Back in September 2022, The Ruinous Powers MTG Commander deck was printed (the Warhammer 40’000 Chaos Space Marine precon). The Ruinous Powers was a Grixis deck, meaning that it was black, red, and blue. This set a trend that villain focused Universes Beyond Commander decks stuck to for years. Masters of Evil, the Dr Who precon, kept these some colours. As did The Hosts of Mordor from Tales of Middle-Earth, and the recent Marvel Doom Prevails precon. The Borg are breaking this pattern and giving villain loving players a chance to experience Esper (blue, white, and black) instead.
There’s a degree of logic underpinning why bad guys are assigned this particular color identity in essentially every MTG set. Villainous characters are often intelligent schemers (blue), who revel in causing chaos and destruction (red), and are willing to pursue their ambitions, however immoral, at any cost (black). Many in-universe Magic villains are also Grixis aligned, including the Draconic despot Nicol Bolas, the Phyrexian corrupted artificer Mishra, and the card draw loving lich lord Nekusar.
All the same, after so much repetition, the pattern has been growing stale for a while now. The only arguable exception has been the ‘Hail, Caesar’ precon from the Fallout crossover, and even that’s a compilation of Fallout New Vegas characters, featuring cards from a variety of factions, rather than a deck dedicated exclusively to Caesar and his legions.
It’s ironic then that We Are The Borg, a deck focused on the Borg Collective, an assimilationist hive mind, is the first to show some individuality and present evil with a different color identity. We Are The Borg swaps out red for white. In doing so, it rids itself of the chaotic emotions represented by red, and substitutes in the conformity and desire for absolute order and control represented by white at its most sinister.
What’s your take here? Do you want to see a variety of different colours used to represent evil in MTG, or are you Grixis all the way? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
