Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #276 - Primary, Secondary, Tertiary

Episode Date: November 6, 2015

Mark talks about the system which explains which colors each evergreen creature keyword falls into.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is a topic based on a suggestion. So from time to time, a while ago I asked my social media, my blog and my Twitter and different things, what topics you guys wanted to hear. You gave me a long list. So from time to time, I do that list. So today is one off the list. So I'm going to talk all about primary, secondary, and tertiary evergreen keywords and what exactly it means to be primary or secondary or tertiary. So the funny story about this is last week, I tried to do this podcast. I hit a bunch of traffic.

I kind of didn't, I don't know. Oftentimes, the first time I do something, it just doesn't quite turn out. It didn't help that I had extra traffic, and so it ran a little longer than I intended. But anyway, I wasn't happy with it. So the next day, I re-recorded it because when I don't like it, I do it again. And the next day, I nailed it. It was perfect. It was an awesome podcast. And then I get to work to realize I never started my recorder. So today, third time's the charm. So I've done it at least once. I've been really happy

with it to see if I can recreate this experience. So what I'm going to do today is I'm going to explain the concept of primary, secondary, tertiary as it applies to evergreen keywords. And then I'm going to walk through all the evergreen keywords and explain what colors they're in and why they're in those colors. So today is sort of an exploratory day of me, or not exploratory, explanatory day. I'm going to explain some stuff and just talk about how we do things. I'll talk a little bit about how we got there, and there's definitely some evolution of how we did keywords, so we'll talk about that. Okay, so let me begin with primary, secondary, tertiary. And I'm going to introduce a new word today, quardinary. We'll get to quardinary, too. Okay, so here's what primary means. Primary

means, actually, before I get to that, the color wheel. Let me talk about the color wheel. I did a whole podcast on the color wheel. There might be no one on this earth that loves the color wheel more than I. I love the color wheel. And I believe it's a really, really important part of what makes magic magic. So one of the big things is we have five colors in the game. It's really important those colors are different. If the colors were all the same, if every color could do the same thing,

then there's no point to having five different colors. What makes the colors really valuable is each one has strengths and weaknesses and things they do, you know, and there's definitely things that are, things that we're trying to capture. And we want different colors to have a different feel. So what that means is

not every color is supposed to do everything. So when we get to evergreen keywords, we don't want every color to do every keyword. That just undermines the color wheel. So what we try to do is primary means this is the main color. This is where it's centered. When you think this ability, this is the color you're supposed to think of. centered. When you think disability, this is the color you're supposed to think of. Primary means you show up at common. Depending on what you are, you might show a whole bunch of times at common. Maybe you show up once. There are a few keywords that actually don't even show up at common, so maybe it means you show up at uncommon. But primary means you show up more than anybody

else. That this keyword is more in your color than in anybody else's color. Also, it means that you're more likely to grant this ability. You're more likely to get other creatures to have the ability. So that's primary. Secondary means, okay, I'm not primary. I'm not, you know, I'm not the number one color that does this, but I also do it. I'm a color that does it. Usually, if a primary color has this card multiple times a common, you'll have it once a common. If primary only has it once a common, maybe you're an uncommon. You know, you fall behind primary.

Sometimes you'll grant the ability, not as often as primary does. But you're definitely a color that gets to do this. You are definitely, secondary means you are a color that pretty much every set will do this ability, just not as often as primary. Okay, tertiary means you get this ability a little bit. You don't

get it at common usually. You seldom grant the ability. But you get it every once in a while. Not even necessarily every set. But you, maybe once a block. You know, it depends. Some tertiaries will get it every set. Some tertiaries will get it once a block.

But it means that, like, you're not primary, you're not secondary, but you can, under certain circumstances, get it. Usually, tertiary things, there's a, like, there's a rule about when you get it. It's not that you just get it anytime you want. It's sort of like a very carved out place that you get it. So, quardinary, that's number four for those that don't know. Primary, secondary, tertiary, quardinary. Quardinary, I'm going to define today as being once in a long while, you know, you will occasionally get this. It's not something of any regularity,

but it is something that we allow on very rare circumstances. So today I'll talk a little bit about cordonary. Cordonary just means like, okay, you don't get it on any regularity, but it's not impossible for you to get it. It's possible. Okay, so let's jump in.

So once again, the idea is I'm going to talk about each of the evergreen keywords. I'm talking about what colors they're in, where they are, and then sort of why they're in those colors. Okay, where do we end with flying? So I've said this before. Flying, in my mind, is the best keyword in magic. It is just an awesome keyword. It's great gameplay. It's super intuitive.

People can literally, all you have to do is say, you know, explain what it is. They go, oh, I get it. It's flying. It does exactly what you expect it to do. Okay, flying is the most used evergreen keyword by quite a bit. There's not even, in fact, when we talk about things being vanilla, we almost count flying vanilla creatures. You know, they're almost like, well, flying, that's, that's practically vanilla. So, like, for example, when we make tokens, tokens usually don't have ability. Everyone's in a blue moon. But the one exception

is we, we make flying tokens and that's just, that's just giving. That's just like, okay, well, of course, flying can have tokens. Tokens can have flying. So the idea is flying is something that just shows up more than anybody else. So because of that, there are two primary colors that have flying. White and blue. Blue originally, by the way, was the only primary color.

Like, blue was, when the game began, was the color of flying. Why was blue the color of flying? Because blue is the elements of air and water. And air, elements of the air, that's the creatures of the air. The original idea is that blue just had access to more flyers than other colors. Eventually what we realized was that flying was so valuable that we needed flying to exist more.

And blue being the fifth color, even though there was a bunch of flyers in blue, it just meant that it didn't have a lot of creatures. So white, we realized that white was kind of king of the small creatures and that white just wanted to have a lot of small, evasive creatures and so it made a lot of sense.

And the flavor made sense in white. White's kind of the color of light. It definitely has some space of, you know, like trained animals showed up in white. And so the idea of trained birds and things and riders that ride, you know, mounted, flying mounted things. So anyway, we ended up making white also primary in flying. So the difference is blue tends to be the color that grants flying and usually has a higher percentage of flying creatures. Usually white and blue are common.

We most often have three. Everyone's in a blue moon, they might have four. White has the more efficient small flyers. Now, white's iconic as the angel, so it can have decent larger flyers, but usually it's an angel, and that's true, and that white's best flyers are the smaller ones, as far as the rate of the creature, how good it is.

The secondary color in flying is black. So what that means is black always has one or two flying creatures. Usually two. Once again, it's just because flying is so prevalent. Like, there's so much flying comparative to other evergreen creatures that, like, white, the primary color gets three. The secondary color gets two. That's not true of other colors. Sorry, of other keywords that's true of flying.

Okay, red is tertiary. With an exclamation, with a, like I said, tertiary often there's a rule. So red's rule is it gets flying if it's a dragon or if it's a phoenix. Other than that, I mean, red, everyone's in a blue moon, but red really, really, the flying is limited to dragons and phoenixes, which also means that red's flying is mostly at rare. Maybe there's a dragon whelpy thing, everyone's followed uncommon. But red really doesn't have a lot of flying, but there's an exception. A, because we thought the dragons were so iconically red,

it just felt, it breathes fire, it's a creature that just wants freedom. And it made a lot of sense to make dragons the reds iconic. And dragons have to fly. We toyed around in the early days with dragons that didn't fly, and it made a lot of sense to make dragons the Reds' iconic. And dragons have to fly. We toyed around in the early days with dragons that didn't fly, and it was a problem. People expect dragons to fly. They look like they fly. We decided to make dragons, you know, creature-type dragon the

creatures fly. Now, that's just a given. And so Red gets that. Red also gets phoenixes. Phoenixes are birds made of fire. I just felt really red, so we made of fire. I just, I don't, felt really red. So, that, that,

that, we made a special exception. So, red is definitely tertiary at flying. So, green, green is quaternary at flying.

So, what that means is green is the worst flying color. Green is not supposed to get flyers. It really seldom gets flyers.

But, every once in a while we do dragons at Tarkir. Like, oh, it's a dragon theme, and every color gets a dragon, and all dragons fly. And every once in a while, green will get a flying creature. It's not like green could never, ever, ever, ever,

ever have a flying creature. But it gets it very, very rarely. And when it gets it, it's supposed to be something like, really, there's a reason for doing it, you know. Like, the idea of, we're doing a dragon cycle. Oh, really, there's a reason for doing it, you know. Like, the idea of, we're doing a dragon cycle. Oh, okay, it's a special cycle. It's dragons.

It's this dragon set. You know, green's going to finally get a dragon and match the dragon set. Okay, it's got flying. So, green can have a flying in little tiny bits. Occasionally, we get, the core sets of green are a little more flying than I've been happy with. But I think we're correcting that so you'll see so basically white and blue primary black secondary, red tertiary

green quaternary so that gives you a good realm of the kind of things you'll see every color has some access to flying because flying is so key to the game it's such an important mechanic that we don't it's not off limits to anybody I mean green rarely really gets it so it's not off limits to anybody. I mean,

green rarely, rarely gets it. So it's not like green gets it very often. But green, even green, even the color that hates flying the most, that's the least flying, gets it every once in a blue moon. Okay, next. First strike, and I'll put double strike with first strike.

So, mostly because they mostly overlap. There's a little bit difference, I'll explain. Okay, so Primary and First Strike. So Red and White are both Primary. No color really leads in this one. I guess we make a, I mean, I don't know. They're very close. If anything, White

probably gets a little bit more First Strike than Red. So it's possible, like, White is, like, near the end of Primary and Black's beginning of secondary I don't know, but red and white both get first strike pretty close to one another they are both defensive creatures they're both combat oriented creatures

and are good at fighting red and white tend to be the good fighters sort of colors and so first strike represents that usually if you're good at fighting or you have a long reachrange weapon that aids you. But anyway, white and red are the colors that do that. If anything, I guess white leans a little more primary,

red a little more secondary, although they're very close. Black is tertiary. So black's exception is that when alpha was made, there was a black knight that Richard made to mirror the white knight, and the white knight had first strike, so Richard gave the black knight first strike. I think that was the only first striker in black at the time.

So anyway, it kind of got grandfathered in. The idea of the black knight, the dark knight, is just compelling. So every once in a while, we'll make a knight, and we'll give it first strike. So black really isn't supposed to get much first strike, and the exception we kind of make for it is, okay, in knights, black knights get a first strike. It's shown up once or twice in other places, people that didn't quite realize that black was supposed to be more restricted in first strike.

It's not supposed to get first strike on larger things. It's really supposed to be on small sort of knight-like creatures. That's where black gets it. And it's tertiary, meaning it can get it. It doesn't always get it, but it can. Neither blue nor green is supposed to get first strike. I know green got a first strike already in alpha, but neither blue or green are supposed to have first

strike. Next, trample. Trample is primary in green. It is secondary in red It is tertiary in white, blue, and black So let me explain So trample is, green does not get flying So it needs some kind of evasion

It tends to have big creatures So one of the big evasions green gets is trample That if I have a big 8-8 trampler, you can block me, but if you don't have a lot of creatures to block with, in some ways it's like I'm unblockable. So what happened was, during future sight, so for a long time, a lot of the keywords were limited to one color. Trample was green. Haste was red. Vigilance was white. And only one color did it.

And so one of the things I realized is that just for the sake of design, we need to diversify a little bit. I didn't want all five colors doing stuff, but this is where I really said, you know what? We could have a secondary color. This is where a lot of the idea of a secondary color came in. I said, you know what? Let's expand. Let's expand it a little bit so that we can have another color have some of these abilities just because we need to have design space and if you limit things too much,

it just makes everything the same. Oh, I'm going to do a cycle of creatures. We're always going to be identical. If white is the only one of vigilance and red is the only one of haste and green is the only one of trample, it just made cycles of things look very familiar. So we decided, okay, let's branch this out a little bit.

The other thing I did was I just wanted to keyword more abilities. I felt like we didn't have enough creature word abilities because a lot of times we want to make French vanillas, which are creatures that just have keywords, or we're doing cycles in which we just want keywords. There's a lot of times where we need keywords, and we were kind of shy on them. So I did two things.

So I stretched the colors. So they got colors that had one color, got a secondary color. And the other thing I did was I made four new keywords, which were Death Touch, Lifelink, Shroud, which would later become Hexproof, and Reach. So I'll talk about those when I get to those ones. The reason I bring it up here was Trample originally was just green. During the big future site change, I decided to put Trample

into red. So why red? Why is red the color? Partly because red, one of the things I was looking for was I wanted to find a color that could use the ability and would do different things with it so that it would play a little bit differently. And one of the things red has is high power, low toughness creatures. That's kind of a red thing.

And trample on a 4-1 or a 5-2 is a really different animal than trample on a 5-5 or 6-6 or 7-7. Because if I attack you with a large creature, like even just a 5-5 trampler, if I attack you with a large creature, like even just a 5-5 trampler, look, either you're going to block with 5 power creatures or it's not really worth blocking unless you're just trying to shave off a little bit of points sometimes.

But if I attack with a 5-2 trampler, there is a reason to block with a 2-2. Yeah, yeah, you're going to take some damage, but you're going to kill that thing, it's not going to attack you again. So what we found was, putting trample in red just made a different kind of creature that trample worked differently. And red flavorfully made a lot of sense.

It's got the creatures with fervor and just the wild kind of creatures. Not wild in the sense of the animals, that's green, but wild in the sense of emotion and just sort of, you know, the berserkers and such. So we ended up putting trample in red. So once again, primary in green, secondary in red. The reason I say primary in green, secondary in red.

The reason I say tertiary for white, blue, and black is one of the rules is if you're just big enough, if you're a big enough creature, you are allowed to have trample. Sea serpents can have trample. Demons can have trample. So here's what I'll say. I'll say blue and black are tertiary and white is quaternary and that white is allowed to have trample.

If white has a big enough creature, white doesn't tend to have that big of creatures. It's a smaller color. It's the color that least has the giant creatures. So white doesn't get trampled very often because it doesn't have the giant creatures very often. But when we do make a giant white creature, trample is something that's on the board

that it can't have. Blue and black will trample a little more. It's not odd in a block to have a black trampling demon or blue to have a trampling sea serpent. So that is something that blue and black do occasionally, but not tons, but more so than white. That's why I'll say white is quaternary.

Okay, the final keyword that is an original alpha keyword, the rest of these weren't keyworded in alpha, is protection. Protection isn't really, I've claimed it's no longer evergreen, it's deciduous. We've kind of downgraded it in Magic Origins. That is something we're allowed to use, but we're going to use a lot less than we have in the past. Just real quickly, protection is primary white.

And it is really secondary nowhere. I'll say tertiary in all the colors. And what that means is white's big on protecting things. So white gets protection. White's the color that we see protection from colors. White's the one that just gets it more normally. Every color was allowed to have protection from its enemies.

And oddly, protection from itself. Those are things that we granted it. And then there'd be specifics. Like green was allowed to have protection from artifacts, because green handed artifacts blue we were trying to make a thing in blue

that blue had protection from weird things originally by the way and the idea in Future Sight was I made blue secondary in protection

and the idea at the time was well blue would get protection but not from colors blue would get protection from other things from car types from creature types from just different things was the idea. Because

we were trying to give blue a little more defensiveness. It never really panned out. It's something we never really did a lot with. True Name Nemesis, oddly enough, was in that space because of this desire to kind of go in that direction. We never really committed to blue. I mean, that was the idea in Future Sight. It never really quite followed through. And now protection is kind of downgraded so that's not going to happen. So I would say that white is primary. We tried to make blue secondary.

Everybody was tertiary because everybody could have protection in certain ways. Okay, next, haste. Haste goes back to the beginning of the game. Nether's Shadow and Alpha had haste, but it wasn't keyworded for a while. Haste, even though the very first one to have it was black, haste, but it wasn't keyworded for a while. Haste for a long, even though the very first one to have it was black, haste for a long time was just in red.

Red is the primary color of haste. During Future Sight, I needed to stretch it to a second color. I decided to stretch it to black. I looked at both green and black, and the reason I chose black was green haste creatures ended up being more similar than a 5-2 haste and a 5-5. Like, 5-2 and 5-5 matters in trample, doesn't matter in haste as much.

It's just like, oh, if you're unprotected, if you don't expect me coming, I get hitched for five. Black gave us access to flying and just a few more keywords that were a little bit different. And so we decided to put secondary in black. a little bit different, and so we decided to put secondary in black. So green, the problem was the development team really, really wanted access to green. They wanted me to put secondary

in green. And I explained that I really, for design, for limited, for a lot of what we wanted to do, black made more sense. But they convinced me, or Eric and I made a deal, which was, I put green tertiary with the following caveat. Development can use haste judiciously,

but they can use it on cards they wanted to be constructed. Basically, Eric said development needed haste as a tool for green. I said, fair enough. Can we just make it tertiary? So don't use it often. Just use it where you need it. But when you need it, okay, green can have haste as a tool for green. I said, fair enough. Can we just make it tertiary? So don't use it often. Just use it where you need it. But when you need it, okay, green can have haste. So green gets haste, but infrequently,

and it only tends to get it on cards where development needs it. So if you see haste on a green creature, odds are it at least is an attempt at a constructed card. Not always. Sometimes it ends up fringe. But it's at least constructed trying to take a shot at a constructed card. What it means being tertiary and green is you will not see it a common, and you will not see it.

You seldom grant haste. But it does show, usually every block, or even every set, usually there's at least a green haste guy. Often something development. It's the tool development uses. We let them, like, in design, we don't often make green haste creatures, but then development will add one, usually one or two at most in development. Next is Vigilance.

So Vigilance also started in alpha, but didn't get labeled for a while. It was on Ser Angel. Vigilance was a white thing forever. It just was something in white. I mean, there were a few other weird, like Eternal Warrior had, it was a champion that granted in red, and there was a blue

bird that had it. So in Future Sight, when I was figuring out where to spread it out, I looked at blue. The reason I didn't go to blue was that blue and white creatures look very similar. They tend to be flyers and low power, high toughness creatures. And it just ended up using vigilance in much the same way. But by putting in green, I got to put it on bigger creatures, on beefier creatures. A 4-4 vigilance,

a 5-5 vigilance. That's just a very different vigilance creature than a 1-4 or a 2-2 flyer. So that putting in green just gave me more, Like I said, a lot of my decision-making was to try to allow us to design different kinds of cards. So we put visionary, secondary, and green. So it's primary white, secondary, and green. Really isn't in any of the colors. One of the things that I will mention, by the way, is I talk about quaternary.

There is what I'll call quinary. That's the fifth one. Which is every once in a... Every once in in like, once or twice in all of magic. Like, haste, for example. We one time put haste

on a chroma, which is a white creature that had all these abilities and just, white didn't only get haste, it's not secondary, it's not tertiary, it's not even quaternary,

it's just like, one time in magic, we'll just do this one special thing one time once. That's quinaries, like, you know, in 20 years, maybe one time we'll do it.

That's quinary. And like, haste is quinary in white we'll do it that's quinary and like haste is quinary in white because we put it on the chroma but really what that means is if there's a really special reason in isolated that makes some sense we'll consider it

but that's not something we do just because a chroma got haste doesn't mean white ever got haste again okay although to be fair haste is something

that other colors do have access to. When we do something like Suspend or something like Awaken, where we find the players have to wait for something or they animate something, there's this confusion about which one I chose or can I attack right away. We'll sometimes use haste there. The other thing that we tried, by the way, in Future Sight, I think it was a future-shifted card,

was maybe making haste and ability in blue only on tap abilities. We were talking about ability haste. We put it on a blue creature in Future Sight that had zero power, so you'd never want to attack with it. Vigilance we ended up sticking in green, primary white, secondary green, tertiary no color. Reach. Reach was another thing we made in Future Sight. I actually didn't want to make reach a keyword.

Reach got made a keyword because of Mark Gottlieb, who was the rules manager at the time. It just made flying a lot easier to write. Because flying in the base set will put reminder text. Flying was, I can be blocked by flying or any creature capable of blocking

flying, which is really awkward. If you just give it reach, it's like, oh, I can be blocked by flying or any creature capable of blocking flying. It was just really awkward. And if you just give it reach, it's like, oh, I can block flying by anything with flying and reach. Just to make it cleaner. So I didn't actually put it in the secondary color during Future Sight. It just was in green, stayed in green. Recently, we're like, you know what? Why is it just in green? Reach in the past has been toyed with in white just because white has archers and things

but white doesn't really need it, white's primary in flying so we recently in Magic Origins are toying around with red being secondary in Reach, red is the number two flying hate color, although a distant second behind green so anyway, something we're trying red

red doesn't have flying in common, and so red red has a lot of direct damage. Red has answers to flying in terms of direct damage. But you don't always want to waste your direct damage on flying, so we're toying with maybe giving red secondary reach. And reach is tertiary in all the colors in that sometimes we make just a big enough creature, we'll give it reach just because somehow the flavor makes sense.

So it's something we'll consider in other colors. Death Touch. Death Touch is primary in black, secondary in green. Death Touch, which is another of the Future Sight keywords. So black is, in black it represents sort of all the deadly things that black does. Green represents kind of natural poison. We don't really do Death Touch anywhere else. It's just primary black, secondary green. They're pretty close. Green is almost primary. I would say that kind of like First Strike, where they're close to each other.

Black leads a little more to primary, and green leads a little more to secondary, but they're pretty close to each other. Lifelink. Lifelink was another ability I brought through in Future Sight. Lifelink goes back to a black creature called El Hajaj in Arabian Nights so that was probably most famous by a card

called Spirit Link in Legends which was really popular so the reason Life Link isn't Spirit Link isn't called Spirit Link is that aura, whenever you put it on a creature any damage dealt by enchanted creatures you gain for life so you can put it on your opponent's creatures

as a way to stop them because you gain for life it sort of neutralizes your opponent's creatures but if you give your opponent's creatures as a way to stop them because you gained the life. It sort of neutralized your opponent's creatures. But if you give your opponent's creature Spirit Link, I'm sorry, Life Link, then your opponent gains the life, not you. So Life Link and Spirit Link aren't identical. We ended up putting Life Link in white, primary in white, and secondary in black. Life is a color of life gain, and Spirit Link really put it on the map for white. Black has a nice flavor.

In black, it's more about draining the opponent. It's more of a drain life sort of feel. So white and black, kind of the flavor is very different, but primary white, secondary black. Flash! Flash was introduced. I think Alliances had the first creature that you could play as an instant,

which was, I think, Benelish Knight in white. We ended up making a keyword Flash in Time Spiral. I'd wanted to try to make instant a super type. It's been a long time goal, but I just wasn't able to pull that off. A little too much of a change. So originally I think we had Flash

was primary in green, secondary in white is what we tried. And eventually I realized that blue really needed it. And so for a while it was primary green, secondary in white is what we tried. And then eventually I realized that blue really needed it. And so for a while it was primary green, secondary blue. But really it's become primary blue, secondary green. Blue is more

useful in blue. Blue has a flavor of kind of being reactive and having instants and it just kind of plays a little bit into blue space than green. Green represents sort of creatures that pounce at you and surprise you and come out of nowhere. So green still gets it, but it's primary blue, secondary green.

It is tertiary in red, white, and black in the sense that if you have a creature, the most common example would be an enter the battlefield effect that's essentially an instant. You know, white is like, I'm going to prevent damage. Well, if the creature doesn't have flash, then you can't use that ability. So, we allow red, black, and white when the, like, mechanically the card kind of needs to do the functionality to have

flash. So, they do get it. Next is Hexproof. So, originally in Future Sight, I introduced Shroud. Shroud was, can't be the target of spells or abilities. It was, uh, I think, it was in green and blue. I forget, I'm not sure which was primary. Um, I think it was originally primary, was in green and blue I forget I'm not sure which was primary I think it was originally

primary green secondary blue and once again it shifted a little bit blue ended up needing a little more but what happened was players were playing

incorrectly they were assuming that they could target their creatures and that their opponents couldn't so we ended up changing it to hexproof

to just make it play the way a lot of players thought it played and then it wasn't it didn't have a downside quality to it. And so anyway, right now, it's primary blue, secondary green, I'd say. Although it is an ability we've been doing less and less. It's proving valuable in very narrow spaces, and so we use it in those spaces. But it can be very unfun in the wrong place, so we've really pulled back on it.

It can be very unfun in the wrong place, so we've really pulled back on it. Hexproof is tertiary in white, meaning that sometimes when we want to do a protection sort of flavor, we'll let white do that. Often white in the past used to be protection. Now the protection is a little less used. It's possible you might see hexproof used a little bit more in white. Also, if we... I don't know. The most cases we've done this have been in white and green, but sometimes if we have an enchantment or something

and we just don't want you to get rid of it, we will give Hexproof to the enchantment to sort of say, hey, you can't just naturalize this. I don't know if you've ever done that in red or black. I could imagine this maybe one time, so maybe Cordinary in black or red if we just need something that we don't need to mess with. Probably wouldn't be on a creature, but I can imagine

it being on an enchantment or something we just didn't want you messing with. Okay, next is Prowess. So this is one of the new ones. Prowess is... Oh, wait, wait, wait! Before I get to the new ones, I forgot Indestructible. So Indestructible showed up for the first time in Darksteel.

For a long time it wasn't a keyword, It was just an ability like Double Strike we tend not to put very often at common. Lifelink, for a long time we didn't put often at common. We've changed our minds, a lot more common now. Indestructible is another thing that you don't really see things that are indestructible at common. You'll see white granting indestructibility

and once in a blue mean green granting indestructibility at common. So when I say primary white I mean white uses it more than anybody else but even white doesn't use it too often at low rarities indestructible is something I'd say tertiary and the other colors and that if something kind of needs the indestructible

for the mechanical reason it is something that's possible although you don't see it using too much in those colors okay now to the new ones prowess for a long time prowess just got added in magic origins you don't see it using too much in those colors. Okay, now to the new ones. Prowess. Prowess for a long time, Prowess just got added in Magic Origins. It's from Contra Tarkir. We've been looking

for a blue mechanic, a combat-oriented mechanic for blue forever, and we've also been looking for a blue-red overlap mechanic. One of the things you'll see before I end is how there's overlaps of most of the color combinations. That's something else I was trying to do during Future Sight,

is when we make hybrid cards or sometimes gold cards where we want the overlap, having overlap between colors can be very valuable. And so when I was stretching and finding secondaries, I wanted to make sure we had as many overlaps as we could. So prowess is primary blue, secondary red. So we have a blue-red overlap is what we need. It's tertiary and white because Jeskai, it was in red, blue, secondary red. So we have a blue-red overlap is what we need. It's tertiary in white because Jeskai was in red-blue and white. So white just felt natural because that's where it got introduced.

So we're going to allow white to have it every once in a while. But it's going to be a primary blue thing. Blue's really the color that needed it. We use it in red because it's valuable to have it in second color and red definitely can make use of it. And having the overlap like I said is really good. Next is Menace.

So Menace is primary black, secondary red. For a long time, black had the fear ability, which was in alpha but not labeled. We finally labeled it. And then we ended up changing fear to intimidate because we wanted it to stretch to other colors, so we put it in black and stretch, I put it in red,

intimidate was in black and we stretched it to red, and occasionally we put it in black and stretch, I put it in red, uh, Intimidate was in black and we stretched it to red. And occasionally we put it in green and blue and white. Um, so now we've moved to Mendous. Mendous matches Intimidate. It's in the same space. So it's primary black, secondary red. I'd say Tertiary. I could imagine us using other colors. Green's the place where I most often, because green needs, um,

green is a little bit low on, um, evasive ability. So I can imagine T tertiary being in green. Flavor-wise, it's something that blue or white might touch. I mean, maybe I'll call it quaternary in blue or white, where, you know, if we have a scary thing that just kind of makes sense, and something like Innistrad, we played around with...

Menace wasn't here yet, but with Menace's Intimidate. We messed around with Intimidate a little bit more because it was a world of scary things. We used Intimidate a little bit more. Finally, oh, I forgot Regeneration. The reason I forgot Regeneration is it's kind of on the outs with us. It's still

used, but we're looking to find a replacement for it. But it's primary green, secondary black. Green uses it on, like, trolls. Black uses it on skeletons. So you see it. We don't use it as much. So primary, secondary, once again, we don't

use it all that much. The last, I'll just throw this in because scry just got added. Scry is not a creature keyword, but it is primary in the color. It's primary in blue. We use it more in blue. Every other color can use it,

so it's kind of secondary everywhere, but it's primary blue. And secondary in the sense that you will see scry stuff in common in all the colors. It's just an ability. It's a color smoothing ability, so we want access to all the colors to have it, so it's a little bit different than how creature keywords work.

But anyway, my friends, this time I recorded it, and I got to work, and it's still recording, meaning you're actually, you're going to hear this. So, that, my friends, is primary, secondary, tertiary. Quaternary, quinary. You learned all the words there. And to give you a little sense of sort of how we think about things and what colors we put stuff in,

and, I don't know, just a little insight into the structure. There's a lot that goes on on how we structure things, and what colors we put stuff in. And, I don't know, just a little insight into the structure. There's a lot that goes on on how we structure things. And so this is a podcast talking about kind of how design, development, structure things. This time talking about

every green creature keywords. So anyway, I'm now in my parking space. So we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. See you guys next time.