Green's Fact Or Fiction Is Mulch!
I'd like to start my problem with Mr. Telfer's argument; that access to appropriate resources should be given to each color, and if that were so, the colors would be balanced, by reminding everyone of one card from Stronghold.
Mulch
1G
Sorcery
Reveal the top four cards of your library. Put all land cards revealed this way into your hand and all other cards revealed this way into your graveyard.
See - there is a Green Fact or Fiction. You get lands, or you get nothing. But the potential is there - your resources show up, right? And you get to dig through your library, right? Threshold can be built up off this, correct?
No.
Well, mostly no, at least.
The question is what KIND of resources you get.
Lands do not cause blue problems, as a general rule. Business spells cause blue - or any other color - problems.
So what color lets you draw the most business spells for the least cost?
Rhetorical question.
Fact or Fiction - or, for that matter, any blue card drawing spell that only has one U in the casting cost - lets you get more, or have more choices about, what kind of spells you're going to get. Black can get you cards, but it'll cost you more resources like life, permanents, or cards in hand, to get those cards. Green only gets specific types of cards; creatures, (the weakest link) or lands; Red makes you run with luck to draw cards; and White goes for enchantments or artifacts. Or the card drawing in those other colors is very dependent on something else - Symbiotic Deployment or Armistice are fine examples of this.
My friend Jason keeps telling me,"Options win games. I learned it from Invasion block."
Yup.
As long as Blue has the greatest versatility in what kind, speed, and quality of cards you can draw, Blue will be the strongest color in any environment. Allowing other colors to have access to their own resources-damage, creatures, discard, or life for example, won't matter, because you'll use Blue to get those resources. It's just more efficient.
Then there's Counterspell. As long as you can say"No" to anything for the simple cost of UU, the strongest abilities in Magic will rely in those blue cards - because hey, if you don't have a counter now, you can always Fact or Fiction one up, right?
Counters are costing more, and more spells are starting to show up that say,"I can't be countered." However, Magic is a game of resource management. The ability to get more resources for less it going to be prized above all else, like the One Ring, and that's why Blue will be unbalanced versus the rest of the field, until Wizards starts to even out card drawing as an ability for all colors.
So - if we wanted to make a creature for Wizards, I'd suggest something like this:
Ancient Librarian
GG
1/3
As long as Ancient Librarian is in play, no player may draw cards unless it is his/her draw phase.
