never to change. It wasn’t changing much anyway. If you want to play the old Five Color till your fingers fall off, then I wish more power to you. Enjoy!
However, I want to turn your attention to the new Five Color. Play it. See if you don’t like it. The new format can be found at the old site. The new format is still subject to change. Both Kevin and I are going over some of the cards on the new B&R list, and we each have some cards we want to discuss in more detail. Perhaps even more cards will come off. We also are working on a solution to the proxy versus ante issue.
Anyway, let’s look at new Five Color.
Five Color, 2009
1. You must play at least 300 cards in your deck.
2. You must play at least 25 cards of each color.
3. Proxies are allowed to any number.
4. Ante is optional, but not required.
5. We have generous mulligans described on our webpage.
6. We have our own B&R list, described on our webpage.
7. All Vintage legal sets are in.
8. A couple of cards, like Chaos Orb and Contract from Below, have been errata’d
This is a much better format. I love the first two rules especially. I’d have supported going to 400 cards or 30 of each color (or both). It is going to be a lot more dynamic. The new B&R list in particular is very streamlined.
You can start building new decks immediately. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a new B&R list or more rules changed between my submission of this article for publication and its actual publication, so check out the website for more info.
I have written 49 articles before this one on Five Color (this does not include articles that mention it, nor does it include Prismatic articles). That makes this one the 50th. During that time, I have gotten a ton of e-mails and forums posts and conversations from players who have told me the main three reasons they did not start playing Five Color. Almost every reason boils down to one of these:
1) Did not have the card pool for it.
2) Did not know where to start building the deck.
3) The ante issue.
Well, let’s look at the new format against these three things.
Proxies allow you to get part the first issue. Now, you don’t need to have all of the dual lands in order to rock on. You can just proxy. Everybody can have any card they want at any time.
I wrote two series of articles and 13 total articles on how to start building your deck. I also intend to write another article soon about how to start building your deck in the new Five Color age. This is an issue that has a solution.
Ante is optional. You can play it or not, at your leisure. There is no requirement that you do so. If you sit down to play with someone, you can agree to play for ante or not, whichever you prefer. You do not have to play for ante if you don’t want to.
As you can see, the three traditional barriers to Five Color entry have solutions. One is completely fixed, another has an answer and the third has a lot of info out there to help you.
If you played Five Color and left, this is the perfect time to come back! If you never have played it, this is the perfect time to try! Get in on the new format from the very beginning!
For the next couple of weeks I am going to write more about the new format. I am going to show you what you can do with your card pool if you don’t want to rely on proxies, and I am going to show you how to start building a new 300 card deck. Those will be articles #298 and 299.
Then I will try to do something special for #300. I have a few ideas in my head. We’ll see what falls out.
I have not been this excited about Five Color for a while, and I love Five Color, so I’ve always been excited. We’ve got things to do and places to see. It’s going to be a lot of fun!
Until later…
P.S. — A group of players who really loved the old format decided to create their own web page. This is the old 5 Color, and the old rules and stuff are all there. For purposes of clarity, I will be referring to the old format as 250 and the new format as Five Color in future articles.