Color Coding Changes

Hey mark! I enjoyed your alphabet podcast, but I might have another one for you. When guilds of Ravnica came out, R&D referred to the nightveil predator cycle of cards as costing CCDD. Does that give you an entry for D?

D moved to N when C moved to M. Now the translated version of that sentence. We used to use C to mean any colored mana, so if we were making a tight cycle (all the cards have the same mana value) where all the costs cost two generic mana and one colored mana, we’d write it as 2C. If we were making a cycle of two-colored multicolor cards, we’d use D for the second color. For example, if it was a tight cycle with two generic mana and one of two different colored mana, we’d write it as 2CD.But then Oath of the Gatewatch came out and we introduced colorless mana in costs. We needed a letter for that, so we used C for colorless. That meant we had to change the old usage of C as it would make a cost of 2C ambiguous. We changed from C to M to mean any colored mana. When we changed it to M, we changed the secondary color to N as N follows M like D followed C.

Colorless Colors Cycles Drive to Work Game Design Guilds of Ravnica Mana Mana Value Nightveil Predator Oath of the Gatewatch Secondary