A colour indicator is the small coloured dot that appears on the type line of some real Magic cards. It exists for cards whose colour cannot be told from a mana cost — the classic case is the back face of a double-faced card, which has no mana cost of its own, so the dot declares ‘this face is these colours’. If you are designing such a card in Magic Set Editor, here is the part that matters: in MSE, the colour indicator is a template feature, not a program feature.
Why the program itself has no colour indicator setting
MSE is a frame-rendering program: the template defines which fields exist on a card — name, cost, type line, text box, and any extras — and the program edits whatever fields the template provides. There is no colour-indicator control in the program’s own menus, because the indicator is part of the frame artwork and field layout. Templates that model modern frames include a way to show the indicator; templates built from older or simpler frames may not have the field at all. Asking ‘where is the colour indicator option in MSE?’ is therefore really asking ‘does my installed template include it?’
When your design needs one
- Back faces of double-faced cards whose colour differs from (or simply is not shown by) the front face — the most common case, and the reason the indicator exists.
- Cards with no mana cost that are nevertheless meant to be a specific colour, where the template supports indicating it.
- Ordinary cards with a normal mana cost do not need one — their cost already declares their colour, and real cards in that situation do not carry the dot.
Working with it in practice
- Check your template first. With a modern-frame template selected, look at the card’s editable fields for the indicator option — its name and location are set by the template, so they vary between packs. If the field exists, setting the colour there renders the dot on the type line.
- If your template has no indicator field, you have two honest options: switch to a template pack that includes one (the large, actively maintained community packs cover the modern frames most completely), or accept the frame as-is. There is no program setting being missed.
- Keep the indicator consistent with the design: the colours it shows should match the face’s intended colour identity for rules purposes, and both faces of a double-faced card should be checked together before export.
As with double-faced frames themselves, support differs pack by pack and improves as the community template packs are updated — if the indicator matters to your set, choosing a current, complete template pack is the fix, not a hidden option somewhere in the program.