MTG: Color Coded

I found an article by Mark Rosewater (when I was just reading his older articles for no reason other than /nerd) and I came up a discussion over combining colors together with their ally/enemy colors. Also, a larger, better colored (the older picture I got was faded so I had to artificially darken/color it), and it's definately more detailed. Look! Everything below is straight copy and paste from his article Split (Odds &) Ends, unless it's in [these nifty brackets]. Some things have been edited out, in hopes to not confuse the non-magic players. Though, there's like 3 people who read my blog anyways, *shrugs* Everyone can accept this post this way, if anyone reads it anyways lol.

---------------------------------------------------

For purposes of this discussion, you have to imagine a line between the green mana symbol and the white one.

Why? Because that is the natural break we make between the colors when we design and develop the cards. We call it the WUBRG order (U stands for Blue for those that don't know this convention – B was already taken for Black and L was taken for Land). This is the order we always put the colors into. It is most noticeable on the cards in two places. First, the collector number goes in WUBRG order and second, the order of mana symbols in the mana cost are ordered in this way.

To figure out what order the colors go in, pick two colors. Now going around the circle, pick the shortest path between the two colors (you may go either clockwise or counterclockwise). Draw the line you've made. To figure out the order, start with the color earliest in a counterclockwise direction. For allied colors, it breaks out as such:

[Azorious - The Law] [Dimir - Master of Secrets] [Rakdos - Chaos and Slaughter] [Gruul - Tribes of Rage] [Selesnya - Nature and Equality]

All of the ally color combinations follow WUBRG order except GW. Because the closest physical connection crosses the line, it means that the mana symbols are reversed from the traditional WUBRG order.

Let's try the enemy colors:

[Orzhov - Maintained Heiarchy] [Izzit - Mad Genius] [Golgari - Life and Death] [Boros - Buring Conviction] [Simic - Genetic Scientists ]

---------------------------------------------------

Ok, so everything in there (minus the Brackety goodness) is taken from the article I linked to earlier. What does this mean? Not much, but I think they did a much nicer job (plus they had the resources and ability to get the actual color symbols for each of the colors) than I did initially. Doesn't that look pretty though?

Every color has 2 allies, and 2 enemies. (Again for clarification, ally colors are the adjacent ones, enemy colors are the ones on the opposite side) Everyone has friends, and enemies, but their freinds also have allies of their own, and that's when the complications start. Look at the picture above:

Red: Hey Black, help me overpower White.
Black: Sure, no problems at all.
Red: Ok, Blue is being an ass.
Black: Well I don't see a problem with that.
Red: Dammit.
Black: Can you help me with Green though?
Red: What? No, we have an understanding.
Black: *sigh* Fine.

You can't hurt an enemy without hurting an ally, and helping an enemy. Likewise, you can't help an ally without helping an enemy, and hurting a friend. (If you were Green, if you hurt your enemy Blue, you'd be hurting White's ally, and indirectly hurting White). Thus, an equality and balence is created. If it wasn't divided 5 ways, it wouldn't work. 4 way? Then Each player would have one enemy, and it'd be two fights (black/white and blue/red, let's say) and nobody would care about the other colors, only their enemy. Ahh, the color wheel, how I love thee. <3

NOTE: The pictures look MUCH BETTER on a white background, where the source was from, so please take that into consideration when you see the jagged edges.