Douglysium

Intro

As expected due to the release of the newest set I have decided to make some more short-form articles about the Color Pie and how it is utilized within a plane via philosophy, factions, and mechanics. In this case, we will be looking at the factions that appear in Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, and since we are going in WUBRG(White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green) we are starting with White and The Imperial Court.

For the sake of clarity, I think it is important that we touch on the Color Pie itself in this set and how it embodies a philosophical conflict of tradition and modernity. All the designers and creators of the set have made it extremely clear that the ultimate theme of this set is tradition vs modernity, and that the main ways they chose to measure and represent this conflict when designing cards is with the Color Pie and with artifacts/enchantments.

Starting with enchantments and artifacts, it is important to remember that while enchantments and artifacts can represent any number of things, both natural and unnatural within MTG, in this set enchantments are usually a reflection of the natural, tradition, and history while artifacts tend to be used to represent technology, modernity, and the new. Not to mention that the enchantments are also used as a representation for Kami-based magic or influence while artifacts obviously tend to be more technology-based magics. However, for the sake of brevity, I’ll go further into detail on those later.

In Kamigawa NEO the Color Pie has essentially turned into a spectrum with Green and Blue acting as “benchmarks” of the most opposing sides of the conflict. If you remember some of my previous writings, specifically that of the zombies and werewolves on Innistrad, you may remember that I pointed out that Green and Blue are enemy colors and explained some of the reasons why. 

In order to refresh your memory here are the basics. On the Color Pie, colors opposite of each other are “enemy” colors due to major philosophical differences. In the case of Blue vs Green, it can ultimately be summed up as an argument of Nurture vs Nature. You see, Blue believes in achieving “Perfection through Knowledge” while Green believes in achieving “Growth through Acceptance.”

Starting with Blue, “Perfection through Knowledge” does not mean Blue literally expects you to be or achieve perfection but rather to be the best you one can be by using knowledge, thought, and intellect. Perfection isn’t necessarily a goal so much as it is a process or way of life, and since the process involves constantly trying to be the best one can be, it could be summarized as striving for perfection or as close to it as possible. One of Blue’s fundamental beliefs is that everyone is a blank slate and with the right amount of knowledge, effort, and time, anything is possible. This does not mean Blue is as naive as to believe that you can just think or will anything to into existence, for example you can’t just gain 20/20 vision by thinking hard enough or magically grow a pair of wings if you want to fly, but rather Blue would argue that there are things that can help you achieve those goals or compensate for abilities or aspects that one may lack. For example, if you are born blind BOOM wear some glasses and now you have perfect vision and if you are born without wings you could invent a jetpack or vehicle that allows you to fly or invent some sort of gene editing that can allow people to grow wings. This is ultimately why Blue is a philosophy that usually encourages an embracing of technology, innovation, the future, and Modernity, as these can allow you to become anything you desire. For this reason Blue sees Green as a philosophy that stagnates and interferes with progress and development.

You see, Green’s “Growth through Acceptance” comes from Green arguing that the world already has all that will make us happy and fulfilled. So if we want to achieve fulfillment and be our best selves we must accept the world for as it is and our place in it. Green argues that if one was born without wings then they probably weren’t meant to fly and if one was born blind then they should probably accept it or realize that it happened for a reason. Unlike Blue, Green argues that you are not born a blank slate and that everyone is born with a purpose, role, or function, whether that be given through biology, destiny or tradition, and it is only by accepting these roles that we can thrive and help the world function as intended. Deers aren’t meant to hunt, penguins aren’t supposed to fly, etc. The real reason Green is the “nature” color is because Green is all about accepting the world for as it is, and the world as it is can usually be described as its natural state. Its value of the natural state often leads to it placing emphasis on the past and tradition in order to help understand how things are supposed to be(if you want to do something like find out the role of bears in an ecosystem then look at earth’s history and how they previously impacted the ecosystem). Due to this Green tends to see Blue’s philosophy as sort of ungrateful or one that creates dissatisfaction. The conflict of Blue and Green’s nurture vs nature ultimately extends to the idea of emphasizing the past vs the future. Blue is all about being able to become anything you want and embracing that anything is possible, so while it cares about past knowledge as a way to better and improve upon itself and the world around it, it tends to look towards the future. Which makes since the future contains all kinds of possibilities and Blue values progress and thinking ahead. Green, as mentioned earlier, is about accepting the world for as it is and accepting your place in it. Thus, tradition and the past tend to be more emphasized in Green in order to help you understand your place and role in the world.

With that out of the way we can finally mark each color from being the most enchantment and tradition focused to the most artifact and modernity focused. That order being Green, White, Black, Red, and then Blue, in that order. Now that we have finally established the basics we can touch upon White and how it tends to manifest in NEO.

White

White in this set is the color that is second closest to tradition and enchantments on the scale, only being beaten out by Green. The reason for this is relatively simple, White is a philosophy that values “Peace through Structure.” That is to say, White’s overall goal is to get as many people what they need using various structures like laws, religion, moral codes, etc. While Blue and/or Red may see technology as something to be embraced and as a form of liberation and Green may see most technology as something that interferes with the natural order White has a more cautiously optimistic approach.

White sees all this new technology as something that can be genuinely used to better the lives of people but we must be careful and ensure that the technology is safe to use first. Having technology that hasn’t been properly tested or used irresponsibly could lead to people hurting themselves or each other. White philosophy in general tends to encourage behavior that is slow to adapt because it wants to be careful and it values having things done in an orderly fashion. There is also the fact that White philosophy believes in an objective morality, i.e. good and evil exist and there is a right and wrong. This extends to technology, meaning there are objectively bad and good ways to use technology plus some forms of technology might be inherently inhumane, evil, bad, or incompatible with previously established morals(something that might also tie into White being placed on the more traditional side of things). White’s placement on the scale ultimately comes from the fact that White is indeed embracing the new technology on the plane but it does so very carefully and slowly when compared to colors other than Green.

THE IMPERIAL COURT

Now to get a bit more specific and talk about the factions themselves and using a “Planeswalker’s Guide to Kamigawa Neon Dynasty” to guide us. The Imperial Court was originally founded to help Kyodai manage the merging of the mortal and spirit realms and the court would later end up as the main, and most powerful, governing body of modern Kamigawa. While the heart of the organization is ultimately that of a peaceful one, they are described as being unafraid to wield their authority and deal with any threats to their mission. They also take an active, and widespread role in restricting new technologies, which they claim is necessary to maintain social stability. In order to join the Imperials one must go through what is described as a grueling education, with many of these people going on to become samurai, kami intercessors, moth riders, and mech pilots. While there are some families who have served the Imperials for generations people from all walks of life are encouraged to join. To the Imperials loyalty is what’s important to them, not social class. The Imperial court also interacts with kami frequently and there are plenty of kami who willingly work with them and lend power in order to help deal with mergers and the possible side effects created from the kami and mortal realms merging. This makes sense considering that dealing with the potential side effects of merges is the reason they were founded.

After what I’ve gone over in this article I think it’s pretty obvious why this faction ends up White aligned but I’ll go over some key, more specific, points. Firstly, the faction valuing peace fits in with one of White’s end goals but the fact that they are unafraid to wield their authority to deal with wrongdoers ties into White tending to use laws and rules to try to keep people safe and deal with evildoers or bad actions. Their restriction of new technology is something I already touched on in the previous section. Interestingly the Imperials allow anyone to join them and prize loyalty over social status. This ties into White’s goals of fairness and equality it is often striving for, as everyone(no matter their background) has a fair chance.

Their interaction with the kami and goal of handling the mergers is something that can still be connected to White’s themes of balance and fairness. In this case, White wants to give both kami and humans a fair shake and create a world where they can coexist and have their needs met while also making the world a better place. The fact that most of their trainees become samurai, kami intercessors, moth riders, and mech pilots also makes sense. Firstly, samurai could be described as very knight-like and the idealized samurai some may think of when imagining them is one with a strong moral code and code of honor, such as bushido. Kami intercessors relate to the Imperial Court’s end goal of moderating the merger and the previously mentioned details. Their mech pilots help show that while they are pretty far on the enchantment and tradition side of things they are not quite as far as Green and they do see technology as something that can be used for good if properly moderated, and I’m pretty sure Moth Riders just connect mechanically to White usually getting a lot of fliers.

The name of the Imperial Court takes obvious inspiration from their relationship with the emperor, with the imperial part signifying their relationship to some sort of an empire and the court portion relating to their jurisdiction over laws and how they act as an establishment that helps and carries out tasks for the emperor, and how they act as the largest governing entity on Kamigawa. The inspiration behind the Imperial Court clearly comes from the fact that Japan has an emperor and an imperial family as well as the fact that it was ruled by emperors in the past(which is something that could further tie into Neo’s themes of tradition vs modernity and could explain part of the reason why the Imperial Court leans a bit more towards the tradition side of the conflict).

Mechanics

Mechanically the Imperials care about enchantments the most, with a splash of artifact matter or artifact cards. This is of course to make it clear that its stance on tradition and modernity is somewhere between Green and Black, specifically, it is a bit more balanced between tradition and modernity as well as artifacts and enchantments than Green but leans a bit more towards enchantments than Black. Plus the presence of the enchantments also helps emphasize their connection and focus on the kami.

The vehicle matters thing, I assume, comes from White’s mechanical connection to fliers. Even though not all the mechs fly my guess for why this would be the case is because pilots show up in this set and a pilot is by definition a “person who operates the flying controls of an aircraft.” In magic pilots mechanically care about vehicles in general because I would imagine only caring about flying vehicles would be too narrow of a design.

White getting a lot of samurai ties into the “honorable samurai” trope as mentioned before and the fact that they gain a boost from attacking one at a time could possibly tie into the idea of a fair and honorable duel or fight. It should also be mentioned that Mark has stated in “KAMIGAWA: NEON DYNASTY VISION DESIGN HANDOFF, PART 2” that they were designed to play well with the Bushido mechanic from previous Kamigawa and be combat-oriented.

Their aggressive play style may also be meant to reflect how samurai tended to have a more direct combat style than that of say a ninja for that reason. For those who don’t know what Bushido is, in the original Kamigawa Bushido was a mechanic that read “Whenever this creature blocks or becomes blocked, it gets +N/+N until end of turn.” While the ability is referenced in NEO the design team ultimately decided to not bring this keyword back for the set because of some thematic complications and because they didn’t want to have a bunch of creatures with the mechanic.

Land

For NEO each of the factions also got its own respective land that showcases a place that’s important to the faction and has a channel ability attached to to that has some sort of effect. For example, the card Eiganjo, seat of the Empire is one that depicts Eiganjo(duh) the place where the emperor of Kamigawa lives and by proxy the main center of the Empire’s power.

So I figured that I would take this opportunity to analyze some of the aspects and mechanics of these lands and see how it fits into the faction and/or the color pie. The Planeswalker’s Guide to Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty has this to say about Eiganjo “Built upon the bones of its ancient former castle self, Eiganjo is a place where ancient shrines and ancestral homes exist side by side with sleekly modern structures. Ancient architecture is painstakingly maintained and incorporated rather than torn down or built over, creating a sense of elegance and harmony between past and present. Eiganjo is home to the Imperial Palace where high-ranking members of the Imperial court live and work, and pilgrims come to seek an audience with the emperor. The main shrine of Kyodai, the guardian spirit of Kamigawa, is located within the palace.” 

The first thing that stands out to me is that Eiganjo was built on top of its former self and it’s a place where the ancient and modern exist side by side. First off, the fact that it’s both symbolically and literally built on top of something ancient and more traditional helps show the strong connection that the Imperial Court has to tradition. The fact that it’s also a place where ancient and modern exist together kind of shows us that one of the major goals of the Imperial Court is harmony between the kami and people as well as tradition and technology. They are a faction that believes technology can be used to make life better but it should be restrained and monitored so that said betterment isn’t at the expense of people, kami or morals. This balance is also further reinforced by the fact that they painstakingly try to maintain and incorporate aspects of technology into the building rather than just tearing it down or building over it. Technology is indeed useful but it should be embraced carefully.

Eiganjo, seat of the Empire, has a Channel ability which for 3 mana(1 White and 2 mana of any color) allows you to discard it in order to “Discard Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire: It deals 4 damage to target attacking or blocking creatures.” The ability also costs one less for each legendary creature you control. White and its ability to directly damage and destroy creatures is an interesting one and also one that I think is sometimes misunderstood both mechanically and flavorfully. Unfortunately, I will not be touching on literally all those details and my thoughts today but I will cover it when I ever get to making that video on White’s mechanics. What you need to know is that White can deal direct damage to creatures like Red can but unlike Red White is much more restricted in how and when it can do it. White tends to only be able to deal direct damage to creatures that are attacking or blocking. The reason for this is that it symbolizes White’s more protective or countermeasure-style philosophical nature. Obviously, if you are destroying a creature you are acting in self-defense, and protecting its creatures, people or others is something that White often praises doing. So by proxy we can assume that by having the card with Eiganjo deal damage to an attacking creature it is trying to show us the Empire’s more protective nature and how it may be willing to punish those who break its laws or do things that hurt others for immoral reasons.

Also, in both the stated flavor and what we see in the online story articles there are of course many soldiers and guards in Eiganjo so the channel ability may also be referring to the use of them as a form of defense via protection and combat. Think of someone guarding the emperor.

Oh and of course the land can tap for White mana because the Imperial Court is mainly White aligned. The fact that it cares about legendary creatures for a cost reduction could be a nod to old Kamigawa and how the set had a legendary creature theme, or at least a lot of them if I remember correctly.

Here’s the old Eiganjo by the way, which is something I’ll cover another time.

Closing

Well, that is all for now. I do plan to one day go back and cover in even more detail how the color pie manifests in different planes but those take a lot of time and I think these smaller articles are easier to digest for a majority of people if they have all day. Next time I will be talking about the Saiba Futurists, so see you then. I might as well ask what your favorite Imperial Court card or character is.