Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #679: Changing the Color Pie

Episode Date: October 11, 2019

In this podcast, I discuss when, how, and why we make changes to the color pie.

Okay, I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. I'm going to drop off my daughter at work. Okay, so today I'm a little farther away from home than normal because my daughter works the opposite direction from work. So we have a little bit longer podcast today. So I picked a topic that I thought I could talk about for a little bit longer. And that is the color pie! I love talking about the color pie, obviously, for those that, for new listeners that have not listened to my show before.

Okay, so I'm going to, I actually have talked about the color pie in general before. I did three podcasts on what I call the golden trifecta, which are Richard Garfield's three genius ideas that got created when magic was made. So this one specifically

is on doing new things in the color pie. So today I'm going to talk about how do we do something new in the color pie? And there are three ways that I can come up with that could happen. Maybe as I'm talking today I'll come up with a fourth way. But there's three ways. So there's three different ways that you can get something in a color that it's never been before. So let's walk through those.

So way number one is what we'll call a bend, which is, well, let me give you the short version. I'll give you the long version. So short version is we're playing in space and we want to do something because we're in a certain theme. And so we push things into colors that don't normally do them. That's a bend. A break is when we push something into colors that undermines its weakness. So breaks we don't like to do. Bends we're willing to do.

Although even bends, we want to make sure we don't do too many bends. Number two is we come up with a brand new ability we've never done before. So we have to pick a color for it that it hasn't been in. It's never existed before. And number three is when we make a conscious decision to move something in the color pie. And I'll talk about when and how we do that. So those are the three ways that you get something in the color pie that's not been there before. And so we're going to walk through all three of those to sort of talk about how those happen. Okay, so we're going to start with bends.

So, for example, let's say we are doing War of the Spark, and there's a planeswalker theme in the set. Well, maybe we want to care about planeswalkers in ways we haven't before. Maybe we want to let colors go interact with planeswalkers in a new way. Or maybe we're doing a graveyard set. And normally, you know, black and green and white a little bit deal with the graveyard. But blue and red don't deal as much with the graveyard. And we want to play up that theme. You know, the idea of a bend is whatever the set is doing and we're pushing towards, we'd like to let all the colors have some access to the major theme.

But not all colors naturally necessarily do that. And so it requires us sort of pushing in that direction. You know, when we're in an artifact world, we've got to push toward carrying about artifacts. When we're in an enchantment world, we've got to push toward carrying about enchantments. Wherever we are, we have to find ways to do that. And usually the key to that is, when we're trying to do a bend, is try to stay true to the essence of what the color is. So, for example, I'll use graveyard just as a clean example. We were trying to find things for red and blue to do.

Like, for example, in the graveyard, black is number one about the graveyard, green's number two. So black and green naturally, just every set, have some interaction with the graveyard. Black's going to raise dead and reanimate, and green's going to regrowth, and maybe have a creature come back from the graveyard. White, we do every once in a while.

White will sometimes bring back small things from the graveyard. But blue and red don't do a lot in the graveyard. So when we're trying to do a graveyard set, we're like, okay, well, what could blue or red do in the graveyard? So one of the things, for example, that pops up is they're the colors that care more about spells, more about instants and sorceries. Okay, well, maybe this is the place where they're getting back spells from the graveyard.

So, for example, we made a cycle of cards in an odyssey, which was a graveyard set, where it entered the battlefield and returns a card from the graveyard of the appropriate type. Well, black obviously had Gravedigger, right? It went and got a creature. But it's like, what are other colors going to do? And that's when we start looking and saying,

okay, well, what would different colors get out of the graveyard? And white's like, oh, well, white could get an enchantment or an artifact. Blue could get an instant. Red could get a sorcery. I think green got land. Although green can do regrowth, so green really can do anything.

But when we divvy them up, we let green have land. So the idea essentially is when you're trying to do something and when you're bending something, you sort of want to figure out, well, I want to do something that feels natural for the color I'm putting it into. So I'm not trying to sort of reinvent the wheel or reinvent the color pie, reinvent the color wheel. I'm trying to figure out how to do something that plays in natural space. So I care about the graveyard and I'm in red and blue. Well, maybe I care about spells. You know, maybe I care about

casting spells at the graveyard. You know, blue, for example, also has some affinity for artifacts. Maybe blue can get artifacts out of the graveyard. Or maybe, for example, there's things that interact with the graveyard in some way. Now, for example, in Odyssey, we flashback introduced. That's the first set that had flashback. And we made a conscious choice to go, oh, well, blue, for example, is a spell color, as is red. Maybe blue and red will just have more flashback spells. That's the mechanic that we put in the set.

And because it was a new mechanic, we had some flexibility where to put it. But okay, well, maybe we'll care more about this thing. And another way you can do the bend sometimes is look at what the set is doing you know look at where the set is reaching and sort of push in those directions you're like War of the Spark

okay we care about planeswalkers we don't normally get to care about planeswalkers normally in a set there's only three mythic rare planeswalkers well it's very hard to make common cards that refer to planeswalkers when there's just not that many planeswalkers and so a lot of what we would do is we'd say, oh, I want to reference a creature. Oh, wait, wait, could I say creature or planeswalker? You know, so sometimes, well, we can bend by just extending normal effects, but letting it affect something it

doesn't normally do. Like, for example, you know, when you are caring about your theme, you're just looking for opportunities to take cards you normally take and care about it a little different. Here's another example. We are on Theros. Theros is more aura-centric. It has an enchantment theme and also really cares about auras. So one of the things we might look for is say, is there some effect we would normally do, but we can turn it into an aura? For example, green normally does giant growth. Well, what if we did a flash aura that granted, you know, plus three, plus three, or plus two, plus two?

And the idea being, okay, it's an aura, it sticks around, so it's a little bit different than a giant growth. It's permanent, not temporary. But, okay, well that's the way in this set that green could kind of get a giant growth, but now it plays into the larger theme. It's an enchantment. It's an aura. There's a lot of things in the set that care about those things, and it's a way for you to sort of go, oh, well I could both get my giant growth effect and be an aura. Another popular thing we'll do when we want to care about auras is

we'll just up our removal into aura space. Now, normally you have pacifism, you have sort of dehydration, but you could do a little bit more of minus-end, minus-end stuff in black, for example. Or sometimes we'll do things where we'll make the spell where you put it on a creature and then at some time it's got to be sacrificed. So it does kill it, but it leaves it around for a little bit of time because auras allow you to have memory over time. You can do some things that are a little trickier to do with just spells. But the key to a bend is

that you are trying to stay within the essence of what the color already does. A good bend is not doing something where you go, like a good bend is you see they go, oh, I've never seen that before, but oh, that, that feels right. You know what I'm saying? That the best bends feel like you're just making slight tweaks of existing things in color, but just leaning toward whatever the theme that you're trying to do is. And that, you know, like that, it's my, assigned to me of a great bend is something where it feels super flavorful, it feels in color, but when you stop to think about it, like, oh, yeah, I don't know if they've ever done that before

that to me is the perfect bet now sometimes the other reason we'll sometimes do bends is we're trying to hit a story point for example I will use an example since I am eight weeks out I can use an example from Throne of Eldraine

because by the time you guys hear this you'll know Throne of Eldraine there's a card in Throne of Eldraine I don by the time you guys hear this, you'll know Throne of Eldraine. There's a card in Throne of Eldraine. I don't remember the name of it. But in the story... Oh, can I... Will the story be known by then? Let's see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys will know the story by then.

In the... I always feel odd when I'm telling you about stuff that you... Currently, when I'm talking, you guys don't know, but I know that I do this ahead of time, so you guys will know, but it always freaks me out a little bit because I'm like, they don't know that yet, but okay. Future you, you guys know this. Anyway, in the story, the king of the White Kingdom, Arvindale, Ardenvale, disappears.

Arvindale, Ardenvale, disappears. That's the father of Rowan and Will. And it turns out that, I don't want to spoil this, but it turns out that a character I won't name, because if you haven't read the book yet, he gets transformed into something. That's the way they hide him.

And into a stag is what he gets transformed into. So we wanted to reference that in the game. And so we had a lot of back and forth about, now normally transformation in magic is in blue. Blue is the color of transformation. But we wanted to turn it into a stag, which is a very, very green animal. And we wanted to do it with an aura. And so the idea was, can we do this in green? Like,

well, it is not where green normally goes, but okay, green has done a little bit of transformational stuff. It's probably number two in transformational stuff. So the idea was, okay, we're trying to turn someone into a stag. Look, that does feel kind of green. It's a green creature, you know, and so the idea of making a card and pushing okay we were bending a little bit you know in a vacuum

that's not the color we wanted it in but it really reinforces something in the story and it doesn't feel super far out like the other one that was tricky

is when we had Trap Emrakul in the moon but Tamio was the one that did it. Tamiyo's a base blue mage, right? Base blue planeswalker. So we really felt like if Tamiyo did it

and she's base blue, we wanted the spell to be in blue. But man, that was kind of a tricky, and we worked really hard to figure out how to do it. But it really was a bend in that we were trying to do something that was a little bit trickier. Another example of, to me, of a really good bend was we were in Theros

and we were trying to capture the flavor of a bunch of different things and one of the stories we wanted to do was the story of, what's his name? What is his name? There's a bard whose loved one gets taken down to hell. She dies. And he goes to rescue her. He goes into Hades to rescue her. And we wanted to tell that story.

And so we were trying to figure out how to do it. And we realized that the cleanest place we could tell it was in black. And that was rescued from the underworld. And so the idea was you sacrifice a creature, and then at the end of turn you return that creature plus another creature from graveyard to the battlefield. And it was super flavorful, and it's like

well, black can sacrifice creatures, okay black can do that. Black can reanimate creatures. But by doing it, we were essentially making a card that kind of was kind of like a flicker because you remove a creature and when you bring it back you trigger

the enter the battlefield effect so it had a little bit of a flickering effect but that's not something that black does but we're like the component pieces are things that black does and the overall flavor is really flavorful for what we're trying to do. And it's like, okay, yeah, we're bending a little bit. We're sort of pushing a little bit in space that's a little bit new.

But it was such a home run hit for all the component pieces that we did that. Like I said, part of today, one of the ongoing things in general is there's a certain amount of intuition that has to go into this. That when we talk through stuff, you know, whenever we try to do something we haven't done before, it comes before the color pie, the council of colors. And the group has to judge, like, does this make sense?

And one of the things that when we grade them is we talk about why is it being done? And one of them is it's a bend. And like I said, the key to the bend is does it feel right? I mean, another part of it is, is it a bend and not a break? If it's a break, we don't want to do it. We don't want to undermine the colors. But, you know, it's sort of like, does it feel right? Like one of the things that you have to do, the sniff test, if you will, is check and see, okay, am I doing something that when I

sort of stand back and think about it, does it feel right for the color? Because another thing that's important for the color pie is not just that it's matching what the color has done, but the overall essence of it feels right. And that is something we're very conscious of and we think a lot about. Okay, number two. We're doing a brand new effect. We're just doing an effect we've never done before.

And this one I'll bring up is something that people who read my blog will know. We've got a lot of discussion on my blog. So there's a card in the latest Commander 2019 called Leadership Vacuum. And the card is, return all commanders to their owner's command zone. I think it's what the card says. So basically, we were making a commander product. We were trying to do something new. Oh, we'd never returned things to the command zone before. So if you think, I did a whole podcast on zones and zone changes. Command is a zone.

We don't do a lot of things that interact about changing zones in which it interacts with the command zone. We don't do a lot of that that interact about changing zones in which it interacts with the command zone. We don't do a lot of that. But we're doing commander product and like, okay, you know, this is... And once again, when we make new things, we are always what I call format agnostic, which is we don't know how the components of the game will get used. Meaning we have different zones and things. And right now, the command zone is primarily a commander thing. I think, like, Plane Chase and Arch Enemy might use it technically to put their deck and stuff, but we don't know.

I mean, once the command zone exists, we can interact with the command zone, and maybe another format will come up someday that really cares about the command zone. up someday that really cares about the command zone. So whenever we make something, we make it agnostic to formats, meaning we just make it and make it feel true to the color pie as a whole. And the idea is, when I talk about Magic being more than one game, look, we make a shared rule set and a shared group of cards, and then the formats will do with them what they will. Oh, so here's the question about leadership vacuum real quick. And this is all the argument

on my blog. Leadership vacuums takes all commanders and puts them back to the command zone of their owner. Now, in commander, any time a commander

would change zones, you can choose to put it to the command zone instead of the zone that it was going to go to. So if I have some sort of black kill spell, a murder or something, and I destroy

target commander, commander murder, destroy target commander, that card would put the commander into the graveyard, but the owner of the commander, if they chose, and because you can recast commanders from the command zone most of the time you'll do this,

they would choose to put it in the command zone. Likewise, if I had a card that said exile target commander, exile all commanders in white, that also would put the commanders back in the command zone. So the complaint was that right now, white and black, for example, and red, I guess, have the ability because they have pinpoint creature destruction. They can destroy the creature. They can exile the creature. They can do damage

to the creature. All those effects in Commander essentially send it to the command zone. And blue has never been able to send something directly to the command zone

because it doesn't have pinpoint creature destruction. Well, okay, so let's talk about the spell. We're making the spell. We want to return all commanders to the command zone.

So we, the Color Pie Council, are like, well, before it even gets to the Color Pie console, the people making the set, people making the card are like, oh, well, what color does that feel like? Who else does something, you know, what color does the closest to this? That's usually

when you make a new ability is you think about existing abilities. And the first thing you ask is, what is the closest to this that magic can do? Okay, so what is this card doing? Well, it's taking all the commanders and saying, okay, you're going to go back from where you came from. You all came from the command zone. We're going to send you back there. And we're like, okay, you're taking something, and you're returning it to the place from which it was cast, you know, the zone from which it was cast, and the opponent can cast it again.

And we're like, okay, well, that feels like an unsummon. You know, the zone from which it was cast, and the opponent can cast it again. And we're like, okay, well, that feels like an unsummon. You know, I mean, it's different. Commanders are unique in that they're the only card cast not from the hand. I take that back. There are cards cast from the graveyard. But other than being cast from the hand or cast from the graveyard, there's not a lot of places you cast cards from. And so we're like, okay, well, this feels a lot of places you cast cards from. And so

we're like, okay, well this feels a lot like an unsummon. And then someone said, well, but be aware there's a side effect to this. If you unsummon something to the hand, they can just cast it at the same cost they could cast it before. But there's a rule in Commander that when you send something to the command zone,

there's a tax on it. It costs two more to cast the second time. So if you cast it normally, let's say it costs three mana. The first time you cast it, it costs three mana. Well, the second time you cast it, now it costs five mana. And the third time you cast it, it costs seven mana. So the issue is, oh, well, not only are you on summoning it, essentially, but you are taxing it. And we're like, okay, well, blue is secondary in taxing.

White's primary in taxing. Blue's secondary. Blue has mana leaks, blue has what we call spell armor, which is, it costs two more to target the creature. It's something we've been experimenting with as a hexproof variant. We've done it a bunch of times. That's just our niece's internal name for it. Or sometimes we call it frost armor. I don't know, it's got a bunch of times. That's just our niece's internal name for it. Or sometimes we call it Frost Armor. I don't know.

It's got a bunch of different names. But anyway, the idea is it costs more to target the creature. It's not that the creature can't be targeted. It just costs more to target the creature. Anyway, so blue does taxing. I mean, white's primary, but blue's secondary taxing.

So Unsummoning is really blue. Taxing is kind of blue. Okay, well, this very much feels like a blue card. Now, the issue is we don't care. Like, we're looking in a vacuum. What does this card do? Well, it takes a particular card, a commander in this case, in the battlefield, and it moves it to the command zone.

Well, what does murder do? That takes a creature and moves it from the battlefield to the graveyard. What does... Pick your favorite exile spell. It takes a creature from the battlefield and puts it in the exile zone. So each of those is a different effect. Now, I understand in the commander format, due to the rules of commander, those effects are more similar. But that's not, the ColorPie

console doesn't care about what the format does to effects. It looks at them in a vacuum. Okay, well this effect goes from this zone to that zone. This effect goes from this zone to that zone. This effect goes from this zone to that zone. Those are three different zones. Okay, those are different effects. And different colors are going to do them differently. Black's more likely to kill something.

White's more likely to exile something. Blue's more likely to bounce something. You know, those are different effects. And so we are not going to we don't take into account that within the confines of Commander these effects are similar to one another.

It's not because because there's always new formats. There's always new ways to play magic you know if we made every decision based upon sort of the current mix you would make an inconsistent system moving forward because you know commander right now is super popular and i i believe commander will be popular for a long time i don't think commander is going anywhere but we can't design assuming commander is always around um we design, you know, assuming that we're doing the effects that we do and look, commander will make use of the cards as we make use of the cards.

So here's a similar parallel. This is not quite color pie, but it's a similar example. One of the things I get asked for all the time by pauper players is, you know what pauper could really use? Effect X. And I say to them, well, the problem is Pauper makes use of common cards. We have rules about what is common and what is uncommon and what is rare. I'm not going to change the rules for what is a common card just so Pauper could use something. Meaning I'm not bending, in this case, it's not the color pie, it's sort of the rarities, It's sort of the rarities. But I'm not bending the rarities just for Pauper.

So, like, when I'm making a brand new card for a standard legal set, I'm not going to put something at common just because Pauper were wanted if it's not something inherently that's supposed to go at common. The idea behind all this is that the game is at its best when the decisions are made for making the game as a whole and then let individual formats deal with it as they will, but we don't change the fundamental rules of how we make things for individual formats. The color pie is going to be the color pie.

The rarities are going to be the rarities. Now, that doesn't mean we don't occasionally think about formats when making cards. The best example of that would be, you know, we're making legendary creatures and we want to think about the color identity. We will do things like, oh, it's a red card, but I'm going to give it a black activation. Oh, now red and black has a red and black color identity. We'll do stuff like that where we're making something that functions within the role. Like having that card be a mono

red card with a black activation works in every format we're not stopping any format from playing it we're not we're not doing anything it's like magic can just make that card so we will make decisions um in individual designs to sort of push toward formats but we don't decide what the colors do based on any format. And so when we are making something, so the way it usually works is whoever's making the ability will make their best guess based on what they know. It will then come to the Color Pie, the console colors, and we'll talk through and say, okay, they're doing this. How does that feel?

Normally, whoever's the person that does that particular color is the first person. And if you're making a brand new effect and you know who the Council by Color people are, they come talk to me sometimes, and they sort of say, oh, we wanted this new thing. What do you think? And the real key is it's twofold. One is, does it flavorfully fit? Although, you can be careful because you can make things flavorfully fit that shouldn't fit. So one is, does it feel right?

Does it match other things the color does? And the second thing is, is it undermining the weakness in any way? Is it making the color do something that it's inherently supposed to be bad at? And you want to sort of walk through that. And that is the biggest thing when you're you want to sort of walk through that. And

you know, that is the biggest thing when you're trying to sort of make a new effect is you want it to feel natural, you want it to feel something that feels an extension of the color, and you just want to be careful that you're not, like one of the things that can happen is it is possible

to take things a color can do, combine them in ways that let the color do something it's not supposed to do. The classic example of this is green is supposed to have a problem killing creatures. I mean, green can kill, green has naturalized effects, so it can kill artifacts and enchantments. So it can kill artifact creatures, kill enchantment creatures. It also can kill flyers because it has anti-flying. But in general, the rule for green is if it doesn't have a creature on the battlefield,

it really has trouble dealing with other creatures. That green is over-reliant on its creatures, part of its strength and weakness. I guess its weakness is it's over-reliant. Its strength is it has a lot of value in its creatures. And so the idea is that green is supposed to be bad at killing creatures. Now, green has fight spells and things. I mean, in combination with creatures, it can kill things. But it really needs its creatures to do that.

But I can make a spell. Death Touch is a black and green ability. So it's primary and black, but secondary and green. And Fighting is a green ability, green and red, primary green, secondary red. Okay, so I can make a creature that says, I can make a 1-1 creature that says when I enter the battlefield, I have death touch, 1-1 creature with death touch, and we give it flash because green is flash. And when it enters the battlefield, it fights target creature. and when it enters the battlefield, it fights target creature.

Okay, well, green has flash, green has death touch, green can ETP fight a little bit, usually on smaller things. Okay, but the problem there is that, for all intents and purposes, is just a green murder. Because anything,

unless the thing it's fighting prevents the damage, there's not a lot of creatures that do that, essentially what's going to happen is it's going to enter the battlefield, it's going to fight with something, it's going to do damage to it, it's got death touch so it'll kill it, it's got one toughness, so anything but a zero power creature is going to kill it. So essentially I've made a green kill spell all out of green parts. So just because something can do something

in the vacuum, like just because a component pieces might fit doesn't mean that the combined thing is something we'll do. And that's something we have to think about. That is something that we definitely have to be conscious of. But it is about sort of where are we doing things and how are we doing things. Leadership vacuum, the fact, like, if it unsummoned anything

or put anything in the command zone and only commanders could be cast from the command zone, that would be a problem because it's permanently getting rid of things. But because it can only get commanders and commanders can be cast from the command zone, you know, it is very much, it is not undermining blue's inherent thing. Blue's whole point is,

I can't permanently get rid of things. I can temporarily get rid of things. I'm king of temporarily getting rid of things, but I can't permanently get rid of things. And this is not permanently getting rid of something. Okay, the third category is when we decide we want to change the color pie. So my example here will be black enchantment removal.

This is something else that happened in Commander 2019. So at one point, Eric came to talk to me, and Eric said that he had a concern about black, that black was the only color that had two different card types it couldn't deal with. That black can get rid of creatures and planeswalkers, but it can't deal with... It can get rid of lands, but it can't deal with artifacts or enchantments.

Planeswalkers are also kind of a weird case. I know there's a bunch of ones that can't deal with planeswalkers, although red and black and kind of green can, so I guess a bunch of them do. So he pointed out that black can't deal with two of them and that every other prototype, there were three cards that could deal with it.

That, like, land, black, red, and green all have land destruction, although we don't do tons of land destruction. Planeswalkers, black can kill planeswalkers, red can do damage planeswalkers,

green can kill non-creature, or destroy non-creature permanents, although we don't do that too much these days. Enchantment, I'm sorry, artifacts, white and green and red can all get rid of artifacts. Creatures, black and red and white can all get rid of

creatures. You know, that every card type, every permanent type, had at least three colors to get rid of it. And he was like, that is not true of enchantments. Only white and green get rid of enchantments. And it'd be nice if there's a third color to deal with enchantments.

So we looked at it. Black seemed to be the right, well, we went back and said, why can't black destroy enchantments? And the major reason we realized was we like to make what we call deal with the devil enchantments. Probably the most famous is Necropotence. Necropotence

said, skip your draw phase, but in exchange for that, you may pay one life, and then anytime you want, and at the end of that turn, you will get to draw a card. So you can exchange life for cards. But at the downside of you never naturally draw a card. Now, that's a very powerful card. It was a super powerful card.

But people occasionally got in trouble people would occasionally lose because they weren't able to get what they needed and they ran out of life and they couldn't draw cards anymore and the card kept them from drawing cards so they would lose and the idea of a deal with the devil kind of card is that you're getting power out of it

but at a cost and that cost could come back to bite you that there's some negative you're dealing with that could harm you. Those are fun cards. It's super black, it's super flavorful, and I think the reason we didn't make enchantment removal in black was we really liked the fact that black could have necropotence, and we didn't want black to just be able to get rid of

necropotence. I mean, necropotence is overpowered, but things like that. But as we looked back, we said, okay, well, it seemed to make more sense that black get rid of enchantments red not getting rid of enchantments is very quarter red

it really has trouble with non-tangible things and red can deal with other things that's the thing red can't deal with well if we make black the one that can't deal with artifacts

then black would be the one that has problems with artifacts red would have problems with enchantments it was flavorful and what we said is okay so we set up a couple parameters for ourselves then black would be the one that has problems with artifacts, red would have problems with enchantments. It was flavorful. And what we said is, okay, so we set up a couple of parameters for ourselves.

By the way, Eric came to talk to me, I pitched this to Eric, and then I sat and talked with the Council of Colors. So the idea was, well, what if black, A, is third in the ability? So white and green are better than it. You know, Black is the weakest at it. So the idea is we're giving Black some resource, but not the strongest resource. You know, if you want to be more efficient at it,

okay, go to White or Green. Black is not super efficient at it. Second is we wanted, we didn't want Black to destroy its own enchantments. We wanted to still make deal-with-the-devil enchantments. So the idea we came up with is, and once again, we are experimenting. so this is where we're starting. You'll definitely see us experimenting over time. So we started with the idea that black can do

black can make the opponent sacrifice enchantments. The first card we made was called Mire in Misery which is in Commander 2019. I think it's each player, each opponent, each opponent sacrifices a creature or enchantment. We obviously started very simple and on a lower power level because we wanted to sort of test things out. What will happen, you'll see. I mean, it's not happening right away. I don't think there's another one in Throne of Eldritch. But there is, we have more coming.

This is something we're testing on Black. We're trying to give black, and once again, the goal here is to give black some resource, but not super efficient resources. Black is not going to be as good as white or green at doing this. We're not giving, at least for right now, we're not giving a target enchantment removal. But we are experimenting with the idea that black can force the opponent

to sacrifice enchantments, and we're playing around in that space. experiment with the idea that black can force the opponent to sacrifice enchantments. And we're playing around in that space. But anyway, so what happened is, Eric and I talk about it. He and I together kind of work out a proposal. I take it to the Council of Colors. I walk

through, and I walk through my philosophy and what I'm thinking about. And then the first person I did is Gavin at the time. Gavin was the leader of the black color pie. It's since changed. I think Corey is now. But anyway, I talked to Gavin

and then we talked through the cultural colors. And the idea is we don't change the color pie super often. But we do it occasionally. I would say a handful of times each year. You know, we added Flash into Black,

we made Haste secondary in Green. I mean, we, normally when we do it, the reason that we'll change

the color pie is the color pie is a living, breathing thing. You know what I'm saying? That the game is this ongoing, evolving game in flux. And because of that, we want the color pie to be reactive.

And the idea is, one of the things about a game that's constantly evolving, you know, it's not like Magic's a game, we made the game, we're done, we put it away, and that's what the game is. Magic is kind of constantly evolving. And because of that, because magic is constantly evolving, we, the people who oversee the color pie, want to feel like, okay, we have some flexibility with what we're doing here. Sometimes a new ability will get added, and we like it, so we keep it. You know, we experimented with impulsive draw in red.

That's the one where you exile cards, and then you can cast them that turn. And we sampled a little bit. We tried it on Chandra and we did a little bit with that and we liked it. So we kept it around and that then became part of Red Collar Pie. Sometimes we do bends and we push stuff and we like how it plays and go, you know what? I know I made this for the graveyard set, but that's kind of a cool effect. Maybe we'll just do that effect a little more. So things can get

there by different means. But sometimes the change is a little more, we're going, oh, we recognize this problem. This is happening. How do we solve this problem? Oftentimes play design will come to us and say, or set design, and say, I'm trying to make my set. It wasn't until I did that, I had this unique problem to solve, that I recognized a weakness in the system. Because we've never done this before, or just the way we're mixing is pushing into something that has always been weak, but because we don't do it that often, it's just hard to recognize it. But now that we're making it a major thing, I'm recognizing a weakness in the system.

And then one thing about magic is because we're constantly innovating and pushing in new places, you know, we're always sort of finding things that need to be fixed. And so when that happens, they come to the ColorPie console.

We'll work to create a solution. Sometimes we experiment. A good example of that is one of the notes we got from the Commander people is that white and red are a little bit weaker in Commander. We spent the last couple of years focusing a little bit more on red. Now we've been focusing a little bit more on white.

But we're trying to find things that are naturally in color, that feel in color, but are pushing in new space. So, for example, I can, once again, because Throne of Eldritch is out, there's a card, I think it's called Happily Ever After, where it lets everybody draw a card in white. Everybody's drawing, what? So one of the things we're experimenting with in white is the idea that the reason that white isn't good at card draw is that it has all the answers. It's the color that has the most answers.

And that we don't want white to have all its answers in its hand because one of white's weaknesses is, while it has all the answers. It's the color that has the most answers. And then we don't want white to have all its answers in its hand, because one of white's weaknesses is, while it has all the different answers, they're spread apart a lot of different cards. And so if white doesn't know what to expect, it's not very flexible. So the idea here is that if white is drawing cards at the same rate

that its opponents are drawing threats, then it's not going up in answers. And so we're experimenting with it. Now, once again, you have to be careful how many cards you draw. There's a point at which you're drawing enough cards it doesn't matter, that people are just discarding and stuff. So right now we're trying it drawing a smaller number of cards. But anyway, we're experimenting in that space. That is something we haven't done before and we're trying because we're trying to figure out, you know, we want to adapt, you know, Commander as a format.

And while we, it's interesting, while we don't make individual decisions about what does what, we are reflective of understanding that certain formats might need certain needs within the color pie. And that is something that, that is the one place where the color pie, I that is something that that is that is the one

place where the color pie i guess is less um completely format agnostic in the sense that we do think about are there needs for colors based on how people are playing magic so that is a little bit more um tied to how people are playing um but the idea there, once again, is we don't want to do something. So let's say we recognize that Commander needs help in red or white or whatever. Our goal is not to make something that makes sense in Commander, but doesn't make sense

everywhere else. No. Because the color pie is agnostic, we want to fix the problem in a way that's organic to what the color pie is that happens to fix the problem at hand. We don't want to fix the problem in a way that's organic to what the color pie is that happens to fix the problem at hand um we don't want to make something say well if you're playing this format yeah this will feel okay but if you're playing other formats it won't feel okay no we don't want to do that uh and so that's something we're very conscious of is um when we're trying to carve new space out

we want to make sure that we are making something that's organic to the game as a whole and if you go back and listen to my podcast on the color pie one of the things i really like to space out, we want to make sure that we are making something that's organic to the game as a whole. And if you go back and listen to my podcast on the color pie, one of the things I really like to hammer home is the color pie is the source of the game. To me, it's the building, the foundation of magic. The mechanics come from the color pie. The flavor comes from the color pie. Our world, our factioning, our structure is built around the color pie. The flavor comes from the color pie. Our world, our factioning, our structure is built around the color pie. You know, there's a reason why the, you know, in design we make cycles.

There's a reason why there's draft archetypes. Like the colors are so organic to the nature of how the game is made that it's really important that the color pie sort of live free of all the different ways to play so that it's this tool. Like one of the big things of making the game of Magic is we are making this very robust, I mean, two things. There's the rule system, and not just the rule system, but the color pie, how the rarities function,

sort of the overall structure of how we make Magic. And then there is the individual cards that are the offshoot of those decisions. And that system is then, there's many, many different ways to play magic. Magic is really sort of this structure by which people can then create and play the game. Now, there's a lot of formats that we create as the people who make the game, but there's a lot of formats that we create as the people who make the game, but there's a lot of formats that you all create. Commander was made by the players.

Pauper made by the players. I mean, Wizards made Standard, made Booster Draft, but I mean, most of the formats outside of the main formats, I mean, I guess, even Modern, even though we made Modern, there were people external doing things very similar to it that pushed us to make modern. So, like, even modern really was an extension of

stuff the audience was doing, like Tom Lapilli, for example, before he worked at Wizards. So, I mean, the... One of the things that we're very conscious of is we, the maker of the game, are kind of... and the keepers of the color pie, it is a very important tool that the game rests upon. And so there have to be times, we have to spread the color pie. There has to be new things and colors.

And today's podcast was all about how and why we do that. You know, it is not something we do lightly. It is not something we do without a lot of thought. But it is something we have to do. And it's something that's important to do. Like if you said to me, okay, we're going to lock down the color pie. Nothing's ever going to get added.

I would say to you, that's going to cause a huge problem long term. That that would be detrimental to the game. I like the fact that the color pie is a living, breathing thing. I like the fact that the color pie is a living breathing thing i like the fact that it's evolving and changing i think we have to be careful you know the reason there's a whole team dedicated to it is i do think we have to sort of think long and hard about how we use the colors and execute colors but it is something that like i'm glad

that we're willing to be able to make changes and have it adapt with time. That allows us to adapt to new ways to play, allows us to adapt to new themes, to new formats, to new sets,

and it really lets us make magic the best that it can be. That's how we do it on time today. Anyway, so I, as predicted, I took 10 extra minutes.

So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today's topic. It was always fun talking about the color pie. And I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work.

So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make magic. I'll see you guys next time.