Douglysium

Introduction

So, I have since finished my little miniseries on the tribes of Innistrad and how their color philosophies express them in their culture, story, and mechanics, and I really enjoyed talking about it so I figured I would write some stuff on the factions as we see them on different planes and how the color philosophies manifest within them. 

I have also realized that this article is way longer than I thought it was going to be so I’m going to make a different version that splits each section into parts.

Before I move on if you want to see my previous(much shorter) MTG articles covering the tribes of Innistrad then you can view them here-  https://douglysium.tumblr.com/tagged/TheTasteOfMagicTheGathering. If there’s a specific tribe you want to read about then you can view them here.

Werewolves- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/662623213059276800/the-taste-of-innistrads-werewolves

Humans- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/662755543203643392/the-taste-of-humans-on-innistrad

Angels- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/663299115099308033/the-taste-of-innistrads-angels

Geists- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/664030257036361728/the-taste-of-innistrads-spirits

Zombies- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/664566115054256128/the-taste-of-innistrads-zombies

Vampires- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/664656723908362240/the-taste-of-innistrads-vampire

I could basically talk all day about the Color Pie if you caught me in the mood, and it turns out I am in the mood.

Although, before we jump straight into the philosophies themselves I decided to make this little intro first to cover my overall goal with this piece. The idea behind this is that it’s basically a housekeeping article. I take what I feel are some important overarching things to consider no matter what color or mechanic you are looking at and try to summarize them so I won’t be forced to repeatedly explain the same concepts over and over, and we can spend more time looking at the aspects that are more specific to each color.

As for what this series covers? Well, my first goal is simply to give my own explanation and thoughts about how the colors work but I also want to look at both the philosophical, and mechanical/gameplay sides of each color and how they tie into each other. I want to look at flavor questions such as how a White-aligned character may act or why this Green-aligned character may not like that Green-aligned character or how a faction’s color alignment can tell us about its goals and priorities, and gameplay questions like “Why does Blue draw so many cards? Why does Red have Haste? Why is Black always bringing stuff back from the graveyard?” etc. I do plan to still cover the color identities of factions within Magic’s multiverse eventually, probably between color articles to keep things interesting, but for now, our focus is on the colors themselves as I feel this creates a good foundation for any future tribe or faction based analysis, since if anyone is ever confused about something I bring up regarding colors in general then they could probably check them out here.

I should also mention that I’m definitely not the first person to cover the philosophies of the colors. You have people like TheManaSource, Dicetry, It’s Not Good, Lorely Writes, and even people who literally make Magic the Gathering products at Wizards of the Coast themselves, like Mark Rosewater, have plenty of blogs, videos, and podcasts that cover it. In fact, as I’m writing this Mark has recently made a convenient compendium of all his Color Pie related stuff, which you can check out here → https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/lets-talk-color-pie-2021-10-11.

So at the end of the day, my goal with this article is to 1. Summarize and go over some general overarching themes or questions regarding the colors, 2. Act as the groundwork for the rest of the series and 3. Hopefully, allow me to explain why I personally love the Color Pie. So let’s begin.

The Color Pie in General

So first off, what does it even mean to be aligned with a certain color? Well, basically the gist of each color is that they represent a character’s core values and, by extension, their ideology. An example of this would be how Blue believes that the most important thing in life is being the best you one can be and that the optimal way to achieve that is through gaining knowledge, meanwhile Red believes the most important thing in life is to follow your heart and do what you want. What determines what color alignment someone/something falls under is not necessarily the state of their existence or even their personalities but rather what they believe in and value. I mean yeah, goblins are often Red-aligned and different species or tribes within Magic tend to share one or more colors for various reasons, such as culture, but this isn’t the end all be all mind you. Being human doesn’t mean you have to have White in your color identity, and just being a living thing isn’t enough to make you Green-aligned, and simply being hungry and wanting to eat or just feeling emotions does not guarantee you are of the Red-alignment. Heck, if you want to go back to the second point, we have even seen robots with Green in their identity. Which I know may surprise some considering how often it can destroy artifacts and how much it holds nature in high regard.

When it comes to the point about personalities, what I mean is that while it is true that a character’s personality can give you clues about what someone’s/something’s values is there is quite a bit of nuance to it. A common example we are given to help prove my point is that just because someone is super organized does not mean that they are aligned with White, but if they VALUE organization and the greater good they might be White-aligned(by extension I suppose this would also mean you can have messy or slovenly White-aligned characters). A mistake that I feel happens relatively often is that I see people assuming that a color has a sort of monopoly on a concept, behavior, or trait. For example, Red is the color that values emotion the most. So some people may look at Red and determine “Ok, so every card that depicts strong emotions, or an emotional moment has to have Red in it right?”

Well… no…

Now don’t get me wrong, Red is clearly the MOST LIKELY to have cards depicting strong emotions due to its belief that you should follow your heart first and foremost. However, that doesn’t mean that the other colors don’t have any emotions or can’t have emotional moments. What tends to be more important when looking at the colors as a whole is not only whether a character within that color has emotions but how they view their emotions and the emotions of others.

Let’s say you have two characters that are both really really angry. We will refer to these characters as John and Jim. John hates bottling up his emotions or holding them back. He believes that you should follow your heart if you want to be happy in life. So when John gets angry he doesn’t pull punches. If someone pisses him off he’ll simply fight them and say something like “Well he shouldn’t have pissed me off,” or maybe he’ll just scream at them and storm off. Both of these outcomes are equally likely.

On the other hand, there’s Jim. Jim is also super emotional but he has a strong moral code. He argues that it’s wrong to get into fights with people when it can be avoided and that you shouldn’t let your emotions control you or else you may end up causing a lot of unnecessary pain for both yourself and others and that’s something he abhors. So when Jim gets super angry he may raise his voice a bit but he will avoid throwing the first punch and will usually go home and do jumping jacks as an outlet for his anger.

Now as many can probably guess in this example, I think it’s safe to say that John is of the Red-alignment in some way while Jim is of the White-alignment in some form. John is someone who believes in following his heart and thus will prioritize what he feels and wants above basically everything else in a given situation. Jim is also an extremely emotional character but he prizes morality and peace above his emotions and is thus more willing to put off things that he wants to do(like punching someone in the face or yelling) for the greater good, or the good of the many. The point I’m trying to get across here is that it’s not that all White or Blue-aligned people intrinsically hate emotion in all its forms but rather they disagree with what Red values and how it reacts to emotions, and by the same token Red has a problem with White and Blue’s priorities. It’s also important to take into account that no one is perfect. It is possible for Jim to get so angry that he fails to properly contain his emotions and he ends up punching someone or getting into a fight. However, due to the philosophy of the White-alignment, I think it’s safe to say that he would probably feel bad about it or at least consider it a mistake/failing on his part in some way. Hopefully, you get what I’m trying to say, the color alignments don’t have a monopoly on concepts like emotion, order, intelligence, greed, concern for one’s own well being, etc., and even though color may be more likely to have it be more pronounced or emphasized in their personality or actions it does not guarantee it nor does it mean that the other colors are completely restricted from having it show up in their personality. The key point I’m trying to get across here is that the best way to help determine where someone sits on the Color Pie is based on what they VALUE as opposed to personality being the end all be all. Also, it should be noted that, yes, a personality can give you clues into what someone values. I mean, if you’re someone who views forethought and knowledge as part of the ideal we should strive for then you are more likely to be thoughtful but not everyone with the same or similar philosophy has the exact same personality. It should be noted that outside factors can also affect how a character acts even if it does not change their alignment, but more on that later.

The Gist of 5 Colors

Now as with most philosophical things there is a lot of discussion and debate to be had, and honestly, I could probably write an entire book solely on Color Pie philosophy alone. However, I figured that since it might be a bit before I finish writing the next article it might be helpful to give you all a taste of what each color is all about. Also, in case you don’t know we are going to go over them in WUBRG order, and for those of you who are unfamiliar with that term, it’s short for White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green and is the order in which the colors are represented. Why is Blue represented by U? I’ll talk about that when I make an article solely dedicated to Blue.

White believes in “Peace through Structure.” That is to say that it wishes to achieve peace and prosperity through various structures, such as laws, moral codes, religion, etc. It also believes in some form of objective morality(there are just some things that are morally wrong to do and some things are morally right). White values the community and the greater good over the good of the individual, and it often attempts to use social constructs and rules in order to help as many people as it can get what they need and guide them on the right path. Now, there is an extremely important distinction in the fact that White believes that there are enough resources for everyone to do what they NEED, and not everything they WANT. Which ultimately ties into White’s theme of sacrifice. Since White believes in putting the greater good above personal/selfish needs it argues that sometimes sacrifices are necessary for the bigger overarching goal. Also, when I say sacrifice in this case I am not solely referring to giving one’s life for a cause, although that can happen, I also mean sacrificing more mundane things like one’s time, money, making sure to avoid going to massive gatherings in order to help prevent the spread of something like a disease or sickness during a pandemic, even if that one party looks rad as hell, and other similar things/concepts. Before I continue, one thing that’s important to remember when looking at all the colors is that none of the colors are inherently good or bad. I mean yes due to White’s moral bent it will basically always want to do the right thing and even if it’s in an antagonist/villainous role it will usually believe it is doing the right thing because… I mean White genuinely does want to help and do the right thing, but at the end of the day intentions can only take you so far. You could also argue that certain colors are more likely to commit acts that a majority of people would consider “bad” or “evil” but again none of the colors are necessarily only negative traits by default. So in order to help get this point across I’ve decided to list one strength each color has as well as one weakness. I will go into more detail regarding each color’s strengths and weaknesses in future content.

One of White’s major strengths tends to be its teamwork and organization. Due to the fact that White prioritizes structure and the needs of the group it tends to be good at working in teams or large groups of people. It also often leans towards utilizing laws and/or moral codes in order to help people stay on the right track.

One of White’s weaknesses is that since it believes in the group over the individual and an objective morality it can sometimes end up having extremely black and white(get it?) view of the world can end up creating a mindset that is extremely controlling of others in an attempt to get them to fit into a strict idea of what is right and a mold that is extremely stagnant and inflexible to changing and adapting.

Some words that are heavily associated with White are peace, law, structure, selflessness, and equality.

Blue believes in seeking “Perfection through Knowledge.” An important clarification is that Blue’s philosophy doesn’t believe you can literally be perfect but rather that we should be constantly trying to improve and be the best us we can be(perfection here is a process not necessarily an end goal). Thus, in a way it can be described as attempting to achieve perfection, since what it’s trying to do is trying to get as close as possible to it. Blue argues that the best way for us to be the best we can be is through knowledge, information, education, etc. At the end of the day, knowledge is power and the key to being able to do something is to simply know how it works and how to do it. Blue believes everyone is a blank slate and that with the proper knowledge basically anything is possible. Now Blue isn’t a philosophy that’s dumb enough to argue that if you are born without wings or with bad vision you could just gain flight and 20/20 vision with sheer willpower. Rather, if you learn how flight or vision works you could do things like build a jetpack or create a set of glasses that could compensate or negate certain issues or even allow you to do new things you never thought possible. In Blue’s eyes, you only have one life so it makes sense that you shouldn’t waste it or ruin it by making shortsighted or emotional mistakes. Thus, you should carefully consider your actions and plan for the future.

One of Blue’s greatest strengths is probably the most obvious, knowledge. Due to the fact that its philosophy prizes knowledge and thinking it tends to be very good at utilizing the information at its disposal and it is less likely to make a silly or shortsighted mistake because it likes to keep the bigger picture, and the future, in mind. So even though a Blue character is capable of making mistakes they will at the very least decrease their chances of making a careless or not thought out action.

However, one of Blue’s major weaknesses is that it can end up being too passive and slow at times. It often sits around thinking and when tasked with making a choice it will try to figure out the best option. While this is often all well and good, sometimes this can lead to Blue getting “frozen” with all the choices it has. This is in the sense that sometimes they take too long to make a decision or act so they can end up not reacting to something fast enough, or in extreme cases just not end up making a decision at all. Sometimes the easiest way to get the upper hand on Blue is to simply act before it has time to think or formulate a plan.

Some of the words that are associated with Blue are knowledge, deceit, cautious, deliberating, and perfecting.

Black believes in “Power through Opportunity’’. This means that, unlike say White, Black believes that there is no objective morality and it prioritizes the self over others. This means that Black believes that there is nothing wrong with doing whatever it takes to win, no matter how underhanded, inhumane, dishonorable, immoral, or unlawful, and thus it’s priorities can be described as trying to amass as much power and strength via any opportunity that it can make or encounter. At the end of the day, Black believes that it’s power that talks and that frankly, the world is a ruthless and unfair place. While some of the White alignment may claim that those who are of the Black alignment are the reason bad things exist, in Black’s eyes it’s the other way around. People are Black-aligned because the world is full of unfairness and brutality which in turn means that it is reasonable that people do whatever they can to survive and gain power. Black isn’t always creating all the world’s problems more so playing with the hand it was dealt in life. It is also important to note that Black is not inherently evil and White is not inherently good. First of all, Black is amoral, which means that it doesn’t actually believe in any sort of objective good and evil, and second of all, from Black’s perspective, life is already hard and unfair enough as it is. Compounding that issue with a bunch of subjective ever-changing morals, limitations, laws, and traditions that you yourself or others put on you is only hindering you. Not to mention that at the end of the day, the only one you can truly guarantee to care about you, your wants, and your safety is yourself. No one else is guaranteed or obligated to look out for you so you should look for any opportunities you see or create and use them to the fullest without mercy or shame. You should do what is best for you and whatever it takes for you to survive.

One of Black’s strengths as a color is that, at its best, it can end up being the most pragmatic out of all the colors, and thus it will be willing to do what needs to be done to achieve its goals. Sometimes other colors may be unwilling to tap into a resource they consider to be icky, scary, or unholy, such as corpses that can be used to make a zombie army, but Black is a color that rarely lets resources like that go to waste.

Now, ironically this sort of ties into one of Black’s biggest weaknesses. While Black does think things out, it’s “nothing is off-limits” ideal can end up manifesting as something that leads Black to take a lot of risks and sacrifices in order to get what it wants. Black is one of the colors that are most likely to end up messing with stuff that people say you shouldn’t mess with for a good reason, and being willing to sacrifice things for an important goal can end up making backfires or misplays blow up in your face all the more. This means that sometimes the color that is most likely to defeat Black can end up being Black itself, since at its worst it’s selfishness, greed, power-hungry ideals, and “no line is a line I’m unwilling to cross” philosophy can sometimes end up shooting it in the foot immediately or down the line.

Some words that are associated with Black are power, self-interest, death, sacrifice, and uninhibited.

Red believes in “Freedom through Action.” That is to say Red believes that in order to enjoy life to the fullest you need only to follow your emotions/heart and do what it is you want to do whenever you feel like doing it. If you feel angry and want to punch something then punch something, if you’re sad and want to cry then cry, if you’re happy and want to laugh then laugh, so on and so forth. Red doesn’t even bother to promise that you won’t make mistakes or get into fights but in Red’s eyes those are just part of life anyway, so there’s no point in trying to bottle up your emotions or sit around scared to do what your heart tells you. I mean you only have one life to live so why spend it not doing the things you really want to do or not acting on the stuff you feel.

One of Red’s strengths is the fact that it often acts quickly. It often knows what it wants and because of that, it will often immediately begin taking the steps needed to get what it wants. It is a color philosophy that doesn’t like just waiting around pining after things and will try to go for what it wants.

One of its weaknesses is that it can be extremely short sighted or chaotic in a lot of situations. It prizes just doing what it wants and following, often fleeting, emotions which means that it may not always think through the consequences of actions or choice. This can lead to Red being bitten in the ass either immediately or down the line because it failed to consider the long-term ramifications of something it did.

Some of the words that can be associated with Red are freedom, emotion, active, impulsive, and destructive.

Last but not least is Green. Green is a color that believes in “Growth through Acceptance.” Green’s philosophy argues that one is born with all they need to be fulfilled and by extension nature has all we need to live a complete life, one just needs to embrace it. It believes that everything is born with a purpose, wolves are born to hunt, deers are meant to be prey, birds are supposed to fly and grass needs to grow. Now, it’s important to remember that Green does believe that things can change, as nature itself is something that evolves and changes over time, but in its eyes such changes should either occur naturally and/or help you better realize your role in nature and the grand scheme of things. If you were born a sparrow then that means you were born to fly and can learn better ways to fly for example. Due to these themes of acceptance regarding your place in the universe and the natural order Green is a color that is tied strongly to things like destiny, divine purpose, and/or many other forms of predeterminism. Green advocates that, instead of fighting against our natural place, we should simply accept them as they are and come to terms with the fact that there are things we just can’t change and some things we can’t fully understand. One cannot magically sprout wings if they are a turtle or become immortal just by thinking about it, and that’s just the way things are. Green is also a color that is strongly connected to the past, tradition, and history as one of the best ways one can figure out where they belong is to look towards the past. If you want to figure out what the role of a bear is in the ecosystem then you may want to look at how bears have impacted the ecosystem in the past or the role they played in the history of that ecosystem.

One of Green’s strengths is that its belief in the natural systems of the world/universe/planes often gives it a strong understanding and connection to nature and the things that occur in it. It is a color that can definitely really appreciate how nature works and the wonder nature can hold.

One of Green’s weaknesses is also tied to the fact that Green sees nature as the best thing since sliced bread. In a weird way, it can sort of end up putting all its eggs in one basket by being unwilling to try anything that it deems unnatural. It also means that if the nature it’s relying on is lacking in something or is too damaged/destroyed it may have trouble adapting due to it’s potentially go natural or go home style beliefs.

Before we move on I might as well at least touch on Colorless, since there are objects and characters that aren’t aligned with any of the five colors. Colorless, as the name would suggest, is the lack of any color and thus it usually represents something that doesn’t have its own ideology to speak of, such as non-sentient objects or artifacts. However, it can also represent characters who have sort of transcended the normal mana colors, such as Ugin as a spirit, or beings that are beyond the understanding of the Color Pie or normal logic, such as the Eldrazi. That’s not to say that a Colorless character can’t have a personality or some sort of value but Colorless as a whole has no consistent permanently overarching philosophy.

Colorless as a whole doesn’t have any philosophical upsides or downsides since it doesn’t have a coherent philosophy it is adherent to.

Also, for the sake of clarity, there do exist artifacts and objects with a color alignment, even if they tend to be less common than those of the colorless variety. These colored artifacts are either sentient while also having a strong adherence to one of the 5 color philosophies or are just heavily attuned with or connected to some color, or color combination, of mana for whatever reason.

Color Allies and Enemies

Now, earlier I mentioned the Color Pie and WUBRG(White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green) order. Well, let’s come back to that for a second. You see, each color has two of what are called allied colors and two enemy colors. A color’s “allies” are the colors that are directly next to it on the Color Pie while enemy colors are the two colors on the opposite side of the pie from said color.

For example, White’s allied colors are the colors next to it, Blue and Green, and its enemy colors are Red and Black. As the names would imply ally colors from a purely philosophical standpoint tend to have more things they agree on with the colors they are allied with and enemy colors tend to have a lot of ideologies that directly oppose their respective enemy colors. If we go back to White we can see that one of the things White prioritizes is structure and the greater good. Green also has a sense of right and wrong like White does and it also has a sense of structure about the way things are supposed to be. Blue also likes structures that can help improve things and spread knowledge, plus it has a sense of the bigger picture and understands that you shouldn’t always put your needs and wants above everyone else. On the other hand, you have Black and Red. Black argues you should always put yourself first and look out for yourself and Red’s philosophy is that you should follow your heart and do whatever you feel like doing. These ideals directly oppose White’s ideals of the greater good and selflessness(These are just brief examples by the way they aren’t meant to be super in-depth).

Now just to be clear, just because a color is allied with another color does not mean that those colors see eye to eye on everything or always agree with each other, and even enemy colors still have things they agree on. Furthermore, not every character that aligns with a color gets along with every single character that is of the allied colors nor do they hate all characters who align with their enemy colors. I mean, yes a Green aligned character is probably more likely to get along with a White aligned character than a Black aligned one because of the fact that in general people with similar philosophies about how the world should work are usually more likely to get along with each other, but this isn’t the end all be all or a hard rule. Heck, characters that fall under the exact same color alignment(s) can be diametrically opposed. Two Blue characters may have different ideas of what perfection they should be striving for and one White aligned character may have a different definition of what’s morally good and peaceful than another White aligned character to the point where they may become enemies, see each other as threats or just simply find themselves on opposing sides of some sort of conflict.

Remember, color philosophy, and philosophy in general, is not just a stock character personality. Certain overarching traits are more likely to occur due to their ideals but this does not mean literally everyone in said color alignment has them nor does it mean everyone within said color alignments embodies literally every aspect of that color. While the colors are archetypes they are PHILOSOPHICAL archetypes, not personality ones.

When it comes to ally/matching color alignments it helps to think of it this way. Does every person within a political alignment or party see eye to eye on every issue, do they all have the same exact personality? No, of course not. There may be some traits a lot of them have due to who their philosophy appeals to but they aren’t all carbon copies of each other nor do they all get along. A color’s relationship with enemy colors can be thought of in a similar way. I’m sure everyone has at least one friend who has wildly different opinions on how good a tv show is or a certain aspect of what they consider ideal for themselves, their community, or the world. Just because your opinions aren’t one to one doesn’t mean you aren’t friends.

To that end, where the color pie places each color is a sort of measurement for how well each philosophy sinks up with each other. A Blue aligned person or character can still have Red or Green aligned friends and family(just make sure to avoid talking about politics with them on thanksgiving). I mean heck, Teferi is a Blue, and sometimes White-Blue, aligned character that is in a happy and loving relationship with the Red aligned Subira, and White and Blue are about as opposite from Red as you can get on the color pie.

It is also important to mention that characters of various color alignments can rub off on each other in various ways without completely altering the alignment of whoever they’re affecting. You can have a Black aligned character hanging around a bunch of White aligned people and thus have them be more likely to follow whatever laws and/or rules these people make because they know that breaking them and getting caught might be way more trouble than it’s worth. Conversely, you could have a White aligned character hanging around Black aligned people who does something that could normally be considered more Black aligned or immoral due to things such as peer/social pressure without losing their White alignment.

We should also consider that not every person or character necessarily embodies literally every aspect of the color they fall under. Yeah, there are a few key aspects to the ideology which in turn makes the occurrence of certain strengths and/or weaknesses more prevalent or easier to fall into for those aligned with said colors. but not every White aligned character is uncompromising, and not every Blue character comes off as cold or emotionless to others for example. It’s just that characters in these alignments are more likely to fall into these pitfalls when compared to other colors due to their heavily moral and information-dependent values respectively, but it’s not universal or a trait literally every character will have. A lot of these potential shortcomings can also act as various forms of inner conflict, and not just an outer conflict, for characters.

Color Combinations

I might as well randomly segue into color combinations. So you don’t have to pick just one if several colors sound equally correct to you. Any person or thing can have anywhere from one to all five colors in their identity and all the various combinations that entails. Heck, as I went over previously, in Magic there are some things that don’t have any colors in their color identity.

Each color combination has its own philosophy that tends to be based on the agreements of the component colors. For example, Green likes understanding nature and watching nature change and evolve and Blue also likes understanding things, knowledge, and watching things improve. So when you slap these two philosophies together you often get one that prizes things like progress and evolution.

I should also mention that just like mono-colors, there are a myriad of ways that characters with these philosophies can manifest ,and there are no hard rules about how they act or who they can be. Also, the same combination of colors can manifest differently depending on how the two colors combine. Instead of combining the progress aspect of Green and Blue, you could combine Green wanting to understand nature along with Blue wanting to understand things too in order to get a character who seeks to fully understand and harness nature to its fullest potential…

or you could take Green wanting to preserve nature and Blue wanting to preserve things for the sake of preserving information to create a way of thinking that wishes to protect nature.

This is all without even getting into center and secondary colors by the way.

Where Colors Fall

Before we continue on, let’s quickly go back to the Color Pie in general and look into more of the specifics regarding why cards within Magic are put into certain color(s). For the sake of convenience, I have decided to make my own categories for the three general reasons that determine where a card ends up, Flavor, Mechanical and Mixed.

I already touched on a bit of philosophy and flavor earlier so I will keep my covering of the Flavor category brief. Cards that I have put in this category have their color identity based on the fact that the action, idea, archetype, or character said card is depicting is either straight up inherently a type of ideology or trait that falls under the philosophy of a specific color(s) or is something that is far more likely to fall under the philosophy of said color(s) than it would in other color identities.

Cards that fall under the Mechanical category are there because their colors are strictly based on their gameplay or mechanics(cards that have their mechanics based solely on the fact that they are part of a cycle could also be considered a subcategory of this type). I’ve noticed that cards in this category can have actions, ideas or archetypes that don’t necessarily align perfectly with a color’s ideology or method of doing something but it’s mechanics do align with the color’s gameplay identity.

I think a good example of what I mean would be cards like Baffling End and Fateful Absence. I’m going to be honest, I don’t really know what is inherently White-aligned about a poor motherfucker just vanishing for no explainable reason, but mechanically these cards fit into White’s ability to sort of “trade” with a player by exiling or destroying something they control and giving them something in return.

The final category is of course the Mixed category. Which is kind of just here for any cards that don’t fit cleanly into either of the previous categories.

I should mention that I don’t believe this is a perfect categorical system. MTG is very complex and nuanced at times so there are plenty of arguments to be made. For example, you could argue that Armored Whirl Turtle is of the mixed or mechanical category because having high toughness and low power does fit into like White and Blue sections of the Color Pie. These categories are a kind of simplification that is meant to help get some of these ideas and flavor or mechanic themes across.

Center/Focus and Secondary Colors

Due to all this talk about multi-colored alignments, I think it’s time to touch upon center and secondary colors.

A person or character can have one or more “center” and/or secondary colors in their color identity. For example, someone like Teferi might be both White and Blue but their center color is Blue and their secondary color is White.

Meanwhile, someone like Kaya has both White AND Black as their center colors. I’ve also seen center colors referred to as focus colors but they are the same thing.

So what even is a center color? As mentioned earlier, multi-colored philosophies tend to be formed from what the colors that make them up agree on. However, when you assign a color as a center or focus you will have the philosophy in question lean towards that color more. The best way to explain is like this, you have a White-Blue character and their center is Blue. So they value Blue’s philosophical goal of perfection and being the best you one can be. However, the presence of White as a secondary color sort of alters how they believe that goal should be achieved. In this case, you end up having a character who tries to achieve Blue’s end goal through White’s means and way of thinking. Thus, you end up with a character who is somehow using White’s structure or morals in order to be the best they can be and try to improve the world around them. This presence of center and secondary colors adds a whole new layer of depth to color identity and can be used to better understand multicolored philosophies. As you can tell when it comes to center and secondary colors you can usually break them down into a formula of whatever the end goal of the color is + what they believe should be done to achieve it.

Now of course, like with most things regarding the Color Pie, there are a lot of nuances to be had. So I’m going to save more specific talks about what different center colors can mean when paired with other specific colors and how they can manifest at a later date. Things like center and secondary colors can have exceptions or manifest in wildly different ways.

Mechanics

Now of course I can’t claim to make a series that will cover how the Color Pie affects Magic the Gathering’s keywords and mechanics without discussing how the colors themselves influence the gameplay and game design of Magic.

Just like how each of the colors and their various combinations have their own strengths and weaknesses from a philosophical point of view they also have their own strengths and weaknesses in their respective gameplay. For example, Red is pretty good at damaging creatures, planeswalkers, players, and destroying artifacts but it usually has a really tough time when it comes to having any way to deal with enchantments. Meanwhile, Blue has counterspells to stop things from entering the battlefield, ways to bounce permanents, and to draw cards. However, it tends to be incredibly bad at destroying permanents once they are actually on the field.

It’s important to remember that there tends to be at least one exception to these mechanical rules I’m describing. Sometimes the design team just makes an honest mistake and gives a color something that messes with what’s supposed to be a color’s weakness(es).

Sometimes the mechanical side of the Color Pie changes and what was once thought to make sense in a color for gameplay and/or philosophy based reasons gets changed, added, removed, etc.

One thing you should always remember, and I can’t state this enough, is that a color doing something it normally can’t isn’t automatically some sort of mistake or Color Pie break. Sometimes colors can do something but only on rare occasions, sometimes there are cards that let a color makeup for a weakness to some degree but at some sort of major cost or downside.

There are times where a set that a color is in has a theme that just ends up applying to all the other colors too. An example of this is Amonkhet’s or Innistrad’s respective heavy graveyard themes. In such sets colors outside of Black may also get more graveyard recursion than usual, in this case, it comes in the form of mechanics like Embalm, Eternalize, Flashback, and/or Disturb.

We’ll come back to Color Pie breaks and bends later. So let’s talk about mana and how it ties into the Color Pie and gameplay.

As you probably already know, in Magic there is a mana system. If you want to cast a Blue spell you need Blue mana, and you can’t just use Blue mana in order to cast a purely Red mana spell-like Shock.

This mana system creates an interesting interaction where players must fight two competing forces within the game. One force is pushing you to play with cards and decks that have as many colors as possible. This is because every color has strengths and weaknesses and the more colors you have in your decks the more likely you will be able to compensate for, and overcome, the weaknesses of each color. You could do something like use Blue to make up for White’s lack of card draw, Red to make up for Blue’s lack of damage dealing, Black’s -1/-1 counters to help Red deal with indestructible creatures, White to help Red deal with enchantments, and so on and so forth.

However, this force comes into direct conflict with the mana system because the mana system actually pushes players in the exact opposite direction.

Since you can’t use the Red mana produced by your basic Mountains to pay for your exclusively Blue mana Opt and you are unable to spend Blue mana to cast you purely Green Gigantosaurus you are encouraged to stick to as few colors as possible in order to increase the possibility that you will have the proper mana needed to cast the spells you need at any given time.

If you’re running a Mono-White deck you don’t have to worry about accidentally drawing a Mountain when you need an Island, but you give up having the presence of Red’s mechanical strengths in your deck and it may make any of White’s mechanical weaknesses in your deck that much more prominent. You are basically forced to choose between variety and consistency to varying degrees on various levels of gameplay. This helps prevent a gameplay situation where five-color decks are literally the only kind of deck worth playing in all forms of Magic until the end of time. These two opposing forces basically force(haha) the player to consider the strengths and weaknesses of each color while also deciding what is the most optimal way to make their deck consistent.

The colors also help give the players realistic expectations of how a match might play out the moment the first lands have been placed down. For example, If I’m playing against Billy and he puts a Mountain into play I now know Billy is playing Red and will likely have some form of direct damage. So I should be careful and play with those factors in mind or else I may end up being punished by having all my small and important creatures destroyed by direct damage. I should also be careful about letting my health drop too low because while a color such as White might not be able to finish me off unless it manages to deal damage with its Flying creatures, a color like Red can just damage me directly with a variety of different spells.

Now if Billy plays an Island I now know he’s playing Blue and that I have to watch out for counterspells. Maybe, I can trick Billy by playing a spell that seems to be important so that if he decides to counter it I can play the spell I actually need to win the game while all he’s out of resources.

One of the things that Mark Rosewater points out is integral to game design is restrictions and limits. To a random passerby, saying something like this might come off as confusing but it actually makes a lot of sense. Let me put it this way, imagine if Magic the Gathering had no mana costs to consider, you could put any number of cards in your deck(no matter the format), all colors could do literally everything else the other colors could do with no downside, you could pick the exact cards that start in your hand, and had infinite health. Yeah, the game would fucking suck. It is very rare for a game that has no limitations to have any point in playing it. Yeah, I admit that the infinite health example might be a bit extreme. However, even without the infinite health, the version of Magic the Gathering I’ve described would literally play out the exact same every time. Most people would probably end up just running the same deck over and over with the exact same outcomes or they would probably just end up putting more interesting limitations themselves via the creation of new formats. In this way limitations actually breed creativity by forcing you to figure out interesting ways to achieve your goals(As mentioned in “Lesson #18: Restrictions breed creativity” in the “TWENTY YEARS, TWENTY LESSONS—PART 3” article).

Marro has also stated that “To design a good game, you need to understand why your target audience wants to play. And then you have to design your game to match that objective” and at the end of the day we all know Magic is a strategy card game. Part of the fun of Magic is that it’s kind of like a puzzle. It leads to moments like “Ok, I want to play these colors and what’s the best way to do that?,” “Ok, I want to play this specific card, how do I build a deck that supports it?,” or “Uh oh, My opponent played an enchantment that damages me every time I kill a creature, how do I play around it?”

In that last example do you try to kill them before they can amass enough creatures to be a real threat? Do you focus on gaining enough life to counteract their effects? Do you build an army of fliers and try slipping past their creatures? So on and so forth.

Also, Mark does have a good point about the fact that limitations can create really fun stories regarding gameplay. I remember one time I was using my favorite historic Izzet deck and I just barely managed to win at like one health against a Mono-White life gain deck that had managed to get over 130 total life; it was just insane(I really wish I had recorded it. I’m sure almost everyone who has played Magic enough has at least one story where they barely managed to edge out a win in a spectacular fashion through a storm of luck and wits. Stories and experiences like this wouldn’t be possible without the limitations present in the general gameplay and the limitations put on each color.

Luck

I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent away from just mechanics real quick. It’s something that I feel is important to the game and helps it in many ways and yet it isn’t talked about too often. That thing being luck.

Now, luck in games is a tricky thing. Most people don’t want a majority of their games to be purely luck-based. As that would remove any possibility of using one’s own skills to win and would make any game that isn’t the purest form of casual frustrating. At the same time, there are times where you do want to spice a game up with some luck because if you don’t do that then the game would literally play out the same way time and time again with no variation(which would get boring really fast and limit replay value). The proper ratio of luck to skill in design varies from game to game depending on its genre, mechanics, and goals but I would argue that luck does in fact help Magic as a game.

First of all, there’s the obvious fact that it prevents games from playing out the exact same way even if you or an opponent is running the same deck over and over. If people had complete control over something like their deck order or starting cards in hand then there’s a good chance that after a while any games involving that deck would play out in the exact same predictable fashion. Which would mean that the gameplay is more likely to get stale and/or you are more likely to get bored of your favorite decks.

I would also argue that luck can act as one of the previously mentioned limitations that can be ever so important to game design. It is an obstacle a player must overcome or workaround. In deckbuilding this takes the form of generally trying to make decks reach a certain level of consistency in their function and win condition by choosing the proper cards. It can also take the form of using the cards in your hand in the most ideal or strategically advantageous way, forcing the player to think of the different ways in which they can achieve their goals with different hands or situations. This also applies to facing the same opponent, since said opponents will not always cast the exact same spells, creatures, and various threats in the exact same order, if at all.

Luck is also something that helps even the playing field. It’s thanks to luck that even a five-dollar budget deck has at least a chance, even if it’s small, of beating a finely tuned and more efficient deck. Without luck, there would be very little reason in continuing to play through a game of Magic the second you realized the opponent had a more meta deck than you.

The luck system in Magic the Gathering is definitely not perfect though. We’ve all had that moment where, for some ungodly reason, you somehow mulligan three hands in a row with one land in it and games where you could have easily won if you just drew that one card that should be in your deck. The point of this isn’t to say that Magic the Gathering’s luck is ideal or perfect but I would argue that it helps the game.

Considering Keywords

Returning to the topic of mechanics I think most would agree that it would be borderline ludicrous to talk about mechanics without mentioning keywords. What mechanics are is pretty self-explanatory, and they often have little unofficial nicknames based on the first card that was able to do them, ie Flicker and Lure effects(Flicker effects are those that exile a permanent and then return it under its owner’s control and Lure effects are those that force an opponent’s creature to block the creature with said effect).

Some of these mechanics and/or abilities are keyworded. In order to keep this as clear and concise as possible we will be using the definition laid out by Marro in his article titled “Keyword to the Wise.” Which defines a keyword as “a word or series of words used as shorthand to represent a mechanic. Examples of keywords would be flying, first strike, flashback, and morph.”

Magic does something very interesting in which it will keyword certain mechanics that are used a lot but it doesn’t keyword literally every single mechanic and it will sometimes keyword something in one set but not another. Well, why is that? Luckily for us, literally everyone and their mom has asked the design team why this is the case and Gavin Verhey actually gives a very in-depth answer to this question in his Good Morning Magic video titled “Why Doesn’t Consider have Surveil?”

For those of you who don’t know, there was a keyword that appeared in Guilds of Ravnica for the Blue and Black aligned House Dimir guild called Surveil. Surveil is a keyword that reads “Look at the top N cards of your library, then put any number of them into your graveyard in any order.” By the way, N is just a placeholder for a fixed number that can vary from card to card. So a card with Surveil might say Surveil 2 and a different one might say Surveil 1.

The example card Gavin’s video addresses is the card Consider. Which is an Instant that costs one Blue mana and reads “Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card into your graveyard. Draw a card.”

As we can all see, Consider is a card that literally has the Surveil mechanic in all but name. Which begs the question “So why not just put Surveil on the card?” Well, in the video Gavin gives us several reasons as to why choices such as these are made.

The first reason is that a majority of keywords that exist aren’t evergreen. Evergreen keywords are a list of keywords that can, and often are, used for any set or block no matter when and/or where it takes place. Some examples of evergreen keywords you may be familiar with include Flying and First Strike.

This means that keywords that aren’t evergreen probably won’t appear in another random set unless it’s for a cameo, in a product that is meant for veteran and experienced players(such as Modern Horizons), or if a keyword is well-received enough to warrant it being used again in another set or block that has the proper in-universe flavor and/or mechanical themes in said product. Gavin goes on to further explain that, like with most things in game design, there are strengths, weaknesses, and costs to consider when designing or implementing something. In the case of keywords that thing is learning the in-game terminology and jargon. Personally, I would say that Magic generally does a pretty good job of teaching players what various keywords do. They do this in the beautiful and efficient way of just fucking explaining what the keyword does on as many cards with enough space as they can.

This helps ensure that it is very unlikely that a player will encounter a card with a keyword they’ve never seen before in the middle of a game and being forced into a situation where they have to look up what it does, since they probably will have already seen the keyword typed out on another, probably more common, card or they can just read what the keyword does on the card itself. Of course, the opponent could probably also explain what the card does.

However, stuff like this also means that keywording an ability a player may never see again isn’t very efficient. Gavin rightfully points out that it usually takes more words and space to write out the keyword and explain what it does than to simply just write out what the card does without a keyword.

So there are some abilities that have no reason to be keyworded because their abilities have a short enough description anyway.

Also, every time you make a keyword you are requiring players to have to learn and remember what it does and how it works. So, being forced to remember something that would otherwise be just two or three words long anyway is not very efficient. If literally, every possible Magic ability had a keyword it might make things a bit more convenient for veteran players but it would make actually getting into the game super difficult since you would be forcing players to not only come to understand the game itself but also memorize a dictionary’s worth of vocabulary, what they mean, and how they all work.

Keywords are also used to show the important themes of a set, block, or faction. For example, if you see Landfall you will know that the set will probably care about playing and utilizing lands. However, if another set had only one card with a Landfall-like ability but no keyword it would help convey that even though this specific card cares about land it won’t be a major theme in the set.

So forcing players to memorize a keyword only to have that knowledge be used once or twice could end up confusing them because then there was very little point in making the keyword and they might be expecting a lot more cards to have those keywords if they’re being forced to memorize it. This also ties in with something that Gavin mentioned in his video “New Evergreen Mechanics?!” This being that when keywords that aren’t evergreen show up in a set they are usually going to be focused on in a decent capacity.

In that sense, keywords can act as a sort of highlighter that’s meant to help a player know what to expect in a set or faction and what they may or may not want to be playing. If you see a keyword like Mentor then you can guess that the Boros are meant to be aggressive with a large number of small creatures, since the keyword rewards you for attacking by giving you the chance to permanently increase the size of your creatures.

If you see something like Flashback in a set like Innistrad: Midnight Hunt then you know that said set will probably care about the graveyard in some form.

At the end of the day, keywords are mechanics so they can be just as flavorful. Firstly, let’s look at some of the ways that keywords not tied to specific Planes or settings, such as Evergreen and some Deciduous keywords, can be used for flavor. The keyword I will be using for this example is Flying, which is a keyword that reads “this creature can’t be blocked except by creatures with Flying and/or Reach.” When it comes to such a keyword, it is often used in two flavor-based ways. The first way is through the philosophy of each Color and the second way is more unique to the creature, creature type, or specific person/thing. I guess you could describe the second way as revolving around physiological, biological, magical, or iconic factors in one way or another.

An example of the first way is how Blue as a color gets a lot of Flying creatures. This ability ties into Blue being a color that often utilizes things like trickery, subtlety, or evasive means in order to help tackle problems indirectly or to help avoid being stopped directly by the enemy. So it makes sense that Blue would try to rely on such an ability when possible.

Symbolically, it also connects to Blue’s association with the classical element of air(which I won’t go into right here but I have covered it in previous articles and I will cover it again when I make an article covering Blue itself).

An example of what I mean for keywords that revolve around physiological, biological, magical or iconic factors would be how keywords like Flying are used with creatures like dragons.

Almost every dragon you see in Magic the Gathering has Flying. This ties into the fact that a majority of dragons you see in Magic, and media in general, have wings or some other way of flying. This helps the flavor and mechanical identity of dragons in Magic while also making sense for the creature and making that aspect of them intuitive and easy to understand for players.

This also connects to another point that Gavin brought up. That being it is really important to consider the imagery and flavor keywords invoke. Part of the reason that something like the act of dealing noncombat damage to a creature or planeswalker probably won’t be called something like “Burn” is because from a flavor perspective such a keyword is extremely limiting in the imagery it invokes. In the case of “Burn” it would specifically call to mind things like fire, magma, lighting, and other stuff that could burn you, and it wouldn’t make sense for every damage dealing card to have “Burn” associated with it. A card that’s just meant to be a strong punch or strike would not make a lot of sense for keyword like Burn, and this dissonance could be disconnecting or confusing for new players.

This is why the names of keywords are also important, I mean both Chroma and Devotion do the exact same thing but Devotion gives off a completely different vibe and thematic connotation than something like Chroma.

This also means that when someone is designing a keyword that’s supposed to be evergreen they often want to make sure that the name covers a wide enough amount of potential imagery to make sense in a variety of contexts.

There’s also the fact that when you keyword something you have to make sure the mechanic that is being named is cohesive and specific enough. The reason Gavin believes it’s unlikely that something like exiling a creature and returning it to the battlefield wouldn’t just be keyworded as “Blink” is because there are too many ways that said ability can manifest. Sometimes when you blink something it is exiled and immediately comes back, sometimes it doesn’t come back until after a turn or two, so on and so forth. So trying to label this broad mechanic under one word would be a bit difficult.

Oh, it’s also important to mention that which keywords are considered evergreen and which ones aren’t can change and evolve over time. Keywords such as Prowess used to be evergreen but have since been changed to deciduous at the time of making this writing. Keywords such as Ward have been added to the list of evergreen keywords as recently as the Strixhaven set. The reasons for why a keyword may have its evergreen status removed can vary. The mechanic itself may just be considered unfun or annoying(this was the reason for why Landwalk is no longer evergreen), or the mechanic in question has simply become obsolete because of a new mechanic that takes its place or the like(Menace replacing Fear is a good example of this).

Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Keywords/Mechanics

Three words you might have seen thrown around when people are discussing keywords, mechanics, and abilities are “primary,” “secondary,” and “tertiary.” These descriptors simply refer to how often a color gets a certain keyword, mechanic, and/or ability. Also, more than one color can be primary, secondary, or tertiary in an ability. For example, both White AND Blue are primary in flying. This means that White and Blue usually get fliers at about the same rate and rarities.

While there’s always a primary color for each ability, there is not always a tertiary or even secondary color for a mechanic. When it comes to multicolored cards they can use primary or secondary abilities of the colors in their identity in order to capture the feel of said color(s) but they almost never utilize the tertiary abilities of any colors in their identity, ie White is tertiary in reach but Mark says that the design team wouldn’t normally make a White-Black card with reach via the logic of “White gets reach even though Black doesn’t so this White-Black card should have reach due to the White part of its casting cost.” However, if the ability we were talking about was one that White was primary or secondary in, like First Strike, then it would be fair game for a multicolored card with White in its identity to have First Strike based solely on the fact that White has access to the mechanic.

If a color is primary in something it means that it’s the color, or one of the colors, that the ability shows up in the most. If it’s an ability that appears in every set then a color that’s primary in that respective ability will get the effect in a majority of sets, like how Blue virtually always has cards with Flying in every Magic set you come across).

In Mark’s 2017 and 2021 mechanical Color Pie articles he makes it clear that there is a wide range of what being primary in something can mean because of the fact that in Magic different effects and abilities appear in different amounts at different levels. A great example that he gives is how a color that’s secondary in Flying can have a greater number of cards with that ability than the number of cards with extra-turn creating abilities in a color that is primary in said ability.

This is because there is just a massive difference in the number cards made with an ability like Flying and the number of extra-turn-based spells and abilities that are made. Extra-turn spells in general also tend to be at higher rarities than Flying, which helps bring me to my next point. If a color is primary in an ability then that ability is more likely to show up at lower rarities in that color, i.e. it’s more likely to appear in common or uncommon rather than strictly mythic or rare cards. Colors that are primary in an ability can also have cards that are capable of granting said abilities to others, i.e. Blue being able to give creatures Flying.

If a color is secondary in something that means the color has the ability show up on its cards on a somewhat regular basis, but not as often as any of its primary abilities. Secondary abilities will not always be in as low of a rarity pool as any abilities a color is primary in. Also, abilities that are secondary in a color usually appear in said color within most sets but sometimes they do have certain restrictions or drawbacks regarding when or how they can be used. An example that is given to us would be how Red is secondary in Flying but it’s Flying is usually restricted to the Dragon and Phoenix creature types specifically.

Similar to primary abilities, colors that are secondary in an ability do have the ability to occasionally grant other targets said ability.

Finally, there are tertiary abilities. Colors that are tertiary in something get said ability occasionally and they don’t get them in every set. Marro points out that sometimes an ability a color is tertiary can go literal years at a time without showing up on any cards of that color. Similar to that of some secondary abilities, tertiary abilities often come with special rules or restrictions that limit when the keyword can be used.

An example would be how Black is tertiary in First Strike and while it can get First Strike on other things the keyword tends to be more limited to Black-aligned Knights.

Especially if the Knights are meant to act as a mirrored version of a White-aligned aligned Knight or the like.

Unlike primary or secondary abilities, colors that are tertiary in an ability can almost never grant that ability to other cards, i.e. a Black card that grants a creature First Strike is not necessarily impossible but incredibly unlikely and very rare.

Creature Types

Cards with creature types can usually have said type split into two subsets. First, there are creature classes, which are things like occupations, careers, jobs, and callings.

Then there are races, which is more of the genetic makeup or species a creature falls under. A majority of the sufficiently sapient creatures in Magic have one or more classes and one or more creature types.

Some examples of creature classes include things like Knights, Wizards, and Rogues and some examples of creature races include Humans, Vedalken and Vampires. Also, obviously, the way Magic uses race isn’t one-to-one with the scientific definition, because I’m pretty sure that would mean birds would be divided up into every possible bird species or something. Also, Mark has gone on record in stating that in the context of Magic the term race is reserved for creatures that are sentient enough to do things like hold a job and the like.

Well, whether dinosaurs are considered a race or not in the context of Magic, my point still stands. You have the creature and if it’s sentient enough it probably has a class, because I imagine things like antelopes don’t usually have jobs unless you’re on a specific plane.

Also, there exist cases where a creature type only has a class, most often this happens when making tokens it seems. I suppose these tend to represent summoning something that is playing a specific role while remaining open to the possibility that said role could be occupied by a number of different creatures.

So after reading all of this you’re probably thinking “Well that’s all well and good but why are you explaining creature types to me in an article about the Color Pie?” I would argue that creature types are actually pretty important when considering how MTG’s Color Pie works in the game and that they have a clear impact on each color’s abilities and presentation.

Some creature types, be they class or race-based, can have certain overarching abilities or mechanics that a lot of them share for flavor reasons and in order to convey some sort of culture or function those creatures have.

For example, most Angels have flying because of the fact that they have wings, a lot of Hydras have some sort of way to put +1/+1 counters on themselves in order to represent them growing new heads and artificers typically care about artifacts in some way.

However, to go even further some colors get abilities at certain rates purely because there is some sort of creature type that often appears in their colors. While Red is secondary in Flying said keyword almost only shows up in the form of Red dragons and phoenixes.

So one of the major reasons Red is considered secondary in Flying is because of the fact that dragons and phoenixes exist.

Similar to keywords, each color also has different creature types that shows up within them at varying amounts for various reasons, such as flavor, ideology, mechanics, etc. A creature type like vampires almost always has Black somewhere in their color identity.

However, in certain planes or settings vampires without Black in their alignment do appear, such as the Mono-White and Mono-Red vampires that are on the planes of Ixalan and Innistrad respectively for various flavor related reasons.

Tying back to the point about keywords, some vampires get keywords like lifelink and flying. Which are both keywords that Black has access to and it ties into the life/blood-draining nature a lot of vampires have along with their pop-culture ability to fly in some way.

Two terms you might have heard when people are talking about creature types in MTG are “Iconic” and “Characteristic” creatures.

Iconic creatures are basically the creature type that is usually meant to embody, epitomize or represent a color and they are often heavy hitting or splashy cards that show up in higher rarities than that of Characteristic creatures. Thus, iconic creatures tend to only appear about once to a couple of times in most sets. Think of them as the creatures that when a player sees they should give said player a sense of what the color the creature is part of is all about. For example, if you look at an Angel you will almost immediately be able to understand that White is a color that probably believes in good and evil and, it seeks to protect people, strives for peace and that it cares about justice, like many angels tend to do.

In the article “BUILDING A BETTER MONSTER” Mark states that iconic creatures must be creatures people already know, so Magic original creatures like Aetherborn or Kor tend to not make very good iconic creatures. So iconic creatures need to be 1. Well-known creatures and 2. Embody their respective color. As of this writing, the current iconic creatures are as follows: Angels for White, Sphinxes for Blue, Demons for Black, Dragons for Red, and Hydras for Green.

Characteristic creatures are what I would describe as the “lite” version of iconic creatures. While they don’t appear in literally every set, they are meant to appear more often than not. Just like Iconic creatures, there is one for each color. Well… except for Black which has two for some reason. Characteristic creatures are all humanoid, typically smaller than iconic creatures, and often appear at lower rarities than iconic creatures. Similar to iconic creatures, they tend to capture the “vibe” of a color in one way or another. The characteristic races of each color are Humans for White, Merfolk for Blue, Vampires and Zombies for Black, Goblins for Red, and, last but not least, Elves for Green.

Factions

As always before we talk about something we must first define it. According to Mark Rosewater’s “FACTION PACKED” article there are four requirements that must be met for a group to be considered a “faction” in a Magic the Gathering set or block. #1: The set has elements that, mechanically and flavorfully, represent various groups, #2: Each group has a mechanical identity, #3: Each group has a creative identity, and #4: The relationship between the groups defines the set.

Mark extrapolates on each of these points and I think it is important to at least skim over them in order to get a better understanding of what he’s talking about, starting with his first point.

Flavor-wise, factions can represent any number of things. It can be anything from students majoring in different things in Strixhaven, to the occupants residing on different worlds, such as how Alara’s shards once were, to different groups that are all living together across a plane, such as the tribes on Innistrad. While there are plenty of factions who fight each other, such as the two sides of the Mirrodin/New Phyrexia conflict and the guilds of Ravnica, there are factions that live in peace with each other, such as the colleges of Strixhaven. What the goal and identity of each faction can vary greatly, but one of their most important features is that one faction is going to have to coexist with at least one other faction in some way, and said world tends to be affected or shaped by whatever kind of relationship the factions have with each other in some way(because what’s the point of having only one faction with nothing else for them to bounce off of?). The contrast between the factions is also important, or else you risk them all just muddling together either mechanically or flavorfully with no distinct difference.

While there are many different things that can define a faction, they tend to be balanced around the color pie in some way. This balance can be as specific as a unique mechanic or gameplay style, such as the keywords of the Ravnican guilds and the gameplay styles of the Strixhaven colleges, or as simple as what colors a faction is made up of and has access to. Due to the fact that there are five colors in Magic factions tend to show up in sets of five or ten. They also tend to have access to the same number of colors but this is not a hard rule and factions, such as the ones on Ixalan, can each have a different number of colors, and there do exist sets and planes with less than five or ten factions. The color pie also tends to influence the goals, workings, and culture of a faction

One of the most popular ways to give a faction a clear and easy-to-understand mechanical identity is via a keyword.

Maro highlights the fact that while there are cases with factions having more than one keyword, there will usually only be one keyword per faction if there are more than four factions. This means that only one faction can have said keywords. This doesn’t mean that there can NEVER be a card outside of the faction that has that keyword, it just means that the other factions in the set or world cannot have said keyword.

If the Selesnya has Convoke then none of the other Ravnican guilds can have Convoke, even if there might be a card in some other non-Ravnican set that has Convoke.

Factions also tend to have a certain playstyle they lean into or gravitate towards that also helps reinforce what the faction is all about. If you were drafting a Ravnica set and decided to draft Red and Blue it is pretty clear that you are going to be casting a lot of instants and sorceries, and keywords like Overload and Jump-Start not only reward you for choosing to play instants and sorceries but also helps give you the vibe of a bunch of mad scientists tinkering with spells and magic in a manner that can sometimes lead to some destructively explosive consequences.

Sometimes a faction’s theme can be reinforced without the use of a keyword. For example, Strixhaven’s Lorehold college cares and rewards you for playing stuff from the graveyard which helps tie into how they focus on digging up history and the past while also setting them apart from other Red and White factions, like the militaristic Boros.

Sometimes factions will have strong mechanical themes that care about a specific part of the game, typically something the other factions they are in contact with don’t care about. The Esper shard of Alara cares about artifacts while none of the other shards do and the Izzet League cares about slinging instants and sorceries while none of the other guilds do. Another popular aspect of the game that factions can be built around is creature types. When a faction is built around a creature type a considerable chunk of the faction will share that creature type and mechanically care/reward you for playing said creature types. A good example of this would be the five major factions on Innistrad(humans, werewolves, spirits, vampires, and zombies).

One thing that is EXTREMELY important to not just factions but Magic the Gathering as a whole is the art direction and creative identity of the game and its groups. This is especially true for factions. Factions in MTG tend to have different appearances and names, unless the name is just whatever creature type a faction revolves around(ie. The zombies on Innistrad). Technically, names like “Izzet” have no mechanical relevance. It’s not a keyword and if you were to not put the word on a single card the cards themselves would still function as intended. Names such as these are still extremely important, however, as they show up in card titles, flavor text, and help make factions more distinct from each other and easier to identify. It’s easier to imagine the Izzet League and understand the type of people in its faction than it is to try to understand some nebulous group of Red and Blue aligned people. This also helps the world feel more complete and lived in and since the factions are more distinct it makes it harder to confuse the Izzet League with the Blue and Red factions of other planes, like the Prismari. Art direction is also important since it’s crucial that you are usually able to tell which faction is which at a glance. This is often done in the card art via wardrobe/uniforms, tools, weapons, expressions, spells, colors color palette, etc.

For example, the Izzet League is a group of mad scientists so their spells are often wild and experimental(often with lightning or energy shooting out from somewhere), their expressions are often full of strong/powerful emotions, and their outfits or designs are often asymmetrical in order to make their designs more dynamic or unbalanced. Not to mention that when they are depicted casting a spell they are often seen doing it with the aid of some sort of technology to help show that their technological inventions are an important facet of their identity.

(Costume and weapon references are from the “GUILDPACT STYLE GUIDE: IZZET” article)

The moment you see them you are probably going to get vibes like “exciting,” “risky,” “explosive,” “innovative,” etc., and you would never mistake an Izzet spell gone haywire for the bright, controlled, focused, and restraining law magic of the Azorius Senate.

The art of the Izzet League also has a lot of focus placed on their spells and experiments which acts as yet another way of subtly guiding the player to the fact that the Izzet are a faction that slings spells. As opposed to a faction like the Simic or the Gruul which clearly display creatures as their main focus.

With the Simic Combine, we see a lot of their mutant creatures, which shows us that they’re all about messing with your own creatures in order to make them better or bigger, and with the Gruul Clans we see their creatures often lashing out in order to attack or destroy things, which plays into their aggressive big creature-based gameplay(If you want to hear more about art direction in Ravnica, and Magic the Gathering in general, I would recommend Ravnican Artist’s videos on the subject- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrj4rH5XlhA&list=PL-gCV1NKMUP4g_Vtl9X3EMvd7zgv39HoP&ab_channel=RavnicanArtist).

How a faction’s community works and how each faction feels towards itself and other factions is usually clearly defined. The conflict between the Strixhaven colleges is usually a friendly rivalry, as opposed to any serious conflicts, and the conflict between Mirrodin Resistance and the Phyrexians is one where the Phyrexians want to forcefully convert all the inhabitants of the world into biomechanical abominations, and of course, the Resistance does not want that. Also, factions will often have a symbol representing their group, and said symbol is often put onto cards in the form of a watermark. Symbols, being art, also help to define or recognize the guild in the same way card art or a uniform can in order to give you a feeling of the faction’s general vibe.

Some factions also have things associated with them in order to make their Magic more recognizable or help symbolize certain aspects about them.

The lightning of the Izzet often makes what they do look more dangerous, erratic, unstable, and energetic while the Gruul’s association with fire, rock, and earth makes them come off as more ferocious, aggressive, passionate, wild, strong, and tough.

One thing Mark stresses is important to factions is that players need to be able to identify with factions. To this end, it is important that each faction has a strong voice, outlook, and point of view. “What are the goals of this faction?” “What is it like to be in this faction?” If asked, a player should be able to, at the very least, tell you what the faction represents and what their motivation is. For example, the Gruul want to protect the few remaining natural wilds on Ravnica and they see the city as a whole as something that must be destroyed so that nature can flourish. So at the end of the day, their goal is to protect nature and restore Ravnica to a natural state. The factions also need to be unique from each other, because if they all blur together due to having the exact same philosophies, attitudes, and the exact same gameplay then there isn’t much of a reason for a player to identify with any specific faction. One of the tricks Maro mentions using in order to help understand the feel of a faction is to ask what sort of emotional response a faction invokes and then capturing that emotional response in the faction’s gameplay and flavor. For example, if one looks at the Gruul the first emotion that comes to mind is probably anger or rage which ties into their extremely aggressive playstyle with mechanics like Riot.

The Izzet on the other hand are more excited and frantic which ties into them being encouraged to sling a bunch of spells or being able to suddenly pump one of their spells with a bunch of mana for a massive effect. Keywords like Jump-start can allow you to cast a spell multiple times which can invoke a feeling of excitement, frantic experimentation, or sudden spell casting and keywords like Overload create massive effects akin to an “unnatural” disaster or a massive experiment going haywire for your opponents.

The feel of a faction extends to not just the flavor but also the gameplay. There are the obvious mechanics and card abilities but there are also other questions that Mark brings up like “What deck archetype is it? What speed of play does it entail? What is its curve like? What game components does it care about? What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses? How does it win?” How do the Gruul win a game? Smash the enemy with big creatures as fast as possible. How do the Boros win a game? Go wide with a bunch of small creatures and attack with your army as fast as possible. How does the Azorius Senate win the game? By leaning into a control playstyle in order to try to restrain the opponent’s choices and win over time. If the faction is based on something the audience already knows about then it is important to take into consideration audience expectations. If someone thinks of a zombie they usually think of a rotting shambling undead corpse. So the Zombie faction in Innistrad is designed to have gameplay that leans into being a bit slower and focuses on overwhelming the opponent. When people think of vampires they often think of their blood-drinking. So the vampire faction on Innistrad cares about dealing damage to other players in order to mimic this. This is all not to say that you can never purposefully subvert expectations with faction or card design. You just usually need a REALLY good reason for it, or else you risk having a faction that doesn’t feel right to most players.

When it comes to faction-based sets it goes without saying that the relationship between the groups in the set is almost always going to be what a set revolves around. Maybe the factions are at war(such as the Dominarians and the invading Phyrexians), maybe they are all racing to achieve some sort of goal or objective before the other(such as the major groups on Ixalan), maybe the groups live in harmony(such as Strixhaven’s colleges or the followers of Amonkhet’s gods). While the specific nuances of the relationships between these can have a nearly endless amount of possibilities in how they manifest it is ultimately important for these relationships to have some level of importance to the world(s) they take place in. If the factions don’t mean anything or don’t have any real impact on the world they are in there is not much of a point in making them the focus of a set.

Now that we have properly defined a faction, and touched upon some of the things that make them unique or important, we should also go into a little more detail about the design of the faction in terms of set and gameplay design.

We have already gone over the fact that a set with factions is almost always going to have those sets revolving around said faction. But what do the factions themselves revolve around? Well, there are a few things that one must sort out before they go about creating and fleshing out their faction. What are the colors of said factions, what creature types do said factions have access to, and what are the mechanics of each faction? I’ve already touched upon this stuff earlier in this section so I won’t spend too much time going over these points.

Considering how integral the Color Pie is to Magic, deciding on the color of a faction is the first and most obvious step in design. Factions in any given set tend to be balanced in such a way that each color has about the same number of cards in a set when you add all the factions up. Although, Mark does state that the one big exception to this rule is two faction sets. Two faction sets are usually, but not always, flavored as one side fighting against another and they tend to give both sides access to all five colors, although not always in an equal amount. A good example of this would be Mirrodin vs the Phyrexians as both sides have access to all colors of mana.

The feel of a faction extends to not just the flavor but also the gameplay. There are the obvious mechanics and card abilities but there are also other questions that Mark brings up like “What deck archetype is it? What speed of play does it entail? What is its curve like? What game components does it care about? What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses? How does it win?” How do the Gruul win a game? Smash the enemy with big creatures as fast as possible. How do the Boros win a game? Go wide with a bunch of small creatures and attack with your army as fast as possible. How does the Azorius Senate win the game? By leaning into a control playstyle in order to try to restrain the opponent’s choices and win over time. If the faction is based on something the audience already knows about then it is important to take into consideration audience expectations. If someone thinks of a zombie they usually think of a rotting shambling undead corpse. So the Zombie faction in Innistrad is designed to have gameplay that leans into being a bit slower and focuses on overwhelming the opponent. When people think of vampires they often think of their blood-drinking. So the vampire faction on Innistrad cares about dealing damage to other players in order to mimic this. This is all not to say that you can never purposefully subvert expectations with faction or card design. You just usually need a REALLY good reason for it, or else you risk having a faction that doesn’t feel right to most players.

When it comes to faction-based sets it goes without saying that the relationship between the groups in the set is almost always going to be what a set revolves around. Maybe the factions are at war(such as the Dominarians and the invading Phyrexians), maybe they are all racing to achieve some sort of goal or objective before the other(such as the major groups on Ixalan), maybe the groups live in harmony(such as Strixhaven’s colleges or the followers of Amonkhet’s gods). While the specific nuances of the relationships between these can have a nearly endless amount of possibilities in how they manifest it is ultimately important for these relationships to have some level of importance to the world(s) they take place in. If the factions don’t mean anything or don’t have any real impact on the world they are in there is not much of a point in making them the focus of a set.

Now that we have properly defined a faction, and touched upon some of the things that make them unique or important, we should also go into a little more detail about the design of the faction in terms of set and gameplay design.

We have already gone over the fact that a set with factions is almost always going to have those sets revolving around said faction. But what do the factions themselves revolve around? Well, there are a few things that one must sort out before they go about creating and fleshing out their faction. What are the colors of said factions, what creature types do said factions have access to, and what are the mechanics of each faction? I’ve already touched upon this stuff earlier in this section so I won’t spend too much time going over these points.

Considering how integral the Color Pie is to Magic, deciding on the color of a faction is the first and most obvious step in design. Factions in any given set tend to be balanced in such a way that each color has about the same number of cards in a set when you add all the factions up. Although, Mark does state that the one big exception to this rule is two faction sets. Two faction sets are usually, but not always, flavored as one side fighting against another and they tend to give both sides access to all five colors, although not always in an equal amount. A good example of this would be Mirrodin vs the Phyrexians as both sides have access to all colors of mana.

Finally, there are the mechanics. As mentioned before, the easiest and most obvious way to give factions a clear mechanical identity is by giving said factions one or more keywords that the other factions do not have access to. However, one could also opt to have their own combination of keywords to set them apart from the other factions(i.e. having specific keyword combinations as opposed to focusing on the individual keywords being unique). The third way is to have each faction have access to all the important/unique keywords in a set but subdivide how each faction uses said keyword. An example of this would be the Magecraft keyword in Strixthaven. All the factions and groups have access to said keyword but they all tend to use them in different ways, typically varying on the color of the card and the faction that said card is supposed to be aligned with. For example, a Silverquill card may use its Magecraft in order to encourage you to be more aggressive and attack by temporarily giving an increase in the card’s power and toughness, or just its power, whenever you cast an Instant or Sorcery, or it may allow you to grant the card Flying in order to score in some extra damage that the opponent may have trouble stopping.

However, Witherbloom is a faction that cares about gaining life. So it may use Magecraft as a way to gain life or drain the opponent of their life whenever you cast an Instant or Sorcery.

So ultimately the most important attributes of a faction are its color alignment, what creature types it has access to, its mechanical identity, and its artistic/flavor identity. Also, while factions can be very helpful to a set by giving it a structure and identity a lot of thought needs to go into the faction in order to maximize their usage and impact.