Former WotC Designer Discusses How Magic Pulled White Out of Last Place

Last updated on April 24, 2025

Myrel, Shield of Argive – art by Ryan Pancoast

It may not be obvious if paper Magic is the only game you play, but when you compare it with other games at large, Magic has by far the most transparent, communicative team of devs you can find.

Magic's Head Designer Mark Rosewater is, of course, heads and shoulders above everybody else, with a gazillion words between his columns on Magic's official website and personal blog. This week, Gavin Verhey gave us a two-part masterclass in how to communicate changes in Commander. And now we also got treated by Ari Nieh's Medium article on How WotC fixed White.

Back in early 2020, Nieh had been assigned to represent White on the Council of Colors, which is “WotC’s internal body for continuously determining and auditing which game mechanical space should belong to each color,” Nieh writes.

White was seen at the time as the weakest of Magic's five colors, at least in Commander, and it was very clear for WotC that things needed to change.

What Was Wrong With White?

Pearl Medallion – illus. Daniel Ljunggren

Nieh notes three main problems with White circa 2020.

For starters, WotC had allowed other colors to steal White's thunder. Token creation, for example: it was supposed to be White's thing, but Red had token-spewing powerhouses like Krenko, Mob Boss that was giving White a run for its money.

Nieh then says, “we had made mono-White’s play style too monotonous. Cast small creatures, buff them up, and turn them sideways. This strategy was often strong, but it wasn’t that interesting for veteran players. The skill expression was too subtle, with little room for clever outplays or gotcha moments.”

And, third, the most grievous sin of all: They had not allowed white do the best thing in Magic, the best thing in any card game that can ever exist, maybe the best thing in the world.

Draw cards!

“While lack of card draw made White less fun in Standard, it was devastating in Commander,” Nieh says. “In a format with 120 life of opponents to chew through, a color whose most powerful cards looked like History of Benalia could never adequately recover from a board wipe without the ability to restock its hand.”

Notably, player sentiment around 2020 seems to have matched WotC's perception, with Commander players seeing White as the weakest color, and in need of some love.

Buttressing White

Tocasia's Welcome – illus. Johan Grenier

According to Nieh, what they did was pretty straightforward overall (even if the execution seems to have been pretty complex, and involved a lot of the Magic's designers): Once they identified White's “pain points”, they designed and printed boatloads of cards to ease the pain.

“We moved Flash into White,” Nieh notes, “creating many more points for interaction and outplays.” And they printed enough white card-draw spells to make Blue mages drool, even though Nieh thinks that white card draw may still have room for improvement.

Nieh also offers a couple of examples of cards “aimed at enhancing strengths and shoring up weaknesses in Commander,” like Clever Concealment and Moonshaker Cavalry.

These last two offer a glimpse into what metric(s) WotC is taking into account when deciding if a color is too weak or too strong. Both cards have a play rate of about 3% as per EDHREC, meaning the player base at large see them as quite playable – but neither card seems playable in cEDH, or has made waves in any other format, implying that casual Commander is WotC's main target.

So… Did They Actually Fix White?

Trouble in Pairs – illus. Fay Dalton

Nieh offers no insights about how has WotC confirmed that their solution worked – namely, what metric they used to reach the conclusion that this job was done.

WotC is famously allergic to sharing specific play data. This exchange happened during the Q&A of the B&R Weekly MTG last week (as summarized by u/mweepinc on Reddit):

Question: Releasing play and win-rate data, especially for Standard?

WotC's Blake Rassmussen: We don't want to prescribe what's good and not by releasing the full data, but I do think there's some things we can do for example ‘beans decks make up x % of the metagame'

WotC's Senior Game Designer Carmen Klomparens: I think it's likely we can allude to some of that more frequently, I think publishing too much data can reinforce itself in an ouroboros but we can stand to publish a bit more.

Nieh's own piece offers a clear example of this data allergy, when explaining how WotC goes around interpreting player feedback.

But, to be fair, this data-sharing allergy goes beyond Nieh, and even WotC. It's rather the norm for PvP games; more often than not you need to rely on third-party data trackers (like Draftsim's Arena Tutor!) if you want to find out win rates and metagame statistics.

Still, the lack of factual proof that the problem has indeed been fixed does weaken Nieh's claim a bit.

So… have they fixed it?

One recent insight into what WotC thinks about the current state of the Commander format is this week's updated Game Changers list:

Source: Wizards of the Coast

But if we were to do a quick, back-of-envelope, off-the-cuff extrapolation where we say that the number of GCs roughly correlates to color's power, then White's clearly no underdog. That would be Red's job!

That off-the-cuff extrapolation would be further supported by a quick glance at the top of the cEDH meta share for the last six months:

Source: EDHTop16

Of the top 15 cEDH decks by meta share, a whopping 14 commanders have Blue in the color identity, 11 lean into Black, and the other three colors are tied at 8 – Dimir () clearly seems a cut above the rest here, but there's nothing implying here that White is the worst.

EDHREC's ranking of the most popular commanders in the last couple of years offers a similar picture, with Blue and Black in the top tier, and the other three colors in a lower tier. At the time of writing:

• 63 of the 100 most popular commanders include Blue in their color identity,
• 62 include Black,
• White or Red are tied with 55 commanders that lean into each of them, 
• Green closes the list with 52.

Last but not least, just three years after WotC started implementing their “Let's Love White” strategy, player sentiment was already turning around, with red becoming the runt of the litter. 

Seeing Red

Krenko, Mob Boss – Illustration by Karl Kopinski

Is Red now Commander's worst color?

If we again go by off-the-cuff, back-of-envelope extrapolations… that may be indeed the case. Red has the least Game Changers, and player feeling seems to indicate it's perceived as the weakest. Although red seems to have something going on for it: As any wildcard-starved Arena player knows, above all when starting their MTG journey, when you don't have the budget for an expensive mana base you can always count on mono-red. “Red Deck Wins” has been a solid archetype since forever, and it's actually one of the best things you can do in Standard right now. And, for Commander specifically, Red has a small edge when it comes to mono-color commanders.

As we saw above, Magda, Brazen Outlaw is the only mono-color commander among the cream of the cEDH crop (you'd have to scroll downwards a bit to find Urza). And when looking that EDHREC's most popular, Red leads this race with 3 mono-color Commanders, ahead of Black, White, or Blue (just 1), or Green (none!).

Yet if Red is indeed the runt of the litter in Commander, then Nieh's job is complete: White's no longer the worst!