Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #245 - Black-Green

Episode Date: July 17, 2015

Mark talks about the color pair black-green.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is another day of my two-color pairs. So, so far I've done seven of them. I've done white, blue, blue, black, black, red, red, green, green, white, white, black, and blue, red. So today I'm up to black, green. So today I'm up to black-green. Okay, so black-green is interesting because this is the conflict that I think most people have the least understanding of. So let me talk a little bit about what black and green do and what they believe,

and then I'll get into their similarities and talk about the mechanics that overlap. Okay, so black believes that things would be best if everybody was responsible for themselves. That Black is like, nobody knows my priorities like me. I should just prioritize myself. If everybody else prioritizes themselves, the world will be okay. Would some people die? Yeah, yeah, the weak would die, but the weak need to go anyway. And the strong would survive, and that's what you want. So, black definitely has the feeling of that I

should do what is good for me and let everybody else take care of themselves. Green believes in the natural order. Green believes that the world is perfect the way it is. I should note, not that...

Green embraces change because the world is about change. Green believes that things evolve and change over time. And Green loves that. But Green believes that you can't usurp the natural process. That there are rules you have to follow because there's a

way that nature works and you have to let nature be nature. Black doesn't believe any of that. Black believes you do what you got to do, and if you got to kill something, you kill it. Whatever you have to do, you take whatever steps you need. And so, green looks at black and sees black as an absorber of the natural order. Black would kill things, not for food, not for some need of survival, but just because. Maybe he just

wants things, or the things bug Black, or whatever. Who knows? But, you know, Green understands that you kill for survival, that you kill to eat, you know, that there's reasons and things that you kill. But Green is not against killing necessarily, but it doesn't like the way Black kills, which is really for no great reason as far as Green's concerned. Green is like Black is killing willy-nilly and that Black does not understand

the consequences of what Black does. Black looks at Green and sees Green as being this kind of stuck in, you know, because Green's very much about spirituality, the connection to the world, and black is like, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever, what claptrap,

why do you handicap yourself with things that don't matter? Who cares? The world's the world. If whatever happens is whatever happens. If I kill something, it's dead. And the real underpinning between, the philosophical difference between black and green is

black believes that you control your fate, that you have free will, that you are able to do whatever you're able to do. What role can you fill in life? Whatever role you want, whatever you need to do, that you are able to do... I mean, if you can do it, then you can do it. That is basically, that is what he believes. That's what black believes. Black is a big

believer in that, look, if you're able to do it, then you're able to do it. And that means that it can be done. Where green believes that people play a role. Green believes that there is a purpose that people fill and that you have a destiny to fulfill that purpose. You know, that you were born to fulfill a role and that you have to understand your role and fill that role. You have a very important purpose. You know, genetically, you are born to have a place in the greater circle of life.

And that part of your role is to figure out what you're supposed to do and then do that. So green is very much about determinism. That you are born into a role. You are born to do something. And that your job is to figure out what that thing is. Black, black believes that you can do whatever you want to do. Now, a lot of people say, how is this different than the green-blue conflict? Because the green-blue conflict is all about nature versus nurture. And it's similar because green, what green believes is very similar,

obviously. Green is all about you are born to be who you are, and you are born to fulfill the role that you play. So the first part is the green-blue conflict, and the second is the green-black conflict. Green-blue is all about who you are. Blue believes that you can become whatever you want, that you have the capacity, you are a blank slate. Through knowledge and experience and tools, you can do anything. You have the capability of being anything.

Green versus black is about the role you play. Green believes that you have a determined the role you play. You know, green believes that you have a determined role that you're supposed to play, where black is like, I'm just going to do what I'm going to do. And in each case,

green believes that you are born with something. Just in the, versus blue, it's about your identity, and versus black is about your role in the, your role in life,

your role in the world. Now those are similar. One of the things you'll find is when you, one of these days I'll do a those are similar. One of the things you'll find is when you... One of these days, I'll do a podcast about the enemy conflicts. And what you'll find is they all interconnect. That what green means in its conflict versus blue is similar to what green means in its conflict versus black.

And that's true of all five colors. It's very cool. Which is one of the reasons I love the color we have. Because it's cool. Okay. So, green and black are somewhat at odds. Green is all about, you know,

embracing natural change and black is about observing natural change, natural order. You know, black is about, that there's nothing that dictates what you have to do.

And so black very much is about doing what it feels it can and needs to do. Okay, so let's, let's take that and extrapolate now to look at where black, so black and green, by the way, one of the take that and extrapolate now to look at where black...

So black and green, by the way, one of the things that's interesting is just because they're enemies doesn't mean there's not overlap. For example, black and green are probably the two colors that most understand death. In different ways, you know... So anyway, we'll get there.

I'm going to go through all the different... I'm going to go through all the different ways they overlap mechanically, and then I'll talk about philosophically as we get to the mechanics. The greater stuff's important, but we'll get there. I'm going to go through all the different ways they overlap mechanically, and then I'll talk about philosophically as we get to the mechanics. The greater stuff's important, but we'll get there. Let's start with creature abilities. Okay, so the two main creature abilities in which these are the colors that are the primary colors that do it is death touch and regeneration. So it's interesting, we talk about

life and death, that death touch says thing, we talk about life and death. That, um, uh, Death Touch says some things are deadly. Well, black and green are the colors most allied with death. In black, you get things, well, in green, you get sort of natural venoms and poisons and things that are

just, they're a defense mechanism of the creatures. The creatures need to defend themselves to be able to protect themselves and kill others. And some of them have deadly touches or deadly poisons or whatever. Black, its death touch is more manufactured. It is going out and seeking things like poison and then using it as a tool. So green tends to use it as a natural weapon, where black is a created weapon. But nonetheless, both green and black make use of it.

Both green and black are willing to kill in the nature of business. They understand that death is part of life. Black sees death as a little more of a tool than green sees it. Green sees it as just a natural force, but neither one of them is afraid of death. The other colors are somewhat scared by death, but black and green are the ones that understand. I mean, black embraces it as the most powerful tool, and green embraces it as a component of life.

Okay, regeneration is interesting. They're flavored differently. Regeneration in green is flavored as super fast healing, you know, Wolverine or somebody, where you damage me and the reason I don't die is I just heal real fast. Where black regeneration is more like I return from the dead, sort of like I'm a skeleton and you kill me, but then I just rise again. And so black regeneration is a little more of an undeath thing. Green regeneration is a little more of a healing thing, but still.

But it's a good example where green more embraces life and black more embraces death. So green regeneration is life to its fullest and black regeneration is death to its fullest. So other areas where they overlap, there's a bunch where one of them does, another one touches upon it. Black is secondary in haste. Green is tertiary in haste. So both of them have some access to haste. Black does a lot more than green.

Green is primary in trample. And, uh, black is tertiary in trample. That means that anything that's big enough in magic is allowed to have trample. Often you'll see, um, demons and things that have trample in black. And green is trample all the time. Flash is secondary in green, tertiary in black. Flash is primary blue, secondary green, but all the other colors, white, red, and black,

if they have a card that kind of needs it, usually they have an enter the battlefield effect that kind of wants to be, you know, that's an instant like effect that you want to do it. But black is, in certain circumstances, allowed to have flash. Intimidate. So by the time you hear this podcast,

you'll have read my article knowing that intimidate is going bye-bye. But just to mention it because there's a lot of cards, black was primary intimidate and green was tertiary intimidate, but green got it every once in a while. Also, land walk has gone away,

but back when land walk was around forest walk and swamp walk both the idea is you have the ability to walk on your own land and you have the ability to walk on your enemy's lands so green had both forest walk and swamp walk and black had forest walk and swamp walk

green was also the color that had all the landwalks, it was the main color of landwalk, so every once in a blue moon you might see, well we just didn't do planeswalk that much so I was saying, neither black or green had planeswalk, so I guess forestwalk and swampwalk were the two as far as talking about death, let me jump to that one oh actually, before I get to that, the one other creature thing that you see in green and black is that both of them have the ability

through an activation to self-pump. Blacks are shades. Blacks are, you spend black mana or some amount of mana, including black, to get plus one, plus one, and you can activate it multiple times. Where green is what we call the root wall effect. The root wall effect is it costs a little more mana,

it's a larger boost, usually plus two, plus two, plus three, plus three, plus four, plus four. But it's a one-time thing. You only do it once per turn. So shades are more like you can multiply pump them and encourage you to have lots of black mana, where root walls are kind of like a built-in giant growth that just gets used once per turn. Okay, now let's get into destruction. Black and green both are good at destroying things,

but interestingly, different things. Black is very good at destroying creatures. Green, not as much. So, black pretty much has 8,000 ways to destroy creatures. I mean, it can just out and out destroy them. It can do damage to them in draining.

We'll get to that in a second. It can do minus X, minus X abilities, or minus N, minus and out destroy them. It can do damage to them in draining. We'll get to that in a second. It can do minus X, minus X abilities, or minus N, minus N abilities to them. It can force the opponent to sacrifice them. Lots of different ways. Green creature killing is a little more, a little less direct. So green can outright kill flyers and artifact creatures. It's the anti-flying color,

so we let it occasionally just destroy a fly color, so we let it occasionally destroy a flyer, and we let it destroy artifacts, which allows it to destroy artifact creatures. But as far as those two circumstances, really that's the only time it actually destroys creatures. Other than that, you see it have fight as the biggest thing.

It can also have lure effects or sometimes provoke. It can do things to sort of prompt a fight. A lot of green's removal of creatures has to do with it using its creatures to get rid of the other creatures. The idea being if green has no creatures in play, it has a real tough time getting rid of non-flying, non-artifact creatures. Okay. of fat creatures.

Okay. The one area... The thing that green's good at destroying is green is number one at naturalized effects. They're destroying artifacts and enchantments. Black cannot destroy artifacts nor can it destroy enchantments. It's got stuff like discard as answers, but that's a very different

one green does. Green can just outright destroy it. Black doesn't have that. The two areas where they do overlap, number one is they both can do land destruction. You don't see it too much because red is the primary land destruction and green and black are secondary. And we just don't do tons of land

destruction. So you'll see the occasional black and green land destruction, but it's not something we do a lot of. The other thing both can destroy are planeswalkers, interestingly. Black, we started giving the ability, usually at higher rarities, to destroy a creature or planeswalker, because black can kill things, and

planeswalkers are living things, and black is good at killing living things, so we allowed black to kill planeswalkers straight up. Green doesn't tend to say destroy target planeswalker. The green cards tend to say destroy target non-creature permanent. Planeswalkers happen to be non-creature permanents. When this effect first got generated, planeswalkers weren't a card type.

So it kind of backed into this one, being that when you said non-creature permanent, it happened that planeswalkers, when they got created, were. So green dabbles its foot a little bit in it. But black and green are the only two colors that out and out straight up destroy a Planeswalker. I mean, red obviously can do direct damage to a Planeswalker. So red can kill Planeswalkers, but it doesn't destroy them. Okay.

But all this destruction, let's go the opposite thing. What about creating life? There's two ways, or three ways, that you can see getting creatures. So first we have token making. Green and black can both do token making. Really all the colors can do token making.

Black's most common token making is zombies, which are two creatures. It sometimes removes things out of the graveyard to make them. Sometimes it straight out makes them. Green also makes tokens. It tends to be a little bigger. The small 1-1 tokens have been seeded mostly to white.

So green tends to make 2-2s and up. Usually green tokens these days are 3-3, 4-4, 5-5. They tend to be a little bit bigger. But both colors do make tokens. Both colors can also tutor for a creature. Interestingly, black can tutor for anything, but it always goes to hand. Green can tutor only for

usually a creature or land, but it can often go and play. Sometimes we let green mess with the top of its library, and in those situations, we occasionally let it get permanents into play, so sometimes it gets artifacts, enchantments, and planeswalkers into play. Usually that's not straight from the library, that's from the top of the deck.

But it can go on the deck and get a land put into play, go on the deck and get a creature put into play. Black doesn't tend to put it directly into play. Black tends to tutor, get it in your hand, then you have to play it. Also, both black and green deal with the graveyard. also both black and green deal with the graveyard black tends to regrow, I'm sorry tends to return creature

cards back to the hand or can reanimate and take creature cards and put them directly into play green can regrow any card from the graveyard including creatures but it doesn't tend to reanimate things every once in a blue moon there will be a green creature that self reanimates

but other than that there's really not a lot of reanimation in green. Green can regrow things and then replay them. Black will directly play them from the graveyard. Okay, next. Black and green also have life gain overlap. Now, green is a straight-up life gain. Green can just, I gain life. Target player gains life, you gain life.

Black usually requires some sacrifice, or requires you draining it off someone. So the most popular way black gains life is a drain effect, which means target creature or player lose some amount of life, and then you gain that much life. So the idea is, you are sucking the life energy out of a creature or a player. Black can also gain life through sacrifice. You can sacrifice creatures or sometimes discard a card. If you pay some cost, black can have access to life gain.

Green, by the way, also will occasionally do sacrificing creatures for life. When green does it, the difference between black doing green doing flavor-wise is black is like, I'm destroying this creature as a means to suck something out of it. Where green is more like, I'm going to kill it and eat it, and there's energy that comes from me eating the thing. But green is not killing willy-nilly. Green is like, okay, I need to eat. I'm going to eat and get my sustenance from this thing. But green is not killing willy-nilly. Green is like, okay, I need to eat. I'm going to eat and get my sustenance from this thing. So when green is sacrificing

a creature, it's less, black is more like, hey, I'm more important than you. Where green is like, we're all in this together and I will need to eat you to make me stronger. Okay, next, card drawing. So blue is primary in card drawing, but black and green are secondary in card drawing. Black's card drawing, once again, usually involves some kind of sacrifice, life payment being the biggest one. But sometimes you can sacrifice creatures or other things. Green usually doesn't require sacrifice, but it's tied to its creatures. Green can draw a card.

It has the curiosity effect where it can draw a card on certain creatures that do damage. It can sometimes draw a card equal to a number of creatures. It can draw cards equal to power of a creature. It has creatures that are capable of drawing cards. You know, green's card drawing is directly tied to its creatures, but it can do it straight up, and it doesn't have a lot of the negatives that black has to have. Okay, power boosting. So I already talked about the shade and the root walla.

So black and green can also boost things in spell form, instants and sorceries and activated abilities, especially the instants and sorceries. Black tends to mostly just boost power. It often will grant an ability. It likes to grant stuff like death touch and things that make it deadly that help it win combats. But black isn't always surviving the combat.

A lot of times black's combat tricks, it's going to die, but it's going to take something bigger with it. Where green gets giant growth effects. Green has plus N, plus N. And so green usually, when it uses its spells, it not only beats it, it survives. So green is different than black there, and then green is a little bit better at the power boosting.

Okay, next. Green and black also tend to... I talked earlier how they get things out of the graveyard. They're also the two colors that most care about what's in the graveyard. The Lurgoy style creature, which is usually star, star these days, where star is the number of creature cards in your graveyard. Black and green are the two of those. Black and green are the two of those. Black and green also,

green loves to have variable power toughness that can go up over time, and black likes to care about things, especially dead things. So you'll see that overlap right there. The other thing that you'll see sometimes is both black and green will sometimes be rewarded for creatures dying with plus one, plus one counters.

Black tends to do it more straight up, just like if something dies, I get with plus one, plus one counters. Black tends to do it more straight up, just like if something dies, I get a plus one, plus one counter. Where green a lot of times is more like if something has died, I get extra counters or it has a meaning. Black will sacrifice this creature just

to give itself counters. Where green is more like, well, there's a means by which I can get counters from my creature. Sometimes it's just dying. Sometimes it's just them being in situations that put them at risk. Okay, I think that's most my overlap of ability. One of the things that's interesting is

that just because things are allies or enemies doesn't necessarily dictate the overlap of abilities. A lot of the enemy color combinations have just as much as the ally color combinations. So let's talk a little bit about black and green. What happens when you get them together? We'll talk philosophy for a little bit. Okay, so what happens when black and green join together? Well, green embraces the natural order.

Black embraces death. So what happens when black and green get together is, green already, both black and green care about death. It's an area that, you know, when we talk a lot about green, we talk about green being the color of life, and it is the color of life, but as much as it's the color of life, it's the color of the circle of life. That death is part of the process. Green doesn't shun death.

What green doesn't like is when death is used improperly. But when green and black get together, they tend to focus on their overlap, which is the graveyard and death. That they're very much about trying to create life from death. That's what black rain is big on, is life from death. It's big on recycling things. It's big on finding means to get things

that once were dead back to life. It really gets into sort of a lot of the fungus and the scavengers. So like the Golgari, which are the Black Green Guild in Ravnica, they're very, very graveyard obsessed. They're very much about recycling the dead and sort of creating an everlasting cycle of life.

So what happens is that when black and green get together, black kind of convinces green that there is a secular nature to death and that undead things, things that were once dead that came back, are a means by which you have dead things living. I say living in air quotes that you can't see me do. Because the mono-green looks at the undead and says, that is an abomination. But when black-green gets together, black hides the full green that's saying, well, it is a kind of life. And so black-green definitely breaks that.

But the difference between black-green and mono-black is black-green cares about the process. They're obsessed about the death process, but they are obsessed about it. And they are very much, black-green is not as selfish as black. Black-green says, here's an area we care about. We're going to focus on this area.

And so black-green has a little bit more caring about the larger structure than monoblock tends to do. Okay, so what is a good black-green creature? What is a bad black-green creature? Okay, so a good black-green creature usually is somebody, well, badly. Whenever you do black, bad is a little easier. well, Badly, whenever you do Black, Badly is easier. Bad is somebody who wants to take advantage of the natural order because they believe it is to their benefit

the new natural order is to their benefit. So one of the things you find about villains that have a white component to them is that somewhere deep down they believe what they are doing is for the greater good. And the difference between white and black is black does not have the illusion that they're doing is for the greater good. And the difference between white and black is, black does not have the illusion that it's doing things for the greater good. Black knows that it's doing stuff for itself. And so when black-green gets together, it is not trying to better the world.

It is trying to take advantage of a tool and use it to its gain. That when black-green looks at the recycling power of the graveyard, it's like, how when Black Green looks at the recycling power of the graveyard, it's like, how can we use this? The green part of Black Green wants to embrace it and take advantage of it, but the black one, it's for black ends. The black's going to do it to gain things that black wants. Zombies can be powerful, the dead can be powerful,

and obviously monoblock takes some advantage of this, but Black Green is sort of into honoring the circle of life, or the circle of death, as far as black green is concerned, but to make use of that. So the positive black green, I think the positive side of black is the idea that you have control of your own life, that you have the ability to take and do what is necessary to self-improve, and you can control yourself.

Green's positive is really a spirituality and a connection to the world around you. So black-green, when you combine those, you get a sense of purpose and a sense of belonging. And so black-green is interesting in that black-green really connects to what it believes, and black-green creatures, or people and such characters, they are out for themselves, but they are out for themselves in a way that fits into the larger structure. That they are not trying to absorb the structure. They're trying to maximize the structure for their own. And that's not inherently bad. I mean, one of the things that black is a bad rap is the idea of looking out for yourself.

That's not a bad thing. Self-esteem is a good thing. You know, being able to take care of yourself is a good thing. Now, there's an excess. I mean, one of the things I always say is that any color in excess can be problematic. There's no such thing as a monochrome character that can't have flaws pushed by being too much in one thing. I like to say that your greatest flaw is your greatest strength pushed too far, is one of my little quotes.

And I think a lot of times when you look at the colors, kind of what makes the color shine, well, too much of anything is going to cause you problems. And I do think black has a lot of sense of wanting self-esteem and believing in oneself and having just a confidence that you have the ability to do what you need to do. that you have the ability to do what you need to do. And green, green has a nice sort of making you feel like you belong and you have a purpose. So it's interesting when you take the self-esteem of black and you take the sense of purpose of green and you mix it together, black-green is pretty apiece.

Black-green believes in themselves and their role and they are very much accepting of that. I think people see, sometimes people see that black is, black has a tendency to sort of never be satisfied, because it's always wanting more power. But when black and green get together, there's a serenity to green that I think helps edges around black. That black's able to take its sort of aggressive self-esteem and see some larger purpose to it. So I think the

positive black-green is actually, it can be in a pretty happy place. That it's appreciating what it has, and it's appreciating its area of the world and what it's able to play into. And so like I said, sort of the darker version of Black Green is observing things for a real personal

selfish reason, where the more positive Black Green is about someone who believes in themselves and feels they have a place in the world. I feel that's what you get from Black Green. Okay, so I'm almost done. I'm almost to work. Just for a quick wrap-up is, remember I have two more of these coming. Next time

will be White Red, or Red White, and the one after that will be Green Blue. So finally we get to Boros and Simic. I know we have the Boros and Simic fans been waiting forever. So the Golgari fans sort of wrap up for today. I think the interesting thing about it is that Black and Green have a lot of similarities.

That they both embrace death in a way that the other three colors will not. They both are willing to sort of scrap a little bit. They both lean on creatures as a resource, although in slightly different ways.

They both have... They both will embrace poisons and a lot of tools that are necessary to sort of survive. They both have a survival of the fittest sort of mentality. I didn't mention that yet. Which is, black is like,

hey, the more powerful should be able to do what they want to do. And green is like, there's a role. But green definitely has a sense of the strong survive. You know, green and black share the sense of there's a gauntlet in life that you have to run. And that if you aren't up to the task, well, then, you know what, maybe it's better you move on. And that green very much looks at it and says, hey, there's a natural order. If you can't make it evolution, you move on. And that green very much looks at it and says, hey, there's a natural order. If you can't make it evolution,

you will not survive evolution. If you are not meant to adapt, well, guess what? Nature will wipe you from the face of the earth. Now, the difference between black and green is green believes it'll gradually happen over time, where black is like, if you're weak, I'm just going to kill you now.

Why wait for evolution to take care of it? That takes a long time. Green's a lot more patient than black. Black kind of wants things now. Not as much as red. I mean, black's a little more patient than red. But black sort of doesn't have... Green's like, hey, all the changes you want will eventually happen.

And black is like, I'm not waiting around for that. That's after I'm dead. I want change to happen before I die. And green just sees... Green is a very big picture, very long-term. Black is medium-term, around for that. That's after I'm dead. I want change to happen before I die. And green just seems... Green is a very big picture, very long-term. Black is medium-term. Black can think long-term. Black is in the short-term as red. But black doesn't think

quite as long as green as far as big picture of how change is supposed to happen. Okie dokie! Well, I am now parked in my parking space. So we all 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 hope you guys enjoyed Black Green today

talk to you next time