Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #219 - Green-White

Episode Date: April 17, 2015

Mark talks about the Green-White color pairing.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is another in my mega series about the two color pairs. So let's see. I've done white-blue. I've done blue-black. I've done black-red. I've done red-green. That means it's time for green-white, the final of the ally color pairs. And then I'll be getting on to the enemy pairs in future podcasts. Okay, so let's start by talking about what does green and white want. So green. Okay. So green, green is the one color that believes that things are the way they're supposed to be.

That nature is this thing of beauty and that the key to life is not changing anything. It's not trying to turn into something else. It's just acknowledging and accepting it for what it is. That's why green, green wants acceptance. That's what green ultimately, just accept the world the way it is. And the way it does that, I say, is through harmony. And what that means is that you have to sort of be able to stop and realize what you have. That what green feels is that nobody takes, or not enough people take into account what you have. That what green feels is that nobody takes,

or not enough people take into account what they have. That they're always searching for something else, not realizing that what they already have is plenty. Meanwhile, we have white. White is seeking out peace. White believes that everybody can be happy, that everybody can have what they need, that we have the resources, that everybody can have their needs met.

But in order to do that, it requires us taking steps to make sure that we all get what, you know, that everybody's able to get what they need. And in order to do that, white is very big on structure. White believes that people inherently will do things that are counter to their own well-being, but if you sort of set up rules, whether the rules be civil rules, like laws, or more

spiritual rules, like religion, that you can guide people. People need guidance. That people have lots of impulses and instincts, or more impulses, I guess. More impulses and selfishness is the issue, is that I just want to do things for me.

Me, me, me, me, me. And white's like, you have to think about not yourself, but everybody else. Okay, so the obvious overlap between white and green is their shared enemy is black. Black is the color of selfishness. Black is, I take care of me first well let's go look at the opposites of black which are white and green

well white clearly has this entire sense of the value of the community in that we need to do what's better for the group if a decision is bad for an individual even if the individual is the person making the decision but the benefit is the group the correct answer is doing what's right for the group and green now green cares about the community in a different context than white.

White is very much about the needs of the group outweigh the needs of the individual. Green believes that there's an ecosystem set up, that there is, that everything sits in balance, that everything is connected to one another, and that part of what you, one of the things you need to realize, part of the harmony that you need to reach is understanding the role you have in the world and the interconnectivity you have with everything else. So green's big issue is I have to care about everything else because I'm connected to everything else. That when I do something, it impacts other things. And that you have to be careful what actions you take, because of the repercussions of those actions.

One of the big problems Green has with Black is Black cares about nobody but itself and does things that have horrible ramifications. That if you kill something, that there's not a role for it being killed. Green's not against killing things if there's a point. If I need to eat, I mean, if there's some function

for the killing, Green understands. But killing for just to gain advantage, like Black wants to do, okay, you're disrupting the web of life. You're disrupting the natural order. That you start killing off creatures, maybe those creatures are predators. And if they don't eat their prey, and then things get out of balance. You know, that green's a big believer that there's a harmony that needs to be reached. So where green and white overlap is definitely the needs of the larger group as a whole. That both green and white, in their own way, believe that what's most important is what you're able to do. You need to think about the larger picture. You need to think not just about you yourself, but extend out and think about the larger role that you play.

but extend out and think about the larger role that you play. Okay, so the first place that you see that is that green and white definitely have a flavor of building. That they are colors that are very supportive colors. So, for example, we'll start with creature buffing. That green and white are the two colors that do plus n plus n, meaning that they boost creatures usually at instant speed to sort of make you bigger. And so, now the way we separate white from green is, white tends to do the smaller boosts.

White is plus one plus one or plus two plus two. Normally what it does is white, then also you gain an ability. So it's plus 1 plus 1 and flying, or plus 2 plus 2 and lifelink, or plus 1 plus 1 and first strike. Sometimes white occasionally will do plus 1 plus 0, like it's plus 1 plus 0 and first strike, something it'll do from time

to time. But white definitely does the small burst and usually adds utility to it. Green does the bigger burst. Green gets giant growth. Green is plus three, plus three. Green doesn't tend to add as much as white does. It does end trample every once in a while. But green usually is more about

size. And you will see that green both has the giant growth-like effects and it also has the root wall effects where built into the creature can giant growth itself. White sometimes will have a little bit of buffing.

Sometimes you'll see with knights or something that they'll pump themselves up, but white doesn't do that nearly as much as green. Okay, also, there's the community buffing, where you're buffing all your creatures. So white tends to do plus one, plus one, or plus two, plus two to the whole team, to all your creatures.

You don't buff your opponent's creatures, you just buff your own creatures. White tends to do smaller buffs. White gets plus one, plus one to the whole team, usually at common, often as an instant, sometimes as they enter the battlefield or an activated ability, although usually activated is higher than common. Green tends to get the larger boost, the overruns, if you will. Plus three, plus three to the team. Now, that happens at higher rarities.

So white's team boosting happens a little lower. White is the army color, right? White is the color that has lots of little creatures that work together. And so one of the things that works really well with a small weenie strategy is something that boosts everything. Now, white and green are also the colors that mess around the most often with plus one, plus one counters.

Green is more primary and white is secondary, but it's something that both of them do. Also, because they are number one and number two creature colors. In fact, white is the creature... White is number one in volume of creatures. White has the highest percentage, usually between 55% and 60% creatures. Green is number two in the number of creatures it has.

Now, green is the biggest creature, so green is the creature color in the sense that it gets the highest. Like, at common, it's going to have a 6-6 or a 7-7. And usually at the higher rarities, usually it has the biggest creature. Every once in a while, one or two colors will get a singular big creature. Blue sometimes gets leviathans and things. But green, on average, if you just added up all the power, toughness, and divide it by the number of creatures you have, just on average has the biggest creatures.

And it has the best utility for paying for its creatures. Now what happens is, white is very, very good at getting cheap creatures and it has the best cost to size equity at the low size and the green has the best cost equity at the big size. So those are the two creature colors. They also

overlap in two abilities, speaking of creatures. One is white is primary in vigilance and green is secondary, not tapping to attack. And then also, white and green are the two colors that most often will get indestructible,

which is, it used to not be a keyword, but it's recently become, or not recently, but in the last, I don't know, year or so, it became a keyword. Anyway, so white and green, vigilance is good for both attacking and defending and white and green have some of that quality to them

indestructible is a good defense mechanism, white and green can be very protective like I said, we already talked about the boost that they can boost creatures, that's one means by which to protect themselves another is stuff like indestructible and the one of the reasons by the way that vigilance is involved to protect themselves. Another is self-indestructible. And one of the reasons, by the way, that vigilance is in both colors is that both colors have this sort of quality

of wanting to look out. And white is more defensive than green. Now, one of the ways that white and green both have a defensive quality is that they're the two life-gaining colors, that they're the two colors that both gain life. Usually the way we tend to separate the life gain is white tends to get smaller bursts at instant speed

and green gets larger bursts at sorcery speed. There's a few exceptions to that. That's the general rule, though. The idea is white's life gain is a little more, ha-ha, you didn't know that was going to happen. You thought you've defeated me. You have a clock going and you think you're going to defeat me and all of a sudden I mess up your clock. Where green is sort of

like, you know it's coming, it's not a surprise but it gets larger bursts. Now, white has a little more ways to get life. White also has life length something green does not have. So white's able to get life through creatures as well. So white has a few other ways to get life. White also has lifelink, something green does not have. So white's able to get life through creatures as well. So white has a few other ways to get life.

Okay, now let's talk destruction. Okay, so white and green both have the ability to destroy enchantments. White is... So the way it works is white destroys enchantments and red destroys

artifacts and green, a common white destroys enchantments and red destroys artifacts and green a common a common white destroys enchantments red destroys artifacts and green destroys artifacts or enchantments um

sort of you know renaturalizes if you will um white is allowed at higher rarities to have spells that can destroy both instants

not instants sorry both artifacts and enchantments doesn't tend to do it as efficiently as green. Either it does it at sorcery speed or it does it more expensive. Sometimes it'll exile them, but at a higher cost.

It'll cost four or something rather than two, like naturalized. Now, white has the ability to destroy more things than green. White has more answers than green. White, for example, white's big thing is White either only destroys things that are messing with it, or its answers tend to have answers, or they tend to be more expensive in the solutions. Green, on the other hand, has very efficient ways to destroy artifacts and enchantments. Always has a common naturalized or naturalized variant. And then the way Green deals with creatures is green has fight.

So green has to fight them, or it can lure them. But green's creature removal always is revolving around its creatures. Where white, if you mess with white, white has spells that can, you know, once you attack or block, if you attack white or block white, white can interact with you. And then white also has the pacifism thing,

the world where I can sort of lock you down although there might be answers to that as far as beefing creatures up white and green also have they are the two colors that most often do buffing auras so that's auras that go into creatures that tend to make them bigger all the colors have the ability to do it a little bit

so I mean all the colors have some ability to do a a little bit. So, I mean, all the colors have some ability to do auras. White and green tend to do them more frequently. Green, for example, usually is the color that has the biggest at common or low rarity, you know, the plus three, plus three type enchantments. White usually has less than that. Just like we do giant growth, white tends to have more plus one, plus two, but with added bonus to it, another keyword, where green sometimes gets more size.

You'll notice that theme between them. So one of the things I should point out is that white and green, when you ask us what two colors have the most overlap mechanically, the two ones we always bring up are either white and green or black and red. And white and green, like I said, as I'm going through this, there's just a lot of areas where it lines up. Like when you're making hybrid cards, white-green hybrid cards are one of the easiest to make because there's just a lot of overlap between what white and green do.

Okay. Also, not only do they have auras for pumping, they also have the two colors that care about auras. They tend to have the positive aura interactions, I mean, outside of an enchantment block. They're the ones that have stuff like enchantresses. They're the ones that you gain when you play auras or affect auras in a positive way. Also, white and green, well, green is number one in land fetching, which is going into your deck and getting up basic lands and putting them in play. White is allowed to go get planes. I guess all the colors are allowed to get their own basic land type.

White tends to do it a little more than some. I guess black is probably second as far as getting its own land type, but white is probably third as far as seeking out your deck. Usually white getting planes, it's been tied to to like are you behind in some way it's done kind of a catch up thing where white says oh you're behind some means let me help you and you go all the way back to like land tax which was crazy broken

usually that's the idea that white white's land fetching usually trying to help you out okay so now let's talk about some of the defensive... I already talked about Giant Growth and Intructable. The other thing is white and green are the two colors that do damage prevention.

So white does damage prevention, sort of spot damage prevention, which is like you try to do something, I prevent damage from that source or to that creature. Green's damage prevention is fog, which is just nobody does damage. So green is much more widespread. Sometimes green will do fogs where not everybody gets

fogged. That's green getting closer to sort of how white functions. Sometimes it'll be like everybody but the werewolves and the wolves deal damage. So one of the funny stories about fog real quickly was when fog began the game in green, and then there were some early weird examples

of black having a fog and stuff. But eventually we talked about, we had a big period where we said, you know, we're going to change around some stuff. The first real sit-down we had on the color pie, and we decided to make some major movements. It's when naturalized moved from white, from disenchant into green. There were a bunch of things that happened at that point. So one of the things we decided to do there was

that fog seemed an odd fit for green, and that it had been tied to kind of weather manipulation, which green does. But we said, you know what? White's really the damage prevention color. Let's put it in white. So we put fog in white. So for a couple years, fog was in white.

The problem we ran into is fog isn't... White doesn't need fog. It's just there's so many other ways So for a couple years, fog was in white. The problem we ran into is fog isn't... White doesn't need fog. It's just there's so many other ways for white to prevent damage that fog just was kind of irrelevant to white. And white had more spot removal, spot prevention. So it definitely was more like we get in a fight and I harm you, but you don't harm me. So white just had better than fog.

And what we found was green really needed fog. Green really needed the I'm going to do some sort of alpha strike and then I have protection in case you strike back. So we moved it back. So what happened was we

it's one of the good examples where we saw something. It seemed to make sense logically. So we made the move. We tried it. And then as we actually started, it seemed to make sense logically, so we made the move, we tried it, and then as we actually started doing it, we realized that we hadn't seen a lot of the ramifications of it. It's one of the reasons I always talk about how important playtesting is in general, where you need to sort of understand the ramifications,

and there's really no way to understand ramifications without actually playing it. That theorycrafting, as we call it, of talking through what you think will happen, only gets you so far. Another thing I want to point out real quickly, because I brought up the story, is that the color pie, the philosophies do not change.

What white represents, what green represents, those are not things that, those are constant, and they've been the constant since Alpha. But our execution of the color pie, how we execute it and what we do with it, that does change. Okay.

I'm sitting in some traffic. This is one of those topics where I have a decent amount to talk about, but it is a more finite topic. It's not like I can just talk forever about it. So I'm hoping this traffic will clear up a little bit because I have a decent amount of material. I have half an hour material.

Don't know if I have 40, 50 minutes of material. Okay, so let me talk about damage prevention. Okay, let's now talk about bounce.

So, green and white both have bouncing as a cost. What I mean by that is that you can play a creature, so they work a little bit differently. What white will do is white often has creatures that say,

when I play this creature, I have to bounce the creature. One time. One time when I play it. Green tends to have bigger creatures, but there's a cost of bouncing at every turn. Neither of these, we do tons. We do them every once in a while. Usually what happens is if the set has a theme where bouncing your own stuff is synergistic,

we're more likely to put it in. So let's say there's a set where the main mechanic, for example, is something that has to do with casting or has some sort of trigger where things enter the battlefield. Heavy things that bounce lets you reset things. And so we tend to add those in when it's necessary, like when it'll help the environment. So they're the kind of things that white and green get, but they don't get super often. And, you know, one of the things that's interesting is that I put things in three buckets as far as how colors go.

There's your everyday stuff. That is, you know, when I talk about something like vigilance in white, every set's going to have vigilance in white, every time. So the first bucket is just things colors do and always do. The second is things sometimes do, in the sense that it's something the color's capable of, and every once in a while we'll do it um and then the third bucket are things that are like special occasion which are

really only when we do a particular theme like for example when we do a graveyard theme we need to make sure we have things for all the colors to do and you know red and blue don't have tons of graveyard interaction in a normal thing and so we've given them a little bit. And the funny thing is the stuff we've given them, when we need it, we'll put it in other sets. Occasionally red will, you know, return an instant resource or something. But the three buckets essentially are things we always use, things we sometimes use, things we rarely use. But we use judiciously to help flesh out particular themes. Okay.

Can you tell when I'm padding? But try not to pick it up. Okay, next. Untapping. So for a long time, white was the color of, well, blue taps or untaps. Blue has the puppet mastery type things where it taps or

untaps. And then for a while, we had white tapping and then white also untapping. Not like blue, not at the same time. Usually when white was untapping, it either untapped all your creatures as a spell or it untapped one creature as a means to surprise someone for blocking.

And so what we've decided is we shifted off the ladder to green, and we did that recently. I mean, not so recently you haven't seen in sets, but so the idea is green now has the I untap a creature and I can use that defensively. And the idea

is we want green to get in fights. We want green to use its creatures to have answers for other creatures. So one of the things might be, oh, I attack with my big creature. Now I see that the coast is carrying. You attack. So now I untap my big creature and I can block. White still gets to untap all its creatures.

White has that general utility. But it no longer does the, or infrequently does the untap to block things. We're letting green do more of that recently. Okay. Next, token making. So there are the two creature colors, and so being the two creature colors, they're the most likely to make

creatures. So not only do they have the highest as-fan of creatures, you know, the highest percentage of creatures, but they also are the most common in making tokens. So one of the things, it used to be that green was king of 1-1 tokens, because green's all about swarming you, and we've shifted a little bit to white. We decided that we liked the idea, there was a period in time where green had both the most creatures and the biggest creatures, and we're like, you know what, we're kind

of wasting it, like, it's neater if we can spread that out. So we decided that white would have the most creatures and green have the biggest creatures. It plays into white's army theme. The white doesn't have big creatures. It has lots and lots of little creatures, but it has more of them. And so we decided to give white small token making.

So 1-1 counters, oh, I'm sorry, 1-1 tokens, creature tokens, is in white's domain. Not that other colors can't do it. Red does it from time to time. I mean, other colors can make 1-1s, but white is the thing where almost every single set there'll be a common white card making 1-1 tokens. You know, sometimes you'll see it in other colors,

but it's almost always in white. Then green, we decided that green, most of the time, and once again, it can make 1-1s, but more of the time it'll make bigger ones. It'll make 2-2s and 3-3s. And so the idea is, if you see a 1-1 counter, the most likely thing is a white mate. And if you see a 2-2 or 3 counter,

well, most likely it's a green mate. A green mate's the bigger counters. Keep calling them counters. Creature tokens. It's also that white and green on the cowards most likely to make multiples. Not only make them, but also make them in multiples because they are the creature cowards.

The only other coward that really does them at lower rarities and multiples is we give red the make two, one, ones every once in a while. Use the goblins to fill up some theme. Okay. Next. Returning from the grave.

So, interaction with the graveyard. So, white has more interaction. Well, white and green each have interaction. Green's interaction isn't get back anything. It ties into kind of its thematic connection with the past. We talk about blue is about the future and green is about

the past. Blue looks for what can be and green looks for what has been. So green through that is able to return anything. It can regrow anything from the graveyard. White is a little more restrictive on what it can get back from the graveyard. White is allowed to get small

creatures as a means to sort of not run out of small creatures. White has a card advantage issue but one of the things we let white do is to sort of keep a flow of small creatures as a means to sort of not run out of small creatures. White has a card advantage issue, but one of the things we let white do is to sort of keep a flow of small creatures and get back to small creatures. White is also the color that often gets back artifacts or enchantments when we have sets where we care. That's the kind of thing that white doesn't do all the time, but does in a set where it matters. Oh, there's an enchantment theme? Okay, white gets back enchantments from the graveyard. There'schantment theme? Okay, white gets back enchantments from the graveyard.

There's an artifact theme? Okay, white gets back artifacts from the graveyard. White also has a little bit of the ability to get things from the graveyard into play. Usually that's also on smaller things. Green does not do that. That's white and black are the two that tend to get them into play. Okay. The other thing that green and white tend to do

is green and white care about creatures and have effects that specifically care. So for a long time, green... Originally, there was a card called Kelden Warlord that was an alpha, which was a red card, and it was star, star, where star was the number of

creatures you had in play. It might have been star, star, plus one, only because they loved star, star, plus ones in the early days. But the idea essentially was it's power and touches are equal to the number of creatures you have in play. It might have been star star plus one, only because they loved star star plus ones in the early days. But the idea essentially was, is power and touch is equal to the number of creatures you have in play. Oh no, it was star star because it itself is a creature. So it always, it, stuff like Lord of the Goys had to be plus one so it didn't die

when you played it, but Keldon Warlord was always a one one. So it was just star star. Anyway, we made Keldon Warlord. Then we figured out that Keldon Warlord didn't make a lot of sense in red. Red wasn't really the color that cared about creatures. In fact, it has the second fewest, only bluest fewer creatures than red. So we moved it into green, and green started doing it. And then, after we made the split to decide that white was the number color,

we came back, and there's a big split, because one of green's big flavors is growing, that it has the things that grow over time. Variable power toughness. Not that the other cards all don't dip their toe in it, but green's a major variable power toughness color. And so, and green is a creature color, so being star-studded equal creatures made a lot of sense.

It grows over time. Green has a swarming concept. But the argument for white was, well, white is the army color. White has lots of little creatures. Oh, well, this thing is a reward for having lots of little creatures. So we had a, there's a meeting we have once a week called, what's it called? It's called card crafting, where we get the designers and developers in a room, and we really argue over, like over nuts and bolts mechanical things,

such as, okay, who's supposed to get the Keldon Warlord? Is it supposed to be white or is it supposed to be green? And this wasn't pretty, by the way. This wasn't a very heavy debate. It wasn't like, sometimes we have discussions and like 95% of the room agrees one way and that's just what we do. This was a case where we were pretty split.

In the end, it was like 60-40, leaning white, so we ended up going with white, so white now became the color that's star-star equal to number of creatures. Green, the place now is green will do effects where it cares about creatures. It both cares about creature size, with like formidable and ferocious, and some of the stuff we've recently done in cons. So green will sometimes

care about size, but also sometimes it just cares about number of creatures. For example, drawing cards equal to the number of creatures, that's a green card. So white and green are the two colors that definitely, like, say, I have a group, I care about the group, in fact, I will count that group. Okay, so that is most

of the mechanical connections. You can tell I have a little longer trip today. How am I doing on my time? Okay, so let's talk a little bit about philosophically where white and green, where they play around with. So one of the things that, so let's talk about the conflict between white and green. I talked about what they have in common looking at their enemy black. So let's talk about where they differ white and green. I talked about what they have in common, looking at their enemy black. So let's talk about where they differ. So the way to do this is, if it's an ally color, you look at their shared, the other allies they have that are enemies.

So white's other ally, other than green, is blue. And green's other ally, than white is red. So blue and red are enemies. Okay, so the conflict between blue and red is one of emotion versus intellect. So the idea there is, blue believes that you should think things carefully through and that you shouldn't, you know,

blue is all about thought where red is all about action. That blue believes that it's important before you do anything, you think of all the consequences. Red is like about action. Red is follow your heart, do what you believe, you know, don't get caught up in your mind, just act, think about things. And we look at white, green, this is where they tend to spread a little bit, is white leans toward blue side. White agrees with the idea that,

look, you've got to be careful, that people just doing things causes chaos, and chaos is dangerous to society. So white very much agrees with blue. White, like blue, is a planning color. White wants to think ahead. White wants to use its structure constructively to make sure that everything stays safe. And so the reason that white and red are enemies is white does not like red's recklessness.

That red does not think about things. And that to white is important. White wants order, not chaos. Meanwhile, green, green is the color of instinct. Green understands the impulsivity of red. Green looks and says, look, you are who you are. You feel what you feel. You do what you need to do. You know, animals aren't thinking. It's not like, you know, if I see my prey, do I think about it if it's the right thing? No, I chase my prey. That's what I do. And green is very instinctual

in nature. So one of the conflicts between white and green is green definitely leans toward the red side of act before you think, and white leans toward the blue side of think before you act. Now both of them very much, like I said, they center on the care of the community, but the means by which how they do that. The other thing that's very different is white is trying to literally protect every member of its group. You know, white wants to make sure that nothing can harm any member. Its laws, its rules, its religion, everything's about protecting every single individual. Green is more about protecting the overall web of life. Green is not protecting an individual.

If a cheetah has to eat a gazelle, well, hey, gazelle, guess what? The cheetah's got to eat. Green does not say, oh, no, no, we need to protect the gazelle. You know, where white is very much, white, in fact, wants to support the meek. White wants to look at the weakest members and make sure that those are protected. And green, green definitely has a quality of survival of the fittest. That, you know, look, if the weak aren't able to survive, then they don't survive.

And that green does not do anything. Like, green believes that the natural order will weed things out that need to get weeded out. If you're weak and you need to get weeded out, then you will. So that's another big issue. I mean, green and white, while they overlap and they have a lot of shared beliefs, definitely how they see the larger community is a very different thing. That white is trying to protect everybody and green is trying to protect the overall system, but not the individuals in the system.

Okay, so what happens when white and green gets together? A couple of different things. First and foremost, white and green banding together will be very group-focused. That white very much will care about the welfare of everybody, and green will care about the combination of everybody. And so one of the examples, obviously, in Ravnica is Selesnya. So Selesnya definitely, you know, for those that know Divergent, for example, there's five factions in Divergent. One of them is called Amity, and for those that don't know Divergent, it's a futuristic, it's a teen novel.

And the idea is there's a horrible, I don't know, world war or something. And each, there's five factions that each believe that something different is what they need to embrace. And green is very much the green website. Amnesty is very much about grabbing peace and belonging and connectivity. And so Amnesty is another green-white example, just like Selesnya. And the thing that both of them overlap, you'll notice, is that the idea that the group as a whole is in charge, that it's not any one individual making decisions, it's the group making decisions. You know, that, you know, the idea of a true democracy where if you're going to take action, every single member of the group will weigh in. I know in Divergent, for example, whenever they make a decision, they literally vote. Everybody votes. And if the majority doesn't agree with them, whatever

the majority wants is what the group does. And they're very much about giving voice to the group as a whole. I think white-green is, of the ten two-color combinations, the most group-focused. It is the most caring about the welfare of the group as a whole. And when you get white and green together,

that's the kind of thing that happens. Now, in gameplay, what happens is white and green are the two creature colors. They're the colors that both have the most creatures, can make the most creature tokens, have the ability to protect their creatures. So white and green strategy, if you look at sort of whenever white and green get together,

it's all about, it's very creature focused. We talk about green and black might be graveyard focused, and blue and black might be library focused. Green and white is the most creature focused. And the strength in numbers. White and green is all about strength in numbers.

If you look at the two mechanics that we did so far for Selesnya, one was Convoke, which is using your creatures as a resource to help get more things out, play more spells and play more creatures, and Populate, which was the idea of just making more creatures, of getting tokens out and then duplicating them and making more. And so, you know, white-green is the most creature-focused. And it's not just individually creature-focused, it's group creature-focused.

It's going to beat you by overrunning you with a large group of creatures. That is how white-green is going to win. It's going to win with creatures, and it's going to win by having more creatures than you can deal with. And like I said, if you really look at all the different mechanics that lead into that, I think green is about overwhelming and

overrunning, and white is about banding together and joining as a group. So when you sort of take those two qualities and mix them together, that you take the like, for example, what green believes is nature is plentiful and that one of the advantages that nature has over everybody else is we just have more things and that if you give us time to sort of pull all the resources of nature, we're going to overwhelm you. White says, hey, we have the individuals, we have of nature, we're going to overwhelm you. White says, hey, we have the individuals,

we have the numbers, we're going to band together, and if we work as a group, we will be more powerful than any individual. Now, take those two philosophies, meld them together, and you see, okay, these are people that are going to create a lot of creatures, band them all together, and work as one very unified unit to take you down.

And they're just going to overwhelm you, because that is the nature, that they're going to make more creatures, and they're going to overwhelm you with those creatures. And that is what green is about. So what is white-green's negative qualities? So I talked about some positive qualities. I think white and green, in some level,

their groupness is their greatest negative, which is they are so focused on the group, in some level their groupness is their greatest negative, which is they are so focused on the group, they can't see the rights of the individual. That like if you want to sort of take a white-green group, and the problem there is individuals don't, they just don't care about the rights of the individuals. That whatever is good for the group supersedes that.

And that, you know, I mean, while there's definitely a lot of value of seeing things for the group, there is some value of, you know, be able to see the rights of individuals and that the individual rights kind of get trampled in a white-green world that, you know, that if it's good for the larger group, it doesn't matter if it's not good for everybody. And, you know, there are individual freedoms that don't exist. And like in a white-green, in a white-green world, you know, there's not a lot of property. Everybody owns everything.

And there's not a lot of, you know, there's not a lot of self-achievement because whatever you do is for the greater good of the group. And so there's individuality lost in white-green that sort of, you know, it has the strength of the group, but it doesn't have any of the strengths of the individual, and that a lot of the things, especially when you get to some other colors that play into that, you know, that is something that is really important. So anyway, I see my, I see wizards. So just remember that we're halfway through. This was the last of the allied two-color combinations, but coming up, not immediately. I'm doing them, I'm trying to do them about once a month maybe.

I'm going to be getting to the other five. The next one I'll be doing, I'm going to go in order. So the next one will be white-black, which is Orzhov. But anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying these two-color pairings. I am fascinated by the color pie. For those that somehow can't tell or haven't heard the 18,000 different things I've written about the color pie. I find the color pie fascinating. I think it's a really neat, I think it is the foundation of magic.

It is the secret sauce, if you will, that you dig down deep. It's the thing that really sets magic apart. And so I love swimming in the manna pool in the color pie and seeing all the cool sort of stuff that you can do. So anyway, I love sharing with you guys, and it is fun to sort of talk color pie and talk color pairs. But I am now parking my car. So you know what that means? It means it's 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.