5/24/13 Episode 35: Blue

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

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’s 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 if I’m in the heart of something I’ll sit in my parking lot and finish it. So I’ll make sure you get your full Drive to Work’s worth of content.

But anyway, today I’m starting from Grand Ridge Elementary, my daughter’s school. Slash summer school. My younger twins. 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 a—one of many mega-series talking about color philosophies. The first one I did was white, since I am going in WUBRG order… so WUBRG, for those of you that don’t know, the order that we do cards in our files is white blue black red green, we call it WUBRG 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 used to—card colors 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 in either of them, so we ended up going with U.

It’s been pointed out to me that 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 U. And so WUBRG is what we call sort of 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 the color philosophy, and me to sort of explain the philosophy of the color and then talk about why the mechanics we use, and 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 we 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, where blue believes that, you know, your environment is what matters. Your upbringing, your teaching, 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 very much 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. And the blue/red—green and red are obviously blue’s two enemies.

The blue/red thing is, blue’s all about like, you know, if you’re calm, you 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, you know, and blue’s like “No no no. The correct way to go is to 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, philosophically, “What is my purpose here on this earth?” And blue sort of says, “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—information leads to all sorts of things. And if you embrace that, you can have a better life. “

I think that when blue looks at its two allies, white and black, in white it seems—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. Compared with black—a little more selfish, 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—blue has a—has a selfish side and has a community side that’s kind of shares its two allies. That you know, when white and blue get together, blue’s like “I want to help everybody! Community!” You know? “Let’s build technology to help our lives! And, you know, do all sorts of things that make life better for us as a group.” And blue gets together with black, and it’s like “Ooh, what can I do?” You know, like, you know… I love when I do little hand signals and you can’t possibly see it because we’re doing a podcast. I just rubbed 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. The idea—I mean, one—so one of the things that is kind of vague but it’s there is “What exactly does the hand and the library represent?”

So what I believe it represents, I mean there’s a little interpretation here, I believe that your hand is your conscious 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, 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 what’s 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 “Well, what spells do I right now on my surface do I know?” And if I study and think, I can get other stuff. You know. And so, I mean, card drawing is a pretty basic essence of the game, and that if you’re going to look at information, okay. Card drawing is pretty much the core of your information.

Now the other thing that blue believes is that--blue is the color that says “I’m doing 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’ll have the means by which to defeat them.

From that comes blue’s sort of core counterspell—is that the reason blue is the counterspell color is blue is the one that says “Okay, you know, knowledge is power, well what’s one of the most powerful things I can do as a blue mage? Deny my opponents access to magic.”

And so blue has the range of counterspells, blue also has unsummon or bounce, putting things back into the opponent’s hand, and then 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, you know, 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? Just send it back. Or stop it from coming in the first place. Or take it. You know.

And then blue’s—blue’s 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. Even if you’re more powerful than me. Even if you have stronger spells. That if I carefully use the spells that I have, I can defeat somebody who is much more powerful than me.” You know. And I think that—I mean, counterspells are a good example, where it’s—“You spent a lot of mana to play a big spell. Well, I spend less—usually--to counter it.” You know.

Now, where blue has a problem is, that blue requires time. You know. That one of the things about being subtle and nuanced is it’s not something you can do quickly. You know. And that blue’s weakness is—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 “Uh… okay, I got something for that, but you’re going to have to wait a couple turns.” You know, like blue’s not the one that necessarily always has the answers.

Now, blue has some answers, like counterspells, 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 throw 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 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, but that’s a different blue ability.

Blue has the ability to sort of—to loot, or to draw cards and discard cards, where it’s looking for something, it has some way 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—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 those are the enemies of blue. And the idea is that some things just have a natural affinity against magic. You know. That there’s some things that like—blue’s magics don’t quite work on. You know.

Like when I made Scragnoth, which was in Tempest, it was the first “can’t be countered” creature, it was just the idea—I think it was called “greased weasel” was its playtest name, was the idea that just—mmm, there’s something about the way you summon this that it doesn’t quite allow the countermagic 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 it’s something that’s been tweaked to deal with—I mean, I guess—I guess since it’s green and red it’s probably more wild, that there’s just some things that inherently by their nature don’t play as well into what blue’s—blue’s magic functions.

So the other thing that blue—blue definitely has a strong feeling for is that blue—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.

Like blue’s greatest strength is its—its restraint, that it carefully—it carefully thinks ahead of what it’s doing, and that it has a great nuance to what it’s doing. Well,  its 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. That, you know, it’s so trying to not make a wrong decision that it sometimes doesn’t make a decision fast enough.

And that’s why blue, for example, is the slowest of the five colors. You know. I mean every 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 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, it understands the value of being tricky, that if your opponent doesn’t understand what you’re up to, that you can get a 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 within the rules, well that’s fair game. That’s why they’re rules.” You know.

And blue has no qualm with—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 figure 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 definitely something we’ve been pushing up a little bit more, you know, that blue has these cards that seem threatening, and it’s not until you, like—when you touch it, that you go “Oh, this isn’t real.” Because 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 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 values 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 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 counterspells—I’m sorry, 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 discarding to different people. Because they are two different means to handle cards in hand. And sometimes, they’re cards that you need to deal with before they come out. And so we wanted to give those tools to two different colors.

And blue--counterspells make so much sense in blue that we decided to put, you know, hand denial in black. But, you know, we did give blue milling, to match the flavor of sort of “I’m wiping away your memories.” You know. Milling essentially, the flavor of milling is, I am eroding your memories from your—your brain, you know, and that you won’t be able to remember things. And look, if I eradicate all your memories, at some point you can’t function, and then I’ll defeat you.”

Blue… what else? Let’s look, talk about 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 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 philosophy sort of stuff, that both air and water have come with it, the symbolness of thought.  That air is—both of them are definitely more malleable, you know, where earth and fire are both 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 if you look through Magic’s history, you know, the sharks and the octopus, you know, all the water creatures  are based in blue.

And there are different things that fly, but sort of the normal things that rule the air, there’s a few exceptions like angels and dragons in other colors, but the majority of birds—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 was made the flying color because its connection to air. What’s happened over the years is, we’ve 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 that, 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, it sort of uses this ability to prevent other magics from hurting it.

Islandwalk just comes from the fact that you can swim in the sea, it’s kind of hard for others who have water to—you can sneak through the oceans very easily. What else does blue have?

Blue is a problem child right now in that it is kind of keyword-light more than the other colors. Blue also has unblockability. Some of that stems from, like I said, 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 its creature keywords, like flying and islandwalk and unblockability, are all evasion abilities.

I mean hexproof protects it, but—oh, blue also has flash. Flash is just 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 the 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 can just blink my eyes and make a keyword appear, blue is the 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 have some new thing, and then each one will have a creature keyword to represent, you know, its color, and blue—I mean sometimes we use flash if flash will work. I mean once in a while we’ll 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 that 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—it is the color that is the most ingenious. In that it really—it doesn’t look for the easy answers. And I enjoy that about blue and the way blue plays is that, you know, every other color does something and blue goes, “Nah,” you know, like every other color just destroys things, and blue’s like “You know, there’s better ways to do things than destroying things.”

Or you know, the other colors, you know, blue just has a—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? Well, let me explain a little of my belief, why I believe that 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—my hypothesis.

I believe the gamer mentality is blue. You know. Because the gamer mentality is, “I’m gonna think this through. I’m gonna 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 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, value understanding things, and like the way blue fights is blue says, “Look, I’m not gonna—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 I feel like, you know, the reason that blue kind of has become, 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 players—like when you first start playing, you see a counterspell, and you’re like “Boring! I want to play with my spells.” But then as you play a little bit more, and you’re like “Oh, well this counterspell can counter anything. Like, that’s a pretty versatile spell. Like no matter what you do, I can counter it with my counterspell.”

Now, Wizards understood this, and so we have nerfed—we have nerfed counterspells a bit in the sense that there was a period in time where like “Deck full of counterspells, what can you do?” And that was very frustrating. You know, there was definitely a time in early Magic’s history where like “And my goal is to never let you do anything. And at some point I will defeat you—whatever. Some, I’ll deck you or—something in which—you know, I’m not even wasting resources. Just I’ll naturally do something the game lets me do.”

And—but I do think for example part of the popularity of Jace—and like I said. Jace was the most popular planeswalker before he got the Mindsculptor. Like 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 you know he is smart and he’s sneaky and he’s tricky and he thinks things through. And I think that’s—that’s very much, you know, the mindset.

So what else? So I am pulling up here at work, but I promised! Since I left—I cut off a minute on the front end that I add a minute on the back end. 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 is 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. Like 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 I—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 from the other colors. You know.

I like the idea of the fact that, you know, if I have a threat for example, if I have a creature that’s a threat, you know, what is—black’s answer is that, well, black Terrors it, right? Well 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 to fight with it.

But blue’s like “Hey, hey,” you know, “That’s a valuable tool there. Maybe I’ll—maybe I’ll use it for myself. Or maybe—ehh, I’ll just—I’ll sever your tie to it, so you just—you’ve got to go get it again,” or you know like blue’s just sort of like “Hey, you know, I got answers,” and that blue is the color that has the most unique answers, right. Blue acts the least like anybody else and blue has the most individuality to it. Another reason that I think gamers like it. That blue really says “Hey, I’m an individual.” You know.

So anyway, I—blue is a lot of fun, and I feel like it definitely has a—an attractive quality to it. I think the reason why 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—I used to always joke that blue is tricky, even with the designers. That it says “Ohh, hey designer, you like this effect, what? It’s fun! Let’s just push it a little bit.” You know. I felt like blue messes with the designers as much as it messes with anybody else. Blue’s just—it’s tempting and sneaky.

But anyway, I do have to go to work, got to go make some more blue cards and the other four colors, I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast and I guess it’s time to go make the Magic.