Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #884: Color Pie Changes 2021, Part 2

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

This is part two of a two-part series where I go over the various changes to the color pie as outlined in the 2021 Mechanical Color Pie article.

I'm not pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Coronavirus edition. Okay, so last time I had a podcast about the changes to the color pie as reflected in the 2021 Mechanical Color Pie article that I did. I got through L, but that's only half the alphabet, so I'm going to do the second half today. But that's only half the alphabet, so I'm going to do the second half today. So basically, I'm just going through the changes we made to explain just different and various changes we made to the color pie. So I'm going to start with milling, because I'm starting with M. The only change I made in milling was milling at the time was a slang term, and since then it's become an actual term in magic. A bunch of people did point out to me, the one thing that I have missed here that maybe I will go change, is I do not reflect that

green can self-mill. Milling is primary blue, secondary black, and those two colors will mill other people, and sometimes can mill themselves, or can mill everybody. Green only does self-milling. Green doesn't mill other... Well, every once in a blue moon, green makes everybody mill and then care about what... Usually when green mills,

green cares about what is being milled and it matters that... Mill and then find a creature or find a land or something. I don't reflect that here. So maybe I will go in the article and I will fix that. Okay, next up, Planeswalker Destruction. So, it used to be primary black, secondary green.

Mostly, green did it because we used to have, green more regularly used to destroy target non-creature permanent, because green could destroy lands and enchantments and artifacts, and at the time, that was all the non-land permanents.

We really don't want green to easily kill planeswalkers, so we've sort of pulled back on this. So I said it being secondary. I said it's tertiary. It is something green can do in a pinch, so I left it at tertiary. But really, killing planeswalkers is mostly a black thing. That's something we've sort of put as an area of black. So black does a lot of, you know, destroy target creature or planeswalker. Okay, next up, playing cards off the top of the library

at a cost. Under the old version, it was primary blue, secondary green. And I didn't know quite, like, the idea here is any color has the ability to access the top of his library

if the things you're going to cast are things in that color sort of bailiwick, if you will. And blue does do it the most. At least there's the most cards that do it. That's why I think it was primary blue before. I finally decided it's not something we do often,

so I did something weird. It's the only ability that is no primary, only secondary, and all the colors are secondary It's the only ability that is no primary, only secondary, and all the colors are secondary. And what I was trying to say is, look, any color can do it. Not every color has done it at the same value. Blue has done it more. But as far as what has access,

any color can have access to it. You know, the only restriction really is that it's something that that color should have access to. And I didn't know how else to reflect that. So this is the quirky one that only does things secondary and not primary. Okay, next.

Playing cards off the top of opponent's library. So basically, it's primary and blue and black that blue and black are the ones that sort of mess with opponent's library the most. And secondary and red, we somehow...

We like red doing impulsive drawing, so we've done a little bit of red sort of impulsive drawing the opponent. So the idea that I exile and cut stuff off the top of your library, and I have a limited amount of time that I can cast them. Usually the blue and black are the major ones

that are messing with this. This was a new section. It just got pointed out in my Council of Colors meeting that I'd simply forgotten it back in 2017. It wasn't new. I just had forgotten it. The one thing I will stress, by the way, in making that Mechanical Color by article is

trying to write down all the colors and all the abilities and everything is a monumental task. So I'm pretty proud of my original article. I didn't miss a lot, but some of the stuff I missed I tried to catch here, and I'm sure there's a few things I'm missing. But every time I update this, I'll get it more and more exact. Okay, next up, Protection.

So Protection, nothing really changed about it. I just, in it, we had, Protection had been evergreen forever. Then we decided to make it deciduous,, then we decided to make it deciduous, and then we decided to make it evergreen again. And so this is just me referencing. I mean, it is, it is in some level, somewhere in between evergreen and deciduous. We label it as evergreen. It does show up in more

sets than it used to. It's a little more evergreen than deciduous. It's a little more deciduous than evergreen. I'm sorry, it's a little more evergreen than deciduous, but it is something that not every set will make use of, so it is kind of the least evergreen of what we dub evergreen. Next up, prowess.

So the only thing that changed about prowess, the primary blue, secondary red, tertiary white didn't change. What did change was it was an evergreen ability. It originally had shown up as an ability, a faction ability for the

Jeskai in Concept Tarkir. We liked it so much we made it immediately evergreen. We then found there was some trouble with it. There's just certain kinds of sets that it fought other things. So Prowess ended up becoming deciduous. My rule is when I make something deciduous,

I just don't take it out. So I leave it in the mechanical card by article. I think with time, I like to get more deciduous stuff in, so I just left it there. Another thing that I took out, a section I removed, was putting cards from hand onto the battlefield.

We just really don't do it anymore, so we took it out. Some people have argued that we do it a little bit it anymore, so we took it out. Some people have argued that we do it a little bit. Maybe I should have left it in. We really, really don't do it much, so I took it out. If it turns out that we're doing, we start doing it a little bit more, I could put it back in in the next iteration.

Okay, next. Reanimation. Okay, so the old reanimation was primary black, secondary white, red, and green, tertiary, and blue. What we finally decided is make it primary white and black. We're being a little more aggressive about white. White as a default tends to reanimate smaller creatures, either in mana value or in power. We started letting white have a little bit more access to just reanimating anything,

and white is just reanimating a little more than it used to. That's why we made it primary. Red can temporarily animate things, and it has phoenixes. Like, we let red do sort of animating for a short period of time, and we have phoenixes that red can animate. And then green has creatures that can bring themselves

back from the graveyard. So anyway, and then we realized that blue, I listed blue at tertiary. We really don't do it in blue, so I removed that. So it's now primary white and black, secondary red and green. Okay, new subsection. Reanimate a permanent. That is something we hadn't done before, but we decided that we wanted white. We wanted to power up white a little bit more in reanimation.

So A, we're letting white reanimate more than just small creatures. And we are letting white reanimate all the permanent types. So it can get back planeswalkers. It can get back artifacts. It can get back enchantments. And it doesn't get back target land, but we're allowing it to say target permanent and get lands when it says target permanent.

So it can do lands, but we're never going to say target permanent and get lands when it says target permanent. So it can do lands but we're never going to call it lands specifically. Next, something we call restocking. This is the ability to put a card from the graveyard into the library, usually on the bottom of the library. Before it was primary green and blue we decided it was just primary green, secondary blue we moved it being primary in blue and green.

We were just trying to reflect that we actually do this a decent amount in blue. Back in the day, we did it more in green and less in blue, but blue's been catching up, so I wanted to reflect that. Okay, another change in status is returning cards from graveyard to hand. So returning artifacts from graveyard to hand, it used to be primary blue, secondary white. We've made it primary white and no longer a blue thing. And returning sorceries from graveyard hand,

it used to be primary red, secondary blue. Now it's primary blue, secondary red. We said that blue is primary and returning instance and sorceries to your hand, and red is secondary in both of those. So we wanted to reflect that. Once again, it's one of those things where

when blue and red have to divvy up in its cycle or something, we will let blue pick instance and red pick enchantments, for example. But in a vacuum, blue does more caring but instance and sorcery, so we change

that. Okay, next. Redirection. We've started doing redirection. We've started doing redirection. It used to be just redirecting spells. We've started doing redirection to be spells and abilities just to make it a little more useful. So I wanted to reflect that. Taxing.

Before taxing was listed as primary white, I realized that blue does taxing counter spells, and I wanted to represent that. So I made blue secondary. It really wasn't a change in what it did. It just was me not pointing out that, look that blue does taxing counterspells, and I wanted to represent that, so I made blue secondary. It really wasn't a change in what it did. It just was me not pointing out that, look, blue does do a little bit of taxing for counterspells,

so we wanted to add that in. Transformation. So this was a big one. I mentioned this last podcast. Blue transformation no longer can destroy or exile a creature and then give its controller a token to represent transformation. Transformation will be done in two ways

now. One is, it'll either do it temporarily, like target non-creature becomes a creature until end of turn, end of next turn, or it'll be done through an aura or some sort of means by which it can be undone. And that the idea is is white is doing what we call compensation removal.

I get rid of it, and then I give you something in place. Now, the compensation doesn't have to be a creature in white. It could be, you know, life or card or whatever. But anyway, we've made the change about blue. So blue won't be doing things like that anymore. Next, tutoring. So tutoring is going to your library, getting a card, putting it in your hand. I think we decided that

before we said that tutoring for instance sorcery was a blue thing, primary blue, we decided that red does enough, we'll call it secondary red. And then tutoring for a land, I wanted to reference that white is getting a little bit more tutoring.

Maybe I should have made white secondary instead of tertiary. I left it tertiary. Maybe white's supposed to be secondary. That's a fine point. But anyway, we are letting white, especially for commander purposes, do a little bit more catching up. Usually it just gets planes, by the way. It doesn't color fix. It just gets more white cards. But we're letting it do that. And then

tutoring for a planeswalker we did not have that before, so I added that section. And then, tooting for a planeswalker was a, we did not have that before, so I added that section. White is primary for tooting for a planeswalker. Okay, next, vigilance. This is another change, and this, in fact,

is the most forward-looking change. This change actually hasn't even happened yet on printed cards, but it is going to happen, and I decided that I might as well let you know. So last time we were there, 2017, primary white, secondary green.

It's still primary white, but we decided to make it secondary, not just in green, but also in blue. This happened because Play Design came to us and was having some issues with blue, especially in combat. They needed more combat-relevant things. So they came and said, hey,

could we just do vigilance in blue? Blue already has creatures that can untap themselves, usually for mana, but it has creatures that can untap themselves. It wasn't that far of a stretch to let blue do it. We talked about whether we wanted to take it out of green when we added it to blue,

but we realized that there's reasons that green needs it, and the general philosophy has been we're a little bit more willing to put creature abilities in up to three colors, and it had only been in two colors. So we are willing, we are sort of, on a case-by-case basis, like, haste now is secondary in red and green and black.

Vigilance is primary and secondary in white, blue, and green. We're being a little bit more. What we found is we want to have enough separation that not every color is doing everything, but we found that it's a little more valuable to us from a design standpoint to let three colors between primary and secondary have access

rather than two. So you're seeing that happen a little bit more. Next, Wheeling. So Wheeling is a nickname for what Wheel of Fortune is. So Wheel of Fortune is discard your hand and draw a new hand. And usually it's draw a full hand. There is an offshoot of wheeling, winds of change is the card,

where you discard cards and you only draw the number that you discarded. We still do that. It used to be that wheeling and the offshoot of that was blue and red, primary blue and red. And since we've really just decided it's a red thing, there's been a lot of discussions about this. One of the big challenges is

that red is not supposed to get card advantage card drawing, that it gets impulsive drawing, where, well, it can get an advantage, but it has to use it immediately. And red has rummaging, where it discards the card and draws a card. But we really don't have to straight-up draw. And the one thing about wheeling is, if I have an empty hand,

or I just have a smaller hand, when I discard cards, if I'm drawing more cards, it is a way to go up in cards. Now, it does depend on red getting rid of its hand. Red kind of has to act really red for it to be able to go up. And we like this effect, and we experimented for a while in blue. It's just blue didn't need it,

and red kind of needed it, so we've decided that it's going to be a red thing. It's something we're careful with. We do it infrequently. We mostly do it at rare. We don't want to make it too easy for red to draw cards, but we said, okay, at a low As fan, infrequently, when red is empty its hand, okay, we'll give red a little bit of ability to sort of draw cards, but we said, okay, at a low as-fan, infrequently, when red is empty its hand,

okay, we'll give red a little bit of ability to sort of draw cards. Okay, so that is all the old sections, but there are a bunch of new sections I added. Mostly, there's the things I just forgot last time. A few of them might be new.

I'm going to run through them, and we'll cover them. So first up is Plus One Plus One Counter, both Creation and Caring. Primary white and green. Secondary black. Tertiary blue and red. This was just something that I'd forgotten in 2017. This isn't a new thing.

We like Plus One Plus One Counters. We use them a lot. In fact, every color has some access to them. You'll notice that all five colors have access. But white and green are both the king of making plus one plus one counters, both on themselves and putting them on other creatures.

In fact, I think white and green are mostly the only colors, with rare exceptions, that put plus one plus one counters on other creatures. Mostly black, blue, and red can get bigger. That's how they use them. Now, I will note, by the way, when I say primary, secondary, tertiary, one of the confusing things about them is

different effects happen at different rates. Here's something we do all the time. So tertiary often will happen in sets. Black, blue, and red, or blue and red are tertiary. Blue and red will get plus and plus encounters in sets all the time, usually on themselves, usually getting bigger on something that's thematic for blue and red.

But because plus and plus one counters is something we use all the time, that tertiary for plus and plus one counters could often mean in a lot of sets. Where other things like that happen infrequently, sometimes tertiary can mean every five years, every ten years. We just don't do it that often. If primary does it every two years, well, secondary does it every three to four years. You know, tertiary could do it very

infrequently. So, primary, secondary, tertiary is irrelevant to how often the effect happens. Anyway, we use post-mortem encounters a lot. We really like them. It's a great way to sort of have change with time. Players have gotten used to them, so it's a resource that we can use

that players are kind of encountered with, and there's a lot of design flexibility on them. But anyway, white and green are king of putting them out. Black does it every once in a while. And white and green are best at granting abilities to things that have plus one, plus one counters. You do occasionally see it in blue because it's something that Simic does. So granting is, although I listed it as tertiary, it is probably secondary for Simic, for purposes of Simic.

That's the one place where we let blue do it a little bit more. Oh, the one thing, by the way, do I mention this here? This came up in my blog. Blue is primary in moving counters. Is that something I talk about? I'm not sure. Blue is primary in moving counters, meaning blue can take a possible counter and move from one creature to another, or take another kind of counter and move it. Blue is primary at moving counters. Blue is not good at generating counters. So the fact that blue can move a possible counter from one creature to another, or take another kind of counter and move it. Blue is primarily at moving counters. Blue is not good at generating counters. So the fact that Blue can move a plus one counter from one creature to another, but it can't make them. So

in order for Blue to be able to move it, it somehow has to get generated. And that's an important differential. Okay, next. Casting spells from opponent's graveyard or exile. This is primary Blue and Black. This is not a ability we listed before. Another blind spot. Blue and black like messing with the opponent

in a way that other cards don't quite. Blue and black are more often willing to use the opponent's resources. I did talk about how they use cards from the opponent's deck. I mentioned that. This is that blue and black will go into the graveyard and will cast cards out of the opponent's graveyard.

This is not a relatively new thing. It's just something that I forgot. But it is something that I think we've been doing a little bit more of than we have in the distant past. So I just wanted to call that out. Okay, then to differentiate casting spells from your graveyard as opposed to casting spells from the opponent's graveyard. So primary casting spells from your graveyard is black.

Secondary is blue and red. Tertiary is white and green. graveyard is black. Secondary is blue and red. Tertiary is white and green. The reason blue and red are secondary is casting Instants and Sorcerers out of your graveyard is something that blue and red do.

It's their only really means to recast something, because Instants and Sorcerers sit in your graveyard once you cast them. Black is the best at getting creatures out of the graveyard. Oh, sorry, this is casting spells. We do let black just cast spells out of the graveyard, any kind of spell.

Blue and red is more casting instant sorcerer out of the graveyard. The reason I left white and green as tertiary is we just do stuff like flashback and flashback variants enough that, look, when it is a theme, all the colors could have access when there's a theme of a mechanic-like flashback. Okay, next. Instant and sorcery triggers. Whenever you cast instant sorcery, blah.

This is primary in blue and red. So the fact that... Basically, this is something where blue and red are the two colors that have the most instance of sorceries, and so it's most often that we've been doing stuff like this. Sometimes it'll trigger off, like we

do with prowess, non-creature, casting a non-creature spell. But when we specifically call for instance of sorcery, primarily we do it in blue and red. Okay, next up, it in blue and red. Okay, next up, talking about sacrificing permanents. Okay, so sacrificing artifacts, we've done

primarily in black and red. Mostly what we've decided is that blue has synergy with artifacts, white has synergy with artifacts, green has green is number one in destroying artifacts, so we like the idea that black and red were just artifacts. Green has green is number one in destroying artifacts. So we like the idea that black and red were just the... Black and red have a lot

of sacrifice themes we tend to do. So both sacrifice artifact and sacrifice creature are primary in black and red. It's kind of nice that we could... There often is a color pair. Often black and red as a archetype in limited

do sacrifice things. And so artifacts and creatures are the number one things that we do for sacrificial purposes. Then we get to sacrifice enchantments. We try to not make it easy for black to sacrifice enchantments. I'll get to a second where there's a small area where we do it. But anyway, so to sacrifice enchantments. I'll get to the second word. There's a small area where we do it.

But anyway, so for sacrificing enchantments, we let green do it. And then when we were in Theros, we had a big discussion in the Council of Colors about we wanted to have more sacrificing enchantments. We were trying to find who needed the help. And red turned out to be the color that least interacts with enchantments. Green and more sacrificing enchantments. We were trying to find who needed the help, and red turned out to be the color that least interacts with enchantments.

Green and white make enchantments and destroy enchantments, and even black has some synergy with enchantments. And blue did as well. So red was really one that had the least amount of interaction, so we thought it made sense to let it sacrifice enchantments. It also means when red is doing... Red is probably king of sacrificing permanents. Red's all about short-term gain.

So anyway, we like enchantments being red. Sacrificing land, primary red. Red is the color that not only destroys land, but also is more likely to sacrifice land. I probably should have listed, now that I realize this, this as being tertiary in all the colors, because all the colors can sacrifice lands when we have means to do it, usually when there's a theme.

But red is when the primary does it. And then we get to sacrificing a permanent. So primary is red, because red is primary in sacrificing an artifact and a creature and an enchantment and a land. I did not list sacrifice a planeswalker. There's just not enough planeswalkers to get there. We do do sacrifice a permanent, so you

can't sacrifice a planeswalker if you sacrifice a permanent. We don't mind red sacrificing planeswalkers, it's just not a build that comes out much. We did list it secondary in black, and the reason there is we don't like black sacrificing enchantments, but because black sacrifices everything else,

like, we didn't list Land Sacrificing Red, but Black Sacrificing Land's not a horrible problem. Anyway, we made it secondary. Every once in a while, we're going to let Black Sacrifice a permanent. That will be a way for it to Sacrifice Enchantments, but we won't call it out by name. It'll be a narrow

band, and we decided that if Black every once in a while Sacrifices Enchantments, we don't make that many, you know, deal with the Devil Enchantments, so we decided that if Black every once in a while sacrifices enchantments, we don't make that many deal with the Devil enchantments, so we decided it would be okay. Next up, Treasure Creation. So Treasure is artifact tokens that have tapped. Sacrifice an artifact at one mana

of any color. Okay, so primarily this is a red ability. Red is the color most associated with fast mana, and what I mean by that is rituals or things in which you get one investment of mana, use it now, and then it's gone. Green is primary in

getting long-term mana, getting elves that tap for mana, getting enchantments that go to lands and make the land tap for more, or getting global enchantments to make the lands tap for more. So anyway, primary this is in red because it's a fast mana thing. Secondary is black and

green. I got a lot of guff for this online. I understand that green hates enchantments. Green does not hate all enchantments, by the way. There are natural things that are enchantments that green is just fine with. Green can like certain kinds of enchantments. Sorry, not enchantments fine with. Green can like certain kinds of artifacts.

Green can like certain types of artifacts. There are natural artifacts that green can like. So it is okay for green to have some synergy with artifacts. There's no problem with that. The second thing is green is primary in making mana. Fine, it's secondary in making temporary mana.

Red is the best at it, but green can still do it. So it's secondary in green because green is the color most likely to do that. It's secondary in black because black has some needs and as long as black is using some resource to get to it, paying life or something, or sacrificing

a creature, we do let black have some ability to do treasures. Blue is a very weird mix. We put it as tertiary because we like doing pirates there, and it's such a nice fit with pirates that we've let blue have a little bit of it when it's messing with pirates.

Probably, probably I should have listed white as tertiary here. We do occasional taxing where you get treasure. It's not something we like to do very often, because white's not supposed to be good at color fixing, and, like, for example, the one where whenever someone casts a spell

you get a treasure. It's a little too easy to get treasure. I think things in which they're taxing where it's not so easy for white to get it, in limited things, maybe we could do a little bit of treasure making. It's not something we should do a lot it. In limited things, maybe we could do a little bit of treasure making. It's not something we should do a lot, but maybe white should have been tertiary.

Okay, next, the Torment ability. So the Torment ability is target player sacrifices a non-land permanent, pays three life, or discards a card. It's something we've started doing a little bit more in black. Corey pointed this out to me, so I threw it in. It's a black ability. Really what's kind of cool is it's combining

life payment and permanent sacrificing and discarding all as one thing, which is kind of neat, saying hey, you choose how you want to suffer, but these are all three black things. Just do one of them. Black's happy that you did it. I don't know how often we'll do torment, and once again,

this is something that maybe is more deciduous than Evergreen, but it is something we're doing a little bit more with, and Corey asked me to put it in, so I put it in. Okay, the last thing is something new that we added. The newest creature ability that we've added, Ward. So Ward is an

ability that we do... We used to have Shroud, in which nobody could target it. Then we changed it to Hexproof, in which nobody but you can target if it's yours. But Hexproof, while it works in certain places, we're not getting rid of Hexproof just yet, it causes some problems in others. And what we found worked really well.

And we just were experimenting for years trying to find other kinds of hexproof stuff. So what Ward says is, if you want to target me, there's an additional cost to target me. And there's two main ways we're doing Ward. One is for mana, and one is for life. Now, yes, you can do Ward

for other types of costs. You could sacrifice creatures. There's other things you could do. But the two main ones, the evergreen ones, are for mana and for life and what we decided was we divvied them up between the colors we decided that white, blue, and green we're going to do ward for mana

and that black and red we're going to do ward for life so the idea is if I have ward for mana and I want to target it oh, well, unless I have extra mana I can't and if I want to do black or red it's more of, am I willing to pay for life? Obviously, life is something more easily accessible than mana. So in some level, ward for life is a little,

it's easier to destroy because you have life, but, you know, how much do you value your life? And ward for high life often can be, is closer to like hexproof because is someone willing to do that? Like we've had a few high ward life cards and really that's like well, unless you're really desperate or

also in commander where life toll is higher people might be more willing to do it just because you have more life to spare. Anyway, that, my friends, is all the things we had. The one last thing I wanted to say, I didn't say this last time, but I'll do it here is, um, I want to thank, uh, two groups. One is the Council of Colors.

Uh, I want to thank them for helping me. This was a big project, uh, them spending time. What we did is each color person, each representative, uh, looked through their color and then gave me notes, both on things to add and things to remove, or just things to change. And then we had a meeting where we talked through all the changes. That was really helpful for me.

And the one thing about doing this was, when I did it the first time, I didn't realize how big a project it was going to be. When I did it the second time, I'm like, well, I've done all, I'm just changing some stuff. It won't be nearly as big a project. and it ended up being a giant project so I want to thank the Council of Congress for really helping me because it would

have been even bigger also I want to thank my the web team who Kendall is my editor and Adam Kendall does my copywriting Adam is my editor and there's a whole bunch of people

that helped put this article together. It's a very complicated article with a lot of moving pieces. And I was changing things. And so I want to thank everybody for doing this. This was, like I said, the reason I'm very excited that Mechanical Color Pie exists

is it's a resource to let everybody be able to sort of learn about the color pie. It's a very complex system. And so this is to sort of learn about the color pie. It's a very complex system. And so this is me sort of starting down the path of trying to get more educated people to really learn about the color pie. I do want to stress I did do an article.

What did I call my article? It was called... What did I call my article? It was Let's Talk Color Pie. So if you Google for Rose It was Let's Talk Color Pie. If you Google for Rosewater, Let's Talk Color Pie. It's an article that lists all my articles and all my

podcasts as of that article where I talk about the color pie. The color pie, I believe, I call it the secret sauce of magic. It's the foundational that everything is built upon. If you love the game of magic, only good things

will come from learning about the color pie. The color pie is truly one of the marvelous things about magic. I did a whole podcast about why the color pie is one of the golden trifecta, one of the three genius ideas Richard Garfield came up with when he made the game. So anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this podcast and the other one,

part one and part two. But anyway, that is all the changes we have made for right now. It's an ongoing thing. The Color Pie is ever in flux. There will be more changes. I will probably update this article again. Hopefully I remember how much work it is.

I'm sure I won't. But anyway, thank you guys for joining me, but I can see my desk. So you all know what that means. Instead of my drive to work, instead of talking about magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.