If you were to take a naive approach to theory-crafting and deck-building in MTG, mono-colored decks would always be the optimal way to play. Adding more colors (again, thinking naively) only introduces problems:
- Not drawing the right mana-source type or enough of them (especially in the first turn).
- Needing to balance the ratio of cards-per-color rather than not having to worry about it if they’re all one color.
- Hypothetically having less access to the cards you want to draw (not necessarily always the case but in mono-decks it’s easier to stack more of the same cards or types of cards).
- Being stuck with cards you can’t play in your hand (more often than in mono-decks).
- Higher constraint on total mana cost, especially when a card costs multiple colored mana.
- Et cetera.
In practice, it’s obvious that mono-decks are not optimal as multi-color decks are extremely popular. People will debate how good they are, ranging from "can’t be competitive" to "red burn is the best deck in the game", even in the past year or so.
So my question is: what are the abstract; theory-crafting advantages to multi-colored decks that off-set the many and obvious advantages monos have? If possible, I’d appreciate not relying heavily on MTG examples as I feel this question has value for game-design and theory-crafting beyond MTG, as other games and genres also have mix-and-match mechanics. (Of course all answers are well-come, just explaining where I’m personally coming from)!
I focused on colors and didn’t mention artifacts as they can have great utility either way.
Let’s also assume ample access to cards to the extent building a strong deck isn’t an issue.
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