Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1043: Green-White-Blue

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

In this podcast, I start talking about three-color combinations in Magic, with today's episode focused on green-white-blue.

I'm pulling out of the gas station. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. And I needed to get gas. I've tried getting gas on the show before and it did not work out well. So I'm starting from the gas station today. I will make sure you guys get your full 30 minutes. But anyway, today's topic is green, white, blue. Yes, I'm finally getting to three colors. So I've done numerous podcasts on the individual colors. I've done podcasts on all the two-color combinations. And there's been a big request for a long time for me to do the three-color combinations.

I've been a bit hesitant because as you sort of branch out, you get to more colors, it gets more complicated. And I think, for example, when you talk about two colors, it's a lot cleaner what the overlap is. And we start talking about three colors, it gets a little messier. But I got a lot of podcasts to do, and I decided, okay, it's finally time to tackle this. Hopefully, I will do a good job. Okay, so the key to three color, which is, this is somewhat true for two color, but very true for three color is, when you make a three color faction or something, you need to center the faction in one of the colors. That one of the colors has to drive the faction.

Now, we've done two major arc or shard, that is what we call when you have three colors that are in a row on the color wheel as green, white, blue. So this is my first one. This is the white centered one. The default when you're doing shards is that the center color is the main color. The two times we've done them in Shards of Alara and in Streets of New Capenna we did that.

Bant was the white-centered, the green-white-blue faction in Shards of Alara, and the Brokers were the green-white-blue faction in Streets of New Campana. In both cases, they were white-centered. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start talking about the philosophy with a white center, and then I will get to the philosophy of the blue center and the green center. And that's the tricky thing about three-color is there's a bunch of different ways to do them. When I talked about two-color, I said that one of them could be the goal and one be the method, and you can swap them.

So there's two main ways to do two-color. But three-color, there's a couple, there's two main ways to do two color. But three color, there's three ways because you can have each one be centered, you know, different factions be centered in different places. Okay, before I get to that, let me recap green, white, and blue so that let's run over the basics

of those three colors and then we'll start getting into the nitty gritty. Okay, so we'll start with white since white is the center here. White wants peace through structure. White firmly believes that the goal of all of society is to look out for all of society. That, you know, everybody, you know, there's enough things in the world,

there's enough resources that we have enough for everybody. But we need to think about everybody. We need to think about the group as a whole. And so what White wants is White wants everybody to have what they need. Not necessarily what they want, because people might want more than they need, but that everybody has the things they need. And White is very, very focused on making sure that happens. And one of the ways White does that is by making structures,

by making laws, by making religion, by making things that sort of inform people, this is the right thing to do. Because White knows that people left to their own devices can stray, can get lost, and there is greed, and there's things that will push people in directions that will do things that aren't for the good of the group. So White is like, okay, I will make structures to help inform you and remind you what you need to do.

Oh, you know, killing people is bad. So I will make laws that say you can't kill people. And I will make religions that say it's morally wrong. And so white does a lot to sort of guide the community in the right direction so that it's making decisions that's right for the community. And the idea is if white is successful, then we are at peace. There's no need for conflict. People have what they need. And that white is really looking to try to make everybody happy. Okay, that is white. Blue is perfection through knowledge. Blue believes that you were born a tabula rasa, a blank slate, and that you have the ability to become anything you want to become. And that the key to that is knowledge. That you have to learn what

the possibilities are and learn what the ramifications of what you do. You know, blue is into education. Blue is into experience. Blue is into becoming the best person that you can be by using all that you have around you to understand what that is. And so blue is very much about mapping out the options and the choices and thinking through things before you act on them. Because, you know, blue doesn't want to make a mistake. Blue wants to make sure that it's very methodical because blue is trying to reach the perfect end state. And to get to the perfect end state, you have to do a lot to understand what is even available, what you can be. Okay, green wants growth through acceptance. Everybody else, all the other colors are trying

to change the world. Blue says, no, no, no, the world is great the way it is. And that the true goal of life is to understand your role in nature and how you connect with all the parts of nature and that, you know, you can grow, but you grow through understanding your role in place. You grow through understanding the power of nature and the glory and the beauty of nature and that your job as an individual is to understand how you fit in. What part of the cosmic web are you, and then understand your role, learn your role, be your role, be the best you can, and then support everyone around you.

Okay, so that's white, blue, and green. So now, let's start by assuming we're going to do it as a white-centered, you know, these three colors are white-centered. Okay, white at its core is about wanting to find peace. So let's look at white's relationships with blue and with green. So white-blue is very much about sort of civilization. It takes the blue's desire for perfection and marries it to white's thoughts of the group over the individual. Blue, left to its own devices, is thoughts of the group over the individual. Blue, left to its own devices, is very much about perfecting the individual.

But when blue gets together with white, blue starts thinking about, okay, yeah, I can perfect me, but also I can perfect my society. I can perfect, you know, I can, blue is very into technology. Blue is very into education. You know, there's a lot of tools that you can use to is very into technology. Blue is very into education. You know, there's a lot of tools that you can use to make a better society. And so blue and white get together and they start looking at civilization. They start looking at advances one can make to make things better. And so you get blue's perfection and white's peace that they're trying to marry to, you know, use all the tools that blue can offer to find what white wants.

And once again, when we're talking about a center color, that means its goal is center. So if white is a center color, peace is the goal. So blue is using its tools to reach peace. So how do I make a better society? How do I give people what they want? And so what Blue is adding to the mix is stuff like education and technology and, you know, things that can help upgrade the systems that White is building. And so between the two of them, Blue can help white sort of maximize the systems,

make the cleanest, coolest, best designed systems. Okay, white and green tend to bond over community. White believes in the sense of, you know, the good of all. Green is very much about, you know, the cosmic web, the interconnectivity. The green believes that we all live in relation to one another. And part of understanding your role in the world is understanding your connection to other things. Okay, so how do we do that?

Well, if you take the goal of White's Peace and adding green sort of push toward community, green and white is all about understanding the system as it is, understanding natural advantages, understanding how relationships work, you know, what are the synergies, how do we enhance one another. And so while blue very much is leaning toward knowledge and technology, green is leaning toward natural systems, natural relationships. Green is leaning toward natural systems, natural relationships, and trying to figure out, you know, when green combines with white, especially with a white goal, it's like, okay, how can we use the bonds we have, the connections we have, the community that we are part of, how do we use all that to make a better society?

And so with a white-centered world, and you can see this in Bant, you can see this in the Brokers, it's very much about, I want to make things as peaceful as I can. Now, the thing I should stress is, we also layer worlds on top of these things, right? Shards of Alara was very much about colors existing without their enemies. So Bant was about, imagine this white world, this white utopia, where white has its allies, blue and green, to help it, but doesn't have its enemies that are causing it problems.

Meaning that white can be as much as white wants to be. And so white, unencumbered by black and red, created Bant, which is very much this kingdom, you know, it's very high fantasy. But the idea is there's not a lot of conflict going on in Bant. The people get along and there's a general goal to sort of share in what they need. And that the community as a whole

is not distracted by a lot of the things that red and black bring to the table. There's no inherent selfishness. There's no inherent anarchy. There's a lot of things that black and red can do that make things go astray. But in Bant, because those are not existing, it's really leaning into sort of a white utopia. And meaning white being as much as white wants to be. Now the brokers, okay, these are families of demons.

And I mean, you know, that's very much about, okay, what does white find in that world? And white is still trying to find a sense of peace and that it wants things to be as orderly as possible. But there it is using its order a little more offensively, if you will, that it is using its sense of structure as a means to sort of control other people. And there, it's leaning on Blue's sort of ability to be tricky and control things and on Green's willingness to be a little more feral in its

nature. The brokers is trying to find peace in the world that is streets of New Campana. But peace there is if I make systems that lock everybody down and nobody can do but what I want them to do, well there will be peace. So that's another thing to remember is no matter what we

do there's the lens of the world that we're going to see it through. And so one's world sort of peace through structure is different from another's in the sense of what's the essence of the world. And streets of New Capenna add in a lot of darker elements that Bant does not have. Okay, but let's assume we're swapping things around. Let's say we make a faction in which white isn't the center color, but blue is the center color. Okay, blue is about perfection, right?

Blue wants to make the perfect system. So when your goal is perfection, white is using structure to help make a better, is using structure as a means for perfection, right? It's the idea of, I know where I want to go, so I want to make sure that I set things up, that nothing gets in my way, that nothing stops me from being the things I need. So in a blue system, white structure isn't aimed toward peace.

It's aimed toward perfection. So what that means is that it's using white as a tool to get what it needs done. That's like, okay, I want to have the perfect system. I want to do the best that I can be. I want society to be the best that it can be. The influence of white, by the way, does make blue think about the larger group.

The influence there means that in a blue, white, green faction in which blue is center, it still is thinking about trying to perfect the group as a whole. It's not just solely an individual because it's lacking the black that really pushes toward individuality. And so, but anyway, in that system, because it's trying to get perfection, it's using

structure as a tool, as a means to find perfection, as a means to control what is happening so that it can be the best that it can be. And in that system, in a blue-centered system, you see a little bit more of blue's sense of controlling the environment. That is something that blue tends to do because blue wants to be the best it can be. So it takes advantage of its knowledge and understanding how things are to press its advantage. But, you know, connect that with white and white's ability to control structure. And white and blue, you know, this is how you get Azorius, for example, in Ravnica, that it's very much about controlling, you know, making a set of laws and, you know, really sort of using structure as a

control tool. Okay, now blue and green. So green is very much about nature. Blue is very much about knowledge and perfection. So when you get to Blue's desire for perfection and marry it to Green's sort of love of what is, there's a fascination Blue has with understanding the systems and then optimizing them. So when you look at the Simic from Ravnica, they're very much Blue goals using green tools. It wants to perfect things,

right? So, improving upon nature, we talk about for the cynic. There is a version, by the way, of green blue where green wants to maximize, it wants to grow through acceptance and that the blue part of it is the knowledge of just learning about systems.

The desire to change the system leans a little blue. But in a blue-centered faction, where it's about blue, once again, blue would want to say, how can I take nature and the strengths of nature and adapt those and use those to become better? And so the blue-centered version of this very much is about I'm using the tools of white and the tools of green and the knowledge deemed from white and the knowledge deemed from green to maximize the systems that I'm trying to make, to maximize, you know, to be the best that it can be. And blue very much at its core is about changing things to be what they need to be.

Blue very much at its core is about changing things to be what they need to be. Now, the interesting thing here when blue is center is blue and white are allies. Blue and green are enemy. So blue and white, what they tend to share is a love of civilization. But green and blue kind of fight. Their core sense is a conflict, right? Nature versus nurture. You know, green very much believes that you are what you're born to be.

And blue believes that you're tabula rasa, that you can become anything you want. And those are somewhat in conflict with each other. So the one interesting thing about when you take a three-color faction and then you don't make the center color the ally is you have this weird dynamic where one color is an ally and one color is an enemy. Now, with any two colors, there's overlap. There's things they care about. As you can see, when we do two-color factions, there are overlaps.

But the interesting thing there is blue using white's tools to make blue better feels a little more organic to what blue and white are doing. Where blue using green's tools feels a little more like blue is blue and white are doing. Where blue using green's tools feels a little more like blue is absorbing some elements of green. And so that is an interesting dynamic that's a little bit different when you center. Okay, now let's center green. Green is all about growth through acceptance.

Meaning green wants the world to be the way it is. wants the world to be the way it is. So, Green looks at White, and it tries to use White's ability to understand structures to better understand the interconnectivity that it has.

That it wants to adopt White's sort of larger philosophy of seeing the group and looking out for the group and understanding the group. It wants to use that knowledge and that, use that understanding to help guide how to make it better.

I want to make a better world. I want to improve the world as is. Green doesn't want to make change. I mean, green's all for natural change and things can evolve and adapt. That's okay. But green doesn't want to add something to the system that is from outside. Like blue, for example, will say, I want to perfect me or perfect my people or whatever. And it will warp green to its agenda.

Green doesn't have the agenda. Green wants nature to be nature. It wants to maximize what it is. And so green is very much about stopping things that would keep natural things from being their way. So one of the reasons it might use white structure is to set up something that keeps people from doing it. Maybe, for example, I can imagine laws that if you harm nature or change nature, it's against the law, or you start a religion where it's immoral in the religion. You use the white tools to guide people, much like white tries to guide them to do what white wants. Green, with a white influence,

would try to use those tools to make people maximize the values that green has. Okay, you chop down a tree, you go to jail. It's not okay to chop down a tree. You know, that's the kind of nature we'd use. Green, when married with blue, would really delve into blue's ability to observe and gain information and use that information. Green would say, okay, if I want to make the best, you know, if I want to maximize the world as it is, I need to understand the world as it is.

And so Green would really use Blue's abilities to understand. And because Green is trying to stop those that are messing with it, that are trying to change nature, it would use the tools of blue. Blue takes the knowledge that it has, and it can be very sneaky, and it definitely can take advantage of things by, you know, warping people without them being aware that they're, you know, being taken advantage of. And that green with a blue nod, very much like green would want to achieve its goals in a blue, green, white way means I use the tools of white and green to accomplish that. I use the structure of white to say doing things that aren't right by what I consider right is wrong, legally wrong, morally wrong, whatever. And I'm using blue to sort of manipulate people in a way that they don't want to do the things I don't want them to do.

That I want, you know, a big thing of blue, by the way, is education, right? So part of what green could use is use the education of blue to make people, you know, help them think a certain way. That I want to, let's say, you know, nature is the most important thing. I want them to believe that to be true. I want them, you know, I would use my education to educate them and make them understand. And that tied with white structure would make a system, you know, so I imagine a green, white, blue system is a system where nature reigns supreme. There are strict laws and things that keep you from doing things against nature

probably there's a religion built around nature which it's immoral to do things that harm nature probably it has a big education program the idea is it's a world in which everybody in that world really understands we're all on the same page that we're being one and harmonious with the world. But we're using the tools of white and blue to make sure the rest of society is following those rules.

Now, like I said, the interesting thing of looking at this is the thing about three color is there's a lot of... the thing about three color is there's a lot of, it is hard to sort of talk about the three colors together without looking at the combinations of the colors. And like I said, the reason that I'm spending a lot of time talking about sort of their tools and their desires is as you mix and match colors, it really is about figuring out how the different colors use the tools of other colors to achieve its goals.

And that's just about where are you centered and what are you doing. The thing in general that I like about Bant as a whole, from a design standpoint, is that it is more about building up than it is about tearing down. You know, white at its core wants to make a community. Blue at its core wants to have some sort of perfection of its system. Green wants to have nature living in harmony. All of them, especially when influenced by the others, tends to be more about making the perfect society.

That white, green, blue wants to have something. Now, it depends whether white or blue or green are, you know, what goal you're using. But all three of them, when combined together, is like, I kind of want to make, you know, my own version of utopia. want to make, you know, my own version of utopia. Now, what that is, what, you know, what is guiding you varies a bit between which of the colors is pushing. But in general, in general, white, green, white, blue is more about saying, how can I make the best systems that I can and encourage people to push toward those systems? How can I make a society where, you know, people want to do the right thing? While there's a little bit of manipulation on blue's part,

mostly green, white, blue is not about making people do something they don't want to do. It's about getting them to understand why what they are doing is the right thing to do. That green, white, blue, no matter who is centered, it very much, you know, in a white-centered world, you're making a world of peace where everybody can live at peace and harmony. In a blue-centered world, you're making a perfect society

where things are, you know, maximized. In a green society, you're making something that is really one with nature and a society that is living as was intended. But in each case, all three versions of this for white, green, white, blue

do make, they're trying to make the perfect society. They're trying to live in a way that is harmonious and they're trying to use the tools. That's another thing, is there are ways to use the tools that can be a little more,

I don't know, vindictive, I guess I would say. It is interesting, though. The reason, I guess, I could look at the brokers for a second, is the brokers is a society in which it is not, second, is the brokers is a society in which it is not, you know, the nature of the world is putting sort of a dark element on it, right? The nature of streets of New Campana is, you know, families run by demons. So right there, you're adding an element that is not sort of core white, green, or blue, but it's sort of like, okay, given that's what we're doing, how does white, blue, green do that? And so, it is interesting when looking at the brokers,

yeah, they have some nefarious goals, but that's only because the larger world is pushing toward nefarious goals. And I think in the vacuum of that world, you know, they are,

the brokers are trying to say, you know what, there's a lot of chaos here. There's a lot of killing. You know, there's a lot of people trying to get what they want that people are getting harmed along the way. So let's make a system that gets us what we need but causes less harm.

And the idea that they use the law, that the brokers, like, use law as sort of a weapon, that they control things through the law, in their mind, in the vantage points they think about, is very much about, hey, can we make a system where we get what we want, because that's important, but we do it in a way that least harms society, that makes the best, that leaves the best system for the people. You know, in a world in which you use the law to control things, you're not killing people. You know, the brokers are more about trying to manipulate things through the system than they are about intimidating people, which, for example, other families are doing. So when I talk about

this, I mean, it's funny. I can talk about something in a vacuum, and then you can talk about it in circumstances. And like I said, both Bant and the brokers are very much green, white, blue, but are different in a lot of ways. And that's the other factor to understand when talking about this is because there's a lot going on. When you have three colors, you have a lot at your disposal. You have a lot of mechanics. You have a lot of effects and tools. You just have a lot going on.

So you have the luxury of sort of fine-tuning what you're using, meaning that how the brokers sort of use those three colors versus how Bant uses the colors, there's some variance that can go on there. There's more flexibility. I think that's why I was a little bit intimidated by three color is there's just more flexibility. When you have one color, well, you're very focused on the one color. When you have two colors,

you have a little bit of flexibility. But when you get to three, and it's one of the reasons we really don't do four color and five color factions, although I guess there aren't five color factions. There's one five color faction. It starts just getting so messy. You know, three-color is kind of at the tops where you have enough control

that you can sort of give a feel for it without it just feeling like soup. And when you get to four, you start to get very soupy. So anything else about green, white, blue? I do appreciate that when green, white, blue get together, and some of this, so one of the things, I guess my final bit, is talking a little bit about what the absence of colors mean, right?

So green, white, blue means there's not black and there's not red. In Bant, that's more important because the factions are defined by the absence of the enemy colors. Whereas, like, the brokers, black and red exists. And like I said, the larger world has elements of black and red to it. So it definitely shapes them in a way. But the key to think about, so real quickly, is black is all about power through the willingness to do whatever it takes. Relentlessness. So power through relentlessness. Black is sort of like, hey, I can do whatever I want.

I'm looking out for me. I'm very self-centric. I want what's best for me personally. And, you know, the way to do that, the way to gain power is just being willing to do whatever it takes, whatever the cost. You know, that I have to not be afraid of the things that will get me power. Even if it comes at a personal cost. And red, red very much is about sort of freedom through action. That I want to do what I want to do.

And I want to follow my heart and I just want to live in the moment and in order to do that, I have to be proactive about it and I have to be willing to do what it takes. Now, black brings an edge of selfishness. Red brings an edge of hedonism, of recklessness.

And both of those things, like when we get to the other color combinations, there's a lot of elements in black and red that can, you know, make but I think what Bant does is it's missing black and red are the

most me, me, me colors, right? Black is like I want to do whatever gains me power and red is like? Black is like, I want to do whatever gains me power. And red is like, I want to do what I want to do. And so black and red really have, they're the strongest colors that play up sort of the role of the individual and the power of the individual and the idea of looking out for the individual. So when you strip those out, when the two colors that are most about the individual

aren't there, that is why when you get to green, white, blue, it's a lot more about the larger group. It's the three-color combination most about the group, because the two colors that are about individualism aren't there. And so no matter which way you're focused, no matter whether it's white-centered or blue-centered or green-centered, it still very much is about the group as a whole. White, green, blue is about the group. Or green, white, blue. Green, white, blue is about the group.

And so that is, I think, the core element of, no matter what you're doing, no matter what world we're building in, no matter how we're building the faction, I think the core identity to white, green, and blue is this idea of, I am looking out for the larger group and I am trying to figure out how to make that group the best that it can be and use the tools available to me to make the strongest group. And that, that I think is the core of what green,

white, blue is. Anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed this. I have pulled into the parking lot, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I hope you enjoyed this.