3/22/2013 Episode 26: White

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

Okay, I’m pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that means! It’s time for another Drive to Work.

Okay. So today, because I like having a lot of balls in the air, I’m going to start a different meta-series. Yes, multiple meta-series all going on at once. So one of the things I’ve wanted to do is do a podcast on each of the five colors and talk about color philosophy. Why would I want to do that? Because I looove color philosophy! I’ve talked about this—in fact, I had a color pie discussion not too long ago, podcast, and I talked about how important I think the color pie is.

So I wanted to walk through the philosophies of each color. I think they’re fascinating. It’s one of my favorite things about the game. And underlying it, I’ll talk about not only what white represents and the other colors on their podcasts, but how mechanics come out of that.

Okay. So we’re going to start with white. I’m going to go WUBRG, so we’re going to start with white. WUBRG, for those that have never heard of it, white blue black red green. We use U to represent blue because B is black and L is land. So WUBRG, by the way, is the order of the colors that we do, and we call it WUBRG in R&D for those that have never heard the expression before.

Okay. So. What is white about? So one of the things I like to start with is talking about what—what does the color want? You know. And white—white has a very simple goal. White just wants peace. White wants everybody to get along. White just wants everything to be good. And be simple. And white just wants—wants everybody to live in harmony. That’s what white wants.

But white understands that that’s not so easy to do. And why? Why is it not so easy to do? Because it’s easy for people to get lost. And that there are a lot of forces in the world that white understands can—can get you to drift. And so white says, “Okay. Well what you need is that the individual needs structure. Structure will help you.” Well how—how is that?

Well, there’s two major kinds of structure that white believes in. One is a moral structure. That white believes in a sense of good and evil. A sense of right and wrong. You know, white believes that there is a correct way to live, and that there’s a sense of morality. White believes in morality. That it’s wrong to do certain things.

And by having a clear-cut spelled-out morality, it hopes—it’ll teach people what the right thing is. Because some people don’t know, and if you just teach people, “Here’s what’s right and here’s what’s wrong,” that’s how you can make sure that they do right and wrong.

 

Now, white also believes that you need a firm set of—of laws. And not only do you need a spiritual guidance, but actually a civil guidance. You need laws to outlaw things that are wrong. You know, punish people for doing the wrong thing, and so like morally you can teach them right from wrong, and then with the law you can sort of teach them through punishment. You know. “Look, you break this—this is a law. You can’t do it. You break it, you get punished.” And through a moral and a civil means, white can sort of craft things to help. 

Now, white’s largest goal, once again is, when it says peace, what white means it wants everybody to be happy. Not just itself—white’s not just looking out for itself. White’s goal is peace for everyone. And in order to do that—right, it has to make a structure to allow people to coexist.

And white believes, by the way, that the good of the group outweighs the good of the individual. You know. That if you allow individual desires to rule things, that would—that will create a lot of unhappiness, it won’t be good for—you know, if you want to make peace for the world, you can’t value one person over another. You have to value the good of the whole thing. Of all people.

And part of that white makes is very dedicated toward society. You know. That—like society is yet another way to structure things. You know. That white realizes the more you lay down for people—humans can get lost. Humans are guided by all sorts of things. And a lot of things that can lead them astray.

And so if you just lead them and tell them what to do through your laws, through your, you know, commandments, through your—different sources you have available, to help teach people and lead people, then you can make a world where everybody’s working together and everybody’s happy. 

Okay. So if you look very carefully, the two major way white structures, it has enemies that are very clearly opposite of that. Okay. So white wants a moral underpinning. White wants a sense of right and wrong. Black, completely against that. Black is amoral.

Black’s not immoral, by the way, little side note, black is amoral. Black does not believe in a sense of morality. Black believes, you know, very much in the sense of self, you do what you need to do. And that morality is a creation of people, that there’s no—you know, white actually believes that there’s this inherent, you know, you know, greater good going on, and that what they are doing is for the greater good of everything.

Black is like looking out for itself, and it’s like “Look. There is no sense of morality. That’s just a human-created thing. It’s—you know, we don’t need to live by any code.” And so black is the antithesis of white there, you know. White’s all about you need some sense of spiritual guidance, and that you need morality as a—as a compass to guide you, and black is like (raspberry sound) you know, black does not care.

So, white sees black as evil. You know. Now, black doesn’t see itself as evil, and I talk a lot about good and evil, but by white’s sense of morality, by white’s sense of how it defines the world—and be aware, humankind follows white more than it follows any other color philosophy—black is evil by that—by that goal, if you judge—if you judge evil by the means of—of looking out for one’s own vs. the good of the group, and not caring about the group, then black—and white truly believes this—black is evil.

Now. Another side, white believes in civility. White believes in laws. Red does not believe in laws. Red wants anarchy. Now to be fair, it’s not that red wants anarchy, red doesn’t want rules. Red wants to do what red wants to do. You know. And red is very all about freedom—we’ll get to red, but red wants to do what it wants to do. It doesn’t want things telling it it can’t do it. And so red is all about civil disobedience. Red’s about “Look, if there’s—if there’s a law that says you can’t do something, then, you know, whatever! Break the law. You know.” Red does not follow the laws. Because red is guided by passion and by its—by its emotions and by its impulses.

And that is the antithesis for white in that regard. White’s like “How do you have civil—how do you have civility if people just break the rules. You can’t break the rules.” You know. And so white sees red as the rule-breaker, you know. Black is evil, red is chaos. And, you know, both of those forces are—will doom society. You know. Black will eat away at the moral founding, red will eat away at the legal, civil founding. Both are bad.

And so white has this very defensive quality that says, “Look.” You know. White doesn’t want to be the bad guy. White’s kind of like the federation in Star Trek in that white kind of doesn’t like to hit first. Most of the time. But—but, and this is where white’s a little different than the federation, white does believe that some things are such—are so bad, black is so evil, red is so chaotic, sometimes you have to lead the fight. You recognize that they’re the problem, and you have to be aggressive. You know.

And that’s where white weenie strategy comes from, is white has this knowledge of “Sometimes, you just have to build the army.” You know. So white obviously is the color of the army, because white believes in the good of the group. What is the army?

It’s a lot of—you know, individuals coming together, and the idea in white is, whites individuals aren’t particularly strong. You know, one of the things in common—white has the smallest creatures in common. White is about making—making it good for the little people, because the only way the little people can sort of survive is banding together. You know.

If white was filled with giants that kind of could watch the room, then maybe white’s philosophy would have come differently. But white’s—it’s got humans, it’s got—it doesn’t have giant big creatures. I mean, it’s got a few, those tend to be trained. A lot of white’s larger things are—I mean, angels come about because angels have a sense of—share a sense of morality. And that they too sort of are trying to uphold the sense of goodness in the world. And a lot of other white’s bigger things—it doesn’t have tons of bigger things, tend to be things that are trained, or—you know, I mean white definitely has some animals that it’s—that are domesticated.

But anyway, so what white is trying to do is, white is saying, “I believe—I want peace in the world. And to get that peace, I’m going to create rules, I’m going to create structure, I’m going to create order. And then I’m going to punish those—I’m going to punish those that break that order.”

Now, one of the things about white—I mean, this is the big debate in R&D, but the thing I like about white is I like white’s defenses to be the following. A. if you break a rule—we talk about “messing with  me and my boys.” But you attack white, well, white’s like, “Hey, you attacked me. Fair game.” I call it the Federation thing. “You attack me, fair game, I can defend myself. You not only attack me, you attack my creatures, you attack my things, you know, you mess with me, okay, I can defend myself.”

White also believes in—“Okay, if I see a problem, I…” White doesn’t like to kill. Not that white won’t kill, white will kill, and white believes that sometimes it’s a necessary evil, but white doesn’t like to kill. And so one of the things I like about Oblivion Ring, Pacifism stuff, is white going, “You know what? I’m—I’m going to stop the thing—I’m not going to kill the thing, I’m going to stop it.”

And the thing I love about that is, it gives white a lot of utility, but it didn’t kill it. It didn’t get rid of the problem. So I could lock something in jail, you know, or I could put an enchantment on it to change how it is. I mean, Pacifism, if you’re ever aware, says, “I’m going to give this creature a desire not to want to fight.” So it’s not that they couldn’t fight, but they don’t want to fight anymore, so they don’t.

The problem, though, is that stuff can be undone. You know. Auras can be broken. Locks can be, you know, opened. That—one of white’s answers is kind of, you know, trying to lock it away, and that white’s answers have answers.

That’s a very interesting part of white to me. That white can deal with most things, but white’s the one that most often, you know, it’s not willing to take the steps to permanently ruin things, so they can come back to haunt it. And I think that’s a cool part of white sort of not wanting, you know, having his moralistic stance and trying to live by its own morals.

So real quick, I want to talk about Superman. So there’s a lot of talk about Superman’s weaknesses. Okay? And I know people (???) kryptonite, and yeah, kryptonite’s there. But that isn’t really Superman’s weakness, if you understand Superman the character.

Now Superman is a—is a mono-white character. Okay? So what is Superman—what is his greatest weakness? His greatest weakness is he has a strong moral compass. You know. And his problem is, his villains do not. And so one of his weaknesses is that he cares. He cares about humanity. He cares about protecting humans especially. He cares about living up to a set of rules and laws. That he is the most powerful being on the planet, yet by his own desire, he won’t do certain things.

And that—that is one of the biggest problems he runs into. It’s not that he’s incapable of solving problems, but he’s incapable solving them in a certain way. And I think that’s a fantastic—people love to pick on Superman as being a character that’s hard to do. And I mean, he is hard to do. But I—I think that’s very neat that the most powerful man in the world has the strongest sense of morals. And that it’s his moral compass that causes his problems.

And I think that’s very neat. You know. Yeah, Superman could rip the world in two, but no no, he won’t. He could easily kill, but he won’t. You know. And he’s got to solve his problems, you know, not the easiest way, you know, because he’s trying to live up to a higher standard. And I—like I’m fascinated, I think it’s a very cool idea. And I’m—that’s a lot of to me white. Is white saying, “I’m trying to do what I’m trying to do.”

So now when you look at white, white mechanically falls in a couple areas that follow its philosophy. So one is, white is the defensive color. That’s why it has, you know, circles of protection. That’s why it has the  most defensive creatures. Why it has more toughness. Of all the five colors, its toughness-to-power ratio leans toward toughness higher than anybody else. You know. It’s why it’s got mechanics like vigilance, you know. That it wants to be able to be there defensively.

But, white also has this proactive army quality to it of “I’m going to take the fight to evil. I’m going to take the fight to chaos.” That you know—I’m not just going to sit here. Kind of crusade-ish if you will. Is, you know, “I see evil in the world. I’m going to go smite it from the face of the earth. That’s what I’m going to do.”

And so white is willing to put together an army and attack. And white—white trains. Because white cares about the sense of an army and understands So white tends to have mechanics that help make—like one of the things I say, and I think banding did this in the early game is, I like the idea that white has a lot of small creatures, but when you put those creatures together they become more powerful than the sum of their parts.

It’s why right now Battalion I think is very cool. You know, that you have to attack with enough creatures and then they get more powerful. You know, it’s why—you know, white has had a lot of mechanics that really sort of say, “Hey,” you know, I mean like, white for example has a bunch of things that say “Look, I will reward you for having a whole bunch of creatures in play.”  You know.

We recently for example moved the Keldon Warlord ability, the “*/* equal to the number of creatures you have in play” to white. Because we wanted to say “Hey, who wants to have a lot of creatures in play? White wants to have a lot of creatures in play.”

So white definitely has this—this army feel. It has a lot of instants and stuff that help it in combat. We give it small boosts—the bigger growths go to green, but the smaller ones—we tend to give white the ones where not only do you get +1/+1 or +2/+2 but you gain an ability. White also is king of granting stuff to everybody. Like the +1/+1 to your team? That’s a white thing. Both in instant form and its enchantment form.

So, let’s real quickly talk about enchantments. So white is definitely the person who loves enchantments the most. And I think the reason is that white sees in enchantments the ability to sort of affect things, in that white is the color that least wants to kill things. So it much prefers saying, “Well, instead of getting rid of something, I either can change its nature, or I can improve the things.” You know. And so white has a lot of sense of—a love of enchantments. And it’s the color that, interestingly, is both best at enchantments and at destroying enchantments. In that it is the one who really sees magic as a means to help it from breaking—to keep its morality.

So the—what else about white? I mean, white definitely has a bit of an eye for an eye feel. I mean, like I said, if you attack white, it has answers, you know, a lot of times it affects attackers and blockers, which is supposed to be the flavor of “it attacks things that are—you know, if you’re in combat it can help you.” White has a lot of combat tricks, obviously. What else does white have?

I mean, I think the thing about white in general is that white—here’s the problem that white—the problem that white gives its enemies is, to black, white has a sense of “We are better as a group than as an individual. And I, an individual, I will do something that’s more beneficial for the group than it is for myself. I will make sacrifices for the good of the whole.” And it teaches that. And all of white’s sort of philosophy is along the line of “I should do what’s best for the group and not for myself.”

Now black, who his whole idea is look out for yourself, he just doesn’t get how white functions. Why would somebody do something that’s not good for them, but good for others? And so black doesn’t get white. White functions in a way that black can’t understand. And so one of the problems black has with white is that white does things that black finds as irrational. “Why would you do something that’s to your own detriment?” That makes no sense to… you know, and that part of what black does is, it tries to use the individual against the whole. But if the individual is selfless, that makes it a lot harder.

You know, for example, if black kidnaps somebody and says, you know, “Give me information so that I can attack your city,” other colors might go “Okay, hey, don’t hurt me, I’ll give you the information.” But white’s like “No, I’d rather you hurt me than I let others, you know, be hurt.” You know. “I’m willing to sacrifice myself for the good of others.” That baffles black to no end.

Red’s problem with white is red sees white as just being, you know, a little too tightly wound. You know. Red is like “Okay, white, calm down.” Like, the red/white conflict is like the Odd Couple, right? Where, you know, white is all fussy and tidy and wants everything just as neat and clean as possible, because white doesn’t like anything messy. White wants things—because white is looking for order. And messiness or lack of clarity leads to disorder. So white will have nothing to do with that.

And red—red just wants to do what it wants to do. It don’t want no order. You know. It doesn’t want rules. So it just doesn’t do those things. So red—I mean, I think white sees black as evil, white sees red as dangerous. Because what—if red’s philosophy spread, it’ll hurt the danger of the group. If each individual is doing what they wanted to do rather than what was good for the group, that would be horrible. You know. And so white does a lot to try to stop that.

The other thing about white that I—it’s funny, because I think sometimes that people—you get into the stereotypes, obviously, so everyone understands the goody two-shoes of white, right? I’m a chivalrous knight. I will—I will fight the evil and I will stop the evil. People get that. Now, white also has a darker side. Right?

You know, white has a side that says, you know, “I’m doing what I think for the good of everybody, but it’s what I think is for the good of everybody. I didn’t ask their opinion.” You know. And white definitely sort of at times will say, “Well, because I’m doing what I think is best for everybody, what I’m saying is okay.” You know. And that sometimes white doesn’t exactly check with the group. White kind of makes decisions for the group. You know.

And that you look at white villains, they’re normally people who—their goals are very good. They are trying to do good things. They want to do good things. The problem is that they are not realizing that, you know, the problems they're adding. You know. Yeah, they’re getting rid of certain problems, and they’re accomplishing that, but they’re making other problems in the meantime.

And so sometimes I talk about—when I say fascism, that’s a little—little incorrect in white. White’s not really fascism, because true fascism, they know they’re oppressing. And that’s not white. White—white’s form of fascism is someone who is honest to god trying to do good for its people, but at the cost of other things, and not realizing that cost.

Like a good white villain is somebody who—you can—you step back and you’re like “I see what they’re doing. I see why they’re doing it. And I understand they’re—they’re trying to do something good. And maybe they’re even accomplishing some good. But they just don’t understand the—the amount of evil comes with that good. And that’s the issue.

So mechanically, what else in white? I mean, white likes lifegain. White values life, that’s another thing, in that white is the color of healing, you know, part of white’s defensive nature is the idea of white believes that—I mean, white is willing to take offense, but in its heart of hearts, white also understands that a good defense is the best offense. That like if I’m prepared for the long game, if I’m prepared to, you know, if we can withstand whatever you throw at us, and we can survive, we will win.

And so white does a lot of prepping to survive. Part of that is white’s interested in life gain. Part of that is white’s interested in healing things. White definitely has a lot of flavor. I mean, white has a little bit of resurrection. Although to differentiate it from black we tend to keep it on smaller things. The idea being that white—white is also a little more human-centric.

I mean—so, one of the things about white is, every other color has a real iconic race. And we’ve had problems with white. And by iconic race, I don’t mean the big iconics, that’s angels in white. I mean the small ones. You know, red is goblins. Green has elves. Black has both zombies and vampires. And who am I missing? Blue… blue is another one that—blue is merfolk, I guess.

But what white has never really had—in some ways, humans are kind of white’s staple. I mean, I think white is the one—as I said earlier, the most ties to basic humanity. A lot of what we think of human processes is very much a white philosophy. I mean, humanity in general does say “Hey, let’s look out for everybody. Let’s make moral laws. Let’s make rules.” You know.

And that humanity functions a lot like white. So I think white has a lot of the connection to humanity. And I think that—the people who are attracted to white are people who like—I think in life, just hey, kind of have that attitude of “Look, let’s do the good thing. Let’s do the right thing.” You know. And—and it—white is nice in the sense that it always tries.

So white gets the defensive stuff, it gets the life-gaining stuff. It gets the combat tricks. Vigilance. I mean, first strike is because of combat. Vigilance is both a combat thing and a defensive thing. Double strike, obviously, first strike double strike are the same colors. White gets lifelink, the idea that it—it—it’s tied, you know, some of its love of life and passion, and sort of fighting for good.

It is funny, by the way, that lifelink in a vacuum, if you really thought about it, is a lot more black in flavor. It has much more of a draining flavor. In white we try to give sort of a—the act of doing good, you know, brings joy, brings—the wizard is closely tied with the creature. But it is interesting. It really started in black, and even though white kind of got it first as a regular thing, it was funny because to me it’s a much more black ability than white. But we use it in white. And white’s level of life gain makes it a lot easier for us to use.

What else can I say about white? Oh, the other thing in general about white is that we like—so white is the color that most will use enchantments to enhance things. It’s the color that most often has enchantments at lower rarities. It usually has more auras, although green sometimes has as may auras as white. But you know, white just definitely wants to build a better world and use magic to build that better world. You know. White has no qualms with that.

Let’s talk about white’s allies real quick. What does white see in blue and green? I talked about what white hates about black and red. So white looks to green and sees a lover of community. That green also understands the big picture. That we’re not individuals, that there’s a group. And that green shares white’s sense of the group.

Now, how green sees the group is a little different. White is obviously more civilized and green’s more the wild. But white and green overlap, they understand that, you know, you have to think of the bigger picture and think of all the things involved.

Now, white and blue tend to ally in the sense of a desire for technology and to use your tools to make things better. Like I said, white likes to use enchantments to—to improve things. And white and blue definitely have this sense of “you need to build toward a better world,” and that—and also, I think the—the idea is that white and blue share the sense of a need of—of forethought, of planning. You know, white and blue are the two colors that think ahead. You know.

And that—like, if you want to look out what’s best for the group, well you have to think long term. You can’t just say “Well, what am I going to do today?” You know. “What am I going to do today that’s going to help tomorrow?” In many ways you can talk about the ants and the grasshopper, you know, Aesop’s fable, I think it’s Aesop’s fable. Where, you know, the ants are working all winter—all summer long to prepare for winter, and the grasshopper’s just playing. And then the winter comes, and the grasshopper—the ants are nice to the grasshopper. I was never sure about that one. I'm like "Really--does the grasshopper ever learn?" 

But, you know, the ants are the white. You know? That they—they’re hard at working and planning ahead, because they are trying to do what’s right for them in the long term. And white, by the way, definitely believes in hard work, it believes in, you know, that they—the hard and working and planning ahead, because they are trying to do what’s right for them in the long term.

And white, by the way, definitely believes in hard work, it believes in, you know—if anything, white’s the one that’s least willing to let itself relax. It’s one of white—oh, let’s talk about that. The negatives of white. The negatives of white are white can be very inflexible. You know. That white sort of has its rules so set up that it has trouble making exceptions to its own rules. That sometimes it kind of gets cornered because it sort of made rules it has to live by. And it’s not quite doing what it wants, but it’s following its own rules.

And white—white does not know how to relax. You know. White’s kind of uptight. And that white also is the color that at times is so caught up in sort of doing what it’s doing that it doesn’t enjoy the moment. You know.

That white—I mean, white clearly, clearly has a sense of happiness, has its loved ones, has its community, all of that is very valuable and uplifts white, and white—you know, tends to be more on the spiritual side, you know, white definitely is—is happy in its own way. Because it’s doing what it wants to do. But it—it is not willing to let go as much, and so, you know, white—white—white is just more inflexible. I think inflexibility is white’s biggest issue.

But anyway, I see work, so gotta wrap this up. Hopefully it’s interesting today. I was trying to give you a little more sense of philosophically and mechanically, kind of how things blend together. I mean, I think that—that the thing that is neat as you explore the color philosophies is, that each color has a philosophy that is completely understandable. You know.

The idea that I value the group, that there’s people around me that I care about. And I want to do right by them. You know. Or the idea that I wanna—I wanna not take the easy way, but work hard so that I get the correct way. Or the idea that, you know, there’s a need for structure, that—you know, a sense of morality’s important. Laws are important. You know. I think everybody can look at that and go “Okay, I get that, that makes a lot of sense.”

And my hope with these podcasts is to sort of get you to see why each color has a value that makes sense, but also how it can kind of go wrong. You know. That white can kind of become a little too anal about things, and have too many rules, and not be flexible enough. You know. So that there’s both a good and a bad to each color. Because I don’t think any color is inherently good or inherently bad. I think that there’s—there’s positive and negative sides to every color.

But anyway, that is my podcast for today. Hope you guys enjoyed learning all about white. And it’s time to go make the Magic.