> I'm honestly kind of amazed at how well-designed all of this is. I suppose that surviving the test of time does imply some sort of quality design, but this is remarkable.
I'm amazed more people don't copy the idea (rather than straight-up ripping off the colors). M:tg is so interesting because of how well-defined colors are. Because they're defined, colors truly have a personality, and - crucially - play different.
For a straight ripoff check Master of Magic too. Very cheap on GOG. It's a Civilization 1 clone with tech tree/progression replaced by spells! Complete with common/uncommon/rare/very rare tiers. The system is so inspired by Magic colors it hurts. But incidentally, it's brilliant! In normal Civ games, tech tree is super boring because of many filler steps and boring +1 bonuses. Even otherwise great Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri suffers from this. But because each step in discrete (each step is a spell!), you get something concrete each time you complete research. The game also has extensive city build-up and a combat system that inspired Heroes of Might and Magic serries. The game has many design and balance flaws, and without the unofficial Insecticide patch by kyrub (who deserves eternal praise) it's extremely buggy. But they did something very, very right as game developers keep trying to clone Master of Magic. The game doesn't care much for balance, but more for very flashy and ambitious ideas.
Another accidental bit of brilliance came from memory limitation. Computers at the time didn't have enough RAM to support large maps. So instead they made 2 planes connected by magical towers. Very heavily guarded. The other plane has unique minerals, 4 unique races, magic roads that are instant travel, very magic everything (2x magic node output too). In late game, hell often breaks loose when POWERFUL computer civilizations emerge. You can also try to break into it early and loot it, but it's very risky.