We Can Work Together: how colors pair up

Because when I think of ponies working together...

Although some rogue decks exist, you pretty much always need 2 colors for your deck to really function.  I hear people asking all the time what could be done for X & Y color combination.  Personally, I think this is actually kind of backward, which is why my last article was more about "what colors work for what I want to do?"  Still, I know many players here play because they like their favorite characters, so here you go.  Pick your favorite two colors and I've come up with strategies to make them work.  I've arranged them in clockwise color order, starting with blue at the top.  If you just want to find your preferred pairing, that can at least help you find the general area for it.  These are only my suggestions, by the way.  I've heard of people trying 3 colors or even just one.  I always encourage experimentation.  This will probably help steer you the right way, though.

 

Blue/Orange

Now, I'm not really good at playing orange, but a couple possibilities occur to me here.  One of blue's biggest traits is its ability to move characters around, which obviously works best when those characters have high strength.  This is certainly orange's biggest strength.  There are an awful lot of characters there with high power, so you get a lot more bang for moving them around than you would moving a bunch of 1-power pinks.  Don't forget Night Watch  and Big Mac, giving you extra flips for faceoffs, then even Ship Shape, giving a redo.  This teamup would seem to offer a lot of confrontational possibilities.  Maybe offer some villains while you're at it, so take full advantage of this?

Blue/White

I've conceived of a theoretical deck with this pairing, hoping to go over villains far more than problems, then using white to dig up those villains to hit again.  I haven't actually tried it yet, but it's something.  What these colors do have in common involves movement.  Blue makes it easier to move itself and white makes it harder for the opponent to move.  You can use these two together to make things very expensive for your opponent, meaning a control deck.  Coincidentally, both of white's anti-movement characters are also heavy hitters, meaning you can move them around freely with blue's effects, get a lot of strength, and maintain very strong control over a problem all together.  While you're at it, throw in Rarity, Truly Outrageous to collect lots of bonus points while your opponent is helpless to approach.

Blue/Pink

This combination would seem to favor a more aggressive approach.  Both blue & pink have lots of cheap Friends, and pink's card draw allows you to go even faster.  Just don't go too overboard on the 1s for Random if you use it; you only get the one extra flip.  (I confirmed this with EnterPlay, BTW.  I thought you got to just go through the deck for a non-1.)  In this case, I wouldn't use lots of movement abilities.  You don't have many that benefit from it.  Instead, I would focus on getting cheap problems dealt with quickly.  Blue does have good strength in regards to faceoffs, and pink has plenty of cards that benefit you when you win faceoffs.  Use cards like Pegasus Royal Guard to specialize in hitting faceoffs well, and good benefits for winning them like Golden Grape.

Blue/Yellow

This pairing is definitely all about the swarms. Both yellow and blue have strong movement abilities. There are so many in fact, that you don't need to care about maximizing the return. Basically, you're already doing what yellow wants to do normally, but blue brings with it strong faceoff strength. The strategy is actually similar to what blue/pink wants to do, but the emphasis is going to be more for the points than overall board position. Every card you draw should be playable right away to great effect, and you don't even have to worry about the late-game. Yellow has so many card effects giving overall group boosts that they're just as good late game as they are early. This is definitely my choice combination for weenie rush. Probably no card will be as notable for you as Forest Owl, but plenty will try for it. It wouldn't be hard at all to make this deck work with many commons.

Blue/Purple

Truly this is what the "alicorn" style would be. You've got the best of the unicorns with the best of the pegasi. The common strength both of these share is the ability to get action tokens. See Solar Wind & Twilight Sparkle, All-Team Organizer. You may want blue's ready abilities to come up so you can use these a lot. See Rainbow Dash, Weather Leader and Lead Pony Badge. Before I learned you could use ready effects on frightened characters (throw in some villains, while you're at it?), I already knew that *coughuntapcough* effects are seriously strong, so I also threw in Tricksy Hat. However, these are all suggestions. If you were to actually include all of these, you'll find that you'll be very busy doing a lot of things that actually amount to nothing. All I'm suggesting here is that you've got plenty of space to figure out how you actually want to fight this out. There is a similar element to blue/orange here, as purple has the potential to be the strongest of all (provided it has a lot of resistance). You can move freely and you can move your opponent around. You can't stop your opponent from doing what they want to do, but you can at least make them do it a lot. This deck would very likely be mid-range and could crush aggro. Control might give it problems, though.

Orange/White

There's actually two common themes to these colors.  The first is on pure strength.  Orange is very good at having plenty of power for problem solving, and white is good at having instant power boosts.  Savior Fare makes for a strong Applejack, Barn Raiser to make a hefty Big Mac (you know you want to run a Big Mac).  The other common theme is controlling your opponent's hand.  Orange has plenty of discard effects, while white has Inspired to control what the opponent draws.  The two are fairly redundant, so you'll pretty much have to choose which one you want (or run a little bit of both).  Honestly, there are so many ways you could run this deck.  Between Too Much Pie, Tangled Coiffure, and Stand Still, you'll have quite the free reign over what your opponent can do, while you grow into a mighty beast that just makes your opponent cry at the sight of you.  There is so much they unexpectedly have in common, it can actually be pretty hard to decide what to make your theme.  I'm sure you'll have a little bit of all these elements, but you definitely have to choose one to make your big thing.

Orange/Pink

Yeah, your opponent isn't going to have any card at all, ever.  Between orange's discard and pink's removal, you'll just remove everything your opponent could ever do, then walk to an easy victory.  You'll take a bit to get off the ground using that strategy, though.  The cards that do all these are rather expensive to play.  It would probably struggle against a fast aggro deck, but it would likely thrive on control decks.  By slaughtering their hand and board, you'll get to put those decks into topdeck mode (relying on the top card of your deck), and nothing irritates control more than that.  The Random mechanic may work best here too, because pretty much the only 1's you'll ever encounter will be pink.  Ignoring a pink for a good orange or event will always work out nicely.

Orange/Yellow

This may seem like an odd combination. The two don't have any overall things in common. Orange likes few, big characters. Yellow sees power in the group. For me, this is a combo deck. For the most part, these two colors can be built to do what they already want to do by themselves, but be sure to add in these three cards: Night Watch, Picnic Lunch, and Working Together. The theme here should be obvious. This color combination is unique in that it gives the maximum number of cards flipped for faceoffs, which often means domination. Let orange run its bulk, so you can maximize the benefit from these flips, and let yellow do its swarm to activate the picnic.

Orange/Purple

This combination is probably the most problematic. It is so slow, I wonder how you'll ever get it off the ground. Purple does have effects to give you action tokens through Studious and Twilight Sparkle, All-Team Organizer. You'll probably need them. Once you do get running though, this is the team of champions. Orange is strong naturally, and purple gets stronger based on the opponent's position. Everything is in position for you to just naturally hulk up. Again though, the big problem is in finding how to get yourself up to that position. Fortunately, depending on who your main would be (probably Applejack, to protect your few things from dismissal), you'll have some base cards to get you going. Purple has the standard 1-2, orange has very strong core cards, and there's Apples & Oranges to boost you up to the champions. The hardest part is deciding upon what champions you'll really be running.

White/Pink

This is currently the most popular form of control.  It's a classic formula from Magic's black color.  Remove all of your opponent's characters from play and make sure they never have any cards worth playing.  Between pink's Friend removal and white's Inspired mechanic, you can at the very least ensure your opponent will never have their second color, giving you total control over their problem (not to mention shutting them out of half their deck's capabilities).  This link shows what is effectively the ideal for the main deck I'm running right now.  It's given me very good results around here.

White/Yellow

Let me level with you.  When I started writing this article, I felt I had a reasonable plan for most pairings.  This one takes me completely by surprise.  I don't even really know where to start.  We've got the queen of control paired with the queen of aggro.  Even Magic's blue/red pairing has something in common (love of flash effects).  If you're determined to run this pairing, I think it would be best to main one color and just look for the cards in the other that can help it up.  Fortunately, yellow does have a control aspect to it in the form of reducing your opponent's action tokens.  When Rarity main and Octavia get together while Fluttershy, Guidance Couselor and Mr. Breezy are in town, your opponent will be feeling a fair amount of paralysis.  Both of those yellow cards need some help, though.  You'll therefore need to run some critters (all non-critter cards require some yellow).  Fortunately, even if you run the awesome Forest Owl, white's power boost effects would allow you to graduate up to the big stuff you need.  Provide the model, let Rarity work her magic, and let the true beauty shine!  (Technically there is no Rarity card that provides said buffs, but work with me here.)  It would be an interesting concept to consider, but even this paralysis strategy seems to run a little light.  Otherwise, you could let yellow do its natural thing, and take advantage of white's ability to get cards back.  Critter Cavalry provides the single highest faceoff boost of any card, so you'll want to use it again.  The instant boosts white provides would also allow you to confront problems that much more quickly.  Right now, these two seem to drag each other down, but these seem to be your best options.

White/Purple

You can't get more elitist than this pairing.  White tries so hard to keep your opponent from moving toward you.  Purple has multiple effects that keep anything less than 3 from being played.  Purple can also outright move characters away.  This is movement control at its finest.    You truly control where the opponent goes in ever-so-many ways.  You can use Inspired on top of that to keep them from drawing the cards that would otherwise make them mobile and/or powerful.  Focus on not allowing your opponent to move anywhere and you'll do fine.

Pink/Yellow

This is quite a versatile pairing.  You can certainly go weenie aggro rush here.  Pink has plenty of cheap stuff, and it has card draw to top it off.  You kinda need to have card draw so that you can play all those little dearies.  If you want a control aspect, there are no cards guaranteed to stay in play other than your opponent's main.  Pink gets rid of the Friends, yellow loses the resources.  Even Troublemakers aren't immune!  Of course, even if you run with this controlling strategy, you just have to play aggressively as a matter of course.  You just get to do both at the same time, only a little more slowly.

Pink/Purple

I considered running this myself, for a while. I kind of still am. The focus here is still on preventing the opponent from having any Friends. Pink gets to dismiss them, purple keeps them from hitting play. I always hoped to lead with Monitor Everything plus a Focused Study. It's as good as a Timberwolf without the extra cost or points. Meanwhile, pink manages to eliminate whatever they play on the other side. I really don't see a way you can go aggro with this pairing; it's got to be pure control.

Yellow/Purple

This is an odd pairing, but it has its merit.  This pairing houses 2 card effects that benefit all of your characters: Forest Owl & Fighting for Friendship.  This means that yellow is probably going to take the lead here.  When you have a combination of multiple "+1 to all" effects, -1 to your opponent's, and extra power for your opponent's characters, you just win every faceoff all the time.  You need time to build up, though.  You'll need to gather a lot of critters for yellow, while also getting the purple power needed to play the more astounding purple cards available.  It can be questionable as to who you'll use for your main though, as both provide very good reasons.  Fluttershy affords mobility, certainly.  Twilight gives you the buffer you need to play your good purple cards (you can't lose her power), and I'm sure there will be some good events you'll be including.  One benefit to this pairing is that it's really versatile.  You can go aggro or control depending on your play style, although given the time you need to build up, I would favor control.

I really REALLY hope this was helpful to all of you.  It was rather exhausting to write.  Now you can just pick your two favorite main characters and you'll have a basic idea of how their deck is supposed to run.  I'm sorry to any would-be fashionistas, but freaky sewing knowledge doesn't seem to be worth having yet (white/yellow).  Maybe next article I'll get around to actually discussing plays you can make for practical, in-game knowledge.  Also, don't forget to send any rules questions to mlpblogrules@gmail.com.  I've encountered some good ones lately, but any more we can learn will make us all better together.  Y'all come back, now.