For years, Magic the Gathering has had a way of categorizing similarly designed cards called "cycles." These have historically been ways to distribute cards with some design symmetry among the five colors or across different archetypes or color pairs. Each member card of a cycle takes a basic template and skews it towards a particular color's philosophy or mechanics. As a result, each cycle has five to ten relatively unique cards that all manage to fit in different decks, while also being somewhat similar across colors.
Source：https://www.cbr.com/mtg-cycle-design-color-balance/
