MTG Designer Says No To Reprinting Color Pie Breaks

Last updated on November 19, 2024

Chaos Warp | Illustration by Phil Foglio

Magic's Head Designer Mark Rosewater has confirmed that WotC will only reprint color pie breaks in MTG formats where they’re already legal.

“The current rule, which I support,” Rosewater wrote in his personal blog, ” is not putting color pie breaks into formats they don’t exist in.”

His personal stance on this topic is a lot stricter, though.

“If was up to me, and it’s not,” he noted in the same post, “I would stop reprinting color pie breaks.”

Kicking the Hornet's Nest

The color pie is one of Magic's fundamental principles, defining what each one of Magic's five colors (white, blue, black, red, and green) can and cannot do.

It's hard to overstate how deeply Mark Rosewater cares about Magic's color pie. He's written about it extensively (with tons of articles and podcasts). In his view, it's so central to Magic's identity that the color pie is part of what Mark calls “MTG's Golden Trifecta“: The three genius ideas that Magic's creator Richard Garfield came up with when he invented the game, with the other two being the mana system and the trading game genre.

And it's equally impossible to overstate how much Mark hates color pie breaks.

Source: Blogatog

Mark's pic above refers to Hornet Queen and Hornet Sting, which he presents as poster children of color pie breaks in his Bleeding Cool article from April 2015.

“Hornet Queen, while flavorful in a vacuum, does very little to play into the overall themes of Magic 2015,” he writes.

And Hornet Sting is an example of what he calls his bane.

“These are the cards that do what I call break the color pie,” he writes. “They do effects outside the color that actively help the color overcome some weakness that's been built into it.”

Green is supposed to need its (usually larger) creatures to deal with other creatures; green can help its creatures fight and bite, but shouldn't be able to use its spells to deal direct damage and kill creatures.

“Hornet Sting violates this rule,” Mark laments.

That's why it's not too hard to imagine how he must feel about this group of cards:

What do they have in common?

First, they are all pie breaks: They don’t just do things their color doesn't usually do, but they also do things their color is not supposed to do.

Second, they are not just pie breaks: They are among the most popular Commander cards, and Faithless Looting is a multi-format staple.

And third? They have all been reprinted this year – most of them in Duskmourn, actually – regardless of what Magic's own Head Designer may prefer. 

Careful What You Wish For

In an earlier blog post, Mark admits that his preference (to never reprint a color pie break) is a fight he lost long ago. And when asked point-blank why WotC is reprinting Hornet Queen, he dryly notes: “Because it’s popular and it’s not introducing it to a format that doesn’t yet have it.”

Would it be better for MTG if he had his wish?

Most likely… not, I would say.

As many have noted on reddit, his wish (at least the way he worded it) would make color pie breaks a de facto reserved list.

“The problem is those cards did get printed and refusing to reprint them would just mean prices skyrocket,” wrote u/Effective_Tough86, noting that mechanically unique cards immediately become valuable as game pieces. 

“Unless you just ban all the current color pie break cards you have to reprint them a little bit.”

To be fair to Mark, the Reserved List is not something he is a fan of.

But just like popular wisdom notes that “If it ain't broken, don't fix it,” in Magic we could also say that “If it is broken, then either ban it or reprint it” – refusing to reprint powerful cards only leads to them being out of reach for budget players, ultimately pricing them out of a format.

Is the Cake a Lie?

Then again, MaRo’s stated rule not to reprint color pie breaks into new formats seems to have a few exceptions.

To begin with, it only applies to paper Magic. “I was talking about tabletop,” Mark mentioned when asked about some Mystical Archive pie breaks added to MTG Arena‘s Historic format, “as that is what we have control over.”

(Implying that MTGA has a separate team and rules; as an MTGA player, I'm not sure I like how that sounds!) 

And Mentor of the Meek just sneaked into Standard with Foundations – white is not supposed to be able to draw cards without a “once per turn” clause.

“Mentor of the Meek only made it in because it’s a popular card from the past,” Rosewater answered when asked about it. “White’s card draw (with a few multiplayer exceptions) is limited to once per turn.”

But, by and large, credit where credit is due: Mark's team has been quite successful in avoiding new color pie breaks (the last instance, according to Scryfall, is Resculpt from Strixhaven).

That doesn't mean WotC won't rework how the color pie works from time to time, letting nowadays colors do things that, years ago, would have been considered a break.

Enchantment destruction, for example…

Source: Magic: The Gathring 

… was very clearly something black cards should not do until 2021, but WotC decided to make enchantment removal secondary in black, so now they can.

Perhaps more importantly, Standard is mostly free from color pie breaks. And Mark very strongly intends for it to remain that way.

UB Shall Not Pass

There has been a lot of discussion surrounding WotC's announcement that starting in 2025, Universes Beyond sets will be Standard-legal, and that nearly half of next year's lineup will be UB sets.

How much will Magic remain Magic when Liliana and Ajani face Wolverine and Spiderman?

At the very least, and flavor preferences aside, Magic's Head Designer has drawn a clear line in the sand as far as the sanctity of the color pie goes.

“When Aaron [Mark's boss in WotC's hierarchy] first pitched Universes Beyond to me,” Mark wrote, “the one thing I stressed was that we could never print color pie breaks for flavor reasons. Aaron agreed.”

So we may see some small concessions, like Captain America, First Avenger‘s casting cost being re-ordered to red white, and blue to reflect how Americans refer to the colors of their flag.

But just like UB won't have planeswalkers (another of Mark's lines in the sand for Universes Beyond sets), my Spongebob Squarepants blocking your lightsaber-wielding Wolverine may break immersion…

… but at least they won't break the color pie.