A recent LR had an entertaining roundtable discussion that touched upon the white’s low standing over the past few sets. While I think there’s a hefty amount of recency bias (it wasn’t too long ago where white had a surplus of unstoppable bombs), one of guests said something interesting: white totally lacks an identity and this leads to a lot of variance in strength from set to set.
One of the things that has made Magic enduringly great is how well they nailed Alpha. It’s tremendous how many mechanics and “color identity” remain a solid foundation 25 years later. Green (mana-elves & big creatures) ramps, blue (Divination, counterspells, fliers) controls, stabilizes, and gains resources. Red (Shock, haste, menace) attacks early, often, and hard. Black (doom blade, deathtouch, sacrifice) has great removal and win-conditions. Now they all don’t do this in every set but having a coherent identity makes it easier to design and play. Let’s throw in a favorite Rosewater-ism: constraints breed creativity.
Conspicuously missing from the list above is white. White is defined by, uh, stuff? Being good? Justice? Let’s try and define this a little better by looking at what I would consider these the exemplar white cards from Alpha.
Benalish Dad 