Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #780: Four-Color Factions

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

This topic started from a question on my blog talking about the difficulty in designing four-color faction worlds and sets.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work, Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so today's Drive to Work, I'm going to be talking about something that came up on my blog. From time to time, people ask things, and sometimes I say, yes, these are things we can do. And sometimes I say, no, this is probably are things we can do. And sometimes I say, no, this is probably not something we can do. And so I'm going to talk about one of those requests that I actually don't think we can do. I mean, I never say never. Maybe we'll find some way to do it. But there are a lot of problems. So what is that? So the request I got in my blog the last couple days was a request for a four-color faction set. So, for example, we've had monocolor faction sets.

Fallen Empires and Throne of Eldraine and on some level Theros has some monocolor stuff. But we've had monocolor sets. We have had two-color sets. Ravnica probably being the big famous. We've had three-color faction sets. And that's like Shardzalara or

Kondraturk here. So the idea here is, okay, we've done one-color factions, we've done two-color factions, we've done three-color factions. Well, all that's left is four-color factions. And basically what I've said on my blog is not likely. It's a really, really big ask. And I've done some job on my blog explaining why,

but I happen to have a full half hour to talk all about it. So I thought I would use today's podcast to sort of just delve in deep and try to explain, for example, why this is kind of hard to do. I did a similar podcast a while back talking about why Vanilla Matters is a hard theme. And people seem to like that. So this is another in my podcast of why it's hard to do that. So four color edition. Okay. So, first up, let's get to the crux of one of the biggest problems with four color factions.

And that is designing four color cards is really, really hard. And the reason for that is one of the things that really makes magic shine is the color wheel. It's the color identity. The fact that something is red or is blue or is white or is green or is black, it means something. One of the things that Richard has done so well, and obviously we've kept this up for the last 20, 70 years, is making each color just have a very, very strong identity to itself. So much so that we found combining colors, you know, like one of the real joys, I think, of Ravnica was the idea of saying, okay, these colors have really strong identities, but if we mix and match them, ooh, the mixing and matching are strong identities. What happens when blue's intellectual side gets with red's passionate side?

Ooh, you get creativity. And so that was really fun to watch sort of how those came together. And I think people sort of thought like, well, if putting two together is so much fun, how about three? How about four? But it actually turns out that it gets tricky. Let me first talk about the design then i'll get to the identity faction identities another big problem um so anyway if i want to design a card that is two color um i have some options i mean first up i can sort of combine things

maybe i find some overlap or the two colors are both good at it. There's a couple of different ways to make a card. And even then, even with all the different ways to do that, in Ravnica, the latest Ravnica, R&D came to the decision that, look, from time to time, we're going to make very flavorful, very in-guild cards in which one of the colors could do it by itself without the second color, just because it's so hard making two-color cards. You know, two – like two-color cards have a lot of challenges and they are light, light, light years easier than three-color, which is light, light, light years easier than four-color. Because part of the issue is let's say I have a white, blue, black, red card.

Well, what defines that? What is it? How is it that? When we made the Nephilim, which were four-color cards, we made a cycle of four-color cards in original Ravnica, we basically just gave them weird abilities. Like, we didn't... There's no real way to feel like you're all

three. I mean, making a card in which you actually represent all four colors is near impossible. Maybe you can make a handful of those. But it's just real difficult, right? It's very hard to do. And what you're kind of forced to do to make four-color work is just kind of do things. Like one of the tricks is to make something novel, right?

Is, well, here's an effect nobody's done. So how do you define it? We'll say it's a four-color effect. There's just not a lot of novel effects. Magic's 27 years old. We've made 20,000-plus cards. There's not an endless amount of novel effects. The other problem is you need a lot of simple effects.

And so for starters, the first problem, just right off the bat, the first problem is it's not easy making four-color cards. And if you wanted to have a four-color faction set, you're going to need a bunch of them, you know what I'm saying? Like, what's the lowest number of four-color cards you could make in a set in which it's about four-color factions? You know, I mean,

you could go low, but even then, you need six or seven? I mean, you need something. If that's your key selling point, if I'm telling you it's a four-color faction set, like, I need enough of those. And just the idea of trying to design seven of each of them, so 35 cards, I mean, I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it would be very, very, very hard. And you would have to design them first, just because they're so hard

to design. And I don't know what you would craft around them. They'd be very challenging. Okay, which leads us into the second problem of a four-color faction set, which is trying to get identities for factions is very hard as you stack colors. For example, one color, very easy. If I want to make the the what do they call it?

The quartz. The quartz thrown at Eldraine. Okay. Well, it's very easy to make a white court and a blue court and a black court and a red court and a green court. Those are very different from each other, right? Each color is such a crisp and clear delineation. Okay. Now I want to make two color. Okay. Two color's not too bad. I'm sort of finding the overlap

between two colors. There's a decent amount of space there. Then you get the three color. If you notice, for example, Shards of Alara did it by defining it as what... Shards of Alara's trick was, okay, there's five different worlds. So we had to make five distinct different worlds. And then each world is defined as two colors are missing. And what that meant is there was a central color.

Its enemies weren't there. Okay, well, what kind of world would white make if black and red didn't exist? What kind of world would blue make if green and red didn't exist? And so on. But notice, for example, in both three-color worlds, both Shards of Alara and Concepts Arkyr, we literally had to make a world per faction. Like, it was so hard to delineate the factions, we had to go, okay, this faction's from this world that just looks radically different than all the other worlds. Like, we had to lean on creative very hard. You know what I'm saying?

And it's interesting to look at the two three-color sets and like Shard of Alar basically played off the color identity. He said, okay, so we're going to make five worlds that are absent of colors. Kansa Tarkir was more of top-down. Like, okay, we're going to chop up Asia for influences and this is from the northern part of Asia and this is the southern part of Asia.

Like, we really had to sort of go to completely different regions so that when you see a card, you have some sense of where it came from. And the point is, that's three color. In three color, in order to sort of give identity to stuff, we had to A, center it in a color, and B, make like a different world for each one. Okay, but you're saying, okay, but we could make five different worlds with a four-color faction. We could, but the fact that you have to lean so heavy on the creative means that mechanically there's just a lot of definitional issues. The other little thing, and this is just an aesthetics thing, in two-color worlds, you've got to overlap them. They both are of equal importance.

In a three-color world, you have to pick one to kind of be the focal point. We did that in both sets. In Shards of Alara, it was the color that was missing its enemies. In Concepts of Tarkir, because of the evolution of the block, it ended up not being the color that had two enemies. It actually

was one of the other colors. Just because the way it happened, we had to drop the enemy color to make the faction in the third set in Dragons of Tarkir, and we wanted the faction to be the same all the way through. So that required us to not do the obvious thing, which is to be the enemy faction. But anyway,

it is tricky. It is tricky to make factions of three color. And it is significantly harder to make factions of three color than two color. And two color is a little bit harder than one color. But, and so, fourar would be even so. Okay, the next problem.

Five-collar soup, as they call it. So when Richard first made the game of Magic, he had what was referred to as a queen problem, which is, let's say I was making chess, and you could pick whatever pieces you wanted to play with. Assume one of them had to be a king, so it was a win condition. So the other 15 pieces, why shouldn't they be a queen? Queen's just better. Queen's better than every other piece.

Why would you have another piece? And the thing is, when Richard made it as a trading card game, that you could choose whatever pieces you wanted, there had to be reasons that you would pick different pieces. So there were three main reasons that he did. One was the mana system. That early game, lower

casting cost things are good. Or late game, higher casting cost things are good. So different cards at different points in the game have different value about how much you want to draw them. You know, a really expensive card early on is useless to you. You can't play it. A very cheap card late in the game, you can play it, but oftentimes it's not

as valuable to you as more expensive cards that you can cast because they have bigger effects. The second thing you did is building in sort of synergies. One of the natures of a trading card game is you can play up different aspects, and so some of the nature of that, of having synergies, makes certain

cards more valuable because they're in synergy of what you're doing. And the third thing was the color pie. Well, why would I not play the best red card? Well, maybe my deck isn't playing red. And so the color pie did a lot of delineation as well. So between those three factors, it started chopping up things. So there's different reasons to play different stuff. So the problem in a four-color faction world is if we're doing a four-color faction world, we're selling it as a four-color faction world. Like part of doing this experiment is like, okay, well, if I said we're making a four-color faction world but not actually having any four-color cards, you would cry foul. You're like, wait, wait, wait. You said it was a four-color faction world. That implies

that you can play four colors. Since it implies you can play four colors, we'd have to allow you to play four colors. And what that requires is us making the mana work so that you can play four colors. So, when we made Khans of Tarkir, so Shards of Alara,

our mana fixing wasn't really good. So Shards of Alara had the problem of, it was hard to play three-color because we didn't really give you the mana fixing. So Khans of Tarkir came along and we said, okay, we're going to solve that problem this time. We're going to give you good mana fixing. And what ended up happening in the larger standard environment with Khans of Tarkir?

People were playing all sorts of stuff. People were playing ultimatums with other ultimatums and ultimatums have three colors of a particular color mana. People were playing things that shouldn't possibly go on the same deck

in the same deck. And it was definitely problematic. So, like, the five color soup problem is something we already concern ourselves with and already is a real issue when dealing with three-color. So going to four-color, like, anyway, it's hard enough making three-color playable without just going to the five-color problem. And four-color would even be that much worse because there's not that much difference between four color and five color um okay another problem is um so let's say uh you are playing uh ravnica um whatever it is that you're drafting whatever factions we're doing and normally we do like five

five factions about what fits in a large set um So let's say we're doing five factions. So if you're playing in a Ravnica set, that means there's two color factions. So one of the things we have to do is we like to have ten archetypes that we build in for drafting purposes. And usually what that means is you can go up or down on numbers. So in theory, you could have two colors and go down to one color, or you can have two colors and go up to three color. When you start getting to multicolor, it's easier to go up than down, meaning it's a little bit harder to play a monocolor deck in a multicolor environment. There's just not enough tools to make it so easy to do that. So, in two color, we tend to go up to

three color. In three color, we tend to go down to two color. So, for example, in Khan's of Tarkir, the backup strategies were the allied colors, because if you drafted ally, you could go into two different wedges, and sometimes you just stayed in, you know, we just stayed in the enemy stuff. So, in two color, we do two color and three color.

In three color, we do three color and two color. Okay, what happens in a four color faction world? Well, you can't go up because there aren't five factions, there aren't five things up. Once you go up, you go to five color. That's just one thing. By definition, you have to go down. So you'd have to do

four color and three color. But, but, there's a lot of complexity there. You know what I'm saying? Like right now, like if you say that every single draft strategy, at minimum you're drafting three colors, that's asking a lot. Like even in Kansa Tarkir or Shardzalar, but Kansa Tarkir is a better example, more recent.

Even in that environment where we're saying, hey, it's a three-color environment, half the people are playing two-color. And you're able to play two-color. So let's say I'm a little intimidated by playing three-colors. At least I can play two-color. So there's that issue that gets woven in, is that just in general, to make four-color factions work,

you have to make them playable. The realistic fallback is then you have three-color. So just an environment where everybody, at bare minimum, is playing three-color, that's a a lot that's more so than normal um and the other thing that so once we get into the world where you're drafting three color and four color which is kind of what has to happen in a four color faction set um it makes understanding mana even more important like one of the things that we find is really good experienced drafters understand the importance of mana.

So the really good drafters are going to, like, one of the things, if you ever watch, like, really good drafters draft a multicolored faction set, they take dual lands and mana fixing much higher than you would think. They take it very early

because what they realize is if I don't have the right mana fixing, it doesn't would think. They take it very early because what they realize is if I don't have the right mana fixing, it doesn't matter how powerful my cards are, I might not be able to play them. And so multicolor environments already have the problem that there's a high differential between the good and bad players because if you don't draft the right mana, like if you're doing, for example,

let's say we're in a one color environment where I'm encouraging you to play one color. Well, a bad drafter's not going to get two off there. Okay, I'm going to, I'm drafting Theros and I'm going to pick the, I got a bunch of Garys and I'm going to do a mono black deck on, with, you know, black devotion.

Okay, well, I don't need to worry that much about mana. I'm going to stick you know, 17 swamps in my deck, right? So mono-color, not too hard. Two-color, a little more difficult. And even if you don't take the mana fixing, you won't be too far off. I mean, you have to be careful about splashing and this and that, but you won't be too far off.

Three-color, okay, three-color already starts to punish. And like I said, a lot of my problems with four color are just like problems that three color already has that just get worse. And that is one of them, which is the differential for how good your experience is has a lot to do with how much you understand mana so that you're able to play the game you want

to play. And if we push too hard to make it easier to do that, we lean into the five color soup problem. And like I said, this problem is a major problem in three color. if we push too hard to make it easier to do that, we lean into the five color suit problem. So, and like I said, this problem is a major problem in three color. Three color can handle it, but I mean, it is definitely something that

has to be cared about. Four color is everything three color is, but more problems. And, the fallback is you can't even play two color. The fallback is you play three color, and we already know that three color is problematic. Okay. Next.

Okay, the next problem is, and here's where I'm trying to get into the nitty gritty so you can understand how there's just a lot of different problems. a lot of different problems. Next is a draft signal problem, which is part of the way you want to make a good draft is you want to make sure that there's means and ways to communicate to the people down from you what's going on, right?

Draft is an important way to play Magic and a lot of people enjoy draft. Draft is an important way to play Magic, and a lot of people enjoy Draft. Draft signals get harder as you get more and more colors in your set. Because, for starters, everybody's playing three or four colors. So the idea of your person next to you being out of that many colors, you're going to overlap in colors a lot. And it's very hard to read. Partly because it's complex. Partly because I'm looking at a lot um and it is just it's very hard to read partly because it's complex probably because like i'm looking at a lot of different component pieces and trying to understand

the negative of what's there like in a in a monochrome drafting environment if i'm not seeing any black cards it's very easy to understand that oh okay a lot of people are in black i should stay out of black um or vice versa i'm just seeing a lot of red cards like oh well not a lot of people in red i should play red um the drafting signals get much much murkier and muddier in in the three color set and would even more so in a four color set next we start getting into a a text length issue um so one of the problems of trying to justify and do higher mana or higher colored things is it just by the nature makes it harder to do simple things that um a a lot of simple things are aligned with mono color strategies or sometimes two color strategies but it just it becomes trickier and harder to make things that feel right that feel like the colors that they are

like as you start making more cards that require more colors, you just go up in text length. And this is a problem, once again, we notice in three color that we can tamp down, but it would get worse as you start to get bigger. Another tricky thing is you have to think about the sets around the set that you're in. You have to think about ramping in and ramping out, meaning you want to make sure that the sets around you can play nicely with you.

And four color is not something, you know, it is not without support. For example, you can't play four color without support. If we're not giving you support for it. And so the idea there is, well, are we giving you support for four color before we get to the four color set? Like, do we want you playing four color? I mean, at least in a four color faction world, there's a reason, I guess, for having to play four color. Because that's what the set is. But just the things around it, you start to get in trouble. Because it's not easy to lead into or lead out of.

And that's one of the things hopefully today I'm trying to get across to you is there's just infinite – there's some big reasons that are a problem and a lot of small reasons. Like I know, for example, when I talk about text length issues, I'm sure you're like, oh, whatever. So it's wordier. I'm like, well, that – there's offshoots of that problem that, you know, already, like I said, one of the problems of having many colors is it's more complex to draft. Okay. Well, another thing about wordiness is that makes it more complex to draft. So, like, if you are worried about one type of complexity, you kind of have some pressure to lower the other type of complexity. But the problem in a four-color faction world is it raises numerous – like the complexity level on many vectors happens.

You're trying to make four-color cards that feel like four-color cards or three-color cards that feel like three-color cards. It becomes tricky. Another thing that becomes challenging is you're going to want to give identity to your factions, and then you want to start chopping up the colors to make that work. As you add more colors, the puzzle piece that you're trying to add together becomes much harder for you, the builder, and becomes even harder for the – like let's say I'm the guy making the jigsaw puzzle, but you're the people putting it together, right? And when you have so many... Like, one of the nice things, for example, when you're drafting a two-color deck is,

okay, let's say I'm in pack three and I know my two colors. I can ignore everything not in my two colors. I mean, I can look at it, but maybe I want to splash something. If I'm really good and I want to splash something. But for most players, they're like, okay, I'm in these two colors. I'm, I can look at it, but maybe I want to splash something. If I'm really good and I want to splash something. But for most players, they're like, okay, I'm in these two colors. I'm playing white-blue. I can ignore the black-green and red cards. I just can ignore them.

And if there's multicolor cards, if they're not blue and white, if they are not those two combined colors, I can ignore them. In a four-color faction world, for starters, you're playing four colors. And like I said, I keep talking about multicolor cards,

but we need a lot of monocolored cards. But making monocolored cards work in an environment where, like, for example, normally, if we're going to do a normal draft, okay, let's say it's a monocolored draft for a second. I know that we do a lot of monocolored drafts. But let's say someone's drafting black. Well, okay, there's five colors, eight drafters.

One or two people could be playing black. Okay, now we get to two-color. In two-color, it's something similar. Normally, we look at a combination like half or one-color, half or two-color. Two to three people can play it, right? When you start getting into four-color combinations, most of the tables

can play most of the monocolored cards and that just like that's the next thing which is one of the things we want to do with draft is we want to make it sure as you go along, you know, yeah your first few picks might be a little bit challenging but it gets easier as you go along. But part of that

is you make decisions that start knocking out other decisions. If you're not knocking out those other decisions, that makes it harder. So at every vector level, at every level, four color just makes it harder to do. It's harder to build. It's harder to collect the mana. It's harder to track what's going on. It's harder to read draft signals.

Just on every level, it is just more difficult to understand the nature of what's happening. Just on every level, it is just more difficult to understand the nature of what's happening. So here's my hope today. Part of why I'm just running through all this stuff is – because one thing that's really interesting is when people say I want to do Thing X, usually it comes from a place of, hey, I would appreciate having a couple four-color cards in my decks. I would like to have another four-color commander or whatever. I get that there's a lot of

what happens is people see, like, they can follow the patterns. Oh, well, I've seen you've done a two-color faction set and a three-color faction set. Oh, here's another thing you could do. A lot of times we refer to as box checking, meaning we've made something, but here's something we haven't done yet, but follow the pattern of something we do. And one of the things I'm always saying on my blog is just because something is recognizable, just because it's something we haven't done

that you can notice and see we haven't done doesn't mean it's something you inherently want to do. Like a lot of what I'm trying to get across today in talking about four-color factions is I understand the very loose desire of the idea, right? I enjoy faction sets. Well, why wouldn't I? Here's a different kind of faction set

I haven't seen yet. The problem is that there's a lot of things that players want that they don't, like, whether or not you voice it, like, one of the things, for example, is you want to have a flavorful world that encourages you to do fun things and has fun gameplay, right?

You want to explore, you want a world that you you to do fun things and has fun gameplay, right? You want to explore, you want a world that you want to explore and that's cool, all the exploring you're doing. But a lot of making that happen, a lot of that working behind the scenes from us making it, is there's a lot of, there's signposts we do, there's a lot of guidance on our end. One of the things people don't think a lot about is we will make sure sometimes that common to just put certain words on commons so that you are aware

of things. The classic example is one of the common Eldrazi, one of the big Eldrazi in Battle for Zendikar, we made have to attack just to communicate that, you know, these guys are best when you attack with them because they had, what was that building called?

Annihilation. Annihilation? I hope that's the right word. Annihilate, I think. And the idea was, it was really good, but we found people weren't, when they were playtesting, they weren't attacking with them.

They'd get out their big creature and not attack the big old drosy. And so we purposely said, okay, well, we want you to experience this. And so there's a lot of nuance that goes into building a set where you're sort of like making sure that people do what you want them to do and then laying breadcrumbs to help get them there.

So the four-color set, the four-color faction set, is one of those things that, as I sort of an experienced magic designer look at, I'm like, holy moly. There's a lot of expectations that would come with it, and trying to make those expectations work, trying to do all the things behind the scenes that we do, all the structure we do,

all the sort of breadcrumbs that we do, it just would be... Like, for example, I'll share a story. So the very first Ravnica playtest I ever did was I had come up with the idea of hybrid, and the set had all 10 two-color pairs and all 10 hybrid pairs. And we played it.

And the response I got from R&D was I had melted their brains. Like I had made something that R&D, you know, seasoned veteran, mostly pro tour players were like, I can't wrap my head around this. This was too much for me to absorb. And the idea was, okay, how many piles do you make? Well, all the red cards, all the monocolored cards go in a pile. All the multicolored cards go in a pile. All the hybrid cards go in a pile. And right there, you weren't even separating, like, creatures from spells or anything. Just putting them so they're unique in their own pile and colors. So you have

my five monocolor piles, my ten two-color piles, and my ten hybrid piles. And that wasn't counting artifacts or lands or anything. We're talking 25 piles! If you want to divide those into creatures and non-creatures, that's 50 piles! That's a lot of piles! It just was brain-melty.

And so one of the things you have to think about when building a set is you have to really keep in mind what's going to cause people problems. And four-color factions, like I said, I worry about three-color. Maybe one of my takeaways from today for you guys is how much I worry about three-color. Not that we won't do three-color, but three-color is really stretching it for us. Three-color has infinite challenges for us to solve. And four-color is just just three color on steroids. It's just three color with more problems with, with less tools and

more requirements. And it just, it's, that's, that's the big challenge. You know what I'm saying? Um, it would be, it would be a mess on several levels. And I get, I get, I get. The reason I did this podcast is I'm just trying to sort of be honest with you and say, look, this thing that maybe, maybe at a distance in concept sounds kind of cool. When you actually dig in, when you actually like, okay, I got to actually make this set. I mean, that's the big thing for me when I try to answer questions on my blog is, okay, I and my team, we have to actually make the set. And sometimes people ask for things, and I'm like, this is similar to the Vanilla Matters. We're like, well, it might sound cool in concept, but, you know, when you sit down and I have a deck of 90% of my deck are just Vanilla Creatures, okay, is that fun? If I don't draw my Vanilla Matters cards,

did I have fun playing with my vanilla creature deck? Eh, you know, I mean, maybe if you're a beginner, maybe, but for most players that's not the compelling match that you've known to come and love. Four-Color Factions, ironically, is the opposite end of the spectrum from Vanilla Matters. Vanilla Matters, I think,

if we made a Vanilla Matters world, a lot of it would be, oh, my deck's not that exciting. Four-Color Faction world would be mind-melting, brain-melting. I think that people would... I believe if we actually made the set, and did the best job we possibly could, we tried to solve every problem we could, what would end up happening is people would play it and then go,

okay, that was an experiment. I never want to do that again. I'm not sure I can make a four-color faction world that players want to play and then play again. Or, yes, there'd be a small percentage. There's a small percentage of players out there that just love

the endlessly complex things. So I'm not saying there's not a home for a four-color faction set for maybe a small number of players. But most players, it would be an unhappy experience. It would be... And it would cause all sorts of problems

external to the sets around it. It just... Anyway, so why don't we make a four-color faction set? Because it has... They're hard to design. There's faction identity problems. If you a four-color faction set? Because it has... They're hard to design. There's faction identity problems. If you create five-color soup,

it causes color pie problems. It is hard for draft signals. It's hard to fit all the components in the set. There's word length problems. There's draft complexity problems. There's an over-reliance on understanding how to draft mana correctly. The sets are rounded.

It's just this endless list I made. I barely fit this on a piece of paper. It's just this endless list I made. I barely fit this on a piece of paper. It is a hard thing to do. So I hope today, and when I did this with the Vanilla Matters, people seemed to like it. I get why people want it. It is not an easy ask.

It's not an easy task. So hopefully today just gives you some general idea of the many, many problems that such a thing would have. But anyway, I can see I'm 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 be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.

Bye-bye.