One of the things I have enjoyed most about playing Magic The Gathering over the years is the massive amount of diversity present within deck building due to the different colors available in MTG. However, after 20 years of printing cards, is any single color the strongest MTG color.
On average, the strongest color in Magic The Gathering is blue. Blue cards are consistently overrepresented in Magic’s older competitive formats. Compared to the other 4 MTG colors, blue cards are more frequently banned in Magic’s competitive play.
| Magic The Gathering Color | Rank |
|---|---|
| Blue | 1 |
| Black | 2 |
| Red | 3 – 4 |
| Green | 3 – 4 |
| White | 5 |
With blue being the strongest color, does that mean you should throw together a deck full of blue spells and Islands in order to start winning more games of MTG?
Well, it’s not quite that simple.
As with many things Magic The Gathering, the full answer to understanding why blue is ranked the number 1 MTG Color is a little more complex, but below, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know.
MTG Colors Ranked #1 – The Strongest MTG Color
The combination of Blue’s card advantage and its greater resources, particularly the drawing of cards, gives it a significant edge.
The blue player is able to one-for-one the opponent and aims to parry each threat card-for-card by utilizing blue’s unique characteristics – like counterspells. The blue player will eventually have a threat the opponent can’t handle because they have run out of resources to defend themselves with.
This also improves the deck’s consistency, as the more cards you draw, the less frequently you “brick,” or have a useless hand.
Because so many of Blue’s cards are instant speed, it can counter dangers without sacrificing its own development.
Blue often has the advantage of holding up mana for counterspells, but can still utilize its unspent mana in cases where an opponent doesn’t play anything relevant to counter. Blue mages can choose to spend their mana on blue card draw spells during that opponent’s end step, or deploy a creature to begin attacking down their opponent’s life total.
The opponent must choose each turn whether to react to the blues’ threats or drop a threat of their own – non-blue mages often can’t wait until the last second before committing to action like blue mages.
The more cards are in the format, the better blue is. Its cards allow it to neutralize almost anything before it reaches the board, pose difficult threats, or grind out lengthy games – and they do so time and again game after game.
In short, blue is the best color because it provides the most options and the greatest flexibility to enable a player to come out on top no matter what the situation. With its suite of powerful spells, blue has something for every occasion – making it the clear choice for anyone looking to win.
However, while taking a broad overview of Magic’s colors, most people would agree that blue is ranked as the number 1 color in Magic, we need to acknowledge a very important weakness of the color blue.
Mono-blue decks are pretty bad.
While mono-blue decks have seen some successful play in competitive settings in Magic’s past, the majority of MTG players wouldn’t rank mono-blue decks as the strongest decks.
That is due to the fact that, unsupported, blue decks aren’t that good.
Blue decks need the support of other colors in order to be truly successful. While blue is undeniably the best color in Magic, it’s important to remember that blue needs the help of its fellow colors in order to be at its strongest.
If you look back throughout Magic’s history of some of the strongest blue decks to exist in competitive formats, you constantly find decks that feature blue alongside at least another color.
The reason is that blue’s strength lies in its ability to interact with what the opponent is trying to do while they do it, but blue often needs other colors to provide it with the necessary support to deal with threats that slip through blue’s defensives onto the battlefield.
Without that support, mono-blue decks can often find themselves struggling against decks that force threats into play early in the game. However, when blue is working alongside another color – or colors – it becomes a force to be reckoned with.
You may be wondering then, is it right to rank blue as the number 1 color in MTG if it can’t really accomplish anything on its own?
The answer is yes, blue is still the best color in Magic even when taking into account its mono-color weakness.
While it is true that blue works best when supported by another color, it’s incredibly rare for the color paired with blue to outshine blue’s power and potential to completely control the flow of a game.
What Is the Weakest Magic Color – Ranked #5
White is commonly regarded as the weakest color, but that can be an unintuitive assessment to back at first glance, given its power in terms of removal and the fact that it’s the only color that can pretty much do everything the other colors can do – It just does none of those same things exceedingly well.
White offers very few amazing tools and outside of a select couple cards such as removal and exile spells.
White offers some of the best targeted creature removal spells, in the form of Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile, but there appears to be a large drop-off in quality White cards when you look past its removal.
The color white in Magic The Gathering ranks as the worst color in Magic and appears to suffer from that timelines problem that I’m sure we are all familiar with at this point – a jack of all trades is a master of none.
However, similar to the best color in Magic blue, if we change slightly the light in which we view the color white, it’s very easy to come to a different evaluation on the color white.
Remember that “jack of all trades” saying? Well, many people don’t realize there is more to that say than just that one line.
A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.
You see, white may well be ranked as one of the worst colors in Magic when we look at Magic as a whole, but when we look at white independently, that’s when it can start to shine.
White is the color that can do everything, but it does none of those things exceedingly well. That means that, while white may not have any one single amazing strength, it also doesn’t need any other colors to support it for it to be a force to reckoned with.
Unlike mono-blue which isn’t often considered a competitive way to play MTG, mono-white decks have been around for over a decade now and are still alive and well.
In most competitive formats that allow for it, you will find some form of a competitive mono-white deck, either in the form of decks like “Death & Taxes“, “White Weenie” or even token decks.
If you need more convincing on this point, check out this video by an avid Magic The Gathering player that attempts to explain why they think white is the best color in Magic.
If you are looking for a more detailed breakdown of all the colors in Magic The Gathering and all their combinations, you can check out my longer post on the topic here.
Also Read: MTG Color Combinations [Color Combos Guide]