What are the five colors in Magic: The Gathering?

White, Blue, Black, Red and Green — abbreviated WUBRG, with Blue using U to avoid colliding with Black's B. Each has a philosophy and a mechanical specialty: white builds order and plays defensively, blue manipulates knowledge and controls the game, black pursues power at any cost, red acts on impulse and deals damage, and green grows large creatures and produces extra mana.

What is the color pie in Magic: The Gathering?

The colour pie is the design contract governing what each colour is allowed to do. It matters most for what it forbids: green cannot draw cards efficiently the way blue does, blue cannot destroy creatures directly the way black does, white cannot ramp mana the way green does. These restrictions are why colours have identities at all — a colour that could do everything would not be a colour.

What are the MTG color combination names?

Two-colour pairs use the ten Ravnica guild names: Azorius, Dimir, Rakdos, Gruul and Selesnya for allied pairs; Orzhov, Izzet, Golgari, Boros and Simic for enemy pairs. Three-colour combinations use the five Alara shards (Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, Naya) and the five Tarkir wedges (Abzan, Jeskai, Sultai, Mardu, Temur). Four-colour sets use the Guildpact Nephilim names, and five colours is simply WUBRG.

What is the difference between a shard and a wedge?

Both are three-colour combinations, but they are built differently. A shard is a colour plus its two allies — three consecutive colours on the wheel, like Esper (white, blue, black). A wedge is a colour plus its two enemies, which skips around the wheel, like Abzan (white, black, green). Shards feel harmonious because allied colours share goals; wedges feel tense because the outer two colours are enemies of each other.

Which colors are allies and which are enemies in MTG?

The colour wheel runs White, Blue, Black, Red, Green and back to White. Each colour's neighbours are its allies and the two colours across from it are its enemies. So white allies with blue and green, and opposes black and red. Blue allies with white and black, and opposes red and green. This wheel is the structure underneath every combination name in the game.

How many colors should my deck be?

One or two for a first deck. Every colour you add makes your mana less reliable, and a deck that cannot cast its own spells on time loses to decks that can. Commander is more forgiving because the format is slower and precons come with a working manabase built in, but the general rule holds: add a third colour only when you have the lands to support it.

What are the four-color combinations called?

They take their names from the Nephilim cycle in Guildpact (2006). Yore-Tiller is white-blue-black-red, Glint-Eye is blue-black-red-green, Dune-Brood is black-red-green-white, Ink-Treader is red-green-white-blue, and Witch-Maw is green-white-blue-black. Each is four consecutive colours on the wheel, so each is defined by the single colour it lacks. Commander 2016 introduced an alternative naming set: Artifice, Chaos, Aggression, Altruism and Growth.

What does WUBRG mean?

It is the standard shorthand for all five colours in wheel order — White, Blue, Black, Red, Green — and it is pronounced 'wooberg'. Blue is U because B was already taken by Black. WUBRG is also used to describe a five-colour deck, and the order is the same one Magic uses when printing mana symbols on cards.

Is colorless a color in Magic?

No. Colourless is the absence of colour, not a sixth colour. Artifacts and Eldrazi are typically colourless, and colourless mana is written with a diamond symbol that is distinct from generic mana, which is written as a number. Generic mana can be paid with any colour; colourless mana specifically cannot be paid with coloured mana.

Which color is the strongest in Magic: The Gathering?

None consistently, by design — the colour pie exists to keep them balanced against each other, and the strongest colour in any given format changes as sets rotate. Blue has historically been the most powerful in eternal formats because countermagic and card selection scale well, and green has been strongest in recent Standard formats. Treat any claim that one colour is permanently best as a statement about one format at one moment.

Magic: The Gathering Colors Explained: The Color Pie and Every Combination Name (2026)

Defined by What They Cannot Do

Most games with factions differentiate them by what they are good at. Magic's colours are defined more sharply by what they are forbidden to do.

Green produces more mana than any other colour and cannot draw cards efficiently. Blue draws more cards than any other colour and cannot destroy a creature outright. Black destroys anything and pays life for the privilege. Those restrictions are the colour pie, and they are the reason a colour feels like something rather than a set of stats.

Understanding it changes how you build decks, because it tells you where your deck's holes are before you find them the hard way — a mono-green deck will have an answer to almost anything on the battlefield and almost nothing to a spell on the stack, and no amount of good green cards will fix that.

Five colours, arranged on a wheel, each with two allies and two enemies. Every combination name in Magic comes from that structure.

The Five Colors

The "cannot do" column is the useful one. It is the checklist of what a deck in that colour will be missing, and the reason two-colour decks exist at all — you add a colour to cover a hole, not to add more good cards.

Blue is abbreviated U because Black already claimed B. Our guide to MTG symbols covers how these appear on the card and the difference between colourless and generic mana, which is the most common point of confusion in the whole system.

Colourless is not a sixth colour

Colourless is the absence of colour. Artifacts and Eldrazi are typically colourless. Colourless mana (a diamond symbol) is also distinct from generic mana (a number): generic can be paid with any mana at all, colourless specifically cannot be paid with coloured mana.

The Wheel: Allies and Enemies

The five colours sit in a fixed order — White, Blue, Black, Red, Green, and back to White.

Each colour's neighbours are its allies; the two colours opposite are its enemies.

This is not decoration. Allied colours share goals and their cards tend to support each other; enemy colours want opposite things and pairing them creates deliberate tension. Every combination name below is generated by this wheel.

Two Colors: The Ten Guilds

The pair names come from Ravnica, where each two-colour combination is a guild with its own philosophy.

These names are used constantly in ordinary conversation — a "Rakdos deck" or "Azorius control" is how players describe colour identity without listing symbols.

Three Colors: Shards and Wedges

Ten three-colour combinations, named from two different sets, and the difference between them is structural rather than cosmetic.

Shards — a colour plus both its allies

From Shards of Alara (2008). Three consecutive colours on the wheel, so every colour in the set is friendly with the others. Shards feel harmonious.

Wedges — a colour plus both its enemies

From Khans of Tarkir (2014), where each is a clan. A wedge takes one colour and both colours it opposes, so the two outer colours are also enemies of each other. Wedges feel tense by construction.

A shard is a colour and its friends. A wedge is a colour and its enemies, forced to cooperate. That difference shows up in how the decks actually play.

Four Colors: The Nephilim

Five four-colour combinations, each defined by the one colour it lacks. The names come from the Nephilim cycle in Guildpact (2006).

Each is four consecutive colours on the wheel, so naming them by the colour they lack is usually clearer — "four-colour, no red" communicates more than "Witch-Maw" to most players. Commander 2016 introduced the alternative names in the right-hand column, and both sets remain in use.

Five Colors: WUBRG

All five, pronounced "wooberg". Every card in the game is castable in principle, and the entire difficulty moves into the manabase — a five-colour deck lives or dies on whether it can produce the right colours on time.

This is why five-colour decks in Commander are so often built around a commander that fixes mana or cheats costs, and why the manabase is usually the most expensive part of the deck by a wide margin.

How Many Colors Should Your Deck Be?

The rule that matters: every colour you add makes your mana less reliable. A deck that cannot cast its spells on time loses to a worse deck that can. Add a colour to fix a specific weakness, not to include more cards you like.

Commander is more forgiving because games are slower and precons ship with a functioning manabase. For the full framework, see how to build an MTG deck, and if you are choosing a first deck at all, how to get into Magic covers the decision that comes before this one.

Conclusion: The Pie Is the Point

It would be easy to read the colour pie as a limitation to work around. It is closer to the opposite — it is the thing that makes deck-building a decision rather than a shopping list. If every colour could answer every problem, choosing colours would just be choosing art.

The practical version: know what your colours cannot do. A mono-green deck has an answer to nearly anything on the battlefield and nearly nothing to a spell on the stack. A mono-blue deck can counter anything it sees coming and struggles with what already resolved. Those gaps are not flaws in your deck — they are the shape of the colours you chose.

And when you do add a second colour, add it for the hole it fills. That is the whole of colour selection, and the twenty-six names above are just a vocabulary for describing the result.

Citations & Resources

MTG Symbols Explained — mana symbols, and colourless versus generic
How to Build an MTG Deck — turning a colour choice into a manabase
How to Get Into Magic: The Gathering — the decisions that come before colour
MTG Tribal Decks — where each tribe sits on the colour wheel
Complete Guide to MTG Formats — how many colours each format can support
The Ultimate MTG Keywords Glossary — the abilities each colour is allowed to have

Magic: The Gathering Colors Explained: The Color Pie and Every Combination Name (2026)

Quick Verdict