Reslicing the Color Pie

By Alternate-Universe Mark Rosewater

This year marks Magic’s 25th Anniversary, which means we’re returning to our roots on every platform. Duels of the Planeswalkers Online’s Shandalar expansion released recently giving players a new look at the plane where the series began. MODO is briefly introducing ante play as a matchmaking option for those of you who want to raise the stakes like it’s 1993.

Planar Chaos 2018, the newest iteration in our yearly “what if” set that bends Magic’s color pie in experimental directions, returns to Dominaria this year, where we’ll bring together concepts left behind in Magic’s formative sets and mechanics we’re still testing out in Standard.

While I can’t talk about details of that set yet, I think now is a perfect time to refresh everyone on the current state of the color pie; specifically, the relationships that colors have with each other. After all, changing the rules is only exciting if you know what the existing rules are.

STARRING ROLES

Many of you may be familiar with the “ally” and “enemy” colors from the context of cycle names like “ally-colored fetchlands” used frequently by established players, or from the contentious politics of the World Mages on Shandalar.

But there’s a much more prominent chart that illustrates how the colors relate to each other. Just look at the back of any Magic: the Gathering card:

The five colors are always presented in a specific order: white, black, green, blue, red.

The colors that are next to each other are considered “ally colors”. They get along and share similar ideals.

The colors that are opposite each other are called “enemy colors”. They have opposing ideals, which puts them in direct conflict.

We don’t have cards target specific other colors very often these days, and recently we’ve shifted to balancing out the representation of color pairs, but we still gravitate toward each color making its allies stronger and weakening its enemies. In the olden days, players looking to score a low blow on their opponents’ green decks packed cards like Flashfires to destroy all their Forests, while blue mages employed Flash Flood to wash out white permanents. (Not to mention Wash Out, but that’s a different kind of color-based removal.)

CIRCLE OF FRIENDS

Let’s break down each color’s relationships, starting with the ally-color relationships.

Red/White: Conviction

Red and white are the colors of ideological conviction. White wants peace; red wants freedom. Together, they’re the colors most likely to call for social change, to push for legal reform, to fight for moral and ethical good for the sake of everyone in society. White/red represents idealism, justice, stirring rhetoric, and skilled warfare.

Mechanically, white and red share first strike and double strike, effects that display martial excellence. They also deal out damage to attacking creatures and create extra combat phases, further emphasizing that red and white come together in their devotion to fighting for a cause.

White/Black: Authority

White wants peace. Black wants power. White and black both believe in the individual sacrificing their interests (and their lives) for those above them in the service of those greater causes. While white and red share a moral imperative, white and black share an ethical one: establishing order and control through whatever means necessary.

Mechanically, black and white typically come together via “go-wide” strategies that emphasize producing lots of expendable creatures, via punishing mass destruction effects, and via controlling the graveyard by reanimating their own creatures and exiling cards from opponents’ graveyards.

Together, white/black are the colors of authoritarianism, religious cults, and maintaining power even in defiance of death.

Black/Green: Predation

Black and green are the colors of predation, hunger, and the cycle of life and death. Black’s love of power and green’s love of growth come through in an uncompromised view of the natural order of things: a competition for survival in which the strong prey on the weak and the dead feed the living. Black and green both believe that decisions are justified by a natural hierarchy based in power; after all, carnivores eat herbivores because they are built to be strong enough for it. As much as black and green understand the way the world naturally works, they understand manipulating it is a source of great power — whether it is to regenerate from harm or to wither and crush obstacles in their path. Together, black and green are the domain of poisons, scavengers, and vermin, of destroying and recreating the landscape, and of recycling the dead.

Green/Blue: Evolution

Blue’s quest for perfection and green’s acceptance of nature act as a single, all-encompassing force: evolution. Green and blue are the most responsive to their environment; while the other colors want to change the world, green and blue seek to perfectly understand it, to change themselves in response to it, and then to find their perfect selves in the process. Together, they foster iterative progress over generations, adapt themselves to their environment, and use knowledge to better themselves. Blue and green are the primary colors of flash and card draw, representing the way this pair takes time to watch and prepare before making their move. They are also the primary colors of counter manipulation, representing mutation and growth.

Blue/Red: Creativity

Blue and red are the colors of innovation and creativity. They embrace change and remove the old in favor of the new. (This ties into their shared love of instants and sorceries, impermanent spells that take effect immediately and then vanish.) They’re also the colors that are most fond of artifacts, since artifacts are ideas made manifest rather than objects that exist independently of a creator. In the same vein, blue and red tend to get the more oddball effects that mess directly with turn structure, cast spells for free or from the library, or alter opponents’ spells. Lastly, blue and red encompass the four traditional Western elements (water, air, earth, and fire). Together, blue and red are the colors of experimentation, novelty, shapeshifting, invention and reinvention, and games (like the one you’re reading about right now).

FOE TO JOY

Alliances show insight into what we care about, but it’s conflicts that drive stories and prove who we are. Colors, like characters, are defined by who they fight as much as they are by who they love. Let’s examine the enemy-color pairs and what makes them so hostile to each other.

White/Blue: Faith vs. Science

White believes in strict moral laws, traditions, and pre-defined structures that tell us what is good and bad, what to do and where to go, and how we fit into society and the world.

Blue, on the other hand, believes in using knowledge to examine the world, then constantly questioning and refining the knowledge it possesses through study and verification. White judges that as amoral heresy, the wanderings of a lost and flawed mind trying to find purpose without involving their heart or soul.

White strives toward an ideal that exists outside of their fallible senses, hopes for things not seen or understood. White believes that perfection is something that is believed in, something which is held at a higher level to be worshipped and humbled beneath, rather than another data point to be dissected and cataloged. Blue sees that as stubborn anti-intellectualism and rejecting knowledge in favor of stagnation.

Blue/Black: Safety vs. Risk

Blue believes in defense and security, protecting oneself from without to ensure focusing on improving one’s self through careful work toward incremental discoveries.

Black takes the opposite approach to self-improvement. To black, becoming better is about reckless ambition: making dangerous deals, making drastic sacrifices, putting your life in the hands of uncontrollable forces, and generally taking every opportunity to reach its goals, no matter the consequences down the line.

To black, blue’s obsession with avoiding risk makes it weak and cowardly. To blue, black’s complete disregard for safety dooms its ambitions to chaos and ruin.

Black/Red: Greed vs. Desire

Greed and desire sound similar, but there’s a crucial difference that makes it impossible for red and black to see eye-to-eye.

Red is driven by desire. Red feels strongly, which gives red strong wants and strong reactions to everything around it. When red loves, it loves with all its heart; when red hates, it burns with anger. Red’s actions are impulsive, heartfelt, and mercurial. Emotion is the core motivator of everything red does.

Black, conversely, is driven by greed. Black’s want is for want’s sake, only a means to power. Black doesn’t commit transgressive deeds like theft and murder out of passion; black does them in cold blood to further its own agenda. Black’s actions are premeditated, calculated, designed to remove emotion from the equation.

Red’s ideal is fire: colorful, alive, constantly changing. Black’s ideal is death: sallow, dour, final. Black sees red as overly sentimental. Red sees black as empty and sad.

Red/Green: Freedom vs. Destiny

Green has a simple view of the world: life is what it’s always been and what it always will be, no matter how much fools might fight destiny. Red, conversely, can’t stand destiny. Destiny says that it doesn’t matter what you want or what you choose, the outcome will be the same. But red craves freedom; red wants everyone to be the sole arbiter of their own life. Red and green can’t get along because green adheres to tradition and red wants to burn tradition down.

Green/White: Instinct vs. Discipline

If you want to get to the heart of the conflict between green and white, ask “how do you know the right thing to do?”

Green believes that we’re born knowing the right courses in our lives. Nobody teaches a bird how to build a nest or a giraffe how to walk. They simply get up and do it.

White, on the other hand, believes in denying your base nature. White believes that people are born lost, not knowing good from bad, and that it takes external law and practiced discipline to find the right path despite the sinful urges of your body.

White sees green’s reliance on instinct as a problem to be corrected; an empty and uncivilized void on which to build a palace and start an empire. Green sees white’s imposed structure as a stain on an already-perfect world, an attempt to bring low that which white doesn’t understand for the sake of white’s lust for control.

FIVE DEGREES OF TOGETHERNESS

The color system is one of the core pillars of Magic. Each color is more than a faction or an elemental marker; it’s an entire philosophy with a wide range of expressions and domains. They’re carefully balanced against each other; if you were to change the order they’re set up in, the dynamics that make the interactions between the colors compelling would fall apart. Or maybe not…

Join me next week when I take a look back at Planar Chaos 2017: Tezzeret’s Rebellion.

Until then, may all your pies slice up the right way.