5/8/15 Episode 225: Black/White

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

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

Okay. So today is another in my series on two-color podcasts! But I finally crossed the middle way. We’re going from allied colors to enemy colors.

So we’re going to start with white/black. So enemy colors are a little bit different than allied colors. I’m going to discuss them a little differently. With the allied colors, I was talking about their overlap. What do they agree on?  So enemy colors—I’m going to talk a little bit about what the conflict between them represents, and then sort of how you can cut the middle on the conflict. So we’ll talk about that.

Okay. So what does white want, what does black want? So white, white wants peace, it wants peace through structure. White believes that we have the means to make sure that everybody can be happy. That everybody can live in peace. And that what we need to do to make sure that such a thing happens is that we use a very exact structure to make sure that everybody involved knows the rules and knows what they need to do so that everybody acts accordingly.

White tends to make its rules on two levels. One is spiritual—moral if you will, and one is civil. So the civil has to do with making laws. When we get to red we’ll talk all about that one. Today we’re going to talk about the moral end of the spectrum. Which is white’s idea that, how do you protect the innocent? By making sure that people understand sense of morality. And white is very much about saying, there are rights and there are wrong. There are absolute rights and there are absolute wrongs, this is a good thing, this is a bad thing. Do good things, don’t do bad things. Don’t do evil things.

Now, black on the flip side, black is very self-centered. But black believes that each individual, that nobody’s going to look out for each individual other than themselves. Meaning that the primary  responsibility of each person is to look out for themselves. And that if everybody looks out for themselves, then everybody has somebody who’s looking out for them.

And black definitely believes that not everybody’s equal, those that are able to survive will. Black is like, look, I gotta do what I gotta do for me, and other people gotta watch out for themselves. And that if I’m able to survive the cost to them, well then I can. And black is very self-centered in the way it looks at things. Now to be fair, black’s entire idea—black believes that it’s a harsh world. And you have to do harsh things to live in a harsh world.

So let’s look a little bit at white and black, and how white and black see each other. Okay? White sees itself as being the paragon of virtue. Of—it’s a good color in an evil world, doing what it can to try—white believes that within everybody is the potential for good. And that there are a lot of impulses and things that lead people to want to do bad things. Evil is alluring at times. But if people just understand, if there’s a clean, clear set of rules, so people know right from wrong, that people have the ability to do right. And that they could live together in a peaceful way.

Black believes it’s a rough world. Black believes that people inherenty are selfish. Black’s like, “I didn’t make people selfish, they are selfish.” And black is recognizing the reality of what the world is. Black is making sure that—black’s like, “Everybody else wants the world to be like they want it to be,” and black’s like, “I’m the one that just recognizes it as it is.”

It’s a mean, rough world. It definitely is something that can be very harsh. And that part of existing in that world is looking out for yourself. So black is very, “Look, I gotta put me first. I have to be the first one there.”

Okay. So black and white look at each other. White looks at black and says, oh, that is just pure evil. Every impulse that black has, every—black is looking out for itself at the expense of the group. That is the embodiment of what evil is. And so white looks at black and says, “Evil!”

Black looks at white and thinks white’s just a fool. Life is hard. You don’t need made-up rules. Like, life’s already really hard. It’s just pure foolishness to make extra rules. Now, white believes black is immoral. White believes itself as moral, black as immoral. Black is like, “I’m not immoral, I don’t believe in morality, I’m amoral. I don’t believe in morality.”

So white and black are pretty on the opposite sides of the spectrum. White is light and black is dark. White is defense and black is offense. They have a lot of different qualities to them. That white merely wants to live in a place, in a world where everything is set up to maximize.

And white is all about the good of the group. White believes that if there’s a decision to be made, and one person suffers but the group is rewarded, that decision should be made in the group’s favor. Even if that decision is being made by the individual. So the individual is supposed to say, “I know this choice is bad for me personally, but it’s good for the group so I should do it.”

And black looks at that and goes, what? People have to look out for their own interests. Why in the world would you ever do something that’s in your own disinterest for other people? Black looks at white as just being naïve. White sees black as evil, black sees white as foolish and naïve.

Okay, so how do these colors ever get along? They seem fundamentally opposed. They are fundamentally opposed. So the interesting thing about enemy colors is trying to find out how to split the middle. How do you live in a place where you touch upon both sides of the conflict? So the five dual-color—two-color combinations are, it’s not so much about finding overlap as it’s about finding a middle ground between the conflict.

Okay. So there’s a couple different ways you’ll see white/black sort of work together. Number one is, you believe in a group, but that group is not the whole group, it’s a subgroup. And so what you’re saying is, instead of just looking out for me, I’m looking out for my group, but my group is not everybody, my group is my group.

So classic example of this would be Magneto, who is a villain in the Marvel comics universe. So Magneto is what they call a mutant. And so in the Marvel universe, some people are born mutants. And mutants have special powers and things. But they’re born that way. They didn’t get bit by a radioactive spider or anything. They’re just born with these powers. And they are shunned by society because society fears them. It’s a good metaphor for minorities and such. 

Anyway, Magneto fights for the rights of mutants. Now, will he do anything it takes for them? Yes. So he acts very black in his nature, he will do what he needs to do. But his motivations is about a white base motivation, which is he is—he’s not trying to help himself, he’s trying to help his group. Not society as a whole, his group. So that’s one way to see black/white, where the person is trying to be protective, but instead of being protective of just themselves, they’re protective of a group.

Another place to see black/white is where you see an organization that is very black in nature, but within the organization has a lot of white qualities. So the place I talk about that is like organized crime. I joke—what’s more white/black than organized crime? Organized—white. Crime—black.

So the idea is, here’s a group of people that have banded together. They’re doing pretty horrible, evil things. They’re killing, and they’re doing a lot of black-type things. The group is doing whatever it needs to do to survive. But within the group, there’s a lot of structure. There’s a sense of honor. That there are things you can’t do within the group because it is wrong within the group. And so you have to honor the group, you have to do what is good for the group, but the group itself goes out and does horrific things. That’s another way. The Orzhov sort of plays into that space.

One of the times that you’ll see white/black, one other example is also from the Marvel universe, the Punisher. The Punisher, in my mind, and I’m talking about the Punisher kind of was a villain. So the Punisher is a guy who, his family was gunned down in Central Park. And he decides that organized crime, the crime is just a plague that he needs to solve. So what he does is, he goes around and he kills bad guys.

And the reason that’s sort of white/black (???), in his heart, he is trying to make society better. He is trying to improve society. He is like, “These things are just—an evil society, I need to get rid of them.” But he follows no rules, he follows—he is, like he is definitely a sort of a white-guided individual using very black means. He’s not just beating them up, he’s not trying to teach them a lesson, he’s just taking them out. Now, I mean, the Punisher went on to be kind of a hero, and they’ve lessened a little bit of his aspect, yeah, I thought he was more interesting as a villain. He’s just like, “I kill bad guys, it’s what I do.”

Anyway, so let’s talk mechanically where the overlaps come. Because there’s a lot of overlaps (???). But one that’s very interesting, by the way, is while there’s not a lot of philosophical overlap, there’s a lot of mechanical overlap. In fact, the enemy colors, in some ways have more overlap than some of the allied colors. And white/black has plenty.

Okay. So there’s—let’s start with keyword abilities. There’s three keyword abilities that white and black share, although one of them just barely. The big one that they share is lifelink. This is the one, whenever we’re doing shenanigans and we’re doing multiple color things and we’re trying to get the overlap, lifelink is the ability that’s in white and in black.

The ability start in black on El-Hajjad from Arabian Nights. But then became really kind of claim to fame was on an enchantment called Spirit Link in Legends. And so it’s kind of funny, and white it’s kind of like a life-gaining thing, that you’re using your noble fighting to sort of gain life. Where in black it’s kind of like, “I’m draining you,” so they have very different flavors, but both white and black do lifelink.

They both fly. Blue is the number one flying color, but white is very, very close number two. Black is third, but flying’s a big enough [keyword] that it gets three colors that have it. Red and green, I mean red has dragons, and green every once in a blue moon dips its toe, but really red and green, barring dragons and phoenixes, do not have flying normally, where white, blue, and black do. So white and black both have flying.

The third thing is, white is first in first strike. Black is what we call tertiary in first strike, which means every once in a while, usually it’s on like a knight or something, we love making like white knights and black knights, and so every once in a while when there’s a knight we give them first strike. Black doesn’t do it very much.

Okay. Now, speaking of lifelink, life gain is something that both white and black do. But once again, a good example when you see the contrast is, white is all about life gain. I gain life. I cast spells. I have creatures with ETB effects. Whatever. I just get it. I gain life. I’m part of the color most associated with life, I gain life.

Black gains life, but at the cost. So the most common way black gains life is what we call Drain Life, where something loses life, it deals damage either to a creature or a player, and then it gets that much life. So it does two damage to a creature and gains two life. It does three damage to a player and gains three life. The flavor there is it’s not just gaining it, it’s taking the life from something else.

Now, black can also get life gain through sacrifice. It can sacrifice creatures or discard cards. Or—black has access to life gain but it comes at a cost. It’s another one of those abilities where black doesn’t really do it, either whether it’s taking it from someone else, or it’s using a cost to get it.

Okay. Now let’s talk destruction. So black and white both overlap in creature destruction. Black pretty much can kill whatever it wants. It has stuff like Murder. A lot of times its stuff will have restrictions just because it plays more interestingly if a kill spell can’t kill everything. But black’s allowed to kill pretty much everything. There’s no type of creature black can’t kill.

White, on the other hand, has the “don’t mess with me and my guys” philosophy, which says white’s kind of like the Federation in Star Trek. White wants to see itself as the good guy. So white tends to not take the first step toward violence.

Now, there’s exceptions. If white sees you as inherently evil—there’s things where white sometimes gets proactive. But usually it’s like, oh, well are you attacking me? Like, are you getting in combat with me? Are you attacking or blocking? Okay, I can deal with it. Have you hurt me? Okay, I can deal with it. That white tends to be—now, white does have some answers. I’ll get there in a second. White has some answers that are temporary but we’ll get there.

But as far as destroying creatures, white and black both have the ability to destroy creatures. White sometimes, by the way, at a high cost will exile creatures. So sometimes we’ll overlap black and white we’ll do like high-cost exile things.

Okay. Black also has the ability to kill planeswalkers. White—well, I guess we’ll get into this now. So, one of white’s answers is, white has what we call answers with answers. So it will have creatures or it will have enchantments that will remove things, and as long as that thing stays in play, the thing stays removed.

So white, for example, its answers to planewalkers is, white has things like Oblivion Ring, where if you play it, remove the planeswalker, and as long as Oblivion Ring stays in play, the planeswalker’s removed. Black can just kill planeswalkers. It’s got destroy planeswalkers.

Black and white also have mass creature kill. So Wrath ofGod, Damnation type stuff. White tends to, when it destroys creatures, usually just destroys everything. Black has a couple other options. Black sometimes will just destroy it. Sometimes it’ll deal damage to it. Sometimes it’ll do –N/-N to creatures. So black has more range of how it can kill things. Although white more often gets the plain-up just “destroy all creatures.” Black gets it occasionally, but black’s more likely to sort of do something else to kill everything.

And now also, black and white also sometimes use auras as a means to deal with creatures. White for example has Pacifism , white sometimes is the creature doesn’t deal damage, white has different answers that it will use on the opponent’s creatures to prevent stuff.

Black to has auras that it will use on opponents’ creatures, usually the one overlap that white and black will have sometimes is white does straight-up taxing, where you have to pay mana, black sometimes does taxing where you pay life or sacrifice a creature. They’ll sometimes overlap there. Black, usually its negative auras are more like –N/-N or something that’s sort of harming things. White usually, the flavor of white auras is, “I’m preventing you from doing something,” where black is, “I’m kind of hurting you. And in hurting you I’m preventing you to do what you want to do.”

They both also have positive auras. They both will do, like in Alpha for example there was Unholy Strength and Holy Strength. Where Unholy Strength was +2/+1, and Holy Strength was +1/+2. As a general rule of thumb, white leans a little bit more towards toughness and black a little bit more toward power. Both of them can do +1/+1, +2/+2. So both of them have that, and both of them will buff things.

They also will have small abilities. White does—I talked about when I did white/green, how white will boost things and also give an ability. Black occasionally will do things, usually it’s +1/+0 or +2/+0. Black doesn’t tend to grant toughness. But it will sometimes grant abilities. It will sometimes regenerate or grant lifelink or deathtouch is very common. So black and white have some sort of spells in combat that will do boosting and add something else.

White and black also, two of the colors that have interaction with the graveyard. White for example, black can regrow creatures, it has the Raise Dead-type thing. White will get back artifacts or enchantments. Every once in a while it will get back small creatures. Those are things it can regrow.

Reanimation-wise, white will reanimate small creatures. Sometimes it talks about CMCs, sometimes it talks about power. I tend to lean towards CMC because the intent is to get back small things, and there are very powerful things that have low power. So we nowadays lean a little more towards converted mana cost. The reason that we do that is that white needs—one of white’s problems, built in on purpose, is that white has issues of running out of card advantage. And so we want to give white some way, without sort of straight-up card advantage, to keep refilling its small group of creatures for its army. So the reanimation of small things is one way to do that.

Black can reanimate anything. White more often gets small things usually out of its own graveyard. Black gets whatever it wants out of whatever graveyard it needs. One of the big things that black tends to do is sometimes steal stuff out of the opponent’s graveyard as a resource. That it will kill things and animate their own creatures. It will do that. So that’s the graveyard.

As far as the library goes, both black and white have some tutoring ability. White tends to get artifacts or enchantments, and within artifacts especially equipment. White is very big on equipment. Black can get whatever it wants thanks to the grandfather of Demonic Tutor. But oftentimes black will come at a cost. Sometimes a life payment, sometimes the top of library. We don’t do quite as many just clean tutors for black as we used to. Usually, like black has to perform some little sacrifice or something as a means to get what it wants.

Black and white both have means to protect themselves. White tends to use indestructible, black tends to use regenerate. So both of them have creatures that are hard to kill. White and black will also, not only will they buff individual creatures, but each of them can buff the team. White more often does power/toughness pumping, like the entire team gets +1/+1. Usually when black affects the whole team, it’s more to grant an ability. To grant it some sort of evasion type thing or deathtouch, or something in which it makes the creatures meaner or scarier usually is the flavor of black buffing.

The other thing that both black and white do is black and white both make use of sacrifice, but they make use of it very differently. This is a good example of how you can have something where the colors can use their differences to show the differences between them.

So white is self-sacrifice. White says, “I will sacrifice me,” and usually by sacrificing me I help somebody else. Sometimes that’s the planeswalker, but often I am helping my team. So the idea of like “I sacrifice myself and give a boost to the team,” that’s a very common white thing. The flavor of “this guy is sacrificing himself for the good of the group.”

Black, on the other hand, tends to sacrifice other things. It doesn’t have creatures that sacrifice themselves, as much as creatures that sacrifice other creatures. And black’s whole philosophy is, I will use what I need, that if somebody else’s sacrifice helps me, okay then I gotta sacrifice them. Now, black and white through different flavoring often will have other things that sacrifice. White’s flavor once again is always a self-sacrifice, and black is “I’m using others to advance my agenda.”

White and black also overlap in exiling cards from graveyard. That’s a one that’s very specific. So white has it from sort of a “consecrating dead” kind of standpoint. Of like DnD and clerics and like dealing with the dead. So white can sort of do it that way. Black just is like, it’s king of the graveyard so it has abilities to sort of answer graveyard threats. Sometimes we let cards who like—the card that best can do something has the ability to deal with it.

Finally, the last big mechanical overlap between white and black is token-making. The difference is, white tends to make smaller tokens. White tends to make 1/1s, usually 1/1 humans or soldiers, or it makes spirits that fly, where black’s most common token is zombie tokens. Which are 2/2 normally.

So black tends to make slightly bigger tokens. It doesn’t make them as often. White is primary in token-making, green is secondary. Black, all the colors other than white and green I guess, I’m not sure—well, red is kind of secondary. I guess black and blue are tertiary. Although tertiary’s not kind of right in that they do it a lot more, especially black will do more than that. Maybe black is like bottom end of secondary I guess.

So anyway, as you can see, black and white, there’s a lot of overlap. But the big difference is, how exactly they make use of stuff. That white tends to say, “What can I do to help everybody else? How can I work together?”

Where black—the funny thing, actually, this is kind of neat. Both white and black have a group strategy. It’s just a very different kind of group strategy. White’s group strategy is, I’m going to overwhelm you with small creatures that are going to work together to sort of slowly defeat you. I have an army. And you might take out pieces of my army, but my army will work together to stop you.

Black, on the other hand, its army is an army of the undead. It has zombies. And a lot of zombies’ strategy is, I’m just going to overrun you with zombies. And you can kill as many zombies as you want, I’ll just make more zombies. And my zombies will eventually overrun you.

So it’s funny that white’s army flavor and black’s zombie flavor, the flavoring is completely different. But the actual sort of gameplay is a little bit the same, where white is just going to keep attacking you, and that even though you get rid of the individual pieces of it, the strength of the group will overwhelm you. And black zombies definitely have a similar sort of feel to it. That they’re going to overwhelm you with the forces, and that both white and black, in those cases, it’s like, the individual piece is not as important as the overall thing it’s doing.

Okay. So now, let me talk the mechanics. Let’s get back to talking about where do white and black… so why… one of the things that’s most interesting about the enemy colors is sort of, I don't know, we talked about the conflict a little bit, I find the conflict to be--I don't know, I’m fascinated by—the five conflicts in my mind are—it’s one of the neat aspects of how the colors work. So for example, let’s look at white and black’s conflict in contrast to the conflicts on the side of it. This is very interesting.

So white is all about the good of the community, vs. black which is the good of the individual. Okay, now let’s take white’s—let’s shift over. What is white’s next conflict? White’s next conflict is white and red. Where there, white is all about the need of structure and order, vs. the need of chaos. So when you get to there, white pivots in the sense that white is looking out for the good of the group, but between black’s conflict is looking about sort of the moralness of the group. Is the group spiritually in the right plae? Are they doing the right thing? Are they being good or being bad? And you get to the red side, and it’s more about are they being orderly or not? Are they following their chaotic/emotional impulses, or are they being orderly? But the same idea there is, white’s conflict between white and black, white is kind of taking the same side, it’s just different facets of that coin.

So now, let’s look at black. So black vs. white is all about the rights of the individual. So let’s look at black to green. And black to green is all about free will vs. determinism. Where black believes that you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, and green believes, no, you fill a larger role. So once again, look at black. Black once again is taking the role of the individual. Black’s taking the role of saying, “I have freedom to do what I need to do.” And white, white is saying, “No, you are not doing what’s good for the group. And green’s saying, “No, you’re not fulfilling your role in the larger ecosystem.” Both of them are sort of talking about how black is not placing—black needs to think about the bigger picture, and black in each case is going, “No, I need to think about myself. I need to do what’s right for me. Not what’s right for everybody else.”

So the neat things about the conflicts is, in each case, when you shift over, white has the same conflict with black and red, just slightly shifted. Black has the same conflict with white and green, just slightly shifted. And one of the neat things about the conflicts—I know a lot of times it’s easy—so one of the things that’s very easy when looking at white and black is to want to see white as good and black as evil.

Now, to be fair, we humans are more white-aligned than black-aligned. And a lot of the teachings of religions and things very much look at what white represents as being good and what black represents as being evil. That doesn’t inherently mean that white and black are good or evil, black—take something like capitalism. Capitalism is a very black thing. The idea of each individual looking out for themselves.

And that’s not inherently evil. There are plenty of things that black preaches that you can go to self-help groups and stuff, and they’ll say, hey. It’s important that you look after yourself. It’s important that at times you prioritize what you need. That it’s not that black is necessarily preaching inherently evil.

White sees black as evil. But it’s very careful to us that there is good and evil in every color. That just like white can do good and try to help people, white can get kind of fascist at times. And apply rules that aren’t necessarily good to the point of I’m trying to protect everything by making these rules exist, but are these rules really helping everybody?

And meanwhile, black sometimes, black is looking out for himself, but sometimes in the system it sets up, it makes something that really gives people more access to freedoms. Black leans more toward individual freedoms than white does. White leans toward the idea of people doing what they need to do for the good of everybody else. So white/red is a little more where you get into true personal freedom, red is the color of freedom. But you see that spilled over a little bit into black.

Likewise, if you take the black/green conflict of green’s idea that you have a role to fill, that you have destiny, that spills a little bit into white. White definitely believes like there’s a role that you have to fill. Now, white’s is a little more structural and spiritual than green’s, green’s a little more ecosystem-y, but you can see how those spill over.

So the idea is, when white takes on black, there are different conflicts. Sometimes the good—I mean, it’s very easy to see the good of the group being the good side. But sometimes, the good of the individual—there’s definitely stories you see where the white is being abusive in power, and white is not understanding the freedom of the individual. Or not seeing the… white is eclipsing, sort of forcing everybody to make decisions based on the group and not on itself.

And that black—that’s where, I mean there definitely are stories where black steps in and black is like, “This is wrong.” A lot of the stories where black’s the protagonist and white is the antagonist stem from a place where usually it’s the person fighting the system, that’s very common where I think a lot of stories where black’s the protagonist, the idea of personal identity starts being stripped away. And someone reclaiming their own personal identity. I don't know, like Logan’s Run or stuff like that, where there’s somebody who—it’s a lot of what black’s protagonists in a black/white, is where black is trying to say, “White is eclipsing identity, that is not okay.” A lot of science fiction films you see, where the villains are white in that they’ve taken to such a far extent that someone has to reclaim the rights of the individual.  

The flip side, black villains are a lot easier to see. Black villains, just people out for themselves, doing something evil, and that the white has stopped them. A lot of traditional dynamics, a lot of superheroes are very white/black in that “I’m trying to save the good of the group.”

But it’s important to understand, so the one example people ask all the time is are we ever going to do a story in which we have a black protagonist and a white antagonist, we actually did in Champions of Kamigawa. The emperor, Emperor Konda, was trying to do what he thought was right for his—he kidnapped the spirit baby, and he was trying to do something that he thought was going to benefit his kingdom as a whole. But in doing so, did great atrocities in the name of trying to do that.

And the person who was the hero, [Umezawa], he was trying to sort of—I mean, he was I think a thief? He was someone who normally looks out for himself, and realized like the emperor had overstepped his bounds and took steps to stop that. And so like I said, you can get black protagonists. A recent example, a good one is, if anyone watches Orphan Black, Sarah Manning’s a good example of a black protagonist, where she really does not start trying to help anybody but herself. But in trying to help herself, she achieves some larger goals in helping other people.

And that’s the trick about black protagonists, by the way, is that the black protagonists, they start trying to help themselves. But then they help the larger agenda of people helping themselves. That’s kind of where black goes.

Anyway, I’m almost to work. I got a little more philosophical today. I think the enemy ones lean themselves a little more toward that, because the ally color ones are talking about overlaps, and the enemy ones are talking about conflict. So it is very interesting. I think that white and black actually kind of work well together at times. And normally, like I said, the two most common ways is white motivation black means or black motivation white means.

And I think there’s a lot of fun in white and black. White and black also, because the other thing you’ll notice about enemy colors is, they make great reflections. White and black is king of this. Unholy Strength/Holy Strength, Black Knight/White Knight. Where you see two things that in some ways are very, very similar. They just—it’s funny how enemies can kind of come to a similar place. That’s a lot to do with reflections. The white knight and the black knight, on some level, represent completely opposite things, yet in the trappings, in the way they function, in what they are, they’re very similar.

And I think that’s a neat thing. White/black, probably if I had to pick all the five-color conflicts, white/black is kind of the cleanest. It’s the most classic. A lot of fantasy is all about sort of the fight over morality. And that you have the embodiment of evil fighting the cause for good. That sort of sense shows up in fantasy a lot. That’s very white/black oriented.

So anyway, that, my friends, is number six of our podcast on two colors. So to remind everybody, I’m going on… I don't know, I guess color order. So the next one we’ll do will be blue/red. Then we’ll be doing black/green, then we’ll be doing red/white, and then finally we’ll be doing green/blue. Which everyone’s asking for, but we’ll get there.

So anyway, I am parking my car. So we all know what that means, that means this is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking Magic, it’s time for me to be making Magic. See you guys next time.