Monocolored
Monocolored (also "mono-colored" or "single-colored") is the property of having exactly one color and no others. It is primarily used to refer to cards that are either white, blue, black, red, or green only. The term can also be applied to a card's color identity and to a deck list or deck archetype.
Description
A card or game object can be defined as monocolored if it:
- Requires mana from only one color to be cast.
- Has a color indicator with exactly one color (i.e.
, 
, 
, 
, or 
). - Has a characteristic-defining ability that gives it exactly one color.
- Is a token whose creation defines it as having exactly one color (e.g. Arahbo, the First Fang creates white Cat tokens).
- It is not a split card where each half is a different color.
A card's status as monocolored can be changed by various effects (e.g. Painter's Servant, Rise from the Grave) and by whether it is on the stack or the battlefield for certain types of cards (e.g. Rooms, cards with Adventures, split cards).
When the term is used about a deck, players will often shorten the description to "mono-[color]", "mono[color]", or "mono [color]" (e.g., Mono-Red Aggro).[1]
Colorless
Cards that are colorless do not count as monocolored because they lack any color. This applies to both a card's color and its color identity. When the term "monocolored" is applied to a deck, colorless cards do not impact the definition. A red deck can still be considered "mono-red" if it contains a mix of red and colorless cards.
Cards with devoid are colorless, even if they require a single type of colored mana to cast.
Hybrid mana
Cards that have either colorless (
, 
, 
, 
, 
) or "two-bird" (
, 
, 
, 
, 
) hybrid mana symbols are monocolored, provided they have no other colors in their mana costs. All other hybrid mana symbols are, by definition, multicolored.
Decks containing cards with any of the multicolored hybrid mana symbols are multicolored, but players will often judge them based on what colors of mana that deck could produce. A deck that contains Dryad Militant and no ways to produce white mana can be labelled as "mono-green," even though this is not strictly true. The flexibility of hybrid cards has caused ongoing debate in the Commander format, where the intersection with color identity means hybrid cards are normally excluded from monocolored decks.[2][3][4]
Color identity
The color identity of a card is the combination of all colors in its mana cost, any color indicator or color-setting characteristic-defining abilities on the card, and any mana symbols in the card's rules text. This increases the number of cards that qualify as multicolored and leaves monocolored a far more restrictive term. Decks with a monocolored Commander cannot include cards that would be considered monocolored under normal circumstances but have a multicolored color identity. It also means that some colorless cards, like Bosh, Iron Golem, have a monocolored color identity.
Due to its unique characteristic-defining ability, Fallaji Wayfarer is the only multicolored card to have a monocolored color identity.
Rules
From the glossary of the Comprehensive Rules (July 25, 2025—Edge of Eternities)
- Monocolored
- An object with exactly one color is monocolored. Colorless objects aren’t monocolored. See rule 105, “Colors,” and rule 202, “Mana Cost and Color.”
Design
Monocolored cards play a foundational role in the design philosophy of both Limited and Constructed formats. With some exceptions, monocolored cards form the majority of cards in a set. These cards demonstrate both the mechanical and creative uniqueness of each color, their strengths and weaknesses, and the strategies they employ.
The game's mana system is inherently tied to its five-color identity. While playing more colors in a deck usually gives access to a wider range of effects—and often more powerful versions of those effects—it comes at the cost of consistency.[5] Multicolored decks are more prone to color screw, a scenario where a player cannot cast spells because they lack the right combination of colored mana. Monocolored decks, by contrast, offer fewer choices in terms of effects and strategy, but enable more reliable gameplay. In a mono-blue deck, for example, a player can cast spells costing 
, 
, and as soon as they have three sources that produce blue mana. In a multicolored deck, however, those same spells with heavy colored mana requirements (e.g. or ) become much harder to cast early in the game, due to the need for a high concentration of specific mana producing sources. Design uses this tension to tweak the impactfulness of cards in different environments. Where a card's value is needed early in the game or "on curve", they can restrict the number of decks it can be used in by adding more colored pips. Where a card needs to be flexible, they can reduce the number of colored pips.
Outside of individual card designs, Wizards has tools they can use to promote or dissuade players from building monocolored decks.[5] On the scale of a set or a format, they can include a high enough density of cards with a specific theme unique to a single color (e.g., discard in black, mill in blue, etc). Players wanting to play that theme will more frequently build decks around those options and be forced to leave out other colors as a constraint. Typal decks will sometimes follow this formula as many creature types are exclusive to one color or feature a large number in one color (e.g., Cats in white or Goblins in red).
The other tool is to directly "bribe" players by adding cards that are above rate and best used in a single color. These "bribes" include scaling cards (e.g. Blanchwood Armor, cards with devotion, etc.) whose effects are directly proportional to the number of cards of a specific color in the player's deck. It may also include cards that significantly buff a specific color (e.g. Divine Sacrament, Crypt of Agadeem), the Medallions cycle in Modern Horizons 3, etc.) that encourage using more cards of that color or cards that play on a specific color's strengths (e.g. Ajani's Pridemate and Linden, the Steadfast Queen are both in Foundations).
Limited
The design of limited formats is primarily driven by the math behind booster collation and the number of boosters used in the specific format. Regardless of whether the format uses Draft or Play Boosters, Design considers it almost impossible to have a monocolored Sealed Deck simply due to booster pack distribution.[5] Six play boosters contain 84 cards, usually including six lands. To construct a 40-card deck, players generally need 20-26 cards that function well together or are particularly powerful in a limited setting.[6] If the play boosters had perfect color distribution (i.e. each booster had an even number of cards of each color), a sealed deck pool would only have 16-17 cards of any one color. This number is further reduced by the inclusion of lands and multicolored cards in a set. A further issue is that 17 lands is the standard usually only so due to the poor mana balance in most Limited formats, and so a monocolor deck only realistically needs 15 lands, and playing weaker cards to make up the last playables is an unnecessary risk.
For Booster Drafts, Design considers a monocolored deck a possibility, but usually as a hidden archetype unless the set has been specifically designed to promote monocolored decks.[5] Throne of Eldraine, Shadowmoor block and to a lesser extent Theros block are the most recent examples. Drafting a monocolored deck in other formats requires players to identify whether the signals from other players indicate they are avoiding a specific color and that color has enough strategic depth to make up for the lack of options available elsewhere. Design can promote monocolored decks using hybrid mana to allow more cards to count as "monocolored" or by increasing the number of colorless cards in the set. Adamant in Throne of Eldraine is one of the more recent monocolor mechanics.
Commons tend to be exclusively monocolor because they are the most common cards and need to maximize the deck construction flexibility. Even in strongly multicolor sets, the number of commons that are multicolor-aligned is usually at a maximum of twenty. Commons also don't tend to have multiple colored pips at mana values less than five because it makes constructing a two-color deck harder for players. Cards that reward monocolored deck construction tend to be placed at uncommon, where Design feels most comfortable putting draft build-around cards. These can act as challenges for experienced drafters, increasing replayability of the format.
Constructed
The mana cost of a card is a key lever used by Design when tweaking the power of a card.[5] Aside from the card's mana value, the number of colored mana symbols (pips) within its cost allows Design to make a card more powerful at the cost of restricting which decks can use it and when in the game they can reliably do so. The additional pips also reduce the chance that the card becomes a staple across all decks utilizing that color.
For cards that Design intends to be used in constructed formats, they will often add additional colored pips to offset increases in card power. Design follows several guidelines around power-to-mana cost.
- At a mana value of one, only one pip can be used. The more flexibility that Pip has (e.g., generic mana or hybrid mana), the less powerful that card can be.
- For cards with mana value two or three, the number of colored mana pips correlates to Design's intentions for constructed viability.[5]
on a two drop generally indicates the card has been pushed and is not merely designed for the limited environment. Cards in this mana value range often need to be played "on-curve" to be most effective. At mana value four and greater, two colored pips have less of an impact because earlier game turns can be spent correcting any color imbalances in mana sources. - Once a card is in the five-to-six mana value range, Design begins to look at using three colored pips to control power.
Commander
Monocolored legendary creatures come at a huge cost in Commander deck construction because of the format's color identity restriction.[5] As a result, Design significantly increases the power of effects and/or the rewards for using those cards when designing with the format in mind. The results can become tricky to balance as they need to be powerful to offset the loss of other colors from the deck, but they can't be too powerful without becoming staples in other formats.
Cards that reference monocolor
References
- ↑ Standard Metagame. MTGGoldfish. Archived from the original on April 17, 2025. Retrieved on April 16, 2025.
- ↑ LouCypher (February 17, 2014). "The Hybrid Mana debate". MTG Salvation.
- ↑ Mark Rosewater (June 30, 2020). "Commander's take on hybrid contradicts the design function of it.". Twitter.
- ↑ Toby Elliott (October 9, 2022). "Hybrid Mana, Revisited". Commander Rules Committee.
- ↑ a b c d e f g Mark Rosewater (May 10, 2024). "Drive to Work #1135: Monocolor Design". Drive to Work podcast. Transistor.
- ↑ Renz Banez (October 10, 2024). "11 Essential MTG Sealed Deck Rules and Tips [Guide]". Draftsim.
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