Image courtesy of Scryfall.com

Clustering mana costs and five-color design: a look at Obelisk of Alara

In the grand tapestry of Magic, some artifacts feel like the quiet center of a storm, quietly humming with power while your fingers fidget over lands and mana rocks. Obelisk of Alara is one of those artifacts: a bold, six-mana behemoth from the Conflux era that invites you to explore a spectrum of outcomes, all through a single card. For data lovers and MTG strategists alike, it’s a perfect candidate for thinking about how mana-cost structure and effect profiles cluster together in game dynamics 🧙‍♂️🔥💎. The card’s design is a microcosm of multi-color strategy: five distinct activation options, each tied to a different color, all within a single, colorless artifact whose identity spans the color pie.

Conflux, the set that birthed Obelisk of Alara, plays with the idea of five shards—each orbiting a distinct color identity. Obelisk embodies that concept in a literal, tactile way. Its mana cost is a straightforward 6 generic mana, but every activation requires a colored mana plus tapping: {1}{W}, {T} for life gain; {1}{U}, {T} for card draw and discard; {1}{B}, {T} for a temporary -2/-2 swing on a target creature; {1}{R}, {T} for a 3-point burn to a player or planeswalker; and {1}{G}, {T} for a +4/+4 boost to a target creature until end of turn. This creates a natural five-way decision tree, a perfect playground for clustering algorithms that look at color-affinity and outcome type. In ML terms, you can imagine each activation as a feature vector: a color-encoded cost plus an effect category and a timing note (instant vs. ongoing). When you run a clustering routine on a dataset of cards with similar constraints, Obelisk often anchors a cluster where “white” tactics lean toward life gain, “blue” leans toward card advantage, “black” edges into removal or debuffing, “red” drives direct damage, and “green” funnels into punchy combat buffs. The result? A visualization where all five colored modes sit in neat, color-coded neighborhoods within a single artifact. 🧙‍♂️🎲

Card data at a glance

• Name: Obelisk of Alara
• Set: Conflux (CON)
• Rarity: Rare
• Type: Artifact
• Mana cost (CMC): 6
• Colors / Color identity: Colorless card with five-color identity (B, G, R, U, W)
• Oracle text (abilities):

  {1}{W}, {T}: You gain 5 life.
  {1}{U}, {T}: Draw a card, then discard a card.
  {1}{B}, {T}: Target creature gets -2/-2 until end of turn.
  {1}{R}, {T}: This artifact deals 3 damage to target player or planeswalker.
  {1}{G}, {T}: Target creature gets +4/+4 until end of turn.

• Illustrator: Jeremy Jarvis
• Legalities: Modern and Legacy legal; Commander legal; Vintage legal

That last bullet—legalities—reminds us how this card slips into modern, casual, and commander play alike. In EDH, Obelisk can be a centerpiece in five-color builds or used as a flashy, mid-game engine piece that offers a little something for every color you’ve tapped for. The life gain, card draw, targeted buffs and debuffs, and direct damage all press different strategic levers, letting you pivot your plan as needed. It’s a five-armed hero in a single chassis—perfect for the color-mappy thrill of a five-color deck, where you can weave together life, cards, tempo, reach, and punch all in one—often turning four or five mana into a clutch moment. ⚔️🔥

Why ML clustering loves this artifact

From a machine-learning perspective, Obelisk of Alara represents a clean, interpretable example of multi-label clustering across color-coded effects. If you encode each activation with a colored mana tag and a primary effect category (life, draw, debuff, burn, pump), you’ll typically see five distinct clusters that map almost directly to the mana colors. The card’s structure makes it a natural testbed for experiments in supervised vs. unsupervised learning about color identity influence on deck-building decisions. It’s not every artifact that rewards you for embracing the color pie—then again, it’s not every artifact that literally invites you to sample every color at once. The five activation modes function like five features you can toggle depending on the board state, each one nudging your expected value in a different direction. In short: a gift for both the data nerd and the MTG player. 🎨🎲

Of course, the practical gameplay angle matters most. Obelisk’s mana costs force a reliable mana base—six mana plus the requisite colored mana to activate. In five-color decks, you’re incentivized to have access to W, U, B, R, and G, which often means fetch lands, shock lands, or other mana-fixing tools. The card’s design encourages you to think in layers: early life gain to stabilize, mid-game card advantage to dig, a ready-made removal window, a basalt of inevitability with direct damage, and a final swing with buffed creatures. In a commander setting, those layers unfold across a single card that invites creative sequencing. The ML angle adds a layer of narrative: you can model how often players lean into which modes at different turn windows, or how different mana-base configurations shift the clustering of activation priority. It’s part strategy, part study, all MTG fun 🧙‍♂️🔥.

Speaking of fun, a small nod to collectability: Obelisk of Alara is a rare artifact that often shows up in discussions of Conflux-era mana-shaping cards. In non-foil form it hovers around a modest market price (roughly a dollar or two in recent data), with foil variants commanding a higher premium. For collectors, it’s a snapshot of a set that sought to bridge the original shard colors with a unified, five-way power portal. For players, it’s a reminder that sometimes the most elegant design isn’t a single powerhouse but a lattice of options that rewards experimentation and a little strategic audacity 🧭💎.

And while you’re scoping out a multi-color build, perhaps you’ll swing by something practical and stylish for your next casual session. The product below is a handy gadget that can keep your phone secure during long drafting marathons or when you’re just streaming a game night. It’s a nice little cross-promotion—useful, unobtrusive, and surprisingly on-theme for a fandom that loves clever, colorful hardware as much as clever, colorful magic. Grip, kickstand, and a touch of everyday magic. 👾

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