Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #35 - Blue

Episode Date: May 24, 2013

Mark Rosewater dives into blue in Magic's color pie.

Okay, I'm pulling out of the parking lot. Wait, what? What? Well, today my daughter forgot something and I had to go to school and drop it off. So I'm starting my podcast today in the parking lot of my daughter's school. But it is still time for Drive to Work. Luckily, I live about a minute away from my daughter's school, so I do not believe we will lose much time today on the podcast. And, and, if I'm in the heart of something, I'll, I'll, I'll sit in my parking lot and finish it.

So, I'll make sure you get your full drive to work worth of, of content. Um, but anyway, today, I'm starting from, um, Grand Ridge Elementary, my daughter's school, slash son's school. Um, my young, my younger twins, not, not my oldest one, who previously went there, but now goes to middle school. Okay, today's topic is going to be blue. I started one of many mega-series talking about color philosophies. The first one I did was white, since I'm going in Woburg order. So Woburg, for those that don't know, the order that we do cards in our files is white, blue, black, red, green.

We call it Woburg, since blue we represent with the letter U. Oh, real quickly, why do we do that? I've talked about this in my column, but for those that haven't heard me say it, when first Richard made the cards, the problem was that black and blue both start with B. So why not go to L then? Well, land, which we use to, card codes are used to signify the border, the kind of card it's on. And so land has its own border. So L is for land.

Well, why not go to A for black? Well, A is artifact. And so U was the first we could get to of either of them. So we ended up going with U. It's been pointed out to me, by the way, in printing, I believe black is K. But anyway, we didn't know that at the time.

It's become sort of institutionalized. So anyway, blue is K. But anyway, we didn't know that at the time. It's become sort of institutionalized. So anyway, blue is U. And so WUBRG, W-U-B-R-G, is what we call the order that we do things in. I decided I would do this in WUBRG order. Okay, so blue. Oh, the idea of these podcasts, by the way, is to talk about color philosophy and me to sort of explain the philosophy of the color and then talk about, like, why mechanics we use and, you know, just

color pie goodness. So I love color pie goodness. So, okay, so what does blue want? Down deep. Down deep, what does blue want? Well, blue values information and knowledge. Why? Why

does blue value that? Two reasons. First, Blue has the belief that anything is possible. It definitely believes what they call the tabula rasa philosophy of a person is born a blank

slate. They can become whatever they want to be. And that the idea that Blue strongly believes is that, you know, anybody can become anything with the proper training, with the proper knowledge, with the proper tools.

And so Blue is very gung-ho in providing all that. I mean, the Blue-Green conflict is the nature-nurture conflict, right? Where Blue believes that, you know, your environment is what matters, your upbringing, your teaching, you know, where green is like, no, it's in your genes.

It is what, you are what you are. You were born to be the thing that you are, that you cannot escape your own destiny. Where blue very much believes that you are in control of your destiny, that you have the ability to shape who you are. Blue also believes that if you think things through, if you have the knowledge that you can win any conflict, you know, if you understand how to win, you can win and that the key to victory is not rushing in.

It's carefully thinking about it. Um, and the blue red, green and red are obviously blue, two enemies. The blue red thing is blue is all about like, you know, if you're calm and think things through and use your intellect and take time, you can carefully reason things out. And it looks at red and, like, red just is impulsive and doesn't think about anything, and red constantly gets itself in trouble, and, you know, and blue's like, no, no, no, the correct way to go is take your time, is to think, you know. And so, I think from this core ideology, we get a lot of what blue is about.

And I think that the essence of blue is every color like, I want to make my experience the best it can be. How do I do that? I mean, on some level, each color is saying, you know, philosophically, what is my purpose here on this earth? And blue sort is saying, you know, philosophically, what is my purpose here on this earth? And blue sort of said, you know, I can make things better for myself and make things better for other people

if I can embrace the power that is information. You know, information leads to technology. Information leads to strategy. Information leads to strategy. Information leads to all sorts of things. And if you embrace that, then you can have a better life. I think that when Blue looks at his two allies, White and Black, in White, it sees sort of using information as a means to better those around, to better the community, you know, to improve the lives of those lived with. You pair it with black,

a little more selfish, it's how to improve your life, how to do things, you know, and because blue values intelligence, blue also realizes that, you know, one of the keys is what's important is that I know things that you do not. So blue very much respects secrecy. It respects using information sometimes to manipulate things. You know, it has a tricky quality to it. And like I said, blue has a selfish side and has a community side that kind of shares its two allies. That, you know, when white and blue get together, blue's like,

I want to help everybody and community, let's build technology to help our lives and do all sorts of things that make life better for us as a group. And blue gets together with black and is like, what can I do? I love when I do

little hand signals that you can't possibly see because we're doing a podcast. But I just rub my hands together, like, you know, like evil villain sort of hands. So let's talk about blue mechanics. So what does that mean? Okay, well, first off, blue seeks knowledge. Well, how do we represent knowledge in the game? Card drawing. Pretty straightforward. So one of the things that is

kind of vague, but it's there, is what exactly does the hand in the library represent? So what I believe it represents, I mean, there's a little interpretation here, is I believe that your hand is your conscience mind, what you're thinking about at the moment. And that the deck is your brain.

It's everything that you know. And the reality is, in any one moment, you do not access all your brain. You know, you can't think about everything consciously at once. So what you do is, you're thinking about the stuff you're thinking about, and then you have to make use of that, what I have in my hand right now.

And with magical spells, it's like, what spells do I, right now, on my surface, do I know? And if I study and think, I can get other stuff. And so, I mean, card drawing is the pretty basic essence of the game, and that, if you don't look at information, okay, card drawing is pretty much the core of information. Now, the other thing that blue believes is that blue is the color that says, I'm dealing magic.

If I want to be better at magic, I have to understand magic. Once again, blue is about knowledge. So blue says, okay, I'm the color that's going to study and understand magic better than the other colors. Because if I understand magic better, I will have the means by which to defeat them. From that comes blue's sort of core counter spell. them. From that comes blue's sort of core counterspell. The reason blue is the counterspell color is blue is the one

that says, okay, knowledge is power. What's one of the most powerful things I can do as a blue mage? Deny my opponent's access to magic. And so blue has the range of counterspells. Blue also has unsummon

or bounce, you know, putting things back into the opponent's hand. And what that represents is the ability to tether. So when you, a wizard, summon something, you go where the thing is, you summon it, you bring it to where you are,

and it's tethered to where you are. That's why it stays where it is. And blue has figured out a way to untether things so that it returns from where you got it. So also, what else does blue do? Blue also says, well, the other thing that's valuable for me is I can turn my opponent's things against them. So blue has stuff that can redirect things.

Blue also has control magics and things that steal things. It says, okay, you can make it. I can take it from you. And what blue has done is blue has said, okay, every other color, they're all about destroying things. Like, no, no, no, no, no. That is, they are being much, they're missing the essence. They're missing the subtlety. If you use magic correctly, why ever destroy it? Just send it back. Or stop it from coming in the first place.

Or take it. And then blue spells are very much about saying, okay, I'm doing the subtler game. I'm kind of thinking it through. Because what blue says is, blue believes that, look, if we have a battle, and I outthink you, I will beat you. That even if you're more powerful than me, even if you have a battle, you know, and I outthink you, I will beat you. That even if you're more powerful than me, even if you have stronger spells,

that if I carefully use the spells I have, I can defeat somebody who's much more powerful than me. You know, and I think that, I mean, counter spells are a good example, whereas you spend a lot of mana to play a big spell. Well, I spend less, usually, to counter it. Now, where blue has a problem is that blue requires time. One of the things about being subtle and nuanced is it's not something you can do quickly. And that blue's weaknesses and red especially plays into this is blue does not

respond quickly. Blue is not the adaptable color. It's not remotely adaptable. Red's adaptable. Red's like whatever, you know, red's in the moment. But blue is like, okay, I got something for that, but you're going to have to wait a couple turns. You know, like blue is not the one that necessarily always has the answers.

Now, blue has some answers like counter spells that if it can set itself up, but, you know, one of the weaknesses is that if you come out really fast, you can sneak under the counterspells, because blue has to get set up to be able to do its thing. And so one of its problems is, it can't really handle, or has trouble handling,

things that sort of just let caution to the wind and go blisteringly fast, because blue is not a fast color. What else does blue care about? Blue's knowledge is not just, not only does blue have card drawing, but it also has what we call card filtering. And what card filtering is, is stuff like, you know, intuition or, it's stuff where, not intuition. I said intuition.

I meant impulse, is what I meant. It does have intuition. That's a different Blue ability. Blue has the ability to sort of, you know, to loot or to draw cards and discard cards where it's looking for something. It has some ability to tutor, you know. Blue definitely uses its knowledge to sort of seek out the right card.

Because a lot of what Blue needs is it needs the right card at the right moment. And so some of its magic is used to sort of reach at that. I think the thing about blue in general is that blue has put all its eggs in understanding what is going on. And so its weaknesses come from like, for example, we purposely put can't be countered in red and green because they're the enemies of blue. And the idea is that

some things just have natural affinity against magic. You know, that there's some things that like blue's magic don't quite work on. You know, like when I made magics don't quite work on. You know, like, when I made Skragnoth, which was in Tempest, it was the first counter creature. It was just the idea,

I think it was called Greased Weasel, was the name, was the idea that just, there's something about the way you summon this that just, it doesn't quite allow the counter magic to ever get a handle on it. And that green and red definitely have some of that, that they have some magic that's been

adapted. Either it's wild or something that's been tweaked to deal with. I mean, I guess since it's green and red, it's probably more wild. There's just some things that inherently by their nature don't play as well into Blue's

magic functions. So the other thing that Blue definitely has a strong feeling for is that Blue wants to plan. Blue wants to, like I said, the weakness of every color is, I always talk about how your greatest weakness is your greatest strength pushed too far. So, blue's greatest strength is its restraint, that it carefully thinks ahead of what it's doing, and that it has a great nuance to what it's doing. Blue's greatest weakness is inactivity, you know, that you can become paralyzed, that if you try so hard to not make a mistake, that sometimes you don't make any choice whatsoever.

And that blue definitely has this problem sometimes of, like, being unable to make a decision, you know, that it's so trying to not make a wrong decision that sometimes it doesn't make a decision fast enough. And that's why blue, for example, is the slowest of the five colors. You know? Maybe once in a while it'll get some creatures that are a little faster, but really it's the slowest. On average, it's the slowest of the five colors.

And the ability it has to win is it kind of has to take control of the situation, you know. And then control is a big part of Blue's philosophy in general, which is Blue is like, look, if I take my time and energy, I can control the situation, you know. And Blue understands that because it values knowledge, that disinformation can be important, secrets can be important, secrets can be important, it understands the value of being tricky, that if your opponent doesn't understand what you're up to,

that you can get tactical advantage. Now, the interesting thing about it is that blue has a sense that if it can come up with things it can do, that is fair game. Like, Blue definitely says there are rules, I will follow the rules, but anything I can come up with in the rules, well, that's fair game. That's why there are rules, you know.

And that Blue has no qualm with doing things that are a little sneaky or a little underhanded, you know, in the sense of, hey, you had fair game, you know, you could have figured out what I was doing, I figured out what you were doing, and so, hey, if I figured out what you're doing better than you figure out what I'm doing, I should have the advantage, you know, and I can lead you, I can get you to believe things that might not be true. Blue definitely plays with illusions, that's something that we've been pushing up a little more, you know, that Blue has these cards that seem threatening. And it's not until you, like, you know, when you touch it,

then you go, oh, this isn't real. But as long as you believe it's real, it has power. That's how blue's illusions work. That, you know, your knowledge kind of gives them power. And the second that you don't believe in them anymore, well, then they just disappear. So what else does blue do? Milling.

So the concept of milling is blue valuing information. And so blue says, if I value information, well, then one of the best attacks is to attack your information. So that brings up, well, wouldn't blue be a good discard color? Well, I mean, technically blue be a good discard card? Well, I mean, technically blue is secondary in discard, although, I mean, a far second. I think the idea essentially was, I mean, there could have been a world in which we gave blue discard. But I think what happened was, when we were balancing the game, like, you kind of want to give counterspelling and discard to different people,

because they are two different means to handle cards in hand and sometimes they're cards you need to deal with before they come out and so we wanted to give those tools to two different colors and blue counterspelling makes such sense in blue that we decided to put hand denial in black but we did give blue milling to match the flavor of sort of

like I'm wiping away your memories. You know, that milling essentially, the flavor of milling is, I'm eroding your memories from your brain, you know, and that you won't be able to remember things. Look, if I eradicate all your memories, at some point you can't function

and that'll defeat you. Blue, what else? Let's look at a couple of creatures. So blue is the king of flying. So another aspect of blue is that Richard, when he set up blue and red, decided to take the four elements and split them between blue and red. So blue has air and water and red has earth and fire. So why So blue has air and water, and red has earth and fire. So why does blue have air and water? Well, philosophically, air and water have represented mental, if you look at a lot of different, you know,

real-world religions and real-world philosophies and sort of stuff, that both air and water come with the simbleness of thought. You know, that air is... Both of them are definitely more malleable, you know, where earth and fire are a little more, you know, less malleable. And that they represent sort of mental manipulation or mental acuity. And as such, because he set that up, he also wanted to sort of flavorfully follow through. So blue ended up becoming the color of the air and the color of the water.

And so Richard gave him, or gave it, sorry, gave it, gave blue, creatures of the air and creatures of the water. So that's why blue is serpents. Blue has, you know, a lot of underwater stuff. And we've been shying away from some of the underwater stuff just because it's hard to show it fighting on land. But I mean, if you look through Magic's history, the sharks and the octopus and all the water creatures are based in blue.

Now, there are different things that fly, but sort of the normal things that rule the air, there's a few exceptions like, you know, angels or dragons that go in other colors, but the minority of birds, I mean, I guess white takes the trained birds, but all the wild birds go in blue, or most of the wild birds. I guess the carrion feeders and stuff go in black.

And so also, to sort of give it some balance, blue made the flying color because of its connection to air. What's happened over the years is we finally got to the belief that white and blue kind of shared air superiority. White needed more flying creatures than blue did, although they're close. And you'll notice in Limited that blue tends to have slightly more flyers that are bigger. It has less... I mean, white has

more... white has a greater number of smaller flyers, but blue has the bigger flyers. And blue more often grants flying. I mean, white does it some, but blue more often grants flying. And so, but both are considered primary in flying now. As far as keywords, hexproof, which was originally Shroud, represents blue using its magic to protect itself from other magics. Hexproof represents magical protection. You know, you cannot be affected by magic.

And so blue uses that. Blue is sort of, you know, the king of understanding magic. You know, uses this ability to sort of prevent other magics from hurting it. Island Walk just comes from the fact that you can swim in the sea. It's kind of hard for others who have water to see.

It can sneak through the oceans very easily. What does blue have? Blue is a problem child right now in that it is kind of keyword light more than the other colors. I mean, blue also has unblockability.

Some of that stems from, it likes to have the flavor of invisibility. That's a sneaky thing that blue does where you just can't see it. I mean, blue is very tricky. And the problem is most of his creature keywords like flying and ion walk and unblockability are all evasion abilities.

I mean, hexproof protects it. Oh, and blue also has flash. Flash is supposed to represent that it has optimized its magic to figure out how to get things there faster. Because sometimes you have a need to get a creature there right away. And blue has sort of mastered the magic to make that happen. But the problem we have is blue is definitely...

If I could just blink my eyes and make a keyword appear, blue is a color that most often has a problem. For example, one of the reasons that creature keywords are important is we'll make cycles in which, to differentiate them, they'll all have some new thing, and then each one will have a creature keyword to represent its color.

And blue, I mean, sometimes we'll use flash if flash will work. I mean, once in a while we use hexproof, but most of the time it has to be flying. It just doesn't have a lot of options. Hexproof can be scary sometimes, and flash doesn't always work, so that is one of blue's things I'm trying to figure out. What else can I say about blue? I mean, the thing I like about blue is that it is the color that is the most ingenious in that it really doesn't look for the easy answers. And I enjoy that about blue and the way blue plays

is that every other color does something, blue goes, nah, every other color just destroys things. And blue's like, you know, there's better ways to do things than destroying things. Or the other colors, blue just has a take on everything better ways to do things than just drawing things. Or, you know, the other colors, you know, blue just has a take on everything that sort of says,

I mean, so by the way, so, blue tends to be the most popular color for experienced players. Why is that? Let me explain a little bit of my belief of why I believe blue is the most popular color for experienced players. Now, part of it is, blue historically has been the strongest color.

But, I believe, subconsciously, here's what's going on. This is my hypothesis. I believe the gamer mentality is blue. You know? Because the gamer mentality is, I'm going to think this through. I'm going to win this game

because I outthink my opponent. Because I examine every opportunity and I find places where I can do things that my opponent doesn't. And I feel that the reason that blue kind of speaks to a lot of Magic players is it really matches the mindset of what makes a gamer a good gamer.

You know, that gamers like value knowledge and value understanding things. Like the way blue fights, blue says, look, I'm not going to... I don't share certain strengths. Other colors have strengths. If I'm going to defeat them, it's not trying to fight them at their own strengths.

It's trying to fight them at my strengths, you know. And that, I feel like, you know, the reason that Blue kind of has become, you know, the experienced player of color is that what it does, it just resonates so strongly with the, you know, the experienced player color is that what it does, it just resonates so strongly with the, you know, like I know, for example, experienced player, but like when you first start playing, you see a counter spell and you're like, boring, I want to play my spells.

But then as you play a little more, you're like, oh, well, this counter spell can counter anything. Like that's a pretty versatile spell. Like no matter what you do, I can counter my counter spell. pretty versatile spell. Like, no matter what you do, I can counter my counter spell. Now,

Wizards understood this, and so we have nerfed counter spells a bit in the sense that there's a period in time where, like, deck full of counter spells, what can you do? And that was very frustrating.

You know, there was definitely a time in early Magic history where, like, and my goal is to never let you do anything. And at some point, I will defeat you and whatever.

I'll deck you. Something in which I'm not even wasting resources, just I'll naturally do something the game lets me do. And but I do think, for example, I think part of the popularity of Jace, and like I said, Jace was the most popular planeswalker before he got

the Mindsculpt. Before he became the most powerful planeswalker, he was the most popular. And once again, I think that Jace is a planeswalker that deals with mental manipulation. And he is smart, and he's sneaky, and he's tricky, and he thinks things through. And I think that that's very much the mindset. So what else?

So I'm pulling up here at work. the mindset. So what else? So I'm pulling up here at work, but I promise since I left, I cut off a minute on the front end

that I add a minute in the back end as to not keep you guys from your full drive to work podcast goodness. So let me see

any last things I can say about Blue. I mean, the thing that's exciting about blue is that it, because it, like some people have said that kind of blue is the one color that kind of understands it's fighting a magical duel, you know, that other colors are kind of just fighting, and blue's like, no, no, no, it's a magical duel. Let me use the pieces. And, you know, for example,

we do less of these than we used to, but like the idea of magical hack and sleight of mind, we're like, I'm actually physically changing what the magic is. I understand the magic so well that I can morph your spells and change them so they don't quite work the way you think they do. I mean, the reason we do less

of those now is more for memory issues than anything else. But from a Blue standpoint, I really like the... I like the fact that blue is the one that kind of messes in a meta sense with things. That it sort of understands... It understands what's going on, and it plays with you in a way that's a little different than the other colors. You know? I like the idea of the fact that, you know, if I have a threat, for example I have a creature that's a threat, you know what is black's answer is, well black terrors it

right, what does red do, red shoots it with direct damage, what does white do you know, white arrests it or pacifies it or, you know uses something to remove it, you know green will like, get another creature and fight with it, but like blue's like hey, hey, hey, hey, you know

that's a valuable tool there. Maybe I'll use it for myself. Or maybe, yeah, I'll just tether your tie to it so you gotta go get it again. Blue's just sort of like, hey, I got answers. Blue is the color that has the most unique answers. Blue acts the least like anybody else. And blue has the most individuality to it.

Another reason I think gamers like it, that blue really says, hey, I'm an individual, you know. So, anyway, blue is a lot of fun, and I feel like you know, it definitely has a I mean, the attractive quality to it.

The reason why I think we keep making broken blue cards, is my joke, is that in the core, in our heart of hearts, that the people who make the game are gamers, and blue speaks to us at a level which, you know, it just, I used to always

joke that blue is tricky, even with the designers. That it's just, oh, hey designer, you like this effect? What? It's fun. Let's just push it a little bit. I feel like blue messes with the designers as much as it messes with anybody else. The blue is just, it's tempting and sneaky. But anyway, I do have to go to work. I've got to make some more blue cards as well as the other four colors.

I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. And I guess it's time to go make the magic.