Lore

The game roughly started out by agglutinating around artifacts (Black Lotus, Moxes) and twenty Lightning Bolt style play, then settled around blue and artifact centric strategies, and in recent years has seen an explosion in the power of white. In the middle were various metagames dominated by black (Necro winter type of thing), red (burn or aggro), and green (Birthing Pod and Collected Company), but I think it's fair to say that Magic has often occupied the players in some broad strokes ways.