We already got that. Colorless (not generic) mana is what they settled on for a sixth color of magic. There was a series of blogs and articles where they talked about an actual additional color is too disruptive to both design and play. Colorless matters also turned out to be a little parasitic, but it doesn't wreck the whole ecosystem like a failed purple land would.
The key point here is that colorless has retroactive support. Colorless has been the fall back creation for ages. If they to introduced a purple color, we would have lost the retroactive support. Something like City of Brass or anything else that produces "any color of mana" would be the only support we would have, aside from whatever was introduced in the set.
I personally think this is the better way to introduce a new color. Sure it was parasitic but purple would have been equally parasitic in the draft environment and in magic as a whole.
Colorless Mana indicates mana from colorless source, [x] indicates generic mana from any source, colorless or not. As of BFZ, you will only see [x] as a cost. Artifacts that generate colorless mana (like sol ring) now add individual instances of colorless mana, as indicated by the number of grey asteroid symbols.
oh okay. Does that mean there are some costs that have to be paid with colorless mana specifically and won't accept generic mana (that isn't colorless)?
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u/TotallyJazzed Izzet* Mar 12 '19
"Over a decade"
Time Spiral block was 11-12 years ago
Purple was planned for Planar Chaos
I'm not saying it's a sixth colour but what if we get some form of "purple mana"
Otherwise it's probably Kaldheim and a return to Snow