Sometimes, Wizards of the Coast prototypes certain mechanics, testing them out before actually including them into rotation. Chroma is one of those mechanics that seems like a prototype for a mechanic that showed up further down the line. Yet, in 2007, when it was first mentioned in Future Sight, it didn't make that big of a splash. Let's take a look at what Chroma is and how it works.

What's Chroma?

Chroma is a keyword ability that appears on a very small subset of cards. Chroma checks the presence of specific mana symbols on cards. Newer players might think that this is just devotion, but Chroma can also count the symbols on non-permanent cards and cards not even in your hand. It's a more varied mechanic than just the amount of colored mana pips in permanents.

Chroma was foreshadowed in the Future Sight set (2007), with Phosphorescent Feast being the first card to contain the mechanic. All the other cards came out in Eventide (2008) but there weren't that many cards with Chroma to begin with. All in all, there's only nine cards ever printed in Magic's history with the keyword on them.

How Impactful was Chroma?

Some keywords (like Infect) have a pretty good showing and remain relevant for years in the future. Sadly, Chroma's short-lived presence and underwhelming performance in limited and standard of the time made sure that the keyword wasn't included in any future sets. However, some of the cards showed promise and that led to the design of Chroma's successor.

Chroma was tweaked and released as the "fixed" mechanic Devotion, in Theros block (2013). Devotion, as a mechanic, has seen a lot of play both in its Standard environment and Eternal formats like Pioneer and even Modern. Unfortunately, since Devotion pretty much replaced Chroma, the likelihood of us seeing the mechanic return is zero, with Mark Rosewater stating that any further development in this direction will see Devotion as opposed to Chroma.

How Does Chroma Work?

Chroma isn't like many other keyword abilities, in that it doesn't have a specific method of determining how it works in any setting. For example, one Chroma card, Sanity Grinding, reveals ten cards from the top of your library, and your opponent mills one card for each Blue mana symbol in those cards. Another one, Umbra Stalker, calculates its power and toughness based on the amount of Black mana symbols in your graveyard. Chroma deals with the mana pips, like Devotion, but doesn't only concern itself with the pips you currently have on the field.

What about hybrid mana? For Chroma, it sees each hybrid symbol with the mana type it's looking for as that mana symbol. If you Clone or copy a creature, the copy will enter the field with the same converted mana cost as the original, and Chroma will see it as a duplicate of the original creature's mana symbols.

What about mana symbols within the rules text? Chroma is only concerned with the symbols in the casting cost, and ignores any other mana symbols, Most Chroma cards have multiple pips of a particular color, meaning that they usually trigger themselves. There are exceptions, though, like Phosphorescent Feast which requires you to reveal other cards while it's on the stack.

Is Chroma Powerful?

On its own, Chroma is an underwhelming mechanic. With only nine cards in the card pool, it's easy to see why many people don't really consider Chroma to be a hugely impactful keyword. Yet its legacy, in Devotion, lives on to this day. Chroma was the prototype for Devotion, and the mechanic now does something solid - checking the amount of mana pips of a particular color on the field. It makes for more intuitive gameplay, and players get excited when they see Mono-Black Devotion making a return.

The most powerful cards in Chroma weren't terrible (they weren't a mechanic like Sweep, for example), but they were beyond underwhelming for what they offered. Chroma did go through a few iterations in its design, but it was clear it was an experiment. Mark Rosewater stated that Chroma was built to make up for the significant cut back on hybrid mana in Ravnica: City of Guilds. It didn't really deliver on excitement, and it took them five years to clean up the mechanic and release it in a form that players could really get behind.

Will We Ever See Chroma Again?

Short answer: No. Long answer: Nooooooo. Wizards rates Chroma a 10 on the Storm scale, so the chances of it finding itself in any set in the future is next to impossible. However, seeing how they printed a new Storm card in Tarkir Dragonstorm (Stormscale Scion) there's always hope, even for the mechanics rated as a ten on the scale, right? Well...since Devotion superseded Chroma, if they even reprint anything in the future, it'll be Devotion, not Chroma.