12/13/13 Episode 79: Green

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 I’m going to be doing another one of my mega-series, this time on color, so I’ve done a podcast on white, on blue, on black, on red. Which means I only have one left. Today is all about green.

So. I feel green is in some ways the most misunderstood color philosophy. I mean, I think people pigeonhole red, and red is more than what they think of red, although what they think of red is true of red, just there’s more to it than that. But green, I think people don’t understand green. So let me explain what green is up to.

Okay. So here’s how green looks at things. Every other color wants to change the world. That every other color believes that the world is flawed in some way, and that if they make some adjustments to it, they can make it the perfect place to be.

Green is the color that goes, “No no no no, it’s perfect just the way it is. Don’t change anything.” Green is all about saying, “Look. There’s a natural process. There’s a natural order. That it’s good. That it took forever to evolve this way, and it’s a thing of beauty.” And that green puts its energy towards having things not change. That while every other color is trying to change the world, green is trying to keep the world the way it is.

And if you kind of look at green’s two enemies, blue and black, the reason that they are the enemies of green is that blue and black most want to change the world. Blue believes in the idea of tabula rasa. It believes in nurture over nature. Right? Blue believes that anybody can become anything. That you could learn and you could adapt, and that it embraces technology and it embraces anything you can to help change things. Blue believes in change. Blue’s a big believer that you can become anything you want to be.

Well, that flies in the face of what green wants. Green believes you are what you are, and so the blue/green conflict is very much the nature vs. nurture conflict. Green believes you are born with the qualities that define you. And blue believes that you can become anything. Tabula rasa means “blank slate.” It’s the philosophy that anybody can become anything. That all it takes is knowledge and training and know-how to do something.

So blue is like, “Every person has the potential to be anything.” Green is like, “No. You are born with your potential.” And so there’s a lot of conflict between blue and green. Because blue wants to change the world to make it better. And green is like “No no no no no. All you’re doing is moving away from the perfect state that the world already is in.”

 

And so the green/blue conflict is very much about that. Blue embraces technology. Green does not like technology. It’s one of the reasons green is the biggest artifact destruction color. I mean, the reason green has Naturalize  is that it doesn’t like artificial things. And so when it sees artificial things, it will destroy them because it believes (???).

The other problem that green and blue have is blue is very much about illusion. Blue is very much about perception. Where green is very, quite literally down to earth. Green believes that what is is what matters. Green believes in reality, green believes in history. Green believes that there is a legacy to who you are and who you stand for. It believes in heritage and lineage. It very much cares about where you come from.

Where blue is like “It doesn’t matter where you come from. You can become anything you want to be.” And so green looks at blue and green’s like “Here’s somebody that does not remotely respect the natural order.” For example, green is not big on technology, nor is it big on civilization. And blue is all about building civilization and using technology to wipe away nature to “improve” they believe. But green is like “What are you doing?”

Now, green/black—green’s issue with black—black basically is like, “I’m going to do what I need to do to get it done.” And black has embraced death as a very potent tool. Now, the funny thing is, green respects death. As far as green is concerned, death is part of the natural order. Green has no problem with things dying.

But green’s issue is when you use death artificially, which black does all the time. Green understands that there are destructive forces. And green respects that there are destructive forces, that’s just part of nature. And that’s okay. Nature needs to be destructive at times. But black usurps that. Black is sort of like, “I’m going to kill the strongest thing, because…” Black looks around and says, “Anything stronger than me, I see as a threat. So I’m going to kill the stronger thing.” And green is like “No no no no no no. The stronger things kill the weaker things. The weaker things do not kill the stronger things, that is not how it works.”

In fact, let’s talk about fight a little bit. So one of the things that I think is very important for understanding colors is every color has an area of vulnerability which makes the game more interesting. And green’s is it very much has this respect for life. And green does not believe in artificially killing things. So what green does is green says, “Okay. If I need to deal with a creature, well I will use my creatures to deal with your creatures.”

Green (???) nothing wrong. If two creatures fight and one creature beats another creature, well, the weaker creature lost. That was okay. That’s the natural order. Creatures will fight. That’s okay. So green is like “Well, I won’t kill a creature. That is wrong. Destroy target creature, wrong. But I am willing to say ‘I will put my creature up against your creature.’ And my creature beats your creature, hey. They had a fair fight. They fought. And your guys was weaker.”

Green very much enables strength. Bigger is better to green, in the sense that hey, the bigger you are, the more you are capable of doing things you’re able to do. Now, that doesn’t say that green doesn’t believe the small guys can’t have abilities. For example, green is the color of deathtouch. So green understands that “Hey, size isn’t everything.” That in the wild, that there are other tools you have at your disposal. And hey, a creature that has poison or some sort of poisonous-type ability? That’s fine. That’s a resource. That’s a weapon that creature can use. Creatures can have a lot of things.

But ultimately green believes, “Look, you’ve got to defend yourself.” Survival of the fittest is very much green’s belief. And green does not like how black just usurps that, and black sort of will take elements that green believes are natural elements and use them unnaturally.

Okay. So let’s look at some of its allies real quick. Another big difference that green has with blue is that blue is very much about intellect. Where green is about instinct. Green is about “Look, there’s just a way things are.” And that you should know that internally. That green trusts its gut. It doesn’t think things through. It feels things. It has a sense of what is right and what is wrong. And it trusts its instincts. Because creatures are born with instincts. And that those are natural processes that green has great faith in.

So look, a creature does what it’s going to do because its instincts lead it that way. Where blue is all about thought and such, and that is not remotely how green thinks you’re supposed to function. Now, green looks at red and green says, “You know what? We share our dislike of blue and blue’s intellect.” Now, red is more impulsive than it’s instinctual. Red is more about emotions, where green is more about natural instinct. But green respects that red lives by its heart. Red feels things and it acts. And green can understand that. Green respects that.

Also, green has a sense of a wild sense of nature. Of a ferocity. And red definitely shares some of that. Green and red have this shared sort of sense of the bigger one’s going to win, and ferocity is okay, and red kind of just lives in the moment. And green understands that. Green gets living in the moment. Green is not at all about planning ahead or about thinking about consequences of things. Green feels like the natural instinct will pay off, and nature will come through for you.

 

Green by the way is also very much about a sense of there is a natural order of the way things are, and that if you live true to that order, then you will be okay. And things will be okay. Now, green definitely as part of its desire and its belief that kind of bigger is better, one of its main weapons is Giant Growth, right? One of its main weapons is the ability using magic to make its things larger.

In some ways, green sees some of its magic much like animals have natural abilities. And that green is like “Look, if my creature is bigger, it will win, well I can use my magic to make my creature bigger so that it can win.” Green is willing to help enhance its creatures. It’s willing to do that.

Green also is very much tied to the land. What is more nature than the land itself? And so green of all the colors has the strongest affinity with the land. And because of that, it has a strong affinity with mana. Green is the ramping color, meaning green has access to get mana quicker than anybody else.

And it does in a couple ways. One is it has access to land searching, Rampant Growth-type effects, and that is the idea that green understands the land the best. That green is able to locate, if you need to find… the flavor of lands, for those that don’t know, land doesn’t really represent as much physical places of land, as it represents the tie to the mana that comes from that land. So when you see a forest, it’s not necessarily representing a particular forest as much as representing the mana from that area of the forest.

And green has this affinity with mana and with land. So when you are searching out, you’re just finding the land. Green knows the land like the back of its hand. It very much cares about the environment, and it is in tune to where things are. So when you’re searching for mana and land, green’s good at that. Green can find it for you.

Now, green also has creatures, like Llanowar Elves is the perennial classic, that tap for mana. And one of the differences is, red has access to mana, but red is very touch and go. It’s very in the moment.Where green—it’s not that green plans ahead as much as it respects things. Like green is about growth.

One of the keys to the way green functions is green believes, “How do I defeat my enemy? Well, if I believe in the natural way, one of the great tools of nature is growth.” That you can’t stand in the way of nature. Green is like, “Maybe you could start against nature, maybe you could make inroads against nature, but you know what? In the end, nature will win. Nothing man can do can stop nature. Nature is a powerful force that cannot be stopped.”

And part of it is, green believes in the sense of growth. I mean, Giant Growth. Even land searching is speeding up the growth of your mana. A lot of green’s strategies are about “I will overrun you…” in fact, it has Overrun exactly, “I will overrun you with something. I will build things.” And it shows its growth in a whole bunch of different ways.

One is it makes things bigger, one is it has bigger things, it has the biggest creatures in the game, like green common, green just has the biggest creatures at common. And overall on average has the bigger creatures. It just skews on the higher end. Green might overrun you by the number of creatures it has. It can make a lot of tokens. It could overrun you with just having lots of creatures.

It could overrun you by having one giant creature that’s just the biggest creature. Trample is a green thing, and that if it’s just large enough it just beats through you. How do you stop this thing? Well, it just keeps going. It’s giant. How do you stop it? So green can beat you that way. It can make it larger. It uses +1/+1 counters as a mean to do growth and make things bigger.

Green is also king of the variable power/toughness. That if you look at green, green is the number one of creatures that just “Hey, I look at something and I get bigger based on that thing.” And usually I will outstrip you and outgrow you, and at some point I will beat you down.

Essentially that is green’s strategy, which is if you don’t stop green, green will grow bigger in some means. Its creatures will grow bigger, its number of creatures will grow bigger. Individual creatures will grow bigger. Its mana base will grow bigger. Something—its forces will grow bigger. It’s going to overrun you with something. That is green’s way.

Green is not the fastest color. Green’s not a speedy color. Now green has a midrange. Green is a good midrange color in that it can quickly get mana and build up, and get larger things out faster than anybody else. That is its speed, if you will, is that it gets larger things out faster. But it’s not as fast as white or red. It’s not a speed color.

But it can ramp in and get in sort of midranges, where it’s like, “Oh, I quickly get out something that would take my other colors more turns to get out, I get out quicker.” And that a lot of green’s threat is “Look, I just have lots of power of creatures. Perhaps it’s all in one creature, perhaps it’s all in a bunch of creatures. But I will overrun you in some way or other. I will use growth as a weapon.”

Okay. So in order to do that, green needs access. So one of the things that green definitely does is while blue is number one in card drawing, green is number two. And the reason is that “Part of my growth is I’m going to grow in cards. I’m going to grow in what I have.”

Now, green has the ability to get two things out of the library. One is it can get land. It’s land searching. And the second is it can get creatures. It has creature tutoring. It also does what I’ll call mulching, I guess, it can get creatures and land off the top of the library as well as go into the library. But green has the ability from the library to get land, and to get creatures. Why? Because those are the two most natural things there are. There’s nothing more natural than the land itself and the creatures that live on it. And green very much is about land and creatures.

Now, it has some other aspects we’ll get to. It has some affinity with enchantments. But the main two things it does is land and creatures.

Now, it can get them out of the library. It also has the ability to make tokens. We have recently sort of split between white and green—white tends to make more small tokens now, where green makes bigger tokens. But the point is, green and white are the token colors. Green can make tokens, that’s playing right into its wheelhouse. It’s about creatures, it’s about growth, so making more creatures using tokens is very much green’s thing.

 

At higher rarities, green does a little bit of cloning, but it usually does it through tokens. In fact, it will do cloning in two different ways. One is it will actually make tokens to copy things. That’s one of the things green will do. And the second is it will go through your library and get duplications of things that are in play. It’s done some of that. 

Green can adapt. Green and blue share some qualities, even though they’re enemies, one of which is both are very adaptive. For different reasons. Green’s a natural adaptation, but it very much—green is a color that can sort of adapt to what’s going on.

But green, one of the side effects of its land searching is that green happens to be the color that is the friendliest at splashing other colors. And the reason for that is, green very much sees mana and sees the making of magic to be a very natural thing.

So green does not have a problem with searching out other lands, of getting access to other color mana. And because of that, because green does not see other colors as threats, one of green’s strengths is that it can kind of splash other colors easier. Because it has access to all the colors’ mana you need.

So green is also very much about the natural way. Life gain ties into that. Green believes in life, green much is the color of life. Green is also the color of creatures. So one of the divides, I think I mentioned this in the white podcast, one of the things we’ve decided recently, for a long time green was the color of creatures, and it had both the most creatures and the biggest creatures. Meaning it had the largest percentage of creatures and it had the largest creatures.

What we decided was it’s better if we split those up, and so to divide white and green, which are already similar, we said “Okay. White is more about number of creatures, that white’s about the army, white’s about beating you up with lots and lots of little creatures. Where green is about getting out the bigger creatures.” And so we made the divide, now white has more creatures than green has. White is the larger number.

But green has the larger amount of power. So if you add up the number of creatures in the set, white will be one, green will be two. But if you add up the power on the creatures, green will be one. Green has the beefiest creatures.

And life gain ties obviously into its love of nature, its affinity. It is very much the color of life, so it has a tie to life. A lot of times it will connect its life gain sometimes to creatures. Interestingly, it does not have lifelink. That is given to white and black. And there’s plenty of arguments that green thematically could have it, but we like to limit sort of where we put things. And white is kind of like rewarding off the life and then black sees it as a more drain life feel.

Okay. So part of its growth besides having tokens is also +1/+1 counters. Green very much wants to grow, and so it has a lot of creatures… so, I explained before that green has the most variable creatures. And there’s a couple ways to do that. One is */*. Which is “I’m equal to some amount,” and that amount usually will grow during the game.  Number  2 is I have the means to get +1/+1 counters. That I can add +1/+1 counters, and that’s the way I grow. As something happens, I get bigger.

Now all colors have a little bit of access to that. That’s not uniquely green. But green has more +1/+1 counters than anybody else. Green also puts  on +1/+1 counters more often than anybody else. In fact, green’s iconic creature is the hydra. And the reason that we decided the hydra was a good fit for green, because obviously it started in red back in Alpha, was that the hydra is very much all about growth. It is a creature that by its nature wants to keep getting bigger. And it usually uses +1/+1 counters to do that.

Well, green is the color of growth and it’s the color of +1/+1 counters. And it’s the color of ferocity, and so the idea of these giant wild creatures that have a growth component to them felt like a very good fit for green. And I’m happy, because we spent a long time searching for green, and I think we finally found something that really is kind of exciting and speaks to green, and as Development started pushing some hydras, we’ve started seeing some more good hydras, I think hydras are starting to grow as green’s thing.

I mentioned this before, the term “overrun,” but it also literally has an Overrun, which is green not only has Giant Growth, but it can essentially Giant Growth its team. Now, one of the dividing points we do between green and white is white tends to do little bursts, so it will give +1/+1 or +2/+2 to an individual creature, usually with another bonus, another ability.

And it can grant its whole team +1/+1 or +2/+2, but once you get to +3/+3, once that line is drawn, even individually or in group that’s a green thing. Green does the giant boosting. So green does Overrun, the +3/+3 to your entire team and it usually adds trample. Trample is big on green. Green believes in beating things down.

A fact about card draw, so the idea in green is green has access to card draw, but it has to be tied to creatures in some way. So for example it has the Curiosity ability, which is in both blue and green, which is “When I hit you I get to draw.” That’s in green. It has card drawing based on how many creatures you have or the power of a creature. Usually we try to tie the card drawing into a way that has something to do with creatures in green. .  To give it some identity. That it gets its growth from its creatures. I think that’s important.

Also, green has some access to natural elements, to nature. It definitely can manipulate nature some. Fog  has become the classic, like it uses nature as a defense mechanism. That as the enemies attack it can just bring in the fog. I mean, green is definitely one of the colors that has more natural-type spell effects.

The reason it gets Fog—for a while we moved Fog into white because it seemed very defensive, but what we found was white has so many ways to be defensive it didn’t need it. Green really needed a defensive thing. That part of “If I’m beating you up with giant creatures, and I keep swinging, that I need to have some defenses.” And Fog seemed like a good defense. It was kind of creature-oriented, and like “Well, a color that’s very much about attacking creatures has some answers to attacking creatures itself.”

Also, while green does not like killing creatures, it has two exceptions. One is it hates artifice. It does not like artifacts. The reason it has the Naturalize ability is that very much the blue-green conflict is against artifice. And so most artifacts green does not like. It feels they are artificially made. I mean, there are a few artifacts that it gets along with where there are natural things, but more often than not green does not like artifacts. It blows them up.

The other thing is it does not like flying. Another big dichotomy between green and blue is blue is the air and green is the ground. And that green does not have great faith in the air, and one of its greatest enemies lives in the air, which is blue, so green is much more grounded, and as such green does not like flying.

Now, some people might say, “Wait, there are many flying things in nature.” And the answer is while green is about nature, it is not about every single aspect of nature. And that in order to make Magic work, we also had to trim a few things mechanically. Yes, if you cared about nature, you would care about things that fly that are natural, but we’ve sort of shifted that mostly out of green. That birds and creatures of the sky are not really green’s thing. Green is more about the things on the ground. The reason green has reach is because of its anti-flying nature.

Green can kill flying creatures. I personally am not the biggest person of “destroy target flying creature,” it can do it, I prefer green to sort of do damage or something that we can play up a little bit more about natural elements. I don’t mind it using storms and things to take them down, just green is not philosophically much about killing other creatures, although in some ways it doesn’t see fliers the same way it sees other creatures, that it sees them to somehow be unnatural because they’re  not tied to the earth. And very much green is very centered to the earth. I mean, another thing it shares with red, red very much is also about the earth. And green and red share that love of the earth.

Oh, green and white, by the way. I didn’t mention green and white. So green and white are all about the community. That black, green’s enemy, is about selfishness and about the individual. And green says, “No no no. For us to survive, there’s a web. We’re interlinked together.” Now white is very much about civilization, where green is very much about a natural community. But green definitely feels like there’s an interlink between us. And thinks it’s important. And so green and white share that love and sense of community.

And they also obviously are the two colors that care much about creatures. That they are definitely the ones that say “Oh, well it’s important. We have a bond and we have abilities that we share between each other.”

Green and white also share the vigilance ability. And the idea there is that green and white have the most patience. Green has patience because it believes in the natural order and that sometimes it takes time for things to happen. Green is a very patient color. Green is like “If you beat up nature, nature will overcome you, but not necessarily quickly.” Nature is not always fast. It can be at times, but it’s not always fast. And that because of that, green is the color of patience.

Now, white is the color of planning, strategy, and very much white has a strategic quality to it. And white also believes—white also has a patient quality. And vigilance is very much white and green sort of being willing to sort of be out there but always be on the look and watching.

Green also has flash, that it shares with blue. Green and blue use it differently. In blue it has to do with manipulating magic and speeding along what you’re getting. In green, the idea is that a lot of green’s creatures are so instinctual by nature that green has a touch with its creatures in a way that it has an affinity, and there is a speed that comes to green, that green has the ability to pounce and to attack and to ambush to a certain extent, and green has used its magic sometimes to call forth creatures that can do the ambushing. Green’s flash is less about magic manipulation and more about affinity with its creatures that allows you to get it faster.

Green has hexproof. What hexproof represents is a dislike of artifice in green. That it is a protection against magical entities. And the idea is, if you have hexproof—I mean, blue’s hexproof is that it’s so good at magic that it’s learned to inoculate its creatures against magic. Green’s about a natural resistance. Green is about that there are things that it at times sees magic as being artificial. An artifice. And so there are creatures that have grown a natural defense against it. And that is what hexproof is in green.

Also you’ll notice that green has “cannot be countered.” And that’s solely on creatures. So both of those represent a similar thing in that there’s some creatures that have evolved so they have a natural affinity against magic, and it’s very hard for magic to get a hand on them. That the magic can’t sort of locate them or touch them because of this anti-magic quality.

Other abilities you’ll see in green: green has what we call the stalking ability, first seen on Stalking Tiger in Mirage. Which means that only one creature can block it. That shows kind of the caginess of the creature, the idea that I know my environment, and that I’m a good enough fighter that I don’t let you team up on me. That I only take you one-on-one. That I see you coming and I’m able to keep the fight down to a one-on-one fight.

 

Landwalk, by the way, also a very green ability. The reason is the same reason that it has the affinity with land. That it understands the land, that it allows you to sort of blend in with the land. And that it can sneak through land and you can’t see it. So green is the number one color with landwalk. Obviously there’s more forestwalk than anything else, because it knows the forest, but green also has access to the other landwalks. It’s allowed to have all five landwalks. 

It has the rootwalla ability. So the rootwalla ability, first seen on Rootwalla in Tempest is the ability to temporarily boost itself. And essentially what that is, if you want to think of it, is a built-in Giant Growth. It’s the idea that there are creatures that can naturally make themselves larger. But it’s limited to once per turn, because they puff themselves up, it’s not as if they can forever make themselves bigger, just they have two states, and one state is larger and they have the ability to get to the larger state. So green has the rootwalla ability.

A few other abilities that it has, we use these not as much as others. It has what I call “new rampage.”Bushido also falls in this area. Which is the idea that when I get into a fight I get bigger. That as things approach me, that I can have an affinity for fighting. And green obviously has the fight ability. Green is a natural fighter. And so there’s definitely creatures that are good at fighting, like in combat they get better. And there’s definitely some things that do that.

Also, it has the trample ability, and so occasionally we do what we call supertrample, which means that I can put my damage through to you even if I’m blocked. And that makes me super, super hard to deal with because you might block and kill me but I’m going to just come through with all the damage.  And usually supertrample’s on really big things, so they’re hard to deal with by being really big, and then the damage comes through.

Other things that green can do… so let me talk a little bit about enchantments. So green believes that there is some natural magic. Green is number two in auras. White is number one. But green is number two in love of enchantments. Where white is number one on it, but green is number two. You’ll see enchantresses from time to time that draw you cards u see in green that are not creature-based. I mean, it’s on a creature. That helps. So it’s at least creature-based in that way.

But it has an affinity to enchantments. And green definitely, if you notice, has a lot in common, usually will have the slightly bigger auras. Once again, green has the sense of growth to it that’s very important, and that green is fine with using its magic to make things bigger. Whether that’s using auras, that’s +1/+1 counters, it’s Giant Growths, whatever, green definitely has this belief that it will grow and it will defeat you. 

And as I said earlier, that its growth tends to be more vertical and less horizontal in the sense that we’ve allowed white to do a little more growing horizontally. If you go back in Magic’s past, there was a time when green very much would overrun you with lots and lots of 1/1 tokens. It still can do that, it still has some access to it. Nowadays we tend to make bigger tokens. Green makes a lot less 1/1 tokens than it used to. It’s making more 2/2 and 3/3 tokens. It still has the ability to make a bunch of tokens, but we’ve allowed white to make more of the “Make two 1/1s” has become more of a white thing and less of a green thing.

Another thing you’ll see green do from time to time, by the way, and white does this a little bit but green does it more, is the “bringing a buddy.” Is the idea that I have one card that represents more than one creature. So like I’ll come into play with a card, and that card brings with it a token, usually.. Ambassador Oak is a classic example, where—we used to call it “moose and squirrel,” in playtest. Where it comes with a big creature and brings a little token creature with it. And white will do that a little bit. We have some squire-type flavor stuff. But I mean green is the color that does it the most.

I think I covered most of the abilities in green. Let me spend a little—I’m not too far from work, so let me wrap up a little on philosophy. That green—when it looks at magic, it looks at a duel, green is like “Okay. Let me figure out what my advantages are. Here’s my advantages. Number one, I’ve just got better creatures. My creatures will win in fights. They’re bigger, they’re better fighters, they’ll win. So I’ve got to get them out. I also have a natural affinity for land. I’m better than anybody else at finding land, at using land, at building up land.” Okay. So my major plan is, I’m going to use those two abilities to try to win.”

What that means is, green’s number one strategy is sort of a ramp strategy, where it’s like “I’m going to use my affinity for mana to get out my larger creatures that are bigger than your creatures, and beat you on the ground with creatures.”

Now, green has some other strategies, obviously. It can grow in different ways. Green has control strategies in that it has some card advantage, it has some good defensive creatures. Green definitely at times can be a little bit speedy, although white is more the speedy creature—white and red are more the speedy creature colors. Green wants to overrun you in a couple different ways. One of the ways, by the way, is to get more creatures and just overrun you with creatures. Although like I said, we’ve moved the token part away from green. Although it still has like “Make lots of 2/2s,” so it can do it that way.

And green also tends to have more creatures in general, so it can sometimes just have more creatures in its deck and get more creatures out. But the key is, green is very much about saying, “I’m going to use my natural resources to my best advantage.” And that green—green’s belief is, “If you don’t stop me, if you’re not able to stop what I am doing, if I am able to get established and do my thing, I will overrun you. I will defeat you because you will not be able to handle me.”

And the other thing that’s important to understand in green is that green believes, philosophically, that it’s going to win in the end. It believes you can’t stop nature. And so green does not feel a great need to rush. Green feels like as a strategy—in some ways, it has a mid-range strategy with ramping stuff, obviously. But green also has a slow strategy, where it’s just like “I’m just going to grow at a faster rate than you do, and you know what? Fifteen turns in, I will have more resources than you. I will have bigger resources than you. And I’m going to win.”

So like I said, green is the most patient color. It has the strategy which is about patience. Which is just about—because green, by the way, can destroy things. Green is able to destroy every card type but creature, and it has the fight ability, and Lure. It can lure things. It can do a couple different things to make fights happen.

So green has a lot of abilities. Green has a lot of control elements to it. But once again, it’s not fast, because that is sort of green’s thing. I will win out. That green believes that it will win out over time. That if it is patient, it will in the end by the last one standing.

Okay. I am now at work. This is the final of my five color podcasts. I’m just finishing mega-series this month right and left. So at some point I might go on to explore color combination stuff. I’m not going to do that right away. To wrap up this little mega-series. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this. I love color philosophy. I think it’s fascinating.

One of the things I keep stressing is that underneath everything at the core of the game, when you dig down deep, not just underneath the flavor but underneath the mechanics, the core of it is the color pie and the color wheel. Same thing. And understanding that is what makes Magic Magic. It’s what realy makes—it’s Magic’s secret sauce, if you will. And so that’s why I want to spend a lot of time and energy explaining it.

And not just talking about it philosophically, but explaining mechanically how the mechanics reflect that philosophy. That’s what I think is so neat about the game and one of the things that really makes it stand out.

So anyway, that is green. Hopefully you have a little better understanding of green. I know that it’s much easier to understand, like “Red blows things up!” than it is “Hey, relax. Trust our way. Over time it will win.”  A little harder to understand.

But anyway, I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast. It was a lot of fun sharing green with you. But I have to go be making Magic. Talk to you next time, guys. Bye-bye.