Conspire is a creature-based mechanic in Magic the Gathering (MTG) that allows you to copy spells with two creatures of the same color. It appears only on instants and sorceries, and it requires at least 2 colorless mana to pay it properly. Conspire allows you to tap two untapped creatures that share the spell’s color while casting it.
Conspire is considered a design failure by 2010, but it allows you to copy a spell that has it as long as you control two creatures that share a color with that spell. Conspiracy cards are colorless, have no mana cost, and cannot be cast as spells. They are not permanents and cannot be played in decks.
On October 22, 2023, Conspire allowed the spell cast to be copied if you tap two untapped creatures that share a color with that spell. However, by October 2, 2024, it was considered a design failure. If a spell has Variable Colorless in its mana cost, you must choose 0 as the value of X when casting it without paying its mana cost.
In addition to Conspire, players can add X mana of any one color, where X is the number of soul counters on Séance Board, to cast instant, sorcery, Demon, and Spirit spells. The introduction of tron lands, “Wastes” lands, and many artifacts has led to interesting colorless deck builds, as well as the extensive use of colorless artifacts in MTG.
In summary, Conspire is a creature-based mechanic that allows you to copy spells with two creatures of the same color. It requires at least 2 colorless mana to pay for, and it is not permanent or permanent.
📹 What’s the Secret Behind Colorless Spells in Strixhaven? | Good Morning Magic
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Does Void Mirror stop Eldrazi?
The principal benefit of the card is its capacity to inflict damage on colorless decks, as any spell cast without colored mana is rendered ineffective. This represents a considerable disadvantage against decks such as Mishra’s Workshop in Vintage or Eldrazi decks in Legacy, resulting in significant damage.
Can you kick a spell multiple times?
The cost of a kicker does not affect the mana cost or the converted mana cost of a spell. Such payments can only be made on a single occasion, unless the card in question features a “multikicker” feature, in which case the payment may be repeated. In some cases, spells possess supplementary effects when they are “kicked.”
Does void mirror counter colorless spells?
Void Mirror is a card that has the effect of halting colorless decks, restricting them to one spell per turn if they have one colored source, and stopping free cards.
Can you conspire the same spell multiple times?
The rule states that a spell’s conspire cost can only be paid once, and if it has multiple instances, each cost can only be paid once. This is a powerful strategy, but it can be costly and may not work if the opponent kills enough goblins to prevent the ability from working. For land destruction, sowing salt may be a suitable solution. The rule is also useful for copying spells that aren’t game-ending, such as bolts, shocks, and naturalizes.
Is conspire a triggered ability?
The text explains the rules for paying a conspire cost for a multicolored spell, stating that two creatures you tap don’t need to share a color with each other, but must share a color with the spell that has conspired. You can only pay the spell’s conspire cost once, and a copy created with conspire will have a conspire ability, but it won’t trigger if it wasn’t cast. The copy is separate from the original spell, and if either is countered, the other remains on the stack.
If the triggered ability of the conspire is countered, no copy will be created, and the original spell remains unaffected. The text also discusses the Aethertow Instant, which puts an attacking or blocking creature on top of its owner’s library. Conspire allows you to tap two untapped creatures you control that share a color with the spell, copy it, and choose a new target for the copy.
Do artifacts count as colorless spells?
Artifacts are permanent objects that represent magical items, animated constructs, or other objects and devices. They are broader than the normal definition and can be colored or colorless. Artifacts were distinct from other card types until the introduction of colorless Eldrazi cards in the Rise of the Eldrazi set. They were the only existing cards with generic mana costs, excluding certain cards with cost.
“Artifacts matter” has been a major mechanical theme in several sets and blocks, including Antiquities, the Urza’s block, the Mirrodin block, the Esper shard of the Alara block, the Scars of Mirrodin block, the Kaladesh block, the historic mechanic from Dominaria, and The Brothers’ War.
Is conspire an activated ability?
Conspire is a keyword that represents two abilities: a static ability that functions while the spell with conspire is on the stack, and a triggered ability that functions while the spell is on the stack. It allows you to tap two untapped creatures that share a color with the spell, and copies its conspire cost if paid. If a spell has multiple instances of conspire, each is paid separately and triggers based on its own payment, not any other instance of conspire.
How do you use MTG conspiracy cards?
Conspiracies are a card type introduced in a previous expansion that start the game in the command zone and have a delightful, unusual impact. They don’t count towards the 40-card minimum and can be placed in the command zone before the game begins. Some conspiracies rely on a little mystery, with some starting face-up and others with a hidden agenda. To name a card, write it on paper and keep it with the face-down conspiracy. During the game, you can turn the conspiracy face up and reveal the chosen name and bonus.
Some conspiracies, like Natural Unity, have color-aligned abilities that not every deck can take advantage of, making the draft interesting. If one card isn’t enough, a variant called double agenda is available.
What counts as a colorless spell?
Colorless objects are those with no colored mana symbols in their mana costs. Lands are colorless by default, except for color-indicated ones. Artifacts are the most common colorless spell, and Eldrazi creatures are colorless to mark them as alien. Karn and Ugin are colorless planeswalkers. In Strixhaven: School of Mages, several colorless Sorceries were printed as first-year introduction spells. Colorless access to everything comes at inefficient mana costs, such as the destruction of permanents. Devoid is a characteristic-defining keyword ability that states a card is colorless, regardless of its mana cost.
How does conspire work in MTG?
Conspire is a spell that allows you to copy a spell with a specific color by controlling two creatures that share the same color. When casting a spell with Conspire, you can tap two creatures that share the same color, making a copy of the spell and choosing new targets. Conspire doesn’t trigger again since it’s not technically cast. Multicolor spells allow creatures to be of any color, and you can only Conspire once per instance of Conspire. Countering the original spell won’t counter the copy, but the copy can be countered itself. However, you can use a Stifle effect to prevent the copy from existing.
Can you protect from colorless MTG?
The protection from colorless designation precludes the possibility of a target creature being blocked by colorless creatures, colorless spells or abilities, enchantment, or the equipping of colorless auras or equipment. Furthermore, it ensures that all damage from colorless sources is prevented.
📹 MTG Conspiracy Take The Crown Full Set Review: Colorless! Magic the Gathering!
This is part six of our six part Conspiracy Take the Crown full set review. Today we look at all the Colorless cards for this August’s …
I love love love colourless cards that arent artifacts or eldrazi. Instants and sorceries feel like a new design space to play around and i am here for it. Aha. As a side note, i think another colourless theme that could be cool is a card that cares about deserts. Think there are currently like ~10 colourless identity desert lands. Gavi nest warden obviously works really well with cycling lands of which there are around ~15 or so she can play i think. It’d be really cool to see a colourless legend that cares about deserts(and maybe also wastes?)/ gives you card advantage/mana or a reward for playing them. Maybe some awesome beefy camel, maybe a haunted sarcophagus, maybe an indiana jones style constuct /gollum, maybe a sand elemental? Mono white would also be cool for this aha Apologies i had to get my suggestion out there aha, colourless sorceries and instants are hype 😁
funny that you guys mentioned students in strixhaven only got to one of the specific colleges in the second year, so to me it was kinda natural to think the colorless lessons were just 1st year classes, that all students would attend to. yet you didn’t mention it here, maybe this interpretation wasn’t intentional?
I like colorless spells in the same way I like artifacts that fill holes in Commander deckbuilding– there are some effects that every deck is gonna need. You need to get them somewhere. Intro to Annihilation, for example, is solid enchantment removal for red, artifact removal for black, or PW removal for white. In summation: I like them. A lot.
Colorless makes sense for the theme. Say some student hasn’t found their color affiliation yet. They are still strong with casting though. Colorless for game play could be problematic. But, I dont work on the design team. I trust Wizards gets the balance right. Another solid article to watch. Thank you.
From a flavor perspective I don’t like the colorless spells. Learning magic the idea that the spells are crafted from the color of mana made sense and interested me in the game. But perhaps in some cases it would make sense, like you mentioned Eldrazi magic. Or perhaps very rudementary magic that didn’t involve an element. I wouldn’t want it to be all the time though. Good article btw!
Having evergreen spells featured on slightly worse colorless spells is really a good idea. Giving any deck access to a 3-4 mana rampant growth for color fixing is awesome. If you aren’t in green it can be really hard to aggressively splash for bombs and good removal. Things like fixing, basic combat tricks and card draw make sense to be available for colors that those effects aren’t known for.
I feel like these colorless instants and sorceries work best at lower rarities because they are fundamentally built to smooth out limited environments, and shouldn’t be constructed playable. I really like the mdfc rare one though, it’s got enough weirdness that it doesn’t feel like one specific color.
I don’t mind them and seeing them as lessons makes a lot of sense. The only thing I am not quite happy with (and this doesn’t have anything to do with WotC) is how Learn can’t really be utilized in commander for its unique aspect of getting a lesson card, due to the fact we don’t have side boards…It just made me feel a little dejected, because I love playing thematic decks and having learn not go off in the more (imo) fun way is kinda sad, for me at least. Still love the set tho!
Instant and sorceries being colorless, specially in this set, feels like the kind of magic that a wizard/sorcerer, and what more, learn on their first year. The basics of magic and mana manipulation, things like improving the mana strength in the area (Enviormental Sciences), gaining knowledge through seeing into thefuture slightly (Introduction to prophecy), modifying living fabric and polymorphication (Expanded Anatomy), ability to destroy and disassemble small matter (Introduction to Annihilation).
Im really looking forward to the Witherbloom Legendary Student. Something like (based on Witherbloom mechanics and the fact he is a bear, at least I hope he is): Fuzzywuzz Jnr 2BG 3/3 When Fuzzywuzz enters the battlefield it may fight target creature and give it +x/+x where x is the amount of life you have gained this turn.
Im cool with colorless spells as long as they dont use the colorless mana symbol in their cost. that was such a headache in Oath limited that made me really dislike that format. It felt really bad pack 3 to open up Thought-Knot Seer and realize you didnt draft any colorless making lands and have to pass it, and it was like a $15 card at the time. Kind of also the reason im not liking Kaldheim as much because i just hate drafting lands of real cards.
I dislike them on principal. It takes away from the color pie in ways artifacts don’t. Also, as a Mizzix of the Izmagnus player, you might think I would love these. However, I also don’t like that you are giving me free spells. I like to earn my experience counters and jump through hoops to make my powerful stuff work. You are setting the game to easy mode by doing this. Us Mizzix players had to manage the number of colored pips on a card and their impact. Even Scour from Existence cost 7 and took work to build up to, but casting costs like that mean it is easy to make these free and chain them together with Past in Flames.
They heavily warp commander in a bad way, same with artifacts that dont uphold a colour identity (looking at you, Strixhaven Stadium). Printing 5 mana exile non-land into colourless negates weaknesses of black, red, and blue. Adding cards of similar style to black and blue (the exile cards) equally hurts deck building as it removes deficiencies in a singleton format. Core parts of EDH include draw, ramp, removal, and protection. Anything optimal in even 1 single colour will become staple material for our format. Please don’t oversaturate this playspace, lest you want there to be a larger definitive foundation of cards every EDH player should own before culling from that list to upgrade into their colour/synergies.
Spells that can be cast with any color make a lot of sense in a magic school setting, a place of study and experimentation. As the colleges are no doubt at least somewhat competetive there are bound to be some students who say things along the lines of “At my college we learn to do X, something students on your college never learns” – inspiring some students attacked this way to search out ways to re-create the effect using the teachings of their college and thus their colors. If that happens often enough you will eventually have the ability to achieve the desired effect with any combination of mana, even if it is less efficient than a spell using the “proper” colors.
Thank you for the info and article Gavin! I like colorless spells in limited, as it can help fix a mistake or a hole in my draft. From a design perspective, they always feel a bit lazy. It feels like R&D doesn’t have to balance the colors in the set, because look White, you do have access to card draw, rather than actually making White card draw creatively. Again, I get why they are there and I will appreciate them as a player… just hoping we don’t start meshing all the colors together and colorless spells further dilute the color pie (looking at you Green).
I don’t think colorless spells in general are great for the game. Sure in this case they are good for limited, but if there are too many colorless cards it just undermines the color pie. Especially when one is made overpowered and shows up everywhere because any deck can play it. (see Smuggler’s Copter). I think we need to see the opposite. More strong 2 and even 3 colored cards. Having the focus of magic be more on the 10 two-colored pairs does wonders for deck diversity. (See RNA standard)
I appreciate the expansion of “colorless” to non-artifact spells which serve a basic function but don’t make sense as artifacts, flavor wise. I think use them as any colorless: either an effective but relatively inefficient way to make up for color pie failure (*cough* mono white card draw *cough*), or an appropriately priced function that is all over the color pie (like tutoring lands to hand). I much prefer one “Farfinder” to a five card color cycle of “Farfinders.”
Ok, hear me out – so the power level issue with colorless spells is the whole “they can go in any deck” thing. What if you applied other limitations to colorless spells that required other matching aspects of the game? The most obvious imo is tribal synergy – a colorless burn spell would be a major addition to all colors, but if you could only use it when you, say, controlled an attacking elemental? Now you don’t have to worry so much about people randomly slotting burn into elves or whatever. Also, would be a great excuse to bring back tribal 😉 You can also help limit them with the colorless mana costs again. I think that was a really good and elegant way to do the whole “sixth color” thing without actually adding a color, but it was so underutilized that it almost never mattered, and that’s why people would get confused by it. And I think the dislike of the Eldrazi was misinterpreted as a dislike of that mechanic as well – people didn’t hate the colorless mana symbols, they just didn’t like yet another Eldrazi set. I would absolutely love to see colorless mana costs again.
Strixhaven major hype but falls short like always….hope my box has atleast a demonic tutor or tainted pact in it. Why print trash cards? Probably in the minority but I wish you’d push cards harder. Lessons are trash and all of the rares are going to suck to open becuase they are trash in Commander!!! Probably not even good enough in standard.
I absolutely love colorless inst/sorcs. Inspired by colorshifted cards from Time Spiral, I made a “all color bends” cube where the color themes are all technically things that color can do, but rarely. Like mono-black enchantress and red-white reanimator (which is also in this set as a real draft archetype for the first time!). I included colorless spellslinger with cards like warping wail, runchanter’s pike, and primal amulet. Colorless can really like instants and sorceries, but has so few of those card types that it has to support another color to even do a bad impression of izzet spellslinger. With cards like these, that space opens up a little more without infringing into space colorless didn’t already have.
While paying life instead of mana is a bit broken, what about paying more mana instead? That’s effectively what the colorless cards do instead. So why not color them and have an alternative mana symbol. Pay a W or 3 generic instead. Would be less fun for commander but would make limited really interesting if you could effectively splash any card (within reason) by paying a tax on top of it.
I always thought that the Colorless Spells on Strixhaven were another case of flipping the colour pairings on their head. Colorless doesn’t have to be destructive nonsense that’s got a ton of mana to dump into it like with Eldrazi, but it can also be general use and very normal things to do across Magic. Honestly, Strixhaven’s colorless nonsense, along with Ikoria’s colorless creature mutants that just evolved to not have any colour attached inspired me to think about a plane of Magic where all Magic as WE know it, i.e. the five colours and whatnot, is suppressed and not allowed by the human population running the plane, but the non-humans of the plane do have colored magic, but can blend in with humans well enough to not have their secrets exposed and even further down the hierarchy, you have hybrids that don’t quite mesh right and thus can’t pass as humans no matter what, and are literally kept from interacting with the Colorless Humans on the surface level of society, as it were.
I’m split on colorless cards. I like when it makes the cards easier playable. Morph was great in that sense, you always have something to do at 3 mana no matter how funky your mana was. And I like what you seem to be doing with the learn/lesson, that seems to fill the same spot. But colorless cards can also feel wrong, especially when it does something better then the color that the mechanic is tied too. Having to pay them with only colorless sources might fix it like the eldrazi but that makes things complex. I actually like that you moved to colored-artifacts in some cases. I’m very happy Embercleave is not a colorless card, haha.
I’m a big fan of having colorless spells for more mana than the main color is allowed to cast it for. I loved the 2-brid cards for that reason, Beseech the Queen, Flame javelin etc. all feel fair because there’s a very real cost attached to casting them in a deck that isn’t monocolored. I personally would even allow them in commander so you could Beseech the Queen in a colorless Eldrazi deck and stuff like that…
I’m a big fan of the new colourless spells, and I see them as an instant/sorcery equivalent of artifacts. Also, on a somewhat related note, as a commander player, I’d like to see an interesting colourless artifact-based commander one of these days. Karn is on the reserve list, so he’s rather hard to get your hands on, and Traxos is just a glorified vanilla.
I really like commander, and colorless commander decks are extremely limited in their functionality. Having colorless spells is a huge boon for them and I love the lessons, but I would also like to see more colorless legendary creatures, and maybe even a colorless precon. Actually colorless legendary creatures, no color pips in the oracle text.
I love the colorless spells. While you talk about the concern making them too powerful, having versions like this that form a common baseline for all colors to access basic effects seems great from a gameplay standpoint and fantastic from the flavor standpoint of a school that teaches multiple disciplines of magic. Looking forward to seeing more of these in the future.
i like the colourless spells, they make alot of thematic sence here, but also think can be used to cover things all colours are able to do in some way, like scrying, but at a higher, non-color-conforming mana cost. so the generic ability can be used for generic mana by anyway, but it’ll cost a little more than something that is dedicated to a colour.
I really really love non artifact non land colorless cards. It broadens the synergies you can build around some themes. Also artifacts tend to glue reprint sets and having access to non artifact colorless cards let’s you make different takes on future sets. I hope to see more of this and I hope that colorless starts appearing in all spells, just as colored artifacts too are a tool for design.