Four-color · Color Identity
Yore-Tiller / Artifice (WUBR): The Four-Color Identity Without Green
White, blue, black and red is every color except green: every counterspell, every removal spell and every artifact synergy in Magic, with no ramp and no way to fix its own mana.
Yore-Tiller is white, blue, black and red, the four-color identity. Everything except green: artifacts, control and the format's most complete answer suite.
Also called WUBR, Artifice, No green, Non-Green.
Where the Name Comes From
Yore-Tiller Nephilim, from Guildpact (2006); "Artifice" from the Commander 2016 deck.
Four-color combinations were an accident before they were a design space. Guildpact printed five Nephilim in 2006, one for each four-color set, and then Magic essentially ignored the space for a decade. The Nephilim gave the combinations their first names, and there is a good joke buried in it: the Nephilim are not legendary, so none of the five cards that named these identities can be a commander in the format that uses their names most.
The second set of names arrived with Commander 2016, the first product ever built around four-color decks, which gave each identity a one-word theme instead of a creature: Artifice, Chaos, Aggression, Altruism and Growth. Yore-Tiller is Artifice, fronted by Breya, Etherium Shaper: a name that reaches back past the Nephilim to Esper's etherium. Both naming schemes are in use, alongside the flatly descriptive "no green", which is what most players actually say.
All 32 color combinations and where each name came from →How Yore-Tiller Plays
Take Esper's control shell and add red's rituals, burn and artifact removal. The result is the most complete interaction package available in Commander: a counterspell for the stack, an exile effect for the battlefield, discard for the hand, and a burn spell for whatever is left. There is no permanent this identity cannot answer except an enchantment, which white handles alone.
Its natural build is artifacts, and that is not a coincidence: Breya sits in the command zone as an artifact payoff, and four colors of artifact support plus black and blue tutors makes assembling a specific two-card interaction reliable. Artifacts also solve the identity's fixing problem, since mana rocks produce any color.
The real constraint is mana. Four colors means a land base that enters tapped, costs money and still occasionally strands you, and green (the color that fixes and ramps) is precisely the one that is missing. That is the trade every four-color deck makes, and it is sharpest here: the identity is designed to answer things and cannot always afford to.
What It Does Well, and What It Doesn't
Strengths
- The most complete interaction in the format: counterspells, exile, unconditional kill, discard and burn.
- The best artifact package in Magic, which doubles as the deck's mana fixing.
- Blue and black tutors, so a two-card combo is a plan rather than a hope.
- Every board wipe worth playing, in a format where sweepers are how a control deck survives.
Weaknesses
- No green means no real ramp and no cheap mana fixing, which is a serious cost at four colors.
- The mana base is expensive and slow, and a color-screwed turn is common.
- Enchantment removal is white's alone, and there is not much of it.
- Very few four-color legends exist, so the command zone options are genuinely limited.
Best Yore-Tiller Commanders
The command zones that define the identity rather than the ones winning this week: the pips beside each name are its color identity, which is what it lets you play in the other 99.
Commander Spotlight
Breya, Etherium Shaper ↗
Arrives with two Thopters and turns any two artifacts into three damage, two life or an artifact destroyed. The Commander 2016 face commander for this identity and still the reason most WUBR decks exist.
Tymna the Weaver ↗
Partner. Pairs with Kraum to make this exact identity, drawing a card for each opponent you damaged this turn.
Kraum, Ludevic's Opus ↗
Partner. The other half of the Tymna pair: a flying 4/4 that draws whenever an opponent casts their second spell in a turn.
Akiri, Line-Slinger ↗
Partner. With Silas Renn it makes WUBR from the other direction, and it is an equipment payoff that grows with every artifact.
Silas Renn, Seeker Adept ↗
Partner. Casts an artifact from your graveyard whenever it connects, which suits the identity's artifact plan exactly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the WUBR color combination called?
It has two names and one nickname. Yore-Tiller, from Yore-Tiller Nephilim in Guildpact (2006); Artifice, from the Commander 2016 deck fronted by Breya, Etherium Shaper; and "no green", which is what most players say in conversation. All three refer to white-blue-black-red.
Why can't the Nephilim be commanders?
Because they are not legendary. The five Nephilim from Guildpact are ordinary creatures with the creature type Nephilim, and Commander requires a legendary creature in the command zone. It is a genuine oddity of the format that the cards that gave four-color identities their names cannot lead a deck in them.
Is a four-color deck worth building?
Only if the extra color is doing real work. Every color past three costs consistency: more lands entering tapped, more expensive fixing and more hands that cannot cast what they hold. Four-color decks that succeed are usually built around a commander that needs all four, or around partner pairs whose combined abilities are the point. If you find yourself splashing the fourth color for two cards, three colors is the better deck.
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