How can I search MagicCards.info for an exact color identity match?

Question

My friends and I are experimenting with various potential Commander decks at the moment — we're drafting far more than we're playing, for a mix of practice, learning, and fun. This means it's semi-regular we'll look up a new commander for certain colours.

Searching for mono- or dual-colored commanders is fine with the colour identity search, using ci:r t:legendary t:creature for monocolored red commanders, or the same legendary creature filter with ci:wum for white/blue commanders.

However, every search for three-coloured commanders and above also includes every two-colour commander that could be found therein. A search for Temur commanders with ci:gurm turns up all the green-blue-red commanders, but it also turns up all green-red, green-blue, and red-blue commanders, meaning I have to mentally sift those out each time I want to explore commander options. The exclusive (!) filter of ci!gurm has no noticeable difference.

How can I perform an exclusive color identity match for commanders of three colours or more, in order to get a commander who has those exact colours, without also getting commanders that match only a subset of those colours?

Answer 1

When you search ci:gur on magiccards.info, you are looking for cards that match that color identity, i.e. that are legal in a deck with whose commander has a GUR color identity, including artifacts. When you append the m, it appears to search for cards that have more than one of those colors in their color identity.

So, in that context, when you are looking for a GUR commander, you are really looking for a card that matches that color identity, but does not match any subset of that color identity.. You can express that using the negation syntax to filter out those sub-combinations, like -ci:ru. The final search is t:creature t:legendary ci:gur -ci:gu -ci:ur -ci:gr. This results in a total of six creatures that have that exact color identity.

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I created a Chrome extension to help construct that search automatically. I also recently discovered EDHREC, a site with similar search functionality.