Why Do Reviewers Combine Allies with Shards and Enemies with Wedges?
General forum
Posted on Jan. 29, 2024, 8:07 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
Whenever a new set is released, members of EDHREC review cards from that set, and they review cards by color, which makes sense, but what does not make sense is that they combine allied two-color cards with shard three-colored cards and enemy two-colored cards with wedge three-colored cards, so I wonder why they do that. Would it not make much more sense to combine all ten two-colored combinations in one article and all ten three-colored combinations in another article? What does everyone else say about this? Why do the reviewers combine the colors in such a way?
wallisface says... #3
I haven’t read any of these articles so i’m entirely guessing with my response.
I am guessing that one of the following statements is true:
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either the 2-colour cards take more time/space to write than the 3-colour cards, or visa-versa. In an effort to have the articles have a similar length and required-writer-effort, they’ve had each article cover half-of-each.
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either the 2-colour cards get much more viewer attention than the 3-colour cards, or visa-versa. In order to maximise reader retention they’ve deemed it more practical to have each article cover-half-of each, so that both articles maintains high reader numbers.
Of course, everything i’ve guessed here is entirely speculation.
January 29, 2024 8:33 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #4
I'm leaning toward the first answer that wallisface gave. Of 70 multicolored cards in MKM 63 are 2-color and 5 are 3-color with the last 2 being 5-color. I know that this isn't the best example since it is a guild focussed set and every 3-color card is wedge.
LCI has 27 (or 26 depending on if you are counting Huatli) multi colored cards and 2 (or 1) cards are 3-color and the rest 2-color.
WOE has 22 and 1 is 3-color with the rest being 2-color.
MOM is a little sticky there are 62 Multicolored cards. But many of them are flip cards with a mono-colored front and a Phyrexian transform cost. If we eliminate the 19 flip Phyrexians and Invasion of Theros Flip which also only requires a single color to cast, we have 42. Of these 35 are 2-color with 5 3-color, and 2 5-color.
There are just way more 2-color than 3-color.
January 29, 2024 10 p.m.
Last_Laugh says... #5
Maybe it's just a mathematical thing. Wedges contain 2x enemy color pairings and Shards contain 2x friendly color pairings. So basically lumping friendly color pairing pairings with Shards makes sense since the majority of those fit into a Shard and same is true with enemy colors and Wedges.
TypicalTimmy says... #2
Has to do with the color pie
In a circle, from the top, it's
This means if you start at , is clockwise from it and is counterclockwise from it. These are considered "allied" because they are one step away.
Conversely, and are adjacent to it, being two steps away in either directions. So since allied was already chosen, "enemy" was the next logical choice since they are opposing (opposite of) it.
Wait, I may have misread the question while standing at the time clock at work lol
January 29, 2024 8:26 p.m. Edited.