Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #385 - Council of Colors

Episode Date: November 18, 2016

Mark talks about the Council of Colors group that was created to help monitor the color wheel.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today, in the last podcast I did, I talked about the Council of Colors. And I said, one day I should do a podcast on the Council of Colors. And then today I realized, that should be today. So today is going to be all about the Council of Colors. So I'm going to explain sort of what it is, where it came from, how it works. The Council of Colors. So I'm going to explain sort of what it is, where it came from, how it works.

And one of the things that I'm hoping you'll see today is I'm going to go real deep on one little tiny aspect of something we do at Wizards. Just to give you an idea of how much things matter and how much infrastructure will be built to make sure that we're paying attention to things. Okay, so the Council of Colors. So for those longtime listeners of my blog, you clearly know that I love the color pie. And I did, in fact, I did an entire podcast on the color pie, the importance of the color pie. I did a three-part series long ago about what I call the golden trifecta, which are the three things, the genius ideas that Richard Garfield created when he first made Magic. One is the idea of a trading card game. The second is the mana system. And the third is the color pie.

So let me, I'll just do a real short version of the color pie. There's a whole podcast if you want the full drawn out version. To me, the color pie is the core of the identity of the game. That Richard came up with the idea of there was five colors of magic. And I explained in my podcast about the importance of it. The Color Pie mechanically does a lot of important things about allowing you in a trading card game to have different things of different power.

And the mana system makes sure that you can't play them all on the same deck. But the thing that's really interesting about the Color Pie is it gives the game an ethos. That there are things in the game that the game has a psychological underpinning to it. That the colors mean something. And the colors' relationship to each other means something. And there's a correlation between all the colors.

And that is a really cool, important thing. In fact, when you go to the root of the game, the core of the game, the foundation of the game, I believe that's the color pie. That the flavor comes from the color pie, the mechanics come from the color pie, like the very essence of why things do what they do all boils down to the color pie. And as such, I have been a big advocate of the color pie and a protector of the color pie. One of the things is the color pie does a lot of important things. One of the most important things it does, I mean, it creates diversity and gives an

ethos to the game. But another important thing it does is it keeps the game, like, one of the most important things about a trading card game is you want to make sure you have lots of different pieces and you want to make sure that all the powerful things can't go on the same deck and the color pie helps do that by separating things in different colors but one of the dangers is if you over time it's very easy for you to just make small changes and go well we'll just bend here and bend there and before you know you undermine the core of the color pie, and it collapses. Because there's a point at which every color can do everything, and there's no delineation. And so we want to make sure that doesn't happen.

And if you look through the history of Magic, there's a lot of cards that got made that shouldn't have gotten made. Cards that really fly in the face of what the color pie is. And so for a long time, what happened is I was the protector of the color pie. And whenever I would see a color pie violation, I'd jump into it and go, okay, white doesn't do this or blue doesn't do that, whatever. And I would defend whatever I thought was needed to be done. The problem was that magic has, like when I first started working on magic, you know, back in 1995, The problem was that Magic has, like, when I first started working on Magic, you know, back in 1995, we made basically three sets a year. And then every other year we made a core set.

And that's what Magic was when I first started the company. It was like we made three sets a year, made a fourth set every other year. And that really was what Magic was. And so it was very easy for me to pay attention. We only made, you know, so many cards a year. And so it was easy for me to sort of just watch. And also in the early days, I was on all the development teams. I was on every single team. So like I was between the, you know, the last part of any part of the process between, you know, the designers designing and the card seeing print is development. So I was there at the tail end

and that I could watch for color pie stuff. And I'm not saying nothing slipped by me. Or sometimes I would allow something and then it ended up being problematic. I mean, I'm not saying I was perfect, but I would allow like, you know, early magic, for example, has a few crazy cards like anarchy is one.

Anarchy is a red card that lets you destroy all white permanents. Well, one of the problems is red's supposed to be bad. It's one of its weaknesses is supposed to be enchantments. And white enchantments are a big part of it. One of the reasons, one of white's arsenals against red is his white enchantments. Well, Anarchy just blows up all white cards, including enchantments, which it's not supposed to do and causes a problem.

Part of the balance between red and red has to do with that white has some answers to red that red doesn't have easy simple answers to. Anyway, I stopped the anarchies of the world. I stopped the like completely like that color doesn't do that thing. And then once again,

I talked about this, that the most important part to me is colors have identities, they have philosophies, and they have weaknesses. And so part of understanding, we bend things all the time. So let me define a bend and a break. So a color bend means, I talked before about the mantle, the crust, the mantle, the, sorry, the core, the mantle, and the crust. The idea is the core is the inner workings of the color pie,

what the color pie does every day, sort of its normal working. These are the, every set, these are the things you see the color pie do. The mantle art, these are things the color pie does some of the time. It doesn't do it all the time. Like, you know, when we do a graveyard set,

we've mapped out space and all the colors for some graveyard stuff. But normally, you know, normally red, for example, doesn't do a lot with the graveyard. But in a graveyard set, okay, we've found some space that we get occasionally. That's the mantle. That's like, okay, we don't go there all the time, but we go there some of the time when we need to go there. And the crust is sort of like, philosophically speaking, you know, these colors could maybe do some things that are kind of a stretch for the color.

And that's when we get into the bend. It's like a bend. And a bend means that the color is doing something it doesn't normally do. But philosophically, it's hitting along the lines, you know, it's not undermining its weakness, which is important. That it's not, you know, undoing something the color is supposed to define the color.

A break is, it is undoing a weakness. It is doing something the color is not supposed to do. And so one of the things we look at when we sort of make cards is, I'm always going to look out for what are the color bends, what are the color bends what are the color breaks um the reason color bends are important is if you make enough color bends and enough volume it's a lot like making breaks you know that you have to be careful how often you you do the bends and where and how you do them and you don't want to do a bend just to do it you should do a bend because it serves the set like if a set's all about the graveyard and we have, okay, Red's bending a little bit to do more graveyard stuff, okay, that's it's reinforcing the theme

it needs to reinforce. But bending when there's not a larger point, like bending should be done only because it serves the set, not because, hey, well I could kind of do this, you know, you shouldn't, you shouldn't be bending without reason. And it's showing me so much bending per set. You don't want infinite bending. So, in the early days, there were three sets. There was a course that every other year,

I could watch it, you know, and I was on all the development teams. So it was very easy for me to monitor that. And it's something that I really early decided that was something important to me.

Nobody else of the early, when I first started working at the early developers, nobody else really cared about it as much as I did. I really, I'm the one that comes my mom is a psychologist, or I mean she's

retired now, but she was a psychologist. I have a big fascination for psychology. You know, the player psychographics obviously are psychology based. And the color pie to me is always spoken to me. I'm a writer, obviously, and it gives a lot of motivations and it explains

you know, why things get along, and why they fight, and anyway, it's a wonderful tool. So I've always been, and I've spent a lot of time and energy fleshing out it. I've wrote articles upon articles about the color pie. I answer questions all the time on my blog about, okay, let's take characters from elsewhere, and what colors are they, and why, and why is this person this color? I spent a lot of time understanding why they're allies and why they're enemies. And, you know, the color pie existed back in Alpha,

but I spent a lot of time sort of hammering it out and sort of cleaning it up a little bit. Much like we cleaned up the rules and a lot of aspects of the game. I mean, Richard made amazing things, but we've had 23 years now to fine-tune those things. So, okay, early days, I was on the development teams. I cared about the color pie. I was keeping my eye out for it. Eventually, okay, I moved on from being a developer to being a designer, which meant I was working earlier in the process.

I wasn't the last hands-on things. Although even in the early days, I also was on a lot of development teams that I designed just because of the nature of there weren't that many developers. But eventually, it got to the point where I was doing design and not doing development. And then I had to peek in from time to time. I would always, you know, look at sets and try to make sure I do a pass on them. But then around Magic 2010, so Magic 2010 was a core set where Aaron Forsythe had this pretty cool idea.

He said, you know what? One of the things the core set needs to do is be resonant and do cool idea. He said, you know what? One of the things the corset needs to do is be resonant and do cool things and that sometimes the cards we need don't quite exist. Well, why can't the corset just make its own cards? And I was on the design team for Magic 2010 and all of a sudden we said,

okay, you know what? Corsets, about half the cards in corsets can be new cards is what we decided. So we started making new cards in core sets. Normally before, right, there were three sets we did a year in the core set and the core set was only repeats. There weren't any new cards in it. Now we're like, okay, we're going to do core sets and not just every other year, every year. And they're going to have new cards in it. It's like, okay, well, that's a few more cards. And that wasn't something I was, you know, as easily to

keep my eye on. I wasn't, other than I happened to be on the design team for 2010 because that was a big shift, but normally I wasn't on core design teams. I was, because I was the head designer, I was watching the main expansions, and so I kept my eye on the major expansions, but while I was kind of high to keep my eye on the core set. And then we started doing supplemental products. We started doing stuff like Conspiracy or stuff like, you know, Commander Decks. We started making new cards for other products. And that was way out of sight in my scope. That's not, you know, and what started happening was more sort of either severe bends or actual breaks were getting through. Chaos Warp's a good example of.

It's a card that was trying to mimic something Red had done, but it really allowed Red to have very clean and easy pinpoint removal of enchantments in a way that there was very little punishment. I mean, every once in a while you would get burned, but, you know, 10% of the time maybe. And it wasn't enough. It was like, okay, Red now has the answers it needs to this problem without having any

repercussions of it. It undid the weakness. And it was clear to me that there were more products getting made, and the other thing was, as we were advancing, when I first took over as head designer back in 2003, I've been trying to find more and more ways to improve how we do the core set. Not the core set, the expansions.

And that involves us doing a lot more with them. And we've started working farther ahead. And now there's exploratory design, exploratory world building, and there's a lot of pieces and parts going on to making the thing click together. And so the thing that really was important to me was that there was too much happening, that I was responsible for more and more things on the design side, that I just had less and less time to be policing things, especially in supplemental sets or core sets that I actually wasn't even working on.

And little by little, things were slipping through that I was unhappy about. And so one of the ideas I had originally was I said, OK, what if I could train my designers to be more, have a better understanding of the color pie? Because I looked at the developers and I said, okay, what if I could train my designers to be more, have a better understanding of the color pie? Because I looked at the developers and I said, you know what? The developers all have a really good understanding of costing. That if I want to cost a card, I can talk to any developer and say, okay, what does this cost?

This is the card. And any developer can give me a cost that was in spitting distance. Not that in the end it might not have to change one or two mana, but it's in spitting distance. Not that, you know, in the end, it might not have to change one or two mana, but it's in spitting distance. And what I wanted to do was I wanted to provide that tool for my design team. I wanted all the design team to be knowledgeable enough on the color pie that if any developer

had a color pie question, they could go to any of the designers to do that. So what I started doing is I started training the designers in the color pie. Now, in general, in order to do design, you need to have a decent understanding of the color pie. So the designers already had a pretty good working knowledge, but I did a whole bunch of meetings. We have weekly design meetings. And so I use the weekly design meetings, or some of them, to walk through each of the colors. And I walked through the mono colors. I walked through all the two colors. I walked through the

relationships between the allies, relationships between the enemies. And we mechanically walked through every color. We're like, okay, let's talk red. Let's write on the board every single thing red can do mechanically. And then I explained philosophically why red could do that, why mechanically red did that. And then I talked about where the bends were and where the breaks were. And I talked about the weaknesses of every color. And I spent a lot of time sort of downloading all the information I could about the color pie to my designers. And the idea being that, look, just as if someone has a costing, they can go to anybody of the developers. And in the end, you know, if you want the perfect costing, fine, you go to Eric Lauer himself and he'll probably

help you. But, you know, you didn't need to go to Eric Lauer every time you needed a costing of a card. Any developer could do that. I wanted the same sense for the color pie, which was any designer will get you in spitting distance. Yeah, there'd be a few complicated ones that involve new abilities that aren't near anything we've done before, and I'm more than happy to help when it's something super complicated.

But anyway, the idea was, okay, that was the first step. I was going to train my designers to know the color pie. I did that. We spent a lot of time on it, weeks and weeks and weeks on it. And then Mark Gottlieb, so Mark Gottlieb is the manager to the design team. He, once upon a time, I used to manage the design team and it became clear that my time was better spent doing products, making, you products, overseeing design itself, because we were doing more and more. And so we brought in a manager so that Mark oversaw the people and I oversaw the work.

So I was responsible for the work they did, but Mark was responsible for them as people, as employees, and making sure that doing all that a good manager will do, keeping them happy and making sure they're not getting overworked and all the manager-y things one needs to do. And so what happened was one of the goals that Galib had was he was looking to figure out responsibilities for the design team. And as a general thing, I was looking for ways to, you know, one of the dictums I got from my boss, Aaron Forsythe, a long time ago was

I needed to figure out what I was doing that somebody else could do. Because I was doing a lot of stuff and really the goal for me was to focus more and more on the future. That we've been trying to work farther and farther ahead as we've been doing more with story. You know, we want to figure out blocks in order to figure out story. We've got to figure out mechanics and, you know, at least mechanical overview mechanical overview and make sure that okay we're telling the story that we can make sense out of um and so as we're doing that um what happened was that like aaron was like okay you got

you have to in order to take on new work which is the advanced work you got to give up some current work so i spent a lot of time trying to figure out what i was doing that other people could do and god had actually had interesting ideas said well what if we took your color pie out? Because you are the person overseeing the color pie. What if we divvied that up a little bit? What if instead of it all being on your shoulders, we created a team and we used the design team to do that? And I was fascinated. I'm like, look, I know I'm overworked.

I know that, like, I knew that things were slipping through the cracks. I just didn't have the time and energy to pay attention to all the different stuff that was getting made. So Mark pitched the idea of a council of colors. I don't know if that was the name at the time, but we came up with the name. And the idea was that there would be five people, that each person would take a color, and that they would be responsible for being the primary person to oversee that color. And then the idea is we would have meetings, and I'll talk about that in a second, in which we'd talk over the feelings of people, and then we as a group, as the council.

So the idea was there would be five people taking five designers, they would be each responsible for color, and that Gottlieb and I would sort of be overseeing the process. Once again, Gottlieb would more oversee the people, I would more oversee the sort of be overseeing the process. Once again, Gottlieb would more oversee the people. I would more oversee the sort of material. But the idea is we would, they individually would do stuff and then we'd get together to do console color meetings and Gottlieb and I would be at those meetings.

Okay, so the first thing we had to do is we had to divvy up the colors. So at the time, we had five that weren't me or Gottlieb, which was Ken Nagel, Ethan Fleischer, Shawn Maine, Gavin Verhey, and Jackie Lee. So the idea was, okay, we have five designers, we have five colors, let's divvy them up. So the first thing we did is we asked everybody to list in order their preference of colors from first to last. And the way we did it is we went by priority of how long you've been working in design. So Ken Nagel was the veteran of the five designers. So Ken, for those who don't know Ken, loves green. He is a green mage through and through. So it was crystal clear that Ken should be

green. It was his number one choice by far. So next technically was Ethan. Ethan and Sean actually started on the same day, but Ethan had his internship in design where Sean had his internship in digital. So the idea there was Ethan had technically been on design slightly longer than Sean. Once Sean's both of them got their internship turned into a full-time job. Once that happened, both of them were on the design team. But Sean spent some time doing digital before coming to the design team. So it turns out that Ethan wanted blue. Good enough.

Sean wanted red. Good enough. I think both Jackie and Gavin, I don't remember their first choices, but their first choices were either red, green, or blue, I believe. But when you looked at their choices, it was clear that between black and white, that Gavin was much more interested in black and Jackie was more interested in white. So we made Gavin black and Jackie white. And then Jules later joined, Jules Robbins, and Jules ended up taking artifacts, colorless

stuff, which technically was not being monitored, but I liked the idea that someone was monitoring it um there is some color identity to colorless i've written about a little bit um and just making sure like are you doing something that really is infringing on the color it's kind of a jewel's job was that's what that did that's what monitoring artifacts mostly is saying oh you're really undercutting red because you should not be giving all colors access to this thing that red's supposed to be good at and other colors aren't supposed to be good at. Okay, so here's how the console colors works. So, every

once in a while, there'll be a file that's far enough along that it's time for us to look at it. So, we'll say, okay, okay, console colors, go look at such and such a file. You have a week or two weeks to go look at this file. And what they do is they look at it, and they grade every card in the file

on a scale of one to four. See if I can remember this correctly. So one means in color pie. Like, you do this. This is what you do. Two means, okay, there's a little bit of a bend. This is outside the normal realm of the color that sort of the place the color normally is. but you're like, I understand why it's

making this bend, and so this is an acceptable bend. Three is sort of an unacceptable bend, which is like, well, either you're bending something that's not appropriate, like maybe there'll be a set where the bend makes sense, but this isn't that set. Like, you know, you're making a bend that it's not, it's not appropriate. Like, maybe there'll be a set where the bend makes sense, but this isn't that set. Like, you know, you're making a bend that it's not playing into what the set is doing. You know, that you're bending

in a place that it's a bend, and maybe in the right place it's justifiable, but here it's not justifiable. And then finally, a four is a break. You just should not be doing this. Under any regards,

you should not be doing this. So what happens is, they'll go through their own colors, and they will grade one through doing this. So what happens is they'll go through their own colors, and they will grade 1 through 4. And then what happens is anything that's graded a 2 or above. So if you're the color pie person for your color, all you're wanting is, look, I know what my color can do.

Those are fine. Anything that's graded 2, 3, or 4 is then looked at by the other members of the color consoles, and they then grade it from a scale of 1 to 4. The reason I say 1 to 4 is it's possible you go, that's a bend. Someone else goes, that's a bend. Why can't your color normally do that? So you're allowed to grade things 1. And what happens is we take all the cards that we tally up the scores,

and then we take the highest weighted cards, meaning the ones that are most marked as being over the line. Now, pretty much if you're at a four, if the core person thinks you're a four, that's a problem. And those we need to get fixed. We talk about them in the group every once in a while. Someone really thinks something of four, and the rest of the group really thinks it's nine. We'll talk those through. It doesn't happen too much. But really, most of our talk is about the twos and the threes.

And as everybody grades them, we get weighted scores to look at. So the idea is a card that is going to be in the meeting is going to be somewhere between a 1.0 and a 4.0, essentially. I mean, if everybody graded a 1 to be a 1.0, the odds are we're not looking at it, everyone graded it. In fact, we're not looking at it if everyone graded it a 1 because the color,

if they didn't grade it a 1, you wouldn't look at it. But anyway, it starts about 1.5, let's say, and goes up to, I mean, if everyone graded it a 4, we just knock it out. We don't really have 4s all that often, but 3.5 or something.

And then we talk about it. And what we do is we have our meetings. Gottlieb and I are in those meetings as well. And we walk through all the changes and talk to them and say, okay, what's going on? And then we'll talk some higher stuff. Like the Council of Colors is a place for us to discuss larger issues. Like, okay, this is something. And one of the things we'll talk about is, especially sometimes in Ben's, is sometimes Ben's are us saying, you know what?

This color needs some solution in some area. What if we push in this direction? And we'll talk a little bit about, okay, that makes sense. No, that's a problem. But like one of the things we'll do, here's an obvious one, is red has had some problems recently,

I mean not recently yet, ever since Commander, the format started, red is really, the way that red normally works, which is kind of the aggro, get-you-quick color, doesn't work great in a long, drawn-out multiplayer game. And so we've been trying to figure out ways to give red something that is inherently red, that feels red, that makes red have better sense in a Commander game. A good example of that might be... We put in both looting and we put in

or rummaging is going red now, because red discards before it draws. And then we also put in impulsive drawing, where you get a card, you get to exile a card, and until the end of the turn you get to play that card. But then it goes away. So it's like card drawing, but only very immediate.

So we'll talk, that meeting, we'll also talk about those kinds of things. You know, we'll, we'll, usually what happens is if someone has an idea of how they want to expand the color pile a little bit, they'll make a card and put it in the file so we can sort of get feedback from people playing and see how they feel. And then the console colors doesn't pass on it. You know, like that's where we sort of, you know, the pedal hits the metal and we talk about things and go, oh, okay, does this make sense or not? And one of the things about the color pie is there's debates. Different people see different things about the colors, not in the broad strokes. I think we all agree on the broad strokes, but sometimes in the finesse of the details is,

strokes, but sometimes in the finesse of the details is, especially in areas where the color hasn't done it, and the question is, should it be able to do it? You know, when you're messing in kind of virgin space that really isn't defined yet. Also, magic has a lot of precedents in it based on cards we have made, and we have to figure out where does that precedent make sense and where is like, no, either we messed up in the past or we've shifted our philosophy since then. Now, be aware of the core philosophies of what the colors represent. That really hasn't changed much. That really has been pretty constant.

I mean, I did some work in the early days kind of cleaning up, you know, giving more definition, and cleaning up is not quite the word, but giving more definition than Richard had in the early days. You know, Richard definitely set up the conflict, but it wasn't as defined, and I spent some time more defining them. What exactly are the conflicts, and labeling things, and giving words to them. But since that early day, since, you know, the first maybe five years of Magic, the color philosophies really have not varied much at all.

Execution has varied, sort of, you know have not varied much at all. Execution is varied, sort of, you know, what's at the core. You know, the color pie is an evolving thing. We're always sort of rethinking what goes where. And sometimes it's a matter of saying, oh, you know, philosophically, this is not playing out the way we want and shifting things or saying, you know what, gameplay-wise this is problematic. Can we make changes that will improve the gameplay that doesn't undermine how the color pie works? And that will happen from time to time. And sometimes, like for example, for a while we moved fog out of green into white

because it just philosophically made more sense in white. But then we realized that if something green just needed more than white did mechanically, and so we figured out a way to sort of say, well, okay, here's why it's okay in white. But then we realized that if something green just needed more than white did mechanically, and so we figured out a way to sort of say, well, okay, here's why it's okay in green. You know, yeah, kind of an absolute vacuum.

It feels more white because white's more about like, okay, I'm going to defend against things. I'm going to do damage prevention. That's a little more white. But, you know, that's the kind of things

we'll experiment around. We'll figure out who does what. We also are always looking to make sure we refine weaknesses and understand the weakness of the colors and a lot of times what we're trying to do is mechanically we're trying to solve problems here's a good example black was having a problem

because it had too many things it couldn't deal with and Eric Lauer came to me and said okay, black cannot destroy artifacts, it cannot destroy enchantments, and it cannot destroy planeswalkers. That's too much. Three permanent types it can't deal with, that's just too much. I need black to be able to deal with one

of them. Which, philosophically, which one makes sense? And I said, you know what? Planeswalkers. Black is all about death. Black's all about, you know, that, you know, it's hard to use death to kill an object or to kill a magical essence, but you can kill planeswalkers. You know, flavor-wise, that makes sense. And so we opened up and said, okay, you know, we're going to not let black do that at too low a rarity. It's something special for black. It's at higher rarities, and it's not something you'll see in limited all much.

But for construction, yeah, black can do that. Black has access to that. And we started doing that. And part of that is, that's part of the color pie, is trying to figure out when we need things, where to put them and how to use them. And the idea is that the reason to me the color pie is, or sorry, the console colors is so important is that I've always contended that the color pie is, or sorry, the Council of Colors is so important is that I've always

contended that the Color Pie is crucial to the game. But I think having more people work on it, like I like the idea of making it something that's vital, that's not just like my pet project. At some level, when one person is doing something, it's very easy for people to go, oh, that's just something you care about. And now having a whole process to it and a whole team dedicated to it, like, it really conveys, no, no, no, this is something everybody needs to be worried about. This is something that's for the health of the game, not my pet project. It is an important component. And one of the neat things about doing Color Pie meeting, one of the things I love about

the Color Pie Meeting is, once upon a time, like, all the decision-making and all the sort of arguments about Color Pie were kind of going on in my head. Because I'm the only person doing it. So, like, okay, I would have to dig things through. And now I have a whole team that really is motivated and dedicated, you know. And one of the things, the analogies I use is, I used to do in my earlier days, I did directing.

I was a playwright. I also was a director. And one of the things that was interesting about directing was that there's this thing where every part is played by an actor. And it is the actor's part to understand that character. And they have no role of understanding other, I mean, not to, they have to understand other characters through the lens of their character. But they are thinking about their character in a way that you are not. Because they are focused on their character.

That's all, that's their focus. Your focus is all the characters as a director. And even when I was the writer, because a lot of times when I directed, I wrote the script too. And I understood the characters, I wrote the characters. But there was a cleanliness, a vision, when someone, that's all they were thinking about. And they would get to questions that I never asked myself. And they would come and say, hey, why is this line this way? Why is the character doing this?

They would ask me questions. And usually there's a reason I did it as a playwright. But as a director, it made me sort of think about it. Oh, why did I do that? And a lot of times in writing, for example, there's decisions made that are kind of intuitive where you, it feels right, but you don't necessarily understand why you made the decision. And having people come to me and sort of make that claim really is allowed me as both a writer and a director to get clarity. And I found the console colors does the same thing. I love that there's people who all they think about,

or their focus at least, is on a particular color. They're going down deep on that color. And so I love having really meaty conversations about why is white the way white is, or blue, or black, or red, or green. And walking through and like, as we've, or red, or green? And, you know, walking through, and like, as we've been exploring red, I love Desmond today. It's okay.

Well, no, no, no, red can't do this. But yeah, I think red can do this. And, you know, when you're exploring new territory, it's fun to sort of walk out and talk through philosophies. And so one of the things that I've really enjoyed in the Council of Colors is having this ability to sort of really stress test the colors in a way that was hard for me to do as a solo project um and they're getting the time and

attention and and all the cards are getting time and attention every set every supplemental set every set is going through the console colors um now that said there's some kinks to work out you know uh we're still new we're still trying to figure out when to look over the file, when to give feedback. If you're too early, then you miss cards later that get made. If too late, then it's hard to adapt to your feedback. You know, it is, there is a lot of balance issues that we're constantly working on. But I love, I love that the Council exists and that one of the things is

it existing has allowed us to really sort of, and not only does it make the colorblind matter for the console colors, I think the rest of the company, and R&D in particular, it's very easy, I think, sometimes when you're focused on the thing you do to just go, ah, whatever.

Like, one of the things that would happen a lot, if you go back a couple years, is it's very easy to make bends and just go, ah, fine, it's bent, you know, and someone would come talk to me and say, is this okay? I'm like, yeah, that's okay. And that we weren't monitoring how many bends got made, you know what I'm saying? It's like, oh, this card in a vacuum is fine. Yeah, it is um the problem you know another problem that was happening that the council colors is dealing with is a volume issue it's like okay yeah you can bend something but you can't bend everything and you can't bend it all in the same set you know if this is where

your theme is and where your bends are okay these cards they shouldn't be bending you know you should pick and choose you can't you only get so much bending in your set. There's only so much where you're deviating that, you know, in general, I talk about how, when I make a set that like, I want to change one or two things. I don't want, I'm not trying to make a set that barely feels like magic.

I want a set that feels like magic, but there's a couple of things about it that are a little different from normal. That's how color pie bend should work. It's like, well, normally blue doesn't do this, but because this is the theme, we're going to let blue dip its toes in some area that it doesn't normally do

because that's where the bend makes sense. That's what reinforces the set. And, you know, I enjoy that we have that luxury now. Like I said, there's a lot... I actually wrote about the console of Colors pretty early on in its existence. I mean, it's a little over a year old. So there's a lot to work out. There's a lot

of things we're still trying to figure out. And I definitely want to involve more people as we can. But anyway, I'm trying to think. I'm almost to Rachel's school for those by the way that have never listened to my podcast on the color pie I cannot the color pie is an amazing thing

I spent a whole podcast talking about it so it is an amazing thing I think some people don't quite understand the value of it and what it does for the game I know there's people

that just like oh I want it annoys me that for the game. I know there's people that just like, oh, I want it annoys me that in a red deck I just can't destroy an enchantment so just give me enchantment destruction please. That's not how red works. And that it's, like one of the things that's very interesting is

I'll tie the color party to writing for a second. When you write, one of the things you come to realize about making characters is how important flaws are to characters. That in some ways, there's a whole philosophy of writing that flaws define your character. That the seed of your character in some ways is the flaw of the character. What about them? How are they different?

What do they believe in that causes them problems? And in the same way, I believe about the colors that one of the things that really identifies what they are is their flaws. You know, the fact that red is so short-sighted and doesn't think about the long term, or that white is so inflexible and it can't understand maybe that things are changing or that its preconceived conceptions are problematic, understand maybe that things are changing or that its preconceived conceptions are problematic. Or blue and its passivity of its desire so much to wait and think about what it's going to do that it lets things happen, things go by without it reacting to it. Or black is so ruthless and so willing to give up whatever it wants to get the power it needs that it'll make decisions and choices that will cause itself problems.

needs that it'll make decisions and choices that will cause itself problems. Or that green, you know, in its desire to sort of appreciate what is, you know, that it doesn't, you know, it has issues with change and with quick change. And it is, while it's good at adapting slowly, it is very poor at adapting quickly. And you know, each of the colors definitely has things that it deals with and that's one of the things to me that is one of the beauties of the color pie and why the Council of Colors is so important is I want to keep the colors flawed, if you will.

I want to make sure they have identities and they do things, but that each one of them has holes and has problems and has ways they think that are strong in some areas, but weak in others. And that is why I think, that's why the color pie is so important. That's why the color is so important is we have someone now to monitor this stuff and specifically monitor it mechanically. Um, you know, that, that's the, it is so easy to sort of like just make lots of little tiny,

little tiny bends. And before you know it, you've just completely undermined what a color can and can't do. Okay guys, but I'm not driving up to Rachel's school. So I hope you appreciated this, uh, peek into the Council of Colors. Uh, and, and like I said, starting like the fact that so much time and energy is spent on just this one little facet of the game, which is an important facet, mind you, just kind of shows you how much detail,

you know, how much there is and how much we try to do with our detail, and it really matters. So anyway, that, my friends, is the Council of Colors. And as I'm driving up to Rachel's school, we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic,

it's time for me to be making magic. Well, I'll see you guys next time. Ciao.