BinderLoot / Glossary
Colors and rarity
What the symbols on a card tell you before you read a single line of its text.
10 terms
The five colors
Every color wants a different thing, and the color of a card tells you how it plays.
white
Small creatures in numbers, gaining life, and clearing the whole board at once.
blue
Drawing cards, countering a spell before it happens, and creatures that fly.
black
Killing a creature, searching your deck, and paying life for an advantage.
red
Cheap fast creatures, haste, and damage aimed straight at a target.
green
The biggest creatures, trample, and extra mana earlier than anyone else.
- White
- White takes order and community.
- White plays small creatures in numbers, protects them, gains life, and destroys every creature at once when it falls behind. It is the color most willing to reset the board.
Example
White makes three 1/1 Soldier tokens with one card, and then gives every creature that you control +1/+1.
- See alsoBoard wipeColor identity
- Blue
- Blue takes knowledge and control.
- Blue draws cards, counters spells, returns permanents to their owner, and flies over the ground. It answers a threat before it arrives rather than after.
Example
You counter the big spell of the opponent, draw a card, and untap. That turn is blue at work.
- See alsoCard drawRemovalColor identity
- Black
- Black takes power at any cost.
- Black kills creatures, searches your library for the card you need, and pays life or sacrifices its own permanents to get ahead. It has an answer to almost anything, and it charges you for each one.
Example
A black card lets you pay four life to draw two cards. Black takes the deal and pays the price.
- See alsoRemovalColor identity
- Red
- Red takes freedom and impulse.
- Red plays cheap fast creatures, gives them haste, and points damage at anything it wants gone. It wins early, and it runs out of cards if the game runs long.
Example
Red deals three damage to a creature for one mana. The answer arrives now, not on a later turn.
- See alsoHasteAggroColor identity
- Green
- Green takes growth.
- Green plays the largest creatures for the mana, gives them trample and +1/+1 counters, and makes extra mana faster than one land a turn. It answers a creature by playing a bigger one.
Example
Green puts a land from the library onto the battlefield on turn two, and casts a 6/6 on turn four.
- See alsoRampTrampleColor identity
How rare a card is
The color of the set symbol says how often a card appears in a pack, and nothing about how strong it is.
- Rarity
- How often a card appears in a booster pack, shown by the set symbol color.
- Black is common, silver is uncommon, gold is rare, and orange-red is mythic rare. Rarity sets the price of a card far more than it sets its power. Read the card, not the symbol.
Example
You open a pack and read the set symbols. One is gold, three are silver, and the rest are black.
- See alsoCommonUncommonRareMythic rare
- Common
- The most printed rarity, marked by a black set symbol.
- A rarity is how often a card appears in a booster pack. It is not power. Lightning Bolt is a common and it is one of the strongest spells ever printed. The whole Pauper format is built from commons.
Example
A common has a black set symbol. Many of the strongest cheap spells in the game are commons.
- See alsoRarityUncommon
- Uncommon
- A middle rarity, marked by a silver set symbol.
- Three uncommons appear in a typical booster pack. Many of the best cards for a first deck are uncommon, because they are cheap to buy and they do one clear job.
Example
You open a pack and find three silver set symbols. Those three cards are the uncommons of the pack.
- See alsoRarityCommon
- Rare
- One card in a booster pack is rare, marked by a gold set symbol.
- Rare marks how often a card is printed, never how good it is. Many rares are built around a whole deck and do little on their own, while a common can fit in every deck of its color.
Example
One card in the pack carries a gold set symbol. That card is the rare, and it is not always the best card.
- See alsoRarityMythic rare
- Mythic rare
- The least printed rarity, marked by an orange-red set symbol.
- A mythic rare appears in roughly one of every eight booster packs in place of a rare. It is rarer than a rare and usually more expensive to buy, and it is still not automatically stronger.
Example
A card with an orange-red set symbol takes the place of the rare in a small share of packs.
- See alsoRarityRare