Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1275: Aesthetic Color Pie

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

In this podcast, I talk about a specific aspect of the color pie and how modern design requires that we care about it.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is the aesthetic color pie. Now, this is not aesthetics. I did a whole podcast on the concept of aesthetics, which is slightly different. This is an element of how we look at the color pie, an aspect of the color pie that I've not talked about or not talked about in great depth. So today I will talk about it. Okay, so before I get into what exactly the aesthetic color pie is. Let's talk a little bit about color pie in general. So let's do a little history lesson. Regular listeners will know some of this, but this is important contextually to understand color pie. So many years ago, back in 1991, I think, Richard Garfield comes to

Wizards to pitch a game called Robo Rally. They aren't able to make it, but he says, what can you make? And they say, we can make a card game with illustrations on it. So, Rachel, I mean, Richard, sorry, Rachel's my daughter. Richard thinks of what exactly, what are cool cards with pictures on them? And he thinks trading cards. In his youth, Rachel really enjoyed trading cards. And he said, that's a neat concept. There are cards that come randomized.

Well, what if you could make a game out of them? And that was, he had this big epiphany, like, what if we make a game out of trading cards? Now, there was an inherent challenge in doing that. what Richard called the queen problem, which is if you were playing chess and you could pick your pieces, why would you ever play with a pawn or a rook or even a knight?

Why wouldn't you play with 15 queens and a king? One king because it's the wind condition. Why wouldn't you just play with all queens? Like why would you play with other pieces? And that was a concern that if, you know, Richard sort of referred to this idea as a game bigger than the box, right? That when you buy the game,

you get some of the pieces and you can choose which pieces to play. But if some pieces are better than other pieces, why wouldn't you play with the best pieces? Like, why would you play with substandard pieces? So Richard, like Richard wasn't sure he could solve this problem. In fact, when Richard first pitched the idea to Peter, Peter Atkinson, the president of Wizards,

he's like, I love this idea. I don't know if it's feasible. I don't know if actually I can do it. But he went off. So he ended up coming up with, two great ideas. I always remember, I have a thing I call the Golden Trifecta, which

is the three genius ideas Richard made would make magic. One is the concept of a trading card game. That's what he started with. The other two are these two items, which is the mana system and the color pie. So what Richard realized is if I'm going to let you choose your pieces,

I need to create some systems that really make different pieces have different value at both different times in a game and in different decks. So let's start with at different times in the game. So the idea of the mana system is that you slowly build up manna over time. So what that means is

a one drop is really, really strong and good on turn one. You're excited to draw it in your opening hand because you can play it right away. But a one drop is not particularly good on turn eight, turn nine, turn 10. It's pretty weak. It's not when you want to draw a late game. meanwhile a six drop is not going to turn one you can't play it but turn eight turn nine turn 10 hopefully sometime around there you can play it so it can be very powerful so the idea is

the mana system allows cards to be powerful at different periods of time that something could be good and the three drop is great when you're at three mana a five drop is great when you're at five manna like there's a curve um and it also allows you when you're building your deck to build into the curve, so I have something to do every turn. Now, the other important thing the mana system does is it separates out the colors. There are five different colors, and each color has its own type of mana. So if I'm playing a deck with just one color, I can be concentrated. I know, you know, that I will get to the colors I need. I mean, I can be, you know, land screwed, meaning I have a four drop, but I only have three lands. But when you're playing more colors,

there's the opportunity that I don't draw the right color. I'm playing a red and black deck, and I drew all my mountains, but I have black cards. Uh-oh. Now, if I'm playing a mono-red deck and I draw my mountains, well, maybe I don't draw enough mountains, but I'm always getting the color I need. And the thing about that that was really nice was,

it said, well, I can't play all the colors. That playing extra colors comes with a restriction that really causes problems. I don't have the ability to cast everything. So there's this nice tension. Now, added it on to that, now we get to the color pie. So what the color pie did that was really important is it said, look, there's five different colors.

The reason for five different colors is the colors can do different things. That if I'm playing a black deck, I have inherent strengths and weaknesses because the color black has strengths and weaknesses. There's things black does well. There's things black does poorly. There's things black can't do at all. And that's true for every color. So the idea is if I'm playing against somebody

and they might have issues that are easy for me to deal with, hard for me to deal with. And that is kind of what the color pie, the color pie, one of its main functionalities is it wants to spread out things to make... So if I'm playing a black deck, black cards are very attractive to me. White, blue, red, and green cards are not.

So let's say there's a really good blue card. Well, I'm not going to play the really good blue card unless it makes sense in my deck. You know, and if I don't have blue mana, if I don't have islands, well, I'm not, you know, or access to blue mana. I'm not playing a blue spell. And the idea is the mana system rewards you for playing less colors, but the color pie rewards you for playing more colors. That is a key tension. So between the mana system and the color pie, Richard made a lot of, it really solved the queen It said, okay, there's lots of different types of cards.

The last thing he did, by the way, which isn't one of my golden trifecta per se, but card design also can do that, meaning I can have cards in which they do something powerful, but only under certain conditions. So the idea is, well, this is a good card if I'm doing other things. If I'm not doing another thing, situationally, it's not a good card. So the idea that card designs can situation be better or worse than certain decks is another way he solved the green problem to boot. Okay. So he has the color pie. Now, the color pie has a secondary function. The primary function is its mechanical definition, right? I want shrinks and weaknesses. I want to make sure that certain colors can do certain things, but not be good at other things. Okay. Now, one of the things that Richard realized is that there needs to be a reason. Why are you subdividing, why are you subdividing the cards? And what he realized, and this came very early on, I mean, this was part of getting the colors in the first place.

In fact, when Richard made magic, he took a game he'd already made. So basically, Richard comes up with the idea of a trading card game. He then is trying to figure out, can he make a trading card game? He then took an existing game he had that was a card game, but not a trading card game, called the Five Colors. That's what he adapted to make magic on him, a different game he had made. The five colors, definitionally, by its name, the cornerstone of it was the fact that were five different colors.

And that's where the five colors came from. But the idea of the five colors, like I said, there's a mechanical component, but there is a very strong flavor component. Each of the colors represents concepts that are very uniquely their own. That the idea of white magic, blue magic, black magic, red magic, green magic, they each have different flavor to them. For regular listeners, each color has a philosophy,

a way of life, a way they see things. And because they have sort of an ethos, if you will, that they care about something, it allowed us to pick and choose mechanics that reinforced the flavor of the color,

the feel of the color, the philosophy of the color. And that feel is very important, which gets us to today's topic, the aesthetic color pie. So when we are making the color pie, yes, we are making a lot of mechanical choices. We want shrinks, we want weaknesses, and all that is built into the color pie. But there's a secondary purpose of the color pie, and that is flavor and feel psychology,

that we want the colors to feel different. That if I'm playing a blue deck, it just feels different, not just mechanically, it will mechanically be different, but that it has, a particular feel to it. Okay, so what the aesthetic color pie says is some of the divisions in the color pie are done

strictly for mechanical definition. Red does not destroy enchantments. White and green and now black can destroy enchantments. Okay, that's a mechanical definition. We are letting some colors of access to something. And once again, like with enchantment destruction,

you know, white is best, then green, then red. and not red, then black. So, like, white, like, white, if you're going to make enchanted instruction, singular enchant instruction, most often it goes in white. Green, for example, does do enchant instruction, but more often does it, like, in naturalized form,

where it shoots between artifacts or enchantments. Black is third. Black is not supposed to be as good. So there's, even though the colors that do do something, we sort of want some definition. And there's a couple different ways to get definition. one is a power level thing like enchantment removal

white and green are better at it than black black does it but it comes at a cost it's a little harder for black to do the rate is not as good that you know another one might be drawing cards blue is king of drawing cards

so blue just gets to draw cards black can draw cards but again comes in a resource I'm paying life I'm sacking a creature like something I'm paying some costs beyond it. Green can draw cards, but green card draw really is creature dependent. I'm drawing based on how big my creature it is or when I play a big creature or I'm doing something in which it's very dependent on what my creatures are. White, for example, started to do card

drawing, but White's card drawing is if I'm following the rules, I get small rewards. I can't draw more than one card a turn based on any one rule, but I can set up rules and follow them and then turn over turn. So build up my long game I can draw. draw cards. Red has impulsive draw, right? Red can draw, but red has to use its draw right away. Red, you know, red gets cards, but red is not thinking long term. So the idea is every color can draw cards, but how they do it, the way they do it, definitionally, is we want to separate them from one another. Now, some of that means that there's restrictions we put on things. Okay, you know, blue can just draw cards whenever, but notice the other four

colors, there's restrictions. I have to pay something. I have to involve a creature. I have to be following a rule. I have to be using it right away. Like, each other other colors comes with some restriction. So that allows us to give the needed ability of different things, but still maintain the flavor. Now, another thing that happens, now that's an example where we start we subdivide a little bit, right? Where we say, well, this color can do that, so this other color can do it, but some subset of that or there's a restriction

and there's additional costs or something. Another way we do sometimes is we divvy things up. For example, if I want to do damage to a player, I want to make my player go down in life, red and black can both do that. But red will deal damage to the player and black will make the player lose life.

There's not a lot of real difference between those things. I'm not saying zero. Any of the changes we're talking about, there's subtle differences. You can redirect direct damage. You can't redirect life loss. So the idea is red will say, you know, this card deals two damage to the opponent. The black card will say,

target player loses two life. those aren't that far apart mechanically and so that's where we get into the aesthetics the aesthetic color pie is about making the colors feel different such that not that they are necessarily always separated although it does some of that

some of the aesthetic is just carving out things to make things a little different and like with damage it's sort of like for example the way red kills things is it does damage to them If black wants to do size-based restriction, it doesn't do damage other than it can do drain life. So under a certain circumstance, it can do damage.

But in that case, whenever black does damage to a creature, it always gains life equal to the damage. Do three damage, gain three life. I'm draining it from you. That's the flavor. Now, if black wants to, where red would do two damage to a creature, black will do minus two, minus two to a creature. Now, again, I should stress, those are not identically the same. thing. They are subtly different. If I do give minus two, minus two a regenerated creature, it cannot regenerate, assuming it's, you know, too power or less, two toughness or less.

It's not, you know, so as we sort of make fine-tuning things, there's some, there's some differences, and it's nice. One of the things that's nice about the aesthetic color pie is it does make the cards actually play a little bit differently. That the fact that the colors have their own area of what they get to do is nice. Another one, for example, in green and white. Both green and white basically get power pumping, creature pumping. Green has what we usually refer to as a giant growth. We let green really pump as much as we want, although the kind of standard.

You know, the standard is plus three plus three. And green has a few things that can add. It can grant trample. You know, there's a few other things that sometimes hex-proof. And there's a few things that can grant. White, what we decided in white is, white does creature pumping, but we restrict white. White usually just doesn't go much above plus two plus two. But white is more likely when it does that to grant other abilities, to grant flying, to grant lifeling, to grant first right.

That it's more likely, so green is more likely to make you bigger, white's more likely to enhance you, boosting you a little bit but getting you other abilities. And once again, green can give you abilities. But, and the difference here is a lot of this is trying to make them feel different, right? Trying to make them feel as if, look, green and white both get pumping. But, oh, green just, it's a little bit bigger. Like, the nature of what it is just makes it feel a little bit different. White's more often feels like a combat trick where green, I mean, green often uses in combat, but it's sort of like, I make my creature significantly bigger because green's more.

but going tall, white's more, but going wide. Once again, we're just trying to make it feel a bit different. Another good example of aesthetic differences is the graveyard. Black is king of reanimation. So we let black is the color that can take creature carts in the graveyard and put them on the battlefield. But that's a pretty powerful ability, and it doesn't make a lot of sense that low rarities,

especially common. So we gave Black a lesser version of that, what we call Rays Day. raised dead is I go get a creature card out of my graveyard and put it into my hand. The flavor is I'm reanimating the creature, but essentially the restriction is, well, I still have to cast it. I got to cast it again. But it gets it back from the dead. Meanwhile, we let White get things from the graveyard.

Now, we let White get some things Black doesn't get. White doesn't, I mean, Black can only get creatures. We let White get enchantments and artifacts and some other things. But we do let it get creatures, and while occasionally at high mana, we let white get whatever creature it wants, most of the time we restrict its creatures. Most of the time it gets a small creature, either defined by, usually by its manna value, every once in a while by its power, but usually by its mana value. So the idea is white can get something, but it tends to be smaller.

Green, green, you know, starting in alpha head regrowth. Green is all about, you know, the interplay and the cycle of life. So it just felt really good that green can get things back from the graveyard because it really uses the graveyard as a resource. So we let green get the regrowth ability, which is get anything. Now, notice black is a subset of green. Black can't, like, if green can get anything, green can get creatures. But, and here's another element of aesthetic sometimes,

we don't ever make a mono green card that specifically just says get a creature out of your out of your graveyard. Why? Because we've given that field to black. Now, sometimes with that green, green either gets all car types or sometimes it gets permanent types. The green does get down on the graveyard,

but it's a matter of that separation, right? A lot of this aesthetic, again, is making minute choices that give a different feel to the colors. And as I sort of point out here, those differences are subtle and they matter. White's more likely when pumping to, you know,

it's less likely to beat a much bigger thing than it because it doesn't pump that much. You know, red has restrictions in that when you deal damage, toughness becomes a much trickier thing to you. Because Black has just creature destruction, Black doesn't, isn't reliant on that. So, like, different things go in different directions.

You know, Black just has creature kill. Red has direct damage. Okay, there's a feel difference between those two things. And, you know, even when Black does pinpoint stuff, it's a drain, it's a minus N-minus-N. It just has a slightly different feel to it. Another class example is, for a long time, we had Red had must attack and Black had Can't Block. Now, eventually, we realized that Can't Black just played better, so we moved more Camp Black to Red. But the idea then was, oh, I don't want you blocking.

Well, there's different ways to make that happen. Must attack and Can't Block. both help you from blocking. Must attack, because I'm always attacking, so I'm always tapped. Can't block, well, I'm not allowed to do it. Now, they're not quite the same thing. Must attack often has to attack

into bad boards and die where can't block that never happens. And, you know, the turn you play a must attack, it can block that turn. So, I mean, once again, it's not that the aesthetic pie doesn't have differences. They are, they're subtle.

Okay, so my question is, why does that matter? obviously we we do it because we want the colors to feel different and in the Council of Colors when we review sets a very common thing to say is oh well you know I want to make a green clone okay we have restrictions on green cloning green can clone its own creatures it does not clone other creatures and so if someone makes a green clone the clones your the opponent's creatures like whoa whoa no no no you know that

is the difference we have made. That we let do the subset. Okay, the reason this really matters, the place where aesthetic comes up the most is in hybrid cards. So hybrid manna was something that I created during original Ravnika block. It was a multicolor block and I was really experimenting with the concept of color. And it dawned on me that traditional gold cards are and that if I have a red and green card, what that means is I require both red and red and red manna and green manna. And as such, I can do something that red can do and or I can do something that green can do.

Right? I have access to all of red and green. But I was really intrigued by the idea of or, not and. What if I had a spell that said, well, you need red or you need green, but you don't need red and green. You need one or the other. Now, there's a big difference there. If I am red and green, I get to have all of red and all of green.

Often I get a combined one of the funds of gold cards is that I can have a card that I can't do in red, mono red or mono green because it combines a red ability not in green and a green ability not in red. So the idea of hybrid said, well, I know there's overlap. I know that red and green, you know,

red and green both have trample. That, you know, I know that red and green both have haste. There's things that red and green can both do. So it might be fun. from time to time to make cards in which either is possible. So that's the thing of a hybrid. When I make a hybrid spell, let's say red-green, I have to make a spell that mono-red and mono-green can make.

Okay, that's what set out. We put it in Ravnika. And when I made it, I knew it was a pretty useful tool. I didn't quite understand how he'd use it. But, so it turns out, in draft, there's a really important quality in draft. In draft, when you make cards, you need every card in your draft to be fought over. And what I mean by that is you need different people drafting different archetypes to want the same cards. Why?

Well, just use red-green. Let's say I made a red-green, a hybrid card that's red or green, but I really make it only for the red and, or, sorry, let's not talk hybrid. Hybrid will confuse this for a second. Let's say I'm making a mono-red card. And my mono-red card is really good in the red-green archetype. But it's not good in the red-white, red-blue, or black-red archetypes, right? Well, the problem is, when I am drafting, if I am a red-green player, nobody is fighting me over it. I'm going to get it every time.

So every draft I do, let's assume we're talking about a common, I'm probably going to see that card. Probably a common is going to get opened up in 24 packs, because there's three packs of eight. probably a comment's going to get up maybe multiple times. So if I'm the red-green drafter and there's a mono-red card that nobody but me the red-green drafter wants,

I'm going to get it almost every time. I mean, people might rare, not red-draft- I hate draft it, maybe, but most of the time I'm going to get it. So what that means is every time I play the deck, it plays out similarly because I always have access to the same card.

Now, if I make that mono-red card not just for red-green, but for red-white, maybe also for black-red. Now, people are fighting over that card. Now, if a card gets opened up, maybe the red-green players playing it, but maybe the white-red or the black-red. Different people could be playing it.

And so what means is that card gets different expressions, because every time it goes into a different deck, different things are happening with it. And so it's a really key element part of drafting that you need people fighting over cards, which means every card, especially at Common, wants to have multiple decks, deck archetypes that want that card. Okay, which brings us to hybrid.

So one of the things hybrid does really well is it makes cards more usable by more decks. And the reason is, if I'm, once again, a red-green hybrid card, well, now any deck playing red can take me and any deck playing green can play me. So let's say we have 10 two-color archetypes. seven of the ten archetypes now can consider taking you. That is a pretty big deal. So what has happened is you'll notice that we've started using hybrid more at low rarities. Why?

Because it's very valuable in making draft have more tension, meaning there's more things that more decks want. It's also nice. Hybrid's also nice because it ups the ads fan availability. If I'm playing a red deck, well, in a traditional thing, only 20% of the cards, and we have colors cards, usually it's less than that, but let's say there's no colors cards for a second. If I'm playing a mono red deck, I have access to 20% of the cards. If I'm playing a red-green deck, that means I have access to 40% of the cards.

But as we add in hybrid, now I start having access to more of the cards. It just increases the number of cards that are playable. So what we've found is hybrid does this really nice thing for limited. So we've been leaning into that. There's a small problem. Hybrid design space is only so big. In any two colors, yes, every pair of colors has some overlaps. They exist.

But as we make more and more hybrid cards, look, there's only so many overlaps they have. Now, obviously, we can reprint things. One of the rules we've learned is you don't need to make a new card if an existing card solves your problem. So, yes, we do a lot of reprinting of hybrid cards. But in general, one of the problems we came to, and this was an issue that color consoles had to deal with, is there was a lot of desire for hybrid. Hybrid is a somewhat restricted design space. How do we solve that? Well, it brings us to the aesthetic color pie.

So the idea is, so let's say, for example, I'm making a black, green card. What can black and green do? Well, one of the things that we can do is what if we take an ability that one of the colors has that's a restricted version of the other color? I'll take raised dead. Black can raise dead. Green can giant growth. Well, if green can giant growth, not giant growth, sorry, can regrowth.

Black can raise dead, green can regrowth. Well, if green can regrowth, it can raise dead. The card it gets can be a creature. So it's not as if we let green get a creature out of the discard pile that we're violating green. It's not a break or anything. It's something green can do. The separation is aesthetics. And that is important.

But what we said in hybrid is maybe the place we can go to get more space for hybrid is the aesthetic color pie. So what if we said in hybrid black green, we let hybrid green raise dead? And the key there is because the aesthetic color pie is not about mechanical definition, I mean, it is for flavor, but not for...

Like, there's no break. Letting green get a raised ad is not a breaking green. It's not something green can't fundamentally do. We don't do it in green because of aesthetics. And what we said is, okay, when the one nice thing about a hybrid card is even though you can play black or green for it in this example, it's still a black and green card. It gets to have sort of the flavor of both black and green.

So if the card that lets you get a creature card out of a graveyard, it is not a mono green card that lets you do that. It's a card that lets you do it in a mono green deck with just green mana, but that's the important difference. A lot of the reasons for the aesthetic color pie is we want colors to feel. certain way. But because the hybrid cards overlap that, that a hybrid card, like a hybrid black green card, half the card is black. Now, I understand. You can put it in a monogreen deck. You can pay it with green. But it still is not perceived the same way as a monogreen card. So what we said is, look, as we're trying to expand hybrid space, the place we can look and should look is the aesthetic color pie. Now, once again, like anything, there's a range. Rays Dead is a good example where

green can do something that encompasses all of that. For example, we do let green pump do small pumps, like plus two, plus two. That's the overlap with white. Green and white can both do that. We do let, you know, green can copy its own creatures. Well, blue can copy its own creatures. I mean, blue can copy anything, but a subset can copy its own creatures. So we do allow that.

We do allow subsets. We're like, okay, we don't normally do the smaller version for aesthetic reasons, but obviously you can do it. Sometimes we'll also play in the space like red and black damage, where red does direct damage to the opponent, black does life lots. Well, it's not as if black can't do damage. We let black can drain the opponent. So the idea of black doing damage to the opponent, it's not, once again, it's not a break in any way. Black can do damage to the opponent. Normally for static reasons, we make it a drain, but in a hybrid card where red can, this is how Red does it.

black can do that. Like that, we can look for stuff like that. And the other category, and this gets a little bit more into bend, but something we're looking at is, what if something, and this is hypothetical, blue, for example, gets unblockability. Blue can just get creatures to say, I can't be blocked.

If you're combining it with another color that has another, like, a restrictive, like something like menace. I don't, I think there's a blue menace card back in like Ice Age or something. We've not made a blue card with menace, but if we were making a hybrid card that, let's say, was blue black, black is king of menace. Blue does not do menace, but here's the hypothetical, blue can get unblockable, you know, like blue can just get creatures. And so let's say this is a smaller creature, not a big creature, but a smaller creature is like, well, it's not exactly what blue does. does, but it's in the space.

I mean, once again, this is technically a bend, but it's a light bend. And so when we're looking in hybrid, that's the other place we're sort of looking at is, can you, are there light bends, are the things where this color doesn't do that exactly, but it's not as if it's undermining something. It's not if it's just playing the space that it can't do.

And so that is where the aesthetic pies has recently become really interesting is we're looking at it as a means to expand hybrid because hybrid needs more design space. But, and anyway, that is why I want to talk about it today. It's something we talk about a lot in council colors, that when we talk about when we're talking about sort of us doing something in a secondary color, then it's normally done in.

It's a matter of, are we breaking aesthetics or not? If it's in normal colors, we're very careful about our aesthetics. It's not that we never do bends in monololors, but like, if something doesn't normally do it, we really want to avoid it because the feel of it is important. But in hybrid space and in some level in multi-color space, that is where we have a little bit more relaxing of that. And the reason it's important, the reason I bring it up is because of this discovery in the hybrid space, we've been spending a lot more time with the mere concept of this is an aesthetic difference. And so I decided to do a podcast on it because that difference, for a long time, wasn't a giant deal.

Don't mix the colors. Whether it was aesthetic or was mechanical definition, it didn't matter. Don't do it. But now that we're playing in hybrid space, there is a difference where we are much more willing to do aesthetic stuff than we are mechanical definition stuff. So anyway, that is why I brought it up today. So I know you guys like getting into the minutia and I love color pie. So minutia and color pie, my, makes for a good podcast. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoy it today.

but I am at work so we all know what that means it means at the end of my drive to work so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic I'll see you all next time bye-bye