magicjudge:

With the wider re-introduction of double-faced cards in Shadows over Innistrad, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the color identities of certain cards and what Commander / EDH decks they can be played in, so let’s talk about that.

What is Color Identity?

Color identity is an attribute of a card. It basically sums up all of the card’s color values, taking into account three things: Colored mana symbols in the card’s mana cost, mana symbols in its rules text, and any color indicators it might have. In the case of double-faced cards, we look at the attributes of both faces of the card.

A card’s color identity only matters for deckbuilding in the Commander format. A card can only be played in a commander deck if its color identity doesn’t contain any colors not found in the commander’s color identity.

Let’s Build a Deck!

To demonstrate the principles of color identity, let’s pretend that we’re building a new commander deck and that we’ve chosen Dragonlord Dromoka as our commander:

Wow! She’s neat-o!

Now that we have Dromoka as our commander, we need to determine her color identity. She has green and white mana symbols in her mana cost, no mana symbols in her rules text, and no color indicator. This all means that her color identity is green and white, and it means that we can’t run any cards in our deck that have blue, black, or red in their color identities.

(I’ve added helpful color identity pentagons next to each card pictured to illustrate what we’re discussing.)

What should we put into our deck next? We like playing allies, so how about General Tazri?

Well, Tazri has only white mana symbols in her mana cost, so that works so far, and she doesn’t have a color indicator, so we’re in the clear there, but she has that ability that costs WUBRG to activate and that sadly means she has a white, blue, black, red, and green color identity and can’t be a member of Dromoka’s deck. :(

All right, fine… well what about Archangel Avacyn? We’ve opened her at the SoI prerelease and are excited to play with her in deck. Let’s take a look…

Her mana cost has white mana symbols, and she has no mana symbols in her rules text, but she has that red color indicator on her Avacyn, the Purifier side. This gives her a red and white color identity, which means she can’t play nicely with Dromoka.

Other Mana Symbols

There are some other mana symbols besides the five normal colored mana symbols, so lets talk about how they affect a card’s color identity.

Hybrid mana symbols consist of two different mana symbols combined into one. For the purposes of color identity, they count as mana symbols of all of their constituent colors.

Kitchen Finks has a green and white color identity because of its green and white hybrid mana cost.

Phyrexian mana symbols represents a cost that can be paid either with 2 life or a mana of the appropriate color. Phyrexian mana symbols count as mana symbols of their color.

Dismember has a black color identity because of the black Phyrexian mana symbols in its mana cost.

The colorless mana symbol looks like a diamond and represents either colorless mana that is added to a mana pool or a cost that can only be paid with colorless mana. Colorless isn’t a color, and thus the colorless mana symbol doesn’t contribute to a card’s color identity.

Endbringer has no colored mana symbols in its mana cost or rules text and it doesn’t have a color indicator, so it has a colorless color identity. It can be played in any commander deck.

Unidentified Color Objects

Talking about colorless mana is an excellent segue into talking about our next subject: things that don’t affect color identity.

First there’s Devoid, which makes the permanent it’s on have no color, but as we said, a permanent’s color isn’t always the same as its color identity. (e.g. General Tazri is a white permanent, but has a WUBRG color identity.) Permanents with devoid still have colored mana symbols in their mana costs and sometimes their rules text, and those mana symbols still define the card’s color identity.

Despite having devoid, Catacomb Sifter has a black and green color identity because of its mana cost.

While mana symbols in a card’s rules text contributes to its color identity, mana symbols in its reminder text don’t. (This mostly matters for monowhite and monoblack cards with Extort, which has a white and black hybrid mana symbol in its reminder text, but also applies to a few other cards such as Charmed Pendant.)

Blind Obedience has a white color identity because of its mana cost. The white/black hybrid symbol in the extort ability is reminder text and doesn’t affect it’s color identity. e.g. Blind Obedience could be played in the Dragonlord Dromoka deck.

In Conclusion…

So that’s it. That’s everything I can think to say about color identity in a (relatively large) nutshell. I hope you enjoyed this little primer and, as always, if you have any follow-up questions please drop them in my inbox: magicjudge.tumblr.com/ask