Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1091: Colorless Design

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

In this podcast, I talk about how we design colorless cards.

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is a topic suggested for my blog. I'm going to talk about the design of colorless. So we're going to talk a bit about the history of colorless, and then I'll get into the philosophy of how we design for it. Okay, so colorless starts with alpha. So when Richard Garfield makes alpha, he makes five colors and he makes colorless. Now in alpha, colorless one for one went with artifacts. The idea being behind it is that artifacts were magical items and that any mage could make use of the magical items. Now I do want to point out from the very beginning

artifacts definitely had leaned toward colors not that in alpha you had to pay colors to use them but Gauntlet of Might made your red creatures have plus one plus one and your swamps tapped, not swamps, your mountains tapped for an extra red. A very red-feeling artifact.

Cormus Bell turned your swamps into one-ones. So there definitely were things that sort of leaned in a certain direction, but early on the idea was kind of what made artifacts stand apart. Their sort of defining quality. I mean, creatively, they were magical objects, but mechanically, they were colorless. They had mechanically, they were colorless. They had generic mana. They were colorless. They had no color, and they had a generic mana cost.

I should point out, by the way, that lands, also in alpha, for the whole point of the game, lands have been colorless. I'm not really going to get into designing lands today. I did do a podcast on that a while back. But I'm talking more about designing things that have a generic cost. So lands are colorless I'm not really going to get into designing lands today I did do a podcast on that a while back but I'm talking more about designing things that have a generic cost so lands are colorless I'm not forgetting that but I'm talking more about sort of colorless spells as opposed to lands okay so alpha comes you know oh the other thing that we learned in alpha you know oh the other thing that we learned in alpha was i think richard's idea of what was an artifact or not was just a flavor like this is this seems like it wants to be an object because it's an object it'll have a generic cost um things were not costed like when for example the never rolls disc is a card in alpha i think it costs one to use, four tap sack,

and you destroy all permanents. One of the things about Early Magic is the colors weren't super balanced. Have you ever heard of the Power Nine, which are like the nine most powerful cards in Alpha, in theory? The six of them are colorless, the five moxes and Black Lotus,

and then three of them are blue cards. Inception Recall, Time Walk, Time Twifter. So blue just had slightly better things. And so the early Magic metagame, if you will, really pushed toward blue. And one of the challenges of blue, one of blue's weaknesses is that it has trouble. It can't destroy things. It can counter things, it can steal things, it can copy things, it can bounce things, but it doesn't actually destroy things. So if you get a good board presence on the board, you can overwhelm blue and blue has trouble.

So it turns out that having a Neverall's Disc was very valuable. In fact, it helped blue, like blue had an inherent weakness and Neverall's Disc was very valuable. In fact, it helped Blue. Like, Blue had an inherent weakness, and Neverall's Disc answered the inherent weakness. Like, one of Blue's problems was, well, what if your opponent just gets a lot of things out fast, faster than you can counter them, and then you just, Blue doesn't have good answers, or at the time did not have good answers for any sort of mass thing. But, while Blue did not answers, never-else-this-can-artifact did. And so never-else-this-saw-a-lot-of-play. And it saw a lot of play not just in blue decks, but in a lot of decks. It was just very efficient. And so that is the beginning of our theme here

of one of the challenges of generic costs is anybody can play them. And so if you make a card that's universally useful, something that everybody might want to play, well, they can play. We will get into this. This will very much shape the definition of how we design for colorless. Okay, so the second ever expansion was called Antiquities. It had an artifact theme. Arabian Nights, which was the first expansion, had a 1001 Arabian Nights theme. So it's sort of the first top-down set. One could argue the first Universe is Beyond set. But the second set was the first to have a mechanical theme, and that was artifacts.

And I think every, minus the lands, which mostly tap for colorless, I think every card in the set referenced Artifacts in its rules text or what, you know, was an Artifact. Like, the word Artifact appeared somewhere on the card. And it really sort of, like, I think Artifacts became a pretty popular card type. I think there was something about them that was fun.

It was universal. Magical objects are fun. But we started realizing that there were just some challenges that we were coming into. So the next big turning point is we get to Mirrodin. So Mirrodin, this is, we've started doing, starting with Mirage, we started doing blocks. And then starting with Invasion, we started doing sort of themed blocks. Invasion was multicolor. So eventually we get to Mirrodin. Mirrodin is an artifact block. I was very excited. I pushed this for a while. We made a brand new

world, which was this sort of artificial world of Mirrodin, where things were made of metal. And it kind of broke stuff. So much so that we had what we called the blob problem. So basically, the way that it used to work back in the day, or still works, I guess, is we would make cards. And then if things got problematic, well, we had a ban list. We could ban cards. The problem we had during the Mirrodin sort of era was that if we made a good card, and because it was an artifact-themed set,

and we wanted cards that were good, some of the cards we pushed were artifacts. And they ended up being really good, and then everybody had access to them. So, it was hard. If we just banned one card, well, did they just play the other good card? You know, like,

all the good cards in Mirrodin, or most of the good cards, were Cullis cards. And so, like, in order to solve the problem, we ended up having to ban, I don't remember exactly, eight cards or something. A lot of cards.

A lot more than we had ever banned before. And it really sort of showed us one of the dangers is if artifacts are uniquely colorless, you know, generic mana, it's hard to push them. It's hard to make cards, because if you do and you make a powerful card, everybody wants to have access.

A classic example is we introduced equipment in Mirrodin. Equipment quickly became evergreen. And we just found that equipment was a little too much because if you made a strong piece of equipment, every deck could play that strong piece of equipment. So we struggled. Okay, now the next important thing to come up would be future site.

So in future site, that was part of the time spiral block. We did past, present, and future. So the gimmick of the future set was we wanted to hint at the future. So we had these future shifter cards that were just us toying with things we maybe or maybe not one day would do mechanically. They were glimpses into potential futures. So one of the cards I made was a card called Sarcomite Mirror. So it was an artifact creature, but it had a blue mana cost. Also, by the way, it was a mirror that had been Phyrexianized, which is a little hint of what was coming, because when we had been to Mirrodin,

we had very subtly stuck in that the Phyrexians were there. Very, very subtly. And then the plan was when we returned at Scars to Mirrodin, we had very subtly stuck in that the Phyrexians were there. Very, very subtly. And then the plan was when we returned at Skars of Mirrodin, you would see what had happened. And I will get to Skars of Mirrodin in a second. But anyway, that's a little teaser of that was coming. So I made the first ever colored artifact. I think that was the first one. The first artifact that just had a colored mana

cost. I had planned to get there somewhere. It seemed like a place to go. It wasn't so much that, as you'll see, we later got to colored artifacts more out of a necessity from a game balance standpoint. But when I first made it in Future Sight, it was just, hey, here's something new we could do.

And my intent was that I was going to introduce it when we went back to Mirrodin. But in the meantime, we had a set called Shards of Alara. So Shards of Alara, the premise of the whole block was there was a world in which it got broken into five pieces. And each piece had a color and its allies, but not its enemies. So what would white be like? What would a world of white manna be like

if there was no black and red to corrupt white's vision? And so there were five different worlds. One of the worlds, one called Esper, was the blue world. So it had its allies, white and black, but it didn't have red or green. And so the world we built was one in which technology had advanced so much to the point that they had whatever they needed. And so much so that they had adapted themselves, that they were able to improve on their own bodies.

And to capture that, I had a mini team. I was in charge. I was the leader of the Esper mini team. It was all Marks. It was me, Mark Gottlieb, and Mark DeLobis, the all-Mark team. And we came up with the idea of what if all the creatures in this set, not in the set, in this Shard, were artifact creatures?

What if the idea of they'd evolved so far in Esper, and then Esper had this sort of artifact theme to it, reinforced by the fact that all the creatures were artifacts? So that meant I had to take this trick that I was saving and use it in Shards of Alara. So it had... The Esper theme was very artifact based. It had a lot of artifacts in it, but the

artifacts were all colored. This would be important. We'll get back to that. Okay, we continue on. We make Shards... Scars of Mirrodin. So we finally do this set we've been doing where we go back. The Phyrexians are there. There's a giant war between the Mirrodins and the Phyrexians.

And the Phyrexians win and make new Phyrexia. Now, what I ended up doing in a new Phyrexia was the mechanic that Aaron Forsythe had made called Phyrexian Mana. mechanic that, uh, uh, Air Force, I think, made, um, called Phyrexian Mana. And we made it so that the, the, the cards that had Phyrexian Mana were mostly artifacts. So, uh, Phyrexian Mana let you pay it with colored mana or with life. Um, but again, we sort of leaned into this idea of colored artifacts. Uh, we tied it to Phyrexian Mana, so it was a little bit different, but again, you started saying colored artifacts. Okay, next up in our timeline, we get

to Rise of the Odrazi. So we've gone to Zendikar, and then we had World Lake, and then we had planned that year to go to a brand new world for the third set. It was the first time we'd ever done large, small, large for a block. And I think Bill's idea was we do large,

small, and then a whole separate place. The separate large sets, it's in its own location, its own world. But the creative team at the time was not staffed up like they are now. They could not handle multiple worlds in one year. So they said, well, what if we make an event so big

that so changes the shape of the world that we could reset the mechanics? And they came up with the idea of the Odrazi. And the Odrazi were these ancient, ancient creatures that were so old that they predated color. So one of the things we did is for the first time that I remember, we might have done this as a one-off, but we had a set where colorless was not equated one-for-one with artifacts. In Rise of the Eldrazi, the Eldrazi were colorless. And that included the three legendary Eldrazi, but also there was spawn to the Eldrazi.

And there's tokens that they made that were colorless. And so there's a lot of different things. Oh! The one other thing I did, I guess I missed this real quickly, is in Onslaught, which goes back a couple years, we did make the morph mechanic. And the morph mechanic made face down cards. And the face down

cards were colorless. Because you paid three generic mana to make them. So I guess I skipped over that morph was another playing in space of colorlessness that wasn't an inherent artifact. So I just realized I missed that. So I guess technically, Morph is the first

time we're experimenting as a theme with non-artifact colorless things. Now given they on the back side they're something usually colored, but at least on the front they were not. So that also was colorless things. So Rise of the Odrazi not only had colorless creatures.

Now, you know, Alpha had artifact creatures that were colorless, but it had colorless sorceries and instants and enchantments. So one of the schisms that we had made early on was that artifacts were the only thing that were colorless and that colorless things were uniquely artifacts of the land. As you can see, as time evolves, we start breaking that down. We start having artifacts that are colored.

We start having colorless spells that aren't artifacts. As we sort of explore magic, and magic starts doing more things, it starts divvying it up. Now, when we return to Zendikar and battle for Zendikar,

we had left on a giant cliffhanger with the Eldrazi, so we come back, there's a giant war, we decide that we really wanted to find the Eldrazi through closeness, we made a mechanic called Devoidid that allows you to have colored mana, but still have the artifacts, or sorry, have the cards themselves be colorless,

which is something we hadn't done before. Well, once again, we had teased it in Future Sight. There was a card called Ghostfire, I think, that caused red mana, but was colorless. So Future Sight was teasing a lot of different things like that. But anyway, in the second set, side was teasing a lot of different things like that. But anyway, in the second set, so, there was a lot of Cullis in this because the Eldrazi came back. In the second set, Oath of the Gatewatch, we introduced

Cullis as a cost. So, up until that point, up until Oath of the Gatewatch, if you looked at a mana, like, we had used the bubble with a number in it as a mana system to mean two different things. So, if you had a bubble with a number in it as a mana system to mean two different things. So if you had a bubble with a two in it, that meant either it cost two generic mana, or if we used it in the rules text, like if we used it in an activation cost,

either a mana cost or an activation cost, that meant it was a generic mana. But if we used it in the rules text, like tap a soul ring, produce two, that was generic mana. That was Cullis mana. But once we decided we want Cullis mana to be a cost, as we did in Oath of the Gatewatch, we then had to separate those two things. So instead of doing a one in a circle, we now do a little diamond. That's the Cullis mana symbol. But Oath of the Gatewatch allowed us for the first time to use colorless as a cost.

It turned out that colorless as a cost, there's a pretty high barrier from a structural standpoint. You have to make lands that can produce colorless. And the way that it worked in the Magic's past is I don't think Alpha even

had a card that tapped for colorless. There were dual lands that tapped for colors and basic lands. In Arabian Nights, Richard, for the first time, made what we call utility lands where the lands could do things beyond just tapping for mana.

And when he did that, one of the tools he did for balancing, although not all the Arabian Nights lands tapped for mana. We will later make that a rule, but that wasn't a rule on Raven Knights. Some of the time, he would have it tapped for colorless just because if you have it tapped

for color, it kind of has to come into play tapped. I mean, we later would have, like, losing life and stuff, but it's a clean way to have a card that doesn't come to play tapped and can do something is to produce colorless mana. We did make, eventually, dual lands. Ice Age at dual lands that could tap for colorless or

tap for colored, but it was pain lands. If you tap for colored, you lose a life. So it let you tap for colorless as a way to not take the pain for tapping for colored. Anyway, in order to do colorless matters as a cost, colorless as a cost, you need to have enough lands that produce colorless in a way that that can support that so it's a theme that we will do again um but something that is not easy to just throw in anyway uh next up we made kaladesh so kaladesh was our third well our fourth set with a artifacts theme, but the third one that had generic costs. So we had Mirrodin, we had Scars of Mirrodin, we had Kaladesh. And then, as a separate case, we had the Espera Shard of Shardzolara.

Mirrodin, horribly broken, caused lots of problems. Scars of Mirrodin, kind of broken, caused some problems, although not as much as Mirrodin. Kaladesh, again, pretty broken. Scars of Mirrodin, I just addressed, was not as bad as either Mirrodin or Kaladesh. Both those sets had huge problems. And we came to the realization that, uh-oh, like, generic mana is just problematic. That we can't push generic mana. Now, we can make things that I would call niche,

meaning we can make artifacts that are colorless, you know, with generic mana, that do really weird things, and maybe even powerful things, but narrow, meaning not every deck would want to play this card. But as soon as we make something that's sort of generally useful, everybody plays it and causes the problem. And we learn that time again and again.

Now, along the way, oh, but, notice, Esper, which was an Artifact Matters theme in which they were all colored, didn't cause a problem. Mirrodin, Scars of Mirrodin, Kaladesh, Generic Mana, causes problems. Esper, same

theme, but colored, didn't cause a problem. It really opened our eyes up to that the answer to, same theme, but colored, didn't cause a problem. It really opened our eyes up to that the answer to, I mean, either we stopped making good artifacts, we could just not make artifacts strong, we could, you know, cost them for limited and stuff, but if we wanted to make strong artifacts, we did, people like artifacts, they're popular, we need to start making them colored. And that is the move to that. The other thing, by the way, you'll notice in Strixhaven, again, we found a different means to explain colorless spells.

In Strixhaven, all the first year spells, like you declare your major at the end of your first year, you join one of the five schools, basically. But for the freshman year, before you do that, we represented those schools by being colorless. Those spells were colorless. The reason we did that is one of schools by being colorless. Those spells were colorless. The reason we did that is one of the values of colorless is when you're trying to do multicolor, actually,

colorless does some nice things. It fills in your gaps. And so it allows you, like, let's say I want to make a monocolor theme, for example. Well, and let's say I divide the set evenly, so I have 20% of each color. Okay, now if I want to play two color, well, I have 40% of the cards that are accessible to me. If I want to play one color, only 20%. It's just not very viable. So when we want to do themes that push toward mono color, we will add in colorless as a support. Also, ironically, sometimes, even with multicolor, we'll throw in colorless as a support. The nice thing about colorless is everybody has access to it.

So sometimes if we have a certain theme that we want people to have access to, like lessons in Strixhaven, we were able to put them in colorless. So that is a thing we do. So now let me get into designing for colorless, now that I've talked all about the history of colorlessness so the big lesson that we learned and we learned along the way of magic is that um generic mana

is dangerous and that one of the things that the color pie does for us is it says hey here's a powerful card but there's a cost I can't I have this color. There's five colors. I can't play every color. And in construction, most of the time I can play one or two usually. Sometimes you play more, but it comes at a cost. So if we put a powerful effect in a certain color, well only decks that play that color can play that.

So not every deck will play it. But if we make something that's powerful, that's generic, well, every deck will play. And we've done that in the past, especially with stuff like Mirrodin, where one of the problems of Mirrodin Black was every deck was playing the same bunch of cards. And the other thing is the reason we have color in the first place, the reason Richard invented color, was part of a trading card game is you want people to make different choices. You want different cards that have different value in different decks.

And a big way of doing that is to make things colored. So when you make things generic, it kind of undoes that and causes problems. And like I said, I get why Richard made artifacts generic in the beginning. It is super flavorful. And if generic mana didn't cause such play balance

issues, we would do more of it. Now we've decided we still do want to do some generic artifacts. They're flavorful. We tend to do a lot for limited and we cost them such that they're not going to be a problem in constructed. Or if we also make them, we also can make them narrow in ways where they serve a certain function but aren't generally useful. All that can still be colorless. And the rule is when you make something colorless, and by the way, we actually have somebody on the Council of Colors that each color has a representative. And colorless, which I should stress, is not a color. It is the absence of

colors. On my blog, my line is that colorless is no more a color than barefoot is a shoe type. But anyway, we do have a representative for colorless. Recently, we've started having them come from the play design team. We used to use colorless as our entry level, so like have people learn the ropes when they first get to the console colors. But recently, we learned that colorless

is really rate-oriented. What I mean by that is rate means how powerful something is with the cost it costs to cast it versus what it does. And what we've learned with artifacts is if the rate is too good and the card is not narrow enough, it causes problems. So the general rule when you design for colorless is you have to look at the colors and say, what color does this the worst?

And am I making sure that my costing is not undermining the weakness of the color that now has access to it? For example, one of the classic things is we set a line for destroying target permanent. Different colors, you know, red can't destroy enchantments, black can't destroy artifacts,

green can't destroy creatures, and green can fight, but green doesn't destroy creatures. They're not artifacts, they're flyers, I guess. But anyway, we wanted to make sure that we're not causing problems there, so we set a hard and fast limit, that if you want to destroy a permanent ink colorless, it costs seven mana, basically. We occasionally let you split it between the activation cost and the casting cost.

So sometimes we divvy it up. But basically, it costs you seven mana. We're like, okay, here's a point in which you can use it. One of the things that's very helpful for Cullis is limited has a power level that's much lower than constructed. And so we can design things and make them work in limited in a way that they just aren't going to be problems for constructed. So a lot of the color stuff we do, we do do with an eye for a limited mind because if something's gonna be worse than the worst color, well it's

tricky to get that played in constructed at times but in limited it can be very valuable. So a lot of our color, especially at low rarities, a lot of our color stuff is playing in that space. Now we do want to have colorless things that are C-constructed play, you know, things with generic mana. The key we've learned for those is it really has to be narrow in its function. It can be strong, and it can be a very useful tool. It just can't be something that every deck would want. It has to sort of lean in certain directions to do that. So when we make something colorless... Now, for example, recently we did the Brothers' War. And the Brothers' War was a look back, kind of a nod to Antiquities.

Antiquities was done at a time where all artifacts had generic costs. So the thing we did in Brothers' War is we said that all the artifact costs had to be generic but that we could weave color into the card. So you saw unearthed costs and prototype costs and other costs that were colored so that there were colorless artifacts

but to kind of optimize them you need to have color mana. And that was important. But that is a big thing in designing colorless is A, figuring out where's the function, where's it for. If it's for a limited, we cost it

for limited. And usually things cost it for limited, there's exceptions, won't be a constructed problem. What is good enough and limited is lower enough in power that usually in constructed it's not an issue.

We have to be careful when you're doing new things or new events or new effects sometimes. And the other thing to be careful of is we've learned over time that colors that really need help

on something are willing to dip. And so that's another thing when making colorless is understanding not every card is undermining a weakness. There are plenty of things we do that don't cause that. And there are things that we've sort of learned to let colorless do at a little stronger rate. We let colorless do land fetching. We let Colossus do land fetching.

We let Colossus do some mana production. Some of the stuff that we need to help with sort of mana bases, there's some support that artifacts can do. And because mana bases are something we're very, very careful with, it's easier for us to fine-tune things. And the other big thing is the more you do something, the better you understand the nuances of it. Artifacts can be tricky, but certain

things like artifacts for mana is something we've had so much experience with that we've really fine-tuned how exactly something can do. So we understand when making mana rocks or making land fetching stuff, we have a good sense of that.

I mean, land fetching, we want to be careful not to undermine green. But anyway, so nowadays, whenever we want to push an artifact, unless, like I said, it's narrow enough, we will put it into colors. That's a common thing we do now. Oh, you want to take an equipment and push it or just some artifact that you want to be a little more aggressive than normal.

The key to doing that is to be conscious of using colored mana. So that's just a tool that we have access to that we're very careful with. The other thing, so let me talk a little bit about the future of of Cullis, I'm at work but I get a few more minutes, I try and make sure even when I get here a little early that you guys get your full 30 minutes of content so the idea

of artifacts one for one Cullis is pretty much a thing of the past we will make colored artifacts we will still make Cullis artifacts artifacts that are Cullless with generic mana. Like I said, nowadays, either they are meant for limited or casual constructed,

or they're designed very particularly so that they go in a particular deck, but they aren't just generally useful. We will continue to make colorless spells, meaning colorless spells that aren't just generally useful. We will continue to make colorless spells, meaning colorless spells that aren't tied to artifacts. The Eldrazi was one execution of it, but that is not the only execution. We don't need the Eldrazi to come back to do colorless spells.

Shrik saves an example of us doing that. I think it's a matter of finding where and how to do colorless spells that thematically feel right, mechanically feel good, we will do more of that. Colorless as a cost is something I expect us to do again. Like I said, it has a lot of structural support.

Sometimes there's mechanics you can do and just throw in and it's not a problem. Sometimes it's like, no, no, no, the set has to support it. And colorless as a cost is one of those things.

I do think, once again, we'll find a place to do it that won't necessarily be Eldrazi. Well, we do tie Eldrazi to Kullus. So, like, if Eldrazi returns, yes, you would see them tied to Kullus. Maybe even see Devoid come back. But you were not...

Those tools are not inherently tied just to that thing. Much like we've learned that, like, Kullus doesn't just have to be artifacts. It can be other things all those tools are at our disposal and we will continue making generic costs we do like generic costs

actually I didn't even get into generic costs, generic costs on colored cards is a very different animal but that's probably a thought for a whole different time as far as generic costs I think I've given you the basics. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this little jaunt through history,

looking at sort of the nature of Cullisness and artifacts and generic costs and all that, and Cullis mana. I hope that was insightful. But anyway, guys, I am here at work, as I told you a few minutes ago. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic and talking colors, it's time for me to make some magic. So I, guys, hope you enjoyed today's little conversation.

And I will see you all next time. So bye-bye.