Before we start, I must say that I'm not dedicated Magic the Gathering player. I had played few hundreds of hours of Magic the Gathering from somewhere 2010 to 2020 in digital and physical formats. I'm not up to date with most recent cards nor I'm in no way pro player. In fact, I was never attracted to a competitive side of things, because I felt that Magic the Gathering is inherently greatly disbalanced and it is very frustrating to play it. I prefer to play various formats which allows only more common cards or just pre-constructed decks, but that is another matter all together.
In my eyes, I perceived that various colors tended to have too strong of options. For example, despite wanting to go black for removal, the best removal was in a white deck as Path of Exile. I had seen similar little things in all decks where supposed strengths and weaknesses weren't upheld. I'm of course in no way an expert, nor I played for quite a while this game. However, this is an impression I was left with that Magic the Gathering had moved away from its premise and colors became a lot more universal in their own capabilities. Far too much for my own personal taste.
I would wish to know opinion of other people and what they think about this.
A good read for that is (the famous article regarding color pie): making-magic/mechanical-color-pie
Its quite excessive, and that alone gives you an idea how specific the color pie has become.
Theres no color that is "the best" in removal by definition, each color just does removal in a different way and powerlevel of the removal varies with each format and new cards, so for old formats, the biggest offenders become the most relevant.
Today Magic is much less about the colors, and focuses a lot more on mechanics that are then attributed to a color combination.
So lets say White/Green has Convoke as a mechanic, so you see a lot more creatures, and tokens to go along that.
If red/blue cares about spells, you see mechanics like Prowess and stuff that cares to interact with instants and sorcery spells.
Blue/Black might be heavy in a mill theme, ever since Ravnica slapped that label on the color combination.
Way back in time, like in the 2000s , Magic had a much simpler color pie for each color.
Green got big creatures, black got discard and targeted destroy removal, red got burn, white got lifegain and protection, blue got card draw and counterspells , etc. etc.
But each color also had sever weaknesses of what it basically could not do, thats almost non existent today, as any color combination can to some degree deal with anything and do its thing to push through.
----
A more basic form of Color identity usually matter more in "limited" , draft or sealed deck (also preRelease sealed).
There you get much less fancy rares and mythics and the fundamentals of magic in commons and uncommons matters more.
(So the flyers are usually in blue and white, the burn spells in red, black gets some destroy effects and so on)
In commons and uncommons the color identity shines more than in rares and mythics (which usually just slap a ton of abilities on card and call it a day).
What a color usually gets is more a watered line than a clear cut, especially including older formats where the "mistakes" are the cards that break some fundamental of magic.
In general white gets weaker or more expensive removal, some form of Wrath of God in basically all sets, but black also gets removal and sometimes a mass removal , more often a smaller mass removal like -2/-2 at uncommon.
Discard in black and counterspells in blue are basically the only very clean color identity, that other colors dont share (at least not in any significant competitive level cards, just some random odd ones).
Red gets a lot more burn, but black also gets some form of life drain, and if either is costed competitive and does the job of killing the targets expected in the format, then thats it.
----
In addition to the basic 5 colors which have some characteristics which they get more often, we also get multicolor combinations of each color pair, and 3-color combinations and so on, which again have some subset of mechanics that they primarly focus on ... especially visible in sets like Ravnica, in which each color pair gets a guild mechanic, and most of the cards will then evolve around that.
----
Path to Exile
and similar strong competitive cards basically ignore the entire color pie to quite a degree and at that point its about building a deck with specific cards in mind, and less what color the deck is (as most competitive decks are 2 or 3 colored anyway, to get access to a combination of cards that work well together).
Especially with spells like Dismember, ever color gets access to it, as you basically never pay its black mana cost anyway, its just life and colorless mana, and if that is the best removal in the format, every color has it (being black would then just give you a little bit advantage, if you ever pay the manacost in a pinch).
I will take a look at your article and yes, color identity is why I heavily prefer limited formats. It is a lot more fun that way, but I felt that I just couldn't find official format that would be for me and popular. The issue is that when you look into limited formats, a lot of basic tribes often lack a key cards to make a tribe whole. Even if card is not OP and fair to play against, for some reason, certain cards would be of rarer quality and thus your builds would suffer. I never felt that Magic the Gathering pays much attention to balance of those limited formats as some key cards were of different rarity than they should.
Path to Exile was an outliner to me which was pretty annoying. I wanted to play Blue/Black, but I had found that white has more solid removal in form of Path to Exile which in my eye is just brokenly good. I also feel that colors sometimes are just too efficient at certain things which they are not supposed to do. For example, Wrath of God in my eyes is one of the best form of mass removal and this thing should not be anywhere close to any white decks! It either has to be situational or a lot worse than it is now. Or Pacifism. While not technically removal, it is in some senses even better than it. It completely removes creature from play, but at lower costs than a card which would remove it from play and people would very rarely would have a counter play for such an effect.
When I'm looking, I can find countless such outliners which are in a game and they never fail to annoy me. It got so bad that I consider White color to be best at removing stuff in a game over any other color which should be the opposite of what I was thought should be the case.
Before we start, I must say that I'm not dedicated Magic the Gathering player. I had played few hundreds of hours of Magic the Gathering from somewhere 2010 to 2020 in digital and physical formats. I'm not up to date with most recent cards nor I'm in no way pro player. In fact, I was never attracted to a competitive side of things, because I felt that Magic the Gathering is inherently greatly disbalanced and it is very frustrating to play it. I prefer to play various formats which allows only more common cards or just pre-constructed decks, but that is another matter all together.
In my eyes, I perceived that various colors tended to have too strong of options. For example, despite wanting to go black for removal, the best removal was in a white deck as Path of Exile. I had seen similar little things in all decks where supposed strengths and weaknesses weren't upheld. I'm of course in no way an expert, nor I played for quite a while this game. However, this is an impression I was left with that Magic the Gathering had moved away from its premise and colors became a lot more universal in their own capabilities. Far too much for my own personal taste.
I would wish to know opinion of other people and what they think about this.
making-magic/mechanical-color-pie
Its quite excessive, and that alone gives you an idea how specific the color pie has become.
Theres no color that is "the best" in removal by definition, each color just does removal in a different way and powerlevel of the removal varies with each format and new cards, so for old formats, the biggest offenders become the most relevant.
Today Magic is much less about the colors, and focuses a lot more on mechanics that are then attributed to a color combination.
So lets say White/Green has Convoke as a mechanic, so you see a lot more creatures, and tokens to go along that.
If red/blue cares about spells, you see mechanics like Prowess and stuff that cares to interact with instants and sorcery spells.
Blue/Black might be heavy in a mill theme, ever since Ravnica slapped that label on the color combination.
Way back in time, like in the 2000s , Magic had a much simpler color pie for each color.
Green got big creatures, black got discard and targeted destroy removal, red got burn, white got lifegain and protection, blue got card draw and counterspells , etc. etc.
But each color also had sever weaknesses of what it basically could not do, thats almost non existent today, as any color combination can to some degree deal with anything and do its thing to push through.
----
A more basic form of Color identity usually matter more in "limited" , draft or sealed deck (also preRelease sealed).
There you get much less fancy rares and mythics and the fundamentals of magic in commons and uncommons matters more.
(So the flyers are usually in blue and white, the burn spells in red, black gets some destroy effects and so on)
In commons and uncommons the color identity shines more than in rares and mythics (which usually just slap a ton of abilities on card and call it a day).
What a color usually gets is more a watered line than a clear cut, especially including older formats where the "mistakes" are the cards that break some fundamental of magic.
In general white gets weaker or more expensive removal, some form of Wrath of God in basically all sets, but black also gets removal and sometimes a mass removal , more often a smaller mass removal like -2/-2 at uncommon.
Discard in black and counterspells in blue are basically the only very clean color identity, that other colors dont share (at least not in any significant competitive level cards, just some random odd ones).
Red gets a lot more burn, but black also gets some form of life drain, and if either is costed competitive and does the job of killing the targets expected in the format, then thats it.
----
In addition to the basic 5 colors which have some characteristics which they get more often, we also get multicolor combinations of each color pair, and 3-color combinations and so on, which again have some subset of mechanics that they primarly focus on ... especially visible in sets like Ravnica, in which each color pair gets a guild mechanic, and most of the cards will then evolve around that.
----
Path to Exile
and similar strong competitive cards basically ignore the entire color pie to quite a degree and at that point its about building a deck with specific cards in mind, and less what color the deck is (as most competitive decks are 2 or 3 colored anyway, to get access to a combination of cards that work well together).
Especially with spells like Dismember, ever color gets access to it, as you basically never pay its black mana cost anyway, its just life and colorless mana, and if that is the best removal in the format, every color has it (being black would then just give you a little bit advantage, if you ever pay the manacost in a pinch).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Path to Exile was an outliner to me which was pretty annoying. I wanted to play Blue/Black, but I had found that white has more solid removal in form of Path to Exile which in my eye is just brokenly good. I also feel that colors sometimes are just too efficient at certain things which they are not supposed to do. For example, Wrath of God in my eyes is one of the best form of mass removal and this thing should not be anywhere close to any white decks! It either has to be situational or a lot worse than it is now. Or Pacifism. While not technically removal, it is in some senses even better than it. It completely removes creature from play, but at lower costs than a card which would remove it from play and people would very rarely would have a counter play for such an effect.
When I'm looking, I can find countless such outliners which are in a game and they never fail to annoy me. It got so bad that I consider White color to be best at removing stuff in a game over any other color which should be the opposite of what I was thought should be the case.