Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1257: Enchantment Color Pie

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

This podcast explores how each of the colors interacts with enchantments.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so Recently, I did some podcast talking about how certain card tubs fit into the color pie I've talked about artifacts. I've talked about creatures. Today is enchantments So the way this works is I will go in Wuburg order, white, blue, black, red, green, and I will talk about each color and its relationship to enchantments. For each color I will start with its ability to destroy and ordeal with them.

Then I will talk about their use on the battlefield, then about their use in the graveyard, slash exile, and then about their hand and library usage. That is the plan. So we'll get started. OK, so let's start with white. So white is king of enchantments. So from a destruction standpoint, white is very good at destroying enchantments.

In fact, back when we used to make cards that just destroyed enchantments, those were usually white. Green tended to destroy both. Although, go back to early alpha, disenchant was an alpha. Anyway, white has the ability to destroy enchantments. That is no problem. It can just straight up destroy them.

It can also do things like Oblivion Ring them, exile them as long as this doesn't play. But White has no problem with enchantments. It has every means and tool by which to destroy enchantments. These days, just because destroying the target enchantment is pretty narrow in effect, it tends to be on modal spells. Normally when a white card destroys an enchantment, that's not the only option of things it can do, just because

that's kind of narrow in a vacuum. So we want to make sure that there's options for that. OK. As far as on the battlefield, white is, like I said, king of enchantments, meaning white is the color that has the best synergy with enchantments. That can mean a bunch of different things. One, it can reward you for having enchantments.

We can do threshold one thing, or we can do threshold things that care about having enchantments. It's the color that can do things to enhance enchantments. In sets that have enchantment creatures, white often will be the color that cares about enchantments. It's the color that can do things to enhance enchantments. In sets that have like enchantment creatures, white often will be the color that cares about enchantment creatures just because white... I mean, as we get to green, green and white are the enchantment colors and green and white are the creature colors. So both of them can interact with enchantment creatures. White tends to have more go wide type things and so like boosting your enchantment creatures a little more on white than green. And in general, white is just, I mean,

white has the ability to have any sort of positive synergy with enchantments. And that, that is, oh, the other thing that white does is white is big on enchantment as removal. The two biggest things is white tends to do what we call pacifism slash arrest effects, which you enchant a creature. Usually it can't attack or block.

Pacifism is it can't attack or block. Arrest means they can't use their activated abilities. So the idea essentially is white is good at shutting things down with enchantments. It also has what we refer to as the Oblivion Ring, which is a white enchantment that exiles whatever its target is as long as that enchantment's on the battlefield. Now in both the cases of the Pacifisms and the Oblivion

Rings, if the opponent gets rid of the enchantment, they get back the thing that you're getting rid of. That's one of white's sort of, I don't know, weaknesses is the right word. But some colors like black, they'll just permanently remove the threat. White wants to believe in the best of things and is more willing to jail somebody, for example, than to kill them. And so there's a chance that if you put someone in jail, they might escape from jail.

So white, like I said, is a big user of enchantments. White also is one of the biggest users of auras. Every color can have auras. But white is one of the colors that tends to have more auras. Usually, white's auras are smaller boots that grant other abilities. So let's see, what else? Oh, white also likes to set rules

So white has a lot of what we call rule setting enchantments, which is like rule of law You can only play one spell a turn things in which it dictates. What is going on it dictates sort of What you're able to do And note that white tends to be more proactive where blue is reactive Blue like you do something and blue reacts to it. White says, well, before you even do it, I want to do a thing that says you can't do this thing or you have limitations when you do this thing. The other thing that we, which is a more recent thing added is trying to get, we, with commander popularity,

we were trying to figure out ways to get white and red to have more card advantage because traditionally they were bad at card advantage. So the big thing we decided for white was this idea that white plays a longer game, meaning that it doesn't draw a lot of cards at once. In fact, it is a limit. It can draw one card a turn and normally it has different things. They don't always have to be enchantments but they can be enchantments that say, hey I'm about this thing if you do this thing once to turn I'll give you a card as reward for doing this thing. Or something that might say when you do this thing I will give you a reward but I only give you one card for turn. And we've been making a lot of white

stuff in that space some of which is enchantments. White also has the most just the so-called anthem effects, which is just pumping the team. White, like I said, is the most wide color. So just like plus one plus one to your team as a static enchantment is white. I mean, Alpha had like crusades. And it's been a continuous thing in white. White is the

color that sort of as a base level gets the team boosting. Okay, that is white. I'm sorry, that is white on the battlefield. Let's get the white to the graveyard. Okay, so white is a color that can get back enchantments from the graveyard. It can specifically get enchantments to your hand. It can also get enchantments from the battlefield onto, I'm sorry, from the graveyard onto the battlefield. It can sort of reanimate enchantments, if you will. White is, black is number one card in the graveyard. White and green are secondary.

But when it comes to enchantments, interacting with enchantments in the graveyard, white is king. Black does not interact with enchantments in the graveyard. So if you want to get them back, if you want to get them into play, that is white. White is the color that can do that. White also in theory can use enchantments in graveyards as a resource if it wants to. It's not an ability we do a lot just because there's not a lot of enchantments totaled

out of there. But white could do the hypothetical if it wanted to. And then we get into hand and library. White is a color that can tutor for enchantments. It can tutor for auras specifically. It could tutor for enchantment creatures if it wanted to. White basically can go, can interact with enchantments. White is number one when it comes to enchantments as far as interactions. Also, it's good at destroying them.

But it can go and get that and you know, I have it probably could put an enchantment from the hand on to the battlefield. It's not effectively do very often, but white or green would be the colors that did that if we did. So white, number one interacting. It interacts in most zones and it can go get them and such. Okay, now we get to blue. Okay, so blue does not destroy things. So blue's answers to

enchantments are not, I destroy them. Blue, in fact, can counter them. And sometimes blue, in a set that cares about enchantments, blue is allowed to have counter spells specifically for enchantments. Or counter spells that the restriction is like a null is for one blue man as counter target artifact or enchantment. That's, we will use that a lot in an enchantment heavy set, for example.

Blue is also allowed to bounce enchantments. And dealing with stuff like aura sometimes, it'll bounce the creature the aura's going to go on so the aura dies because it'll fizzle when you play it. It has... Yeah, most of its answers to enchantments are it can steal enchantments, it can bounce enchantments, it can copy enchantments, and it can counter enchantments. Those are probably its biggest tools. Much like it deals with any permanent. Blue does not get rid of permanents, but blue can copy and steal and bounce and counter them.

As far as using enchantments when we get to the battlefield, blue, like white, is the other color that most often makes use of auras as a defensive measure. Blue has what we call the dehydration enchantments. Those are enchantments that lock down a creature, that as long as this enchantment is on the creature, it doesn't untap, often in fact tap the creature when you fast it. There are variations that will take away abilities. Also it'll have enchantments that

override a creature. For example turning into a vanilla 1-1. That's another common answer Blue will have. Now Blue can also do enchantments. He can do ones that turn things into small and significant things, but it also can turn things into more powerful things. So Enchantment future becomes a through-through flyer or something. So it can use Enchantments to enhance or it can use its Enchantments to minimize or limit. Blue also has minus X minus N effects, meaning, or sorry, minus N minus zero effects, meaning the Enchantment might give something minus three minus zero, minus four minus zero, meaning it's a way to sort of weaken it. It does not kill it, but it does weaken it.

So blue, like I said, does have a bunch of enchantments that's used offensively. And blue, when blue makes auras, it tends to grant very blue abilities. A small boost in flying, for example, is probably the most typical blue aura. It'll grant things like curiosity. Whenever you do combat damage, you draw a card. Its auras usually are tied to evasion or card advantage. Drawing cards or also blue is number one at sort of being evasive. It's a number one color for flying, it's got a lot of black ability and so it sometimes gets

auras that can help it make it like whether it's granting flying or granting some sort of black ability, evade, blue is good with evasion. As far as general interaction with enchantments, blue, like white, blue is probably secondary in sort of rule setting enchantments. Blue used to do a lot more of them. White sort of took that over many years back. Blue still does a little bit. It'll do a little bit of taxing.

It still has, in order to attack, you have to pay. It does that every once in a while. And then blue also tends to have enchantments that help sort of advance blue goals. Blue is allowed to have enchantments that help with its card drawing. Every once in a blue moon we do stuff that like, we'll do some, we don't do counter spells a lot, but every once in a while we'll do something that sits on the battlefield and counter something that will happen, though we don't do that a lot these days. What else can we do? Yeah, I mean, mostly blue enchantments are the kind of things where you're trying to do something of a more grandiose scale, and usually it involves card advantage of some kind or card drawing and such.

or hard drawing and such. Okay, blue in the graveyard. Blue cannot get back enchantments from the graveyard. Well, sorry. One of the things that we are experimenting with right now is we're trying to understand, blue has always been a bit limited in some of its reach. And so, Contra-Colors right now is talking a little bit about what ability of influence can Blue have

with enchantments and artifacts. In fact, what interaction can Blue have with non-creatures is really the talk. Blue already gets incident sorcerers out of the graveyard. We're talking a little bit is Blue supposed to have more interaction with non-creature stuff. So that's something we're experimenting with. Oh, something I didn't mention. An area that we've messed around with recently that we're definitely exploring more with is there's an ability that's known as the Enchantress ability. It first showed up on the Dirt Enchantress in Alpha,

which is whenever you play an Enchantment, draw a card. We did that in green originally, then we tried doing it in white, but white now doesn't draw lots of cards on a single turn. So we tried in a dust morn, and putting it in blue. Blue is the card drawing color. We want blue to care more about non-creature car types. And so we are trying to do the enchantress, see how it feels in blue. White and green, there's some oddness to it, even though they are the colors that care much about enchantments.

So blue right now, we're sort of fiddling around with how does it want to interact with the graveyard and non-creatures. I don't know quite the future of that, but it's something we're talking about. As far as hand and library, blue tends to tutor more for instance in sorcerers than it does for Enchantments. It does have the ability to Impulse, which is look at the top end cards of the library.

It can Impulse for anything it wants, so I guess it can get Enchantments through Impulse. But it's not specifically, it doesn't know. Once again, as we're sort of interacting with Blue and its ability to deal with non-creatures, maybe that's something where we look a little more into impulses for stuff like that. So that is something we're exploring. OK, we get to black. Black. So black destroying enchantments is an

interesting case. So when magic started, white had this enchant. And then very quickly thereafter, not too long, green got naturalized. So green and white always were the answers to enchantments. But one day I got Eric Lauer, who used to be the head developer, came and talked to me and said, here's our problem. Black right now has two different vulnerabilities.

It both can't destroy enchantments and it can't destroy artifacts. Also separate problem, there are three different colors, white, red, and green that can destroy artifacts, but there's only two colors, white and green, that can destroy enchantments. I think what we want to do is I think we should let black destroy enchantments. It doesn't need to do it as well as white or green, but that would allow three colors that deals with enchantments and it would make black only have one vulnerability and not two. That made a lot of sense.

We talked to the council of colors, and the decision we came to is, okay, we're gonna let black start killing enchantments, but we're gonna make it at a rate that's not as good as white or green. The reason black originally didn't destroy enchantments was, one of the things we like to make is occasionally we make what we call deal with the devil enchantments.

And what a deal with the devil enchantment is is you get some power some ability but it comes at a cost and the idea is you get this positive thing but it comes with a negative thing and that the negative thing could end up being problematic for you necropos is kind of a classic it's very powerful you can pay light to draw cards but you don't get to draw cards if you run out of life You have no way to draw You know they get the deal the devil and shamans have a way to so they can come back to burn you and for a long Time we didn't let black rid of enchantments who we didn't want to get rid of those type of things Eventually realizes we just don't make those that much anymore and that if black really really wants to get rid of them

Okay, if I can get rid of them Yeah, and a lot of the devil may deal stuff already some if black can get rid of them yeah and a lot of the devil may deal stuff already some creatures black can get rid of those so we decided it was fine um we've been messing around with the power level of how good black should be at destroying enchantments um i think at bare minimum we found the line we don't want to cross whether or not the line we found was a little farther than we want i i think we might have been a little too aggressive and we'll pull back a little bit. We do want Black Destroyer Enchantments but we don't want it to be nearly as good at it. As far as stuff on the battlefield,

like I said, Black does have the deal with the devil stuff. We don't do that a lot these days, a little bit. Black definitely has auras. Black's one of the colors that does a decent amount of creature auras. All the colors have some access to creature auras. Black is number one on sacrifice. So Black likes to sacrifice things. Like I said, for a long time we didn't let Black sacrifice enchantments because we didn't want to get rid of the deal

with the devil enchantments. We've changed our mind on that. Black can now sacrifice enchantments if he wants to. That is OK. And black's enchantments, black often uses enchantments for kill. For example, it has what we call the weakness enchantments, which is minus n minus n, or n doesn't have to be the same

number, but something in which you shrink the toughness. So minus 3 minus 3, or minus 4 minus 4. Sometimes it'll do stuff like minus 4 plus 1, or black and red will do that. Or sometimes it'll do plus 4 minus 1, where it makes it bigger but makes it weaker. Black has the ability to mess in that space. Black can make creature orbs at both raised or lower power

and or toughness. Normally though, black lowers power, tends to lower toughness. Blue is the one that lowers power without lowering toughness. Black also sometimes has kill spells that delay. I enchant a creature and then at the end of a turn it dies or when a certain effect happens it dies. Black sometimes has enchantments that interact with resources, but at a cost. So I draw cards, but I lose life.

That's a common sort of black thing we do from time to time. And black, when using enchantments, black, much like white, black lights sort of doing things. The difference is black enchantments tend to be more punishing, especially toward the opponent. While white will set rules, white's rules tend to set it for everybody. This is true. I'm setting a rule when everybody must follow this rule. Black is more like to, I make a rule for you. You are punished. And I do things to you that black's more likely to just do negative effects overall.

It's enchantments are more likely to have negative consequences where white overall more often are doing positive consequences. It will set rules from time to time Okay, then we get to the graveyard Interestingly, black does not really interact with it I mean black is king of interacting with the creatures in graveyard and reanim reanimating creatures, and raising dead, and all that sort of stuff. But when it gets to enchantments, Black does not do a lot with enchantments. The one thing we could let it do is an enchantment, have you said, it could use enchantments in the Graveyard as a resource. I could eat enchantments in the Graveyard.

Black could do that. Black likes to sacrifice enchantments, so eating at the Graveyard sort of thematically follows through there. But Black does not have a lot of interactions there. As far as the hand in library, black is a color that can tutor for anything. I don't think we would call out enchantments by name. I don't think black would go get an enchantment out of your deck specifically, but black can go get anything out of your deck and that anything could be an enchantment.

And so that is blocked interaction. Okay, which brings us to red. So red, okay, so red's Red's weakness is enchantments. Red likes to blow things up. It's very destructive. But how do you blow things up that aren't tangible? I can, you know, I can blow up a person, I can blow up an object, I can blow up a place, but it's hard to blow up a intangible thing. And so red has problems with enchantments. That is red's weakness. Every other color, I mean, blue doesn't directly destroy enchantments, but it has more answers to enchantments than red does.

Red isn't allowed to punish you for having enchantments. Like I can make an aura or an enchantment that like whenever you play an enchantment it does damage you or something. Like I can punish you for having enchantments but I can't get rid of the enchantments. So as far as in play, red likes auras. Red is one of the more aggro colors with white so it tends to have the more aggressive auras. It likes doing small, pumpy things. It likes granting haste because red is primary in haste, and also granting a very common thing for red. Red tends to grant more power than toughness on its auras, where white, for example, tends to grant more toughness than power. I mean, white sometimes will have even stats, but when they're uneven, usually the power is higher than the top. So red power is almost always higher than top. It can do

plus one plus one, but when it starts getting high, plus two plus one, plus three plus one, plus three plus zero, stuff like that. It often will grant first strike or first strike when attacking. Sometimes white, by the way, is really good at flash, so what times white will flash in is a gem effect. Every color but red has flash in it. Red is fifth in flash, so red doesn't do a lot of flash auras, or like white or green stuff will do more stuff like that. Red's enchantments tend to be more punishing, kind of like black.

Red for example has a lot of enchantments that say hey when certain trigger happens I do damage. That's a very classic red shape for enchantment. Red likes to boost its team but usually through power when it has enchantments. It likes granting haste, it will do that. Usually as a general rule by the way, when enchantments grant things, it tends to grant whatever it's primary in. So for example, red is secondary in trample, it doesn't do a lot of granting everybody trample. Could put trample on a singular aura, but it doesn't tend to grant everybody. But red is primary in haste, so enchantments that grant all your creatures haste, that's something red can do.

And that is true across the board. Red, like I said, red is fine using enchantments. It has problems dealing with enchantments. As far as the graveyard, red does not do a lot of interaction. Hypothetically, red likes to do temporary stuff out of the graveyard. I can imagine Red getting an aura for a turn or enchantment

for a turn. But the practicality use of that is low, so why would we don't try to make that spell? Oh, Red, by the way, talked about the battlefield. Red could heat shimmer for enchantments. Heat shimmer is when you copy something and you only have for the turn once again copying the chamber just for turn Doesn't tend to have a lot of the usage of copying a creature or copying artifact, but that is in red pie as far as the Hand in library red

We Red in library. Red, in the right set dealing with auras, I can see red impulsing for auras, creature auras in the right set, but it doesn't really, red has the least interactions with enchantments. That's one of the, that's actually a topic of the Council of Colors is trying to figure out more ways for red to interact with enchantments. It's kind of a weakness that red is light on them.

Red can sacrifice enchantments. Red is allowed to do that. And red has some number of enchantments. Red can have enchantments. But as far as enchantment interaction, red does not have a lot of enchantment interaction. So it's something we've been working on to figure out how to get red more enchantment interaction. Okay, which brings us to green, which does have a lot of enchantment interaction. Green is right behind white enchantments. I would call it white primary, but green is pretty close to white. Green and white are one and two, but they're close as far as enchantments.

So green can destroy enchantments. Green has what we call naturalized effects, which destroy enchantments, artifacts, or enchantments. We don't often let green just by itself destroy enchantments, although we will let that be a mode. I guess green is doing more of that, where one of its modes destroy target enchantments. So green definitely can do that.

We didn't make spells that only destroyed enchantments before we started getting to doing more modes. But now that we do modes, destroy target enchantments as a mode for green do all the time. And normally these days, there is a comment that has three modes, two of which are destroy artifacts and destroy enchantments, and the third one is destroy fliers or whatever, and that can vary. So it can destroy enchantments.

So as we get to the battlefield, green is life to use enchantments. It is probably one of... White and green probably use creature auras the most. Green is king of the bigger creature auras, like plus three, plus three and above. Most colors don't tend to get that big a buff. Every once in a while, we'll do like, make me an angel or something in white, but green is sort of the king of the big aura buffs. Green also, because it's the color of

Giant Growth, likes to have flash auras. In sets that have enchantment matters, we tend to like to make flash plus three plus three auras. So the idea that green not only can boost itself, but then that sticks around. And it's a way to take out an effect that's normally in green and turn it into enchantments. So in enchantments, that's we're always looking for how to get more things into enchantment form.

Like I said, green has enchantments. Green can have enchantments that deal with mana, helping you get mana. Oh, green is probably the king of land enchantment, of enchant lands, especially to get more mana or to color fix. Green tends to do that a lot. Once again, I guess all the colors use the enchantments just to enhance what they do.

The idea of boosting mana is probably the thing. Boosting mana or boosting creatures are the things. By the way, white tends to do the most smaller boosting creatures, plus 1, plus 1, plus 2, plus 2. When green tends to boost creatures, it tends to be plus 3, plus 3, and up. Sometimes that's just instant sorcerers or sorcerers, usually, that can overrun.

But sometimes we can do larger stuff that will grow creatures. As far as the graveyard, green has the ability to get back any cards from the graveyard into its hand. We don't tend to call out enchantment by name. Green will either say any card or any permanent card, both of which gets enchantment. So green has no problem getting enchantments out of the graveyard but we don't specify it all that often that it gets specifically enchantments. It does not reanimate though. In theory green does have the ability to get its own creatures out of the graveyard not as a separate spell but creatures that get themselves out of

the graveyard. I guess it may be a green enchantment that got itself out of the graveyard and somewhere I don't know if we've done that but I could imagine us doing that. And then when you get to hand and library, so green, like I said, is number two in enchantments. It can fetch enchantments if it wants to. A lot of times we'll let it look, sometimes when we impulse, it'll impulse for permanence sometimes so it can get enchantments. I think most of the time the tutoring is more white than green for enchantments, but I think in the right set that green could have a little bit of that.

And definitely, impulsing for subsets that include enchantments, like impulsing for permanence, is something green can do in the right side. In a vacuum, it tends to get creatures and land, but it can get that. Anything else for green that's unique to enchantments? Yeah, green, like I said, is it is a color that enjoys enchantments and has a little more access to enchantments.

It also tends to have more enchantment synergy, much like I said, white dead. Green is a color, for example, that can reward you for playing enchantments or having enchantments or enchantment creatures. All the stuff I talked about in white is more than viable in green. Anyway, that, my friends, is the color pie for enchantments. Um, the one thing that I will say, my sort of meta note at the end of this is I think we've made a lot more sets that had a strong artifact theme than we had a strong enchantment theme.

And because of that, we've done a lot more fleshing out how all the colors interact with artifacts. I think we've made less enchantment sets. I mean, we made Theros, obviously, and we've made, you know, Duskborne had an enchantment theme. And I do think, you know, looking toward the future, enchantments are a core part of the game. We've spent less energy on enchantments.

I do think there's more potential for us making more sets that revolve around enchantments, just because it is a core part of the game that we've done a little less. We've just made a lot more artifact sets than enchantments, just because it is a core part of the game that we've done a little less. We've just made a lot more artifacts sets than enchantments sets. So I do think there's some potential sitting on the table there.

And I think as we do more of those, I do think we could flesh out more, some more minutia of how things interact with enchantments. Like for example, the reason we're talking about this in the console is about red is, red is pretty light. Okay, I have an enchantment set. What do I do with red? Okay, red can sack enchantments and red can have some enchantments

But red doesn't really like where is the synergies with enchantments in red? If you ask me for artifacts when I did the artifact one all the colors had a little more interaction So that that's one things you'll notice today is that every color has some interactions in some colors like white and green have a lot of Interactions, but hey, maybe we want some more stuff in blue. Maybe we want some more In red, you know black we let it start destroying things So you can start seeing that a lot of our evolution with enchantments is not as far as long as their evolution with artifacts That is just how many enchantments that's we've made the more sets we made were in terms of our major theme the more we have to go to that and figure that out.

And artifacts literally just, they've had a lot more sets for us to figure that out. But I do think enchantments are being a core part of the game. We will spend more time evolving that is my guess. So anyway guys, I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Hope you enjoyed today's podcast, and I'll see you soon.