Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #999: Green with Megan Smith

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

In this podcast, I sit down with Megan Smith, the representative for green in the Council of Colors to talk all about green.

I'm not pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work at Home Edition. So I use my at-home time to interview people. So today we have Megan Smith, here the green representative of the Council of Colors. Welcome, Megan. Hey, thanks Mark for having me. Okay, so the idea of this podcast is all about green. Talk about your role as green, how you see green, and you and I will chat all about green. So I want to start with a little, like, how did you first get involved in the Council of Colors? How did that happen? Well, I've been in the design studio for about three years now. And about a little, around a year ago, we had Ken Nagel left the Council of Colors.

He went on to some greener pastures to explore some new opportunities within wizard still uh but still greener pastures as you said greener pastures exactly even greener he's taking his role with him very seriously uh so there was an opening on the council um i've been involved in the magic design side i've been involved with magic spell slingers which is our mobile game that is available now on Steam. But, you know, I've just been all over the place working on a bunch of things.

So I was approached and asked if I wanted to join. And of course I said yes. Okay, so let's talk a little bit. So your role is to represent green, right? Yes. So as the green representative, what are the most important things as far as like, what do you think your most important job is as a representative of green?

The most important job is just make sure that green has the biggest and scariest creatures. I think that's just the hallmark of what green is all about. It's all about just like this evolution of the strongest survive. So anything that like doubles power and toughness, I'm just like, yes, green. Yes. I love all of this. But along with that, I think there's this part about green that we kind of forget sometimes, which is green just has a really close connection to like heritage and history and like where people come from that I love exploring with like regrowth effects. So for me, it's not just about having big green creatures, but it's really connecting to like your community or where you come from and representing that in cards and mechanics. So real quickly, we won't get too deep in this. I've done a Council of Colors podcast,

but one of the roles of each representative is whenever we do a set, you guys do a pass on the set and you make notes about your color. So what are the most common notes you make about green? What are the most common things you have to say about green? Most often, more frequently recently is maybe this is a white card. Green and white have been doing this little dance. We have been very heavily entwined in each other. And Chris Mooney has been doing a fantastic job helping untwine that and i'm doing my best to assist but very often we find green and white stepping on each other's toes and i think the biggest thing is making sure that even for

colors who share a ton of similarities like tokens and plus one plus one counters is making each of those colors feel like they're doing it in their own special way so for the biggest thing that i always say is can this token size be bigger? Or can this care about a creature type that green cares about, like beasts, dinosaurs, things like that? Can it care about lands instead of a more generic type? So anything that really connects with things that are just really more green

than any other color has a connection to. Yeah, so you talk about it, I'll go back in history a little bit. Way back in the day, green was sort of the creature color, and everything about creatures, including having lots of creatures, we sort of lumped into green. And then one day we were like, you know, white really is more about having lots of creatures, where green is more about having the big creature. And we started on this path of saying, okay, let's really make sure white is about I want

lots of little things, and green is about I want, if I have lots of things, they're big things, but if I have one thing, it's a big thing. And then, like you were saying, we definitely went down this path of, okay, they both make tokens, but white is the king of lots of little tiny 1-1 tokens and stuff. And green is like, right, 3-3 tokens or 4-4 tokens or 5-5 tokens. It's just making the bigger things. And that's been an interesting divide between white and green. Like, we also see that in Giant Gross,

where we let white, like, plus 1, plus 1, plus 2, plus 2. Fine, that's white. But plus 3, plus 3, bigger. Okay, now we're talking green. And it's been an interesting divide. Yeah, it's been really difficult, like I said, to untangle those, because they do seem very closely related.

There was one card that Chris and I fought, you know, quote-unquote fought over, of who gets this effect or whose card is this really, and that was Skew Swarm that came out of Xehanar. And this one just sparked up a really interesting conversation about green's copying abilities, where it can copy its own stuff like Giant Adaphage, but white's efficiency of making really small, tiny things

that kind of like spread out and go all over. Could you say what the card does to the audience? Let's assume they haven't memorized every card. Yes, sorry. Skew Swarm is a three mana green creature. It's a 1-1 with a land fall ability that says whatever land comes into play under your control, create a 1-1 insect creature token.

I believe if you have seven or more lands, make a copy of card name instead. So once you hit that threshold of total number of lands, you start making copies of Skeet Swarm, which is exponential growth. You'll make four, then you'll make eight, then you'll make 16. And that's the type of token making that white should be more able to do than green. Right. One of the things that's interesting, one of the, I mean, you and I talked about this, but I'm curious to share this with the public. One of the things is a lot of times there's abilities that like there's some

history there, but then we have to reevaluate. And so, green for a long time, we've let green copy itself. You can't copy other things. Blue's the color that can copy other stuff. But the green has, like, self-replicating things and the ability to... Sometimes, for example, you know, we let you go get another copy of a card of a creature you already have on the battlefield and stuff. And I know you and I are both fans of the green can copy itself thing, but let's talk a little bit.

There's some controversy around that. There is. Like you said, Blue does this a lot of the time. There's a couple of, like, not hard and fast rules around what green can copy, but like you said, we do want green to kind of self-replicate as opposed to like stealing other people's abilities or getting access to things it doesn't have so if you think in terms of like my favorite examples of creatures that like self-replicate are like oozes and slimes they just split up and all of a sudden you've got two of them and those ones split now you've got a bunch of them oozes and slimes feel very green in that sense like this this

bio-organism that kind of just like takes on this like multiplicative nature um but the the big thing is like when we want green to copy itself we want it to copy it through green means so we don't want it to do classic cloning where it's you know uh as this creature enters the battlefield it enters as a copy of another creature uh that's why i pointed out giant adaphage which is a six seven mana i believe it's a seven mana seven seven with trample and when it deals combat damage to a player make a copy of itself uh so it starts getting big and starts kind of just like going to town and making a bunch of these things and that is the greenest way to copy a thing i could think of i love that card i always reference that card whenever I'm talking about copy effects.

Yeah, it's one of the things that's really interesting to me is there's so much nuance in carving out, well, this ability exists in two colors, but here's how, like we talked about how white and green can both do tokens but do differently, and blue and green can both copy things but differently. It's kind of neat finding that dividing point, like, you know, how does green do in a way that's green? Exactly. And that's one of my favorite parts about being on the council is like, how can I find cool and unique space or different space for my color that is still respectful to other colors? You know, we always talk about making sure colors,

fingers aren't in each other's pies, the color pies, and making sure that they're kind of doing their own thing. But as the game grows, we want to make sure that the colors are kind of evolving or finding new, cool, interesting things to do, especially as we create these really intricate new planes. Like the streets of Nukapena was just a super interesting place to figure out how does green, which is a color normally associated with nature and animals

and things like that, be in a city. Just be in a full city that has, you know, cars and, you know, all these buildings and everything. You know, what does green look like on those planes? And I think the creative team has done a really great job showing what green can be like in these places. But thinking about those things and thinking about what else can these colors do or represent is the fun part of being on the council and helping kind of steer that those decisions a little bit yeah the thing is i find very fascinating is it is so easy to think of colors to of their extreme like kind of yeah green and extreme is like i'm running through nature and i mean like it's like but there are aspects of green

you know green isn't one thing you know it's sort of a multitude of things. And so let's talk a little bit about artifacts. Cause I know, I know this is an interesting topic of green and artifacts. Um, so we know that green hates artifice, right? Green, green doesn't like unnatural things. And some artifacts are very unnatural. Some of them are, you know, made items and stuff. So as a green, let's talk, what is your take on artifacts as the green, the counsel for green? I think the way that you phrased it there is perfect. The man-made or the human-made, the artifice things are what green dislikes because it is unnatural. It's something that was created not by you know nature um it was just created out of a need or necessity or desire um so when i think about these things i think about the difference between how uh artifice was displayed

on kaladesh for instance versus like mirrodin um in kaladesh nature and artifice are combined in this really beautiful way Ovia Pashiri is one of my favorite cards from that set she's she just creates artifact creatures and she's green and it was just the beautiful blend of how can we create things like this versus creating something like a warship or you know a sword or something that, which doesn't have a life of its own. It doesn't really feel like it's, you know, growing in that way. So that's how I like to approach green when we're looking at artifacts or how it interacts with artifacts is, is this artifact that it's interacting with created naturally? Does it fit into the scope of the setting that we're in? Naturally, does it fit into the scope of the setting that we're in? Is it something that green would naturally come across or find in its environment? Or be a natural evolution as, you know, the plane's civilization progresses?

Things like that are all questions we talk about on the council. And I know that creative has a big where in the world of Kaladesh, the idea of creation and of nature were a lot more interlinked. Like, one of the things you'll notice is a lot of the designs of the artifacts mirror nature. You know, a lot of them are meant to, like, reflect nature. And that's kind of, it was neat to me that in this world, green is not as separated from artifacts as it is in other places because the nature of the world

is a lot more, I guess, like nature. And it's funny because I know it's very easy to say, well, green hates this, so what's green ever doing helping artifacts? It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Green likes certain types of artifacts, doesn't like others, and that yeah, green is really good at destroying artifacts,

but that doesn't mean it can't be good at working with them. I always point to white. Like, white's great at destroying enchantments, but it's also good at working with them, so. Yep, and it's all about, like you said, the context of how it's working together, which is why we do such a great job, all the teams at Wizards, of combining everything to make the story make sense.

You see these cards and you're not turned off by them because you see the art combined with the designs combined with the world. And it all just creates this nice package that is just like super digestible. Okay, so now we'll talk a controversial topic, since we're talking artifacts. Treasure. Do you consider, as the green representative, treasure to be a green thing? Yes. I think there are a lot of great arguments. I read so many arguments online about these things because I think it's just so fascinating.

But ultimately, green is a mana creation color. I think this is probably the easiest answer I could give without getting into too much nuance. I think this is just a very mechanical answer, but green is a mana generation color. I always joke that it's the five color color. Treasure doing what it does in a vacuum is a green thing the execution of artifacts i think is where things get muddled and that's where people again you kind of zero in on this one thing of green hates artifacts um and that's where you kind of have to like open up your mind a little bit and kind of like see the bigger picture of it's not just artifacts you know what else can green care about that could be represented as an artifact for instance you know there are treasures in nature

that could easily have you know be on the art for these cards it could be you know a bouquet of flowers it could be like a necklace that your grandmother made and had down to you and that's not artifice it's it's something it's a token it's a it's a bit of your history as like i was saying before um and it's a treasure in a different sense. So kind of looking at the hard and the loose rules here, mana, yes, green, yes, but also if you look at it at the bigger picture, I think it makes a lot more sense. Yeah, I think it's very easy to, like, one of the things about magic and colors is that every color has a relationship with all the components of the game

and it's not absolute. It's not like this thing is only good or only bad and that green and artifacts have a relationship. It's not, you know, green does like blowing up artifacts. It's not like green doesn't have some hatred for certain kinds of artifacts, but I do

think there are... Yeah, it's interesting to me because we use artifact to be so wide. Like, it's an object. And, you know, some objects are natural things. You know, we joke about... You and I were talking about how there's, like, a rock. Like, Togo makes a rock. Well, I...

Togo's a green card confirmed. He's got landfall. Maybe we should revisit Togo, Mark. That's true. But I think that's great. I think another one that people don't come to as something that green doesn't do a lot is Magecraft in Strixhaven was all about casting and copying instants and sorceries. And we don't often put casting instants and sorceries on green cards, but green certainly has access to magic. certainly has access to magic. We have, you know, shaman and druid in green that are very obviously doing magical things with nature, of course, to an extent. But when we went to Strixhaven, we had to kind of reimagine, you know, what does green instant and sorcery casting look like? And

like, what is the ultimate result of that? And I think that one was a really great execution. And I think I'd be super interested to explore more of that. But I think that's another thing to kind of look at where it's like, yes, each color needs to have some kind of relationship with each card type in magic. And it's not always just a checkbox of yes, we like these and no, we don't like these. Okay, so what is the effect that is not currently in green that you most believe should be in green? Oh, I didn't know there was going to be a test. Yes, we got it. I think something that I really like for green is more access to flashback type things. Flashback is very blue, red, Innistrad type stuff. But to me, reflecting on something you've done before is very green.

I think we could do more flashback stuff for green. It's not something that's not currently in Pi, but it's something we don't explore very often. It's just more stuff that kind of like comes back from the graveyard in a sense. Could be reanimation. It could be creatures that come back. Those are all like minor aspects of green's color pie but i think we could explore that more yeah so here's the interesting thing you and i are on the same page on this one but uh there's been arguments on the team about whether regrowth is supposed to be green now you and i know are both in the regrowth camp as being green um but because green for example isn't one of the colors that tends to get back

into the sorceries, where red and blue, for example, more likely are. And there's some argument of like, oh, is regrowth, you know, should green be doing that? So what is your defense of regrowth? My game designer brain says it's a healthy thing for our game to have, is just have a color that can have access to any card type in the graveyard that's the easy answer is just saying it makes our game

better or it makes the game work uh my other example is just what i've said before it's the it's the learning from the past it's learning from the history it's like dredging up ancient you know artifacts enchantments spells from your ancestors, dead bodies, creatures. All these things, I think, are just flavorfully in Green's pie. I think I would find it extremely odd if Green had, say, an Archeomancer, a creature that enters the battlefield and only returns an instant or sorcery. I'd have some questions about that because I think that Blue and Red have earned the right to have those cards be

strong in their colors and green has access to many other regrowth effects um but I have no I have no qualms with green just saying yeah any card yeah sometimes one interesting divides we'll make is and this is what we ended up agreeing on was that green can get any card but we don't let it specify uh non-permanent so you can't go get an instant you can't go get any card, but we don't let it specify non-permanent. So you can't go get an instant, you can't go get a sorcery, but you can say anything, and then, okay, you can get those,

but only on the guise of everything. Yes, it secretly says get an instant or sorcery, but we disguised it by also letting you get all these other permanent types. Yeah, well, there's something very powerful about what words you put on cards, in that the fact that we only reference, we never reference it specifically, it's there, but it's, you know, it's a little bit, I don't know, I think that's important, so.

Yeah, I agree. Okay, what ability is currently in green, do you think should at least be in green? What's the ability that you're like, I really think this color should be somewhere, this ability should be in another color? Giant green dragons. That is my hot take. I loved the D&D sets. I played D&D myself.

I totally get the cycle of colored dragons. I think it's perfect for that setting. I just looked at old gnaw bones and I was like, dang. So that was one where i really had to wrestle with my my knowledge and love of the color pie and say it's for a good cause it's for a good reason this is a great card knob bone is a strong magic card it's super fun to play uh but i think big green flyers is the one thing that really uh feels the the most foreign to what green usually does. Yeah, it's funny.

Cycles is what gets us in trouble the most often. It's like, we're just making a cycle. I'm like, well, it's part of the cycle. And I know we've had numerous, numerous meetings where we're like, well, okay, but only as part of a cycle. Yes. had numerous numerous meetings where like we're like well okay but only as part of a cycle yes the only as part of the cycle getting us in trouble very famously but uh i think it was appropriate for the setting so i'm willing to loosen the reins on giant green dragon specifically if you try and get some giant green flying adephages in there now you're combining my favorite thing with my least favorite thing about green and I'll really have to make a decision.

Oh, I tried to stop Hornet Queen and could not stop that card. I tried so hard. Okay. So somehow Hornets and Wasps are my bane. It's a color-by bane. It lets you do bad things

in the color-by. So, okay. What is an ability that green has done being. They just let you do bad things in the color buy. So, okay. What is an ability that Green has done in the past that we haven't seen in a while that you would love to see? Some of us should say, Green used to do this and we just haven't done it. I'd love to see Green do this. What's an effect

in that camp? Ooh, what is a good thing that Green hasn't done in a while? I feel like that's a really good question. I feel like green is in a really good spot lately. I think in our endeavors to separate green and white, I think green enchantments have been the least like fleshed out i think that there's a lot of cool space with green enchantments um that we've kind of just like defaulted into white ton of green enchantments that could just be white and we've done that um so that's one that i'm really excited to kind of see more of is kind of go back to green's roots and enchantments and then kind of explore the green and white relationship with those a little bit more and kind of figure out once and for all who gets Mesa Enchantress.

Do you believe green should get Mesa Enchantress? I think that there's a lot of discussion around white card draw, which I think is the biggest thing that will limit white's ability to have Mesa Enchantress in the future, is the slow draw for white. I think Mesa Enchantresses in the future uh is the the the slow draw for white um i think mesa enchantress with a limiter is absolutely i think green should not get mesa enchantress if white does not have an equal or better version and that's how we try and find the balance in the colors since green and white are both primary and enchantments we have to make sure that one is not significantly stronger than the other. So we kind of have to figure out how do we make sure each color is not only doing their thing in

the way that their color would do, but also making sure that those colors each have a strong representation of that effect. So yeah, one of the things that I find very interesting, I mean, the council's existed for a while, you've been on for a year, is we have some very interesting debates about, like, philosophy of colors that I find fascinating. And one of the ones that keeps coming up in green is this idea of, like, like, everybody agrees green is about nature, right? No one, no one has any issue with that. But, right, like, for example, you were talking a lot about how green's about the past and how green's about tradition. And I agree with you.

I think that's a really important part of green, but I feel like that doesn't get nearly, like everybody wants to go to nature and not enough people want to go to other aspects of green. Yeah, I think there's a lot of themes that we do. Again, I'm always fighting with Chris over white things because they're very similar to green but I think there's a lot of themes around like civilizations

or just like hierarchies where like monarchies for instance I think monarchies are a very green thing I think they represent justice which is a very white theme but ultimately inherited rulership feels very green to me.

And I think that that would be interesting to see like thrown about like the Eldraine system if King Kenrith was base green. He was base green for a while, but that's because he was an elk. So we don't count that. But if he was green instead of white, like what does that change about how he runs the courts or how he runs the plane? So I realize we've talked a lot about green and white's conflict. So let's talk about the other colors for a second. So green and red. What do you think green and red are fighting over?

Green and red are fighting over sizing, I think, the most of i think that red's ferocity is something that everyone knows about you know big stat uh stat uh power statted tramplers when you think of something like that you think red first and i think like square stats square stat tramplers are more green like more chonky on the on the toughness side um so i think that trying to make sure that green and red have different ways to attack and create creatures that feel like their color is a big deal. Red does get giant flyers, which does differentiate it from green, which is another reason why I think green flyers should be limited to preserve red's identity as the dragon color or having these big flying threats. We are usually in a fight over some haste. I've encouraged designers to explore different ways that green can grant haste to other creatures, not just having haste on itself.

That's just something green can do and has done in the past. But looking at things in terms of like, how can green grant this keyword to other things is something that we've kind of pulled back on. And then I kind of want to explore explore more as we keep going, but keep it separate from red. Right, and we've talked about, for example, even taking haste as a good example, where we really want red haste to be on smaller things and green haste to be on bigger things.

That when you're talking about, you know, the one drop, the two drop, the three drop, that's more what red is doing, and that it's right, I play this giant creature and attack you right away, but it's something of size. That's more where green's trying to use its haste. A little more on the bigger things.

Yep. Green has also gotten in a little bit of trouble with its evasive threats. Again, the small little things that can slip under or you can put an equipment enchantment on it and it's really difficult to block or interact with. Those things are ones that we also watch while they come through to make sure that there are other colors that are better at evasion such as blue and flying or blue with you know skulk or some other you know

flavor of evasion and saying making sure like green can have these we don't want green to be the small aggressive creature deck we want green strength to be in its size and its high cost cards. So you brought up blue. So what's the green blue? What are green blue fighting? Drawing cards. I think green just was drawing so many cards. And I know that that was something that I brought up. I had a Twitter thread up the other day talking about green card draw and some of the things that we've pulled back on. Most of it has been in the card draw. We definitely saw, you know, people gravitating away from blue they you know we have all the card draw we need in green everything's here um so trying to aim green's card draw again more around those

things that it cares about uh caring about you know the greatest power that you control uh making sure that you know green's doing something like whenever a creature with power four or greater enters the battlefield stuff like that where it's really having you play into the green themes to get that card draw as opposed to playing around more in the blue themes or the white themes where it's you know small things coming into play and generating a ton of value just separating those a little bit more yeah i know you and I share our dislike of Harmonize. Oh, Harmonize was, well, yeah. That's a very strong blue card.

Drawing three cards for four mana in blue would be a strong card. So in green, it's even stronger, given that you don't have access to anything like that. And green can pump mana, so it can get there faster than blue can get there. Okay, green and black. What did green and black fight over this is one's weird because the more that green and black fight over these colors the more they seem to play well together so green and black i think fight over the graveyard a lot i think that green and black regrowths how they you know uh raised deads how you get creatures out

has been a line that cory who's the black color counselor and i have talked a lot about uh in terms of like what's the efficiency level of getting creatures out um who should be doing it better and when uh black obviously fuels its graveyard better than green so it's raised deads are stronger because you're more likely to find the card that you need uh and it's more of a draw spell than it is like I want to buy back my creature after it's died once. So trying to figure out if black should be milling a couple cards before it returns something back to give it

some extra strength is something that black would do better than green, for example. Okay, so I'm almost to my desk here, so we're almost to work. So final thoughts to leave to the audience of as someone who's thought about green for a year, what are so final thoughts to leave the audience of as someone who's thought about green for a year what are your final thoughts about this current state of green i'm really excited

for where green is going i think that there's a ton more space i've seen the few i've seen into the future and i've seen all the cool planes we're going to visit and all the cool things that green is going to get to do and i'm really excited for everyone to see that. But I want people to know like green is kind of coming into a little bit of a new identity and it takes time to really feel all the changes. I know white's kind of gone through its, you know, glow up phase, as you might say. I think green is just getting a little bit of a rebrand, but I'm excited to see how people receive it. Yeah, the other tricky thing I think about green is of all the colors green is the color we've been the least exact with over time and so now

that like commander is all the rage and like people playing with cards from 30 years of magic green is the most all over the board when that is true and so there's a lot of really identifying cards that aren't really green and so that And so I know that makes some problems for getting a sense of what green is. Yeah, and that's why I think that the best thing that we can do is be consistent moving forward. I think players will learn over time when we don't print more Harmonizes in Standard or Modern Horizon sets and things like that, that this isn't really like a green thing anymore. But they'll see the types of cards that are green that are allowing them to draw cards like rishkar's expertise you know drawing equal to greatest power things like that will show up more often and more frequently and i think

you'll start seeing those patterns and i think that's what players should take from magic's growth is always trying to learn and see what's new or what's next and then also just learn from the past and understand what is no longer in pie or something we don't want to do anymore and why. Okay. Well, thank you for joining me. It's fun. I love talking color, so it's fun talking green.

But I am at my desk. So we all know what that means. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So, guys, this is the end of Drive to Work, but I want to thank you, Megan, for being with to be making magic. So, guys, this is the end of Drive to Work, but I want to thank you, Megan, for being with us. Thank you so much, Mark. And to all of you, I will see you next time.

Bye-bye.