6/5/15 Episode 233: Blue/Red

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 of the color pairs. So we’re up to blue/red. So we’re in the enemy section of the color pairs, so these are now colors in which they have an internal conflict. So I’m going to talk about the two colors, what their internal conflict is, and where they overlap. What happens when you put them together.

Okay. So blue, blue seeks perfection through knowledge. Blue believes in tabula rasa, that every single thing is born a clean slate, and it can become whatever it wants to become. That the only thing in its way is it needs knowledge to understand how to do it. It needs to gain the experience, it needs to gain the tools, it needs to gain the training. Blue believes that, like, with the proper training and tools and just understanding, that blue can become whatever it wants. And it is seeking perfection. What it says is, I want to make myself the best that I can be. I want to figure out how to use my intellect and reach the pinnacle of what I am capable of.

Now, red in contrast is all about seeking freedom through action. Red says, I have the strong… my body tells me what it wants. I have these emotions that speak, that are primal, that tell me what I need to do. And my goal is to live true to my own heart. I have this passion and these beliefs and I need to live to my passion and my beliefs.

And what I want is, I want to exist in a world where that can happen. Where I am free to do what I am able to do. That I can have a passion, have an idea, and do what I need to do. And, red is all about seizing the moment. Of following your heart. That if you feel something, you act on it. If you are happy, be happy. If you are sad, be sad. If you are angry, be angry.

Now, one of the things about red is red is often shown—because we tend to focus on conflict and fighting, you tend to see red’s angry side. And so a lot of people associate red with anger. And while red does have anger as a component, that’s not the only emotion that red deals with. It’s just the emotion that is most frequently seen in the card set.

Okay. Now, the conflict between blue and red comes from these different ideologies. Blue very much believes that what you want to do is think and in order to have the best outcome, you want to think through every option.

Let’s say a situation comes up. Blue’s like, “Okay, before I act, I want to think through every possibility, because I want the perfect answer.” And the key to doing that is to examine the problem at hand and look at every possible solution. So before I act, I carefully think through everything I do. Red, who’s all about sort of impulse, is like, “No no no. Thinking causes you problems. Thinking, you doubt yourself. What you want to do is be true to what you’re feeling and act on your feelings.”

So right here we get the key conflict between blue and red. Blue is about thinking, red is about feeling. Blue is about passivity about waiting, about making sure you’re doing the right thing. Red is about acting in the moment.

So blue is all about not acting in the short term to make sure that in the long term you’re doing the right thing. Where red is all about doing the right thing in the short term, not worrying about the long term. And so they very much come in conflict. Very much this is emotions vs. intellect. That blue is the intellectual side, red is the emotional side.

It’s a key—a debate that goes back to the beginning of humanity, which is are you supposed to follow your head, or follow your heart? Do you follow your intellect or your passion? Do you think or do you act? That is the key of the blue/red conflict.

Okay. So, well what happens when you get the color that’s all about waiting and doing the right long-term thing, with the color that’s all about doing the quick short-term thing? And the answer is a very interesting one. Because blue is all about, blue has a sense of curiosity and a sense of wanting to know. Red has a sense of acting.

So when you get curiosity and action and you put them together, you start getting creativity. Because creativity has two components to it. It has a combination of a quest of curiosity and a love of knowledge, combined with a passion for discovering something. Of finding something. And when you get blue and red together, you get this very strong passionate creativity.

The Izzet, for example, is the blue/red guild in Ravnica, they are the inventors. And the reason is, blue and red both have a little bit of interaction with artifacts. Blue believes in technology. Blue believes that the key to becoming the best you can is having the best tools available to you. Technology is one of those tools. If I can have a device or something that will help me, then I should have that. Why shouldn’t I have that? If I’m better with a particular weapon or a particular tool, well then I’m better to have that. Blue very much leans toward technology.

Red loves to tinker. Red loves to get its hands on things, and it is very hands-on. It learns by doing. Red doesn’t learn by reading or talking, red learns by doing. And so when you get this passion for technology and this desire for hands-on, you very much get into the inventor’s mindset. That inventors are very passionate, and must get in and dig, and that they’re not necessarily thinking—they’re sort of exploring as they go. They’re learning along the way.

And that the Izzet mentality, which really captures the sense I’m talking about, is the idea of this passion for discovery. That you take the passion of red and the love of technology and the curiosity of blue, and you mash them together.

So like the interesting thing there is, that blue and red when they combine—one of the things about when you find colors combining is they tend to find different aspects that move together. So blue, when blue gets with red, it gives up a little bit of its stand-backishness. And plays up more its curiosity. Where red gives up a little bit of its recklessness, a little bit of its destructive qualities, and leans a little bit towards its constructive qualities.

So—and also another big difference is that—so let me give the similarities. (???). So the thing that blue and red have in common, the number one thing that blue and red have in common is, in Magic, we have—the colors have a percentage of creatures vs. spells. So the number one creature color is white. White has more creatures than any other color. Green is number two. Black is number three. Red is number four. Blue is number five.

Now, when you don’t have creatures, what you have in those slots are spells. So it literally flips upside-down. So blue is the number one spell color. And by spell I actually mean non-creatures. Blue has more of—now, it also, by that nature having more, tends to have more instants and sorceries. It also tends to—it just has more noncreature spells, literally because it has less slots dedicated to creatures, so it has more dedicated to noncreatures. Which makes blue number one and red number two of noncreature spells. Especially instants and sorceries.

So that’s one area where red and blue tend to overlap. They tend very much to be spell-oriented. And as we get into mechanics, spell mattering is a very big part of red and blue. That when you look at what red and blue do when they get together, one of the big focuses they’ll often have is caring about instants and sorceries.

Okay. So let’s start talking about where they overlap. Now, I will say this, one of the things when we make hybrid cards or we make, so to a lesser extent, multicolor cards, or like I was talking about, recently I did the Dark Ascension podcast [NLH—Not transcribed] where I talked about flashbacks with a different color. Those act a lot like a hybrid card.

The key to a hybrid card is, where colors overlap. If I make a red/blue hybrid card, it’s like, “Well what can red do and blue do? Where do red and blue overlap?” And what you’ll find is, red and blue of all the ten color pairs overlap the least. Blue and black is probably number two. But red and blue have always traditionally been very problematic.

For example, currently right now red and blue have no overlap in an evergreen mechanic. That it’s something we’ve been searching for forever is what could blue and red do? And so one of the things right now is that when we do like hybrid cards, like blue and red have to start finding other things to do. Activated abilities or something. Because of all the keyword abilities—now, black and blue aren’t much better, black and blue overlap in flying and flying only. So like I said. Red and blue and black and blue, somehow blue’s the trouble child, tend to have less overlaps. But anyway, let’s talk about blue and red, where do they overlap? They overlap in some places.

So number one, they both have the ability to… I’ll say looting, although we call the blue version “looting” and the red version “rummaging.” Which is, drawing cards and discarding cards. Now, blue will draw first and then discard. Red will discard first and then draw. And that’s trying to play up the different ideologies. Of the colors. Both of them are spell colors, both of them want to have access to new cards, but the difference is, blue, the careful, gets to draw first and think, and really think about what it wants to do. Red is a little more reckless, so it throws things away before it necessarily knows what it’s getting.

And the reason we did that is, we liked to have both of these colors have access to some card flow. But we wanted them to feel a little bit differently. And we like a lot. And a lot of people complained that the blue one is just strictly better than the red one, and the answer I have to that is that card flow in red—one of red’s big disadvantages is, red tries to burn you out. Red has direct damage. And that usually what happens in red is, it gets very—it tries to beat you as quick as it can. Red can get very, very close to beating you, and the ability to get access to one or two more cards often can mean the game. It can mean winning.

And so the ability of looting in red is just slightly better. That what red does, it is very powerful. So one of the other reasons we do rummaging is, red already has a slight advantage in that its lack of getting cards is something that’s supposed to rein it in. And so we were careful with red, we don’t tend to give red card advantage. Blue can get card advantage. But looting isn’t card advantage. Card advantage would be drawing cards where you go up the number of cards.

But we tried to make sure that what we do with red, that we are careful of how much utility of getting cards red can do, because it’s so valuable to red. That a color that like, it’s trying to eke out the last few points of damage. Getting access to other cards can be very powerful.

So another ability that is similar in overlap is blue does get straight-up card advantage. Which is blue gets to draw cards. What we’ve done with red is what I call impulsive drawing, which is red can exile a card from the top of the library and then until end of turn, can play that card. So essentially, red has its version of draw, but it has to use it immediately. It doesn’t have the ability to long-term hold it. It has a short-term answer.

And if you look at both rummaging and impulsive drawing, it’s a good example where you see the difference between blue and red. That red can kind of do some stuff blue can do, but it has to do it quicker, more immediate. It doesn’t have any long-term gain from it. It’s trying to use it very short-term.

Okay. Red and blue also have power/toughness swapping. That’s not something we do as much. Sometimes in hybrid you’ll see us do it just because it’s an area that red and blue overlap. Which is—so one of the things that red and blue do is blue is all about being—blue has, I don't know if mischievous is the right word, but blue likes to manipulate things. Blue is into manipulation.

Red is into trickery. Red likes to kind of fool you. And so blue and red kind of overlap a little bit in that they will mess with you, but the means by which they mess with you is a little different.

So for example, both of them can copy spells. Both of them can copy spells. Both of them can redirect spells. Both of them can kind of mess with what’s going on. But the flavor, I mean they overlap a little bit in mechanics, but the flavor is very, very different. Blue is manipulating you. It’s carefully studying magic and it is sort of using that knowledge to mess with you. Where red enjoys the sort of “Ha ha, what you thought was going to happen didn’t happen.” Red really likes creating short-term emotional responses. “Ha ha! Ha ha! I did this! I tricked you!” And so red and blue overlap there. And power/toughness swapping is kind of blue manipulating and red going “Hee hee!”  Some of the overlap in red and blue have that sort of feel.

Also, blue and red are the two colors primary and secondary in gaining control of things. And this likewise has a little bit of flavor. But blue, blue is a long-term… what blue is doing when it takes control of something is, “I’m using mind control. I’m using magic in which I’m taking control of your mind.” That blue’s sort of mental manipulation is a long-term manipulation. I have changed the way you are thinking. You are now… I might have changed your memories or I might have done something where you are now convinced that you are working for me, or that you have no idea that I’ve manipulated your memory.

Red, what red tends to do is when it controls something, t’s manipulating emotions, which are not inherently long-term. It’s inflaming your passion or your anger. It’s taking some aspect of you that you already have and sort of playing that up. But the point is, at some point you recover from that. It’s like, well, fine, you can make me angry for a turn, but at some point I go, “Oh, okay, whoa, what’s going on? Why am I so angry?” And that red’s control is a short-term bursty type of control, and not a long-term control. Which is something that blue has.

Okay. So let’s see. Red and blue, so once again, you’ll see a lot of this. The overlap in red and blue, they overlap mechanically but they represent different things. It’s a very common theme you’ll see today. Okay, so red and blue also have +N/-N, which what that means is, oh, I get +1/-1. I get +2/-2.

For blue, it tends to be part of a shapeshifting flavor. Usually when you get +1/-1, you also have -1/+1. They don’t have to come together. But in blue, when you see it, it’s a means of representing shapeshifting. That blue is changing its shape. Blue is the color of change. And so it has the ability to manipulate its own shape.

When red does it, it is representing of red pushing advantage short-term at a long-term disadvantage, the idea being, okay, I’m willing to put more attention to my offense at the sake of my defense. That now I’m more powerful, but I’m easier to damage and destroy.

So when red uses +N/-N, it is more trying to show that red is pushing to gain advantage, not caring about the disadvantage. That red is king of I will get my advantage with a disadvantage, just like okay, well if I need to get my offensive advantage for my defensive disadvantage, okay.

Black and red overlap a little bit here, although black is here—red is like, whatever, I’m going to do it, and black is like I’ve weighed the options, this is worth the trade. That is one of the big differences between red and black is that they both do it, but black has carefully thought it out and decided it’s worth the risk. Red’s sort of like, “Ehh, whatever, good enough. I’m not going to think about it.”

Okay. Another area that blue and red—this is another one that all the colors kind of overlap. Which is token-making. Red is number one in temporary token-making, meaning it makes tokens that go away at end of turn. Blue dips its fingers into that a little bit. You also sometimes see when we do red/blue that red can make dragon tokens and blue can make big flying tokens. So they’re the two colors that could make big flying tokens. That’s another place for overlap. Blue is not particularly big at making tokens, although it can do it. But making the big tokens or the temporary tokens is the biggest area you’ll see some overlap.

Okay, another big area, where this is a funny one, which is blue and red both have the ability to help get creatures through combat. But they do it differently, although the outcome is very much similar. Red says target creature or any number of creatures can’t block. It keeps creatures from blocking. Blue keeps creatures from being blocked.

So here’s the funny thing. If I make an enchantment and I say, “creatures cannot block,” that’s red. If I make an enchantment that says, “All creatures are unblockable,” that is blue. They do the same thing. Or more likely, instead of the broad one, you might want to say, “All my opponent’s creatures can’t block.” And then “All my creatures can’t be blocked.” That does the same thing. Yet one is red and one is blue.

And there’s a little nuance there. One of the things that’s very important in game design in general is, the reason the colors exist, the reason there are five colors is, we want there to be different ways to play and you have different choices. And you want the colors to have different nuances.

That’s why the color pie exists. That’s why each color has different abilities and different strengths and different weaknesses. That when you play a color, there’s certain things it does for you and certain things it can’t. And that’s important to us, that’s why the color pie is so important is, I want to make sure that the colors represent what they can do and that they have reasons you’d want to play them over colors, and reasons you don’t. A lot of this flavor stuff’s also important, even when you overlap mechanically, it’s important that what they represent is a little bit different. It feels a little bit different.

Okay. Next, I talked about—so interesting sorcery matters. I mentioned that up front, but let me talk about that a little more. So number one, you’ll see a lot of triggers, where it’s like, “When you cast an instant or sorcery, something happens.” A creature, like a very common thing is you’ll see a creature get a bonus. Or sometimes you’ll have a triggered enchantment where when you do it it triggers something.

Red and blue very much care about sorceries and instants being played. Sometimes they can make it easier to play instants and sorceries. They also are the two colors that allow you to go get instants and sorceries from the graveyard and bring them back. They’re the two colors that sometimes allow you to use flashback, to grant flashback to instants and sorceries in the graveyard. They’re definitely the two colors that intermingle to allow you to play a deck in which you want to emphasize instants and sorceries.

Like, the two times that we have visited the Izzet in Ravnica, both times they were very spell-oriented. The first time we saw replicate, where they had spells where you could copy the spells, copying spells is something red and blue do. The second time was overload, where they could change the number of targets. Well, changing targets is something red and blue does as well.

And as you can see, a lot of stuff where red and blue overlap is types of spells. For example, most of the stuff I said today, I mean obviously, power/toughness swapping occasionally is on creatures, but normally you do it to creatures. Looting and rummaging, once again, can appear on creatures, but once again they’re spells. Copying, redirecting. Token-making. Unblockability. A lot of that stuff is spell-oriented.

A lot of where red and blue overlap—now remember, red and blue have more spells, so there’s clearly a place to overlap. So that is a place where you see a lot more of it. Red and blue, when you get them together, by the way, so one of the things that’s interesting is, every time we make a set, we have to make the color pairs and figure out what the color pairs do.

And there tends to be what we call a default deck. And what that means is, given no exterior changes, the set’s not doing something a little different that pushes it in a slightly different direction, each color pair has a natural state. The kind of thing it wants to do.

So the blue/red neutral state deck tends to be a tempo-oriented deck. It’s spell-oriented, and it’s tempo-oriented. What I mean by tempo-oriented is, red and blue both have a lot of spells that kind of disrupt things. Thematically, it goes back to the manipulation, to the trickery, that there’s a lot of spells that disrupt.

Now, some of them are where they overlap, some of them are different. Counterspells can be very disruptive. Damage can be very disruptive. And a lot of what’s going on is, the idea of tempo advantage, we’ll get a little bit into advanced game theory.

The idea is, there are different ways for you to get advantage over your opponent. Card advantage is all about, oh, well I just am netting more cards long-term than my opponent. I have more cards available to me, cards are a resource, I will overwhelm you in a resource.

Well, another resource is time. And opportunity. And what tempo says is, if I’m able to gain advantage not because I’m drawing more cards than you, but I’m forcing you to sort of waste more time than me, that I’m getting things done, where I’m doing things that are delaying you, that I get an advantage of time. What we call tempo.

And the idea, a good example of tempo is, I’m able to play a spell, play a creature that… like, Man-o'-War is a really good example. I’m using old-school—Man O’ War is a 2/2 creature that when it comes into play, Unsummons one of the opponent’s creatures.

So when you think about what it does is, I play a spell, I play a creature. When the dust settles, I now have a creature. I am up a creature. And you are down a creature. Now, the creature’s back in your hand. It’s not forever gone. It’s not like I’ve destroyed it. But I had a tempo advantage. I played a turn in which I went up a resource and you went down a resource.

And that resource is time-oriented. You’re going to get to play the spell again, but you’re going to take a turn to play it. You’re going to have to waste your mana and take a turn to do that. So I’ve sort of stolen a turn from you. That’s the idea of tempo.

And once again, I’m way oversimplifying this. It’s the idea of getting the advantage of time and opportunity on the opponent. Red and blue tend to do that very well. They have a lot of different tools and availability to do that. And they tend to combine in a way that does that well. That’s one of the resources that blue and red get you.

They also have a spell center. Usually when there is a mechanic in the set that’s a spell-centered mechanic, usually the deck that takes advantage of that archetypally is usually red/blue. Not always, but very often. When scry matters, a lot of the time red and blue might be the “scry matters” deck. Whatever. Pick your spell-oriented mechanic, that red and blue are often the deck that’s going to take advantage of that.

Okay. But wait a minute? Is there nothing… do they not overlap anywhere in creatures? So let me talk about the ideas, there’s a thematic area that they can overlap a little bit. So red and blue happen to be the two colors of the elements.

So there are four elements, so red takes the fire and earth part of the elementals, and blue takes the water and the air. And those components are very important parts of the color, thematically. The reason blue has so many flying creatures is because blue is the color of air. The reason blue has so many water-based creatures and the merfolk and stuff is that blue is the color of the water.

Also, thematically, if you go to like astrology and stuff like that, that water and air have a lot of mental qualities to them. Where earth and fire have a little more body qualities to them. That’s another, a little difference between blue and red is that blue is very focused on sort of the mental, and red is a little bit more focused on the physical. More on, like red is sort of like, how am I feeling? And I have senses that I have, and the physical sensation.

Maybe I should say physical vs. mental, maybe that makes more sense. Red is very physical.  “I feel something.” That’s a very physical thing. And I must act on how I feel. Where blue is about sort of how I’m thinking about it. That’s a very different thing.

Anyway, because the elements overlap, they’re the two colors that have elemental qualities, we have an elemental creature type. So that’s something you’ll see in red and blue. It’s not that the other cards don’t have elementals, it’s just that red and blue have the most elementals, because the four elements, if you will, show up in red and blue. And so that’s a very common place for us to go.

Now, Magic has had its fun with elementals. We have made elementals out of things that aren’t really elements by any stretch of the imagination. Time Elemental. We’ve done all sorts of things. But it is something that we definitely see overlapped in red and blue.

The other thing that red and blue tend to do a lot of is red and blue, because they’re spell-oriented colors, you also see that they often have a little bit more activated abilities on creatures that have a spell sensation to them. Blue does this a little bit more than red, but red still does it. Of they definitely have a little bit of, I have a little guy, and the little guy, although he’s a creature, has a spell orientation to him.

The other big thing on creatures in general is you will see that red and blue tend to like activations. That they are colors that, for example, red has firebreathing. And blue often has different types of pumping as well. That you can see a lot—different colors do pumping in different ways, black has its shades, and things. But there definitely is a sense of even when you get down to the creatures of red and blue, that there’s a little bit of a spell-like quality to them.

Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about, okay. So the positive part of blue/red getting together is, like I said, this passionate curiosity. This desire to get your hands on and find answers through trying things. So what is the negative side of red/blue?

The negative side of red/blue tends to be—well, the negative side of blue is impassivity. Is the idea of not doing anything. And the downside of red is sort of acting irrationally. So when you get impassivity and irrationality together, blue and red together can be very vindictive. That blue is all about sort of manipulation and sort of thinking things through, and red has a very petty side because red is very emotional.

And so if you cross red, if you do something that red doesn’t like, that red can really harp on it. But blue is mental. So if you take red’s quality of harping on things, of not letting things go. And blues just like to dissect things and blues sort of lean towards trickery, blue and red are the tricky colors, that you get those together, they can be a bit mean.

They can definitely be—so like I’m talking about positive red/blue is definitely kind of the fun absent-minded adventure. Which Izzet plays into quite a bit. And the downside of blue/red is a little more the mean, vindictive, almost the bully in some ways, but the intellectual bully. Not the one that’s going to beat you up, but the one that’s going to make your life a living hell because it knows the things you care about and is going to one by one take those things away from you.

Now, blue/black also has a little similar quality. Blue/black also, black’s a little more sadistic than red. So blue/black also has some of these qualities, but the difference is that blue/red comes more out of emotional spite than it comes out of tactical advantage. That blue/black is not going to do something that long-term is problematic.

Where blue/red sometimes will, like “I’m really upset with this person, I’m going to get them” and it’s not necessarily, if it’s not necessarily long-term the right thing to do.  Blue/black will get somebody if it has a gain long-term for doing it, where blue/red does not. And once again, the kind of difference between red/black there, where red and black both can be pretty vindictive, where black is vindictive carefully, and red is not very careful. Red is not a careful color.

So one of the things that’s tricky in general about talking about blue/red is that blue and red, like I said, are not—the lack of overlap is—like one of the things that’s interesting, which is, if you were starting from scratch, and you were like, “Okay, I’m going to make all the color pairs,” I mean, Richard clearly spent a lot of time and energy giving each color strong identity. Which he did a great job at. And the mechanics kind of fell out of where it made sense.

And then with time, like a lot of the things I’ve labeled, that were overlap blue/red things, did not start in both colors. Spell redirecting was a blue thing that we moved to red. Stealing was a blue thing that we moved to red.  Looting was a blue thing that we moved to red. That there was a bunch of things that we said, “Oh, I think red could do this too.”

So we had a meeting many, many years ago where we said, oh, you know what? Red has the smallest piece of the color pie. Red, there’s the least number of things. Of all the colors, red does the least number of things. Well, let’s go look at other people’s things and take some things so that red can do some stuff that felt red.

And in some cases, we were extending it, meaning the original color wasn’t losing it, just red was also doing it. And in some cases, we were moving it to red. Red didn’t used to do it, and now red was going to do it. For example, temporary stealing used to be in blue, and we decided to say, okay, what if we divided stealing, gave permanents—let blue keep permanent stealing, give temporary stealing to red?

And anyway, it was funny because what we said is, let’s just go with what the colors want to do. We wrote down all the abilities, okay, here’s what red does. What might red want to do? What, philosophically, will make sense in red?

And what we found was, most of the things that red wanted to do that were in somebody else’s color pie tended to be in blue’s. There was some overlap with black. Red and black have a lot of overlap. But it was interesting that—well, where black and red tend to overlap in the destructive areas. Black and red were all about, “Oh, well black and red both have this destructive quality, oh, okay, there’s some destructive overlap between the colors.”

But when we went to anything with some nuance to it, red and blue were where the overlap happened. It was very interesting. Interesting sort of… and that’s when we realized that red has this trickster quality that we hadn’t really been playing up.

One of the things that’s hard is, red likes chaos. And trying to—for a long time we interpreted chaos as randomness, and a little bit of randomness is okay. But it’s not typically great gameplay because you can’t control it. And while thematically it makes a lot of sense, keep giving red things where it can’t control it doesn’t make for good gameplay. If red can never control what it’s doing, then why play red? You won’t play red.

And so what we’ve found is, what red wanted to do is not be chaotic itself, it wanted to create chaos in others. And that is a really important distinction. That is why spell redirection and some of that stuff started to happen. Where it’s like, red is all about, you thought your plan was going… you were all orderly. I introduced chaos into your order. Not that I was chaotic. I used chaos as a weapon against you. That was an important distinction.

So anyway, final thoughts. I… I had traffic today. So this was not the podcast—some podcasts, when I get in the car, and I say, “Okay, oh, I see some traffic,” I’m like, “Okay, whatever. I could talk forever about this topic.” Blue/red overlap, blue/red the color pair is tricky because it is—thematically blue and red do overlap a decent amount, there definitely is this desire to manipulate for different reasons where you see the overlap. And there is a spell orientation overlap.

But it’s just less. Like, I did a sheet of paper and wrote all the things they overlap, just so I could look at it before I start my drive, just go, “Okay, what is the overlap?” And blue/red just had the smallest. I knew it had the smallest. But I wrote it out anyway.

And like, there’s some colors like black and red or green and white, where like the sheet is filled. Top to bottom. I’m writing little notes on the side. Like, it is just filled to the gills. Blue/red’s like, ehh, it’s space. I can make my lettering a little bigger. I have tons of space. There’s just not a huge amount of overlap between blue and red.

Should there be more overlap between blue and red? It’s something we’re always looking for. One of the holy grails we’ve been looking for is the idea of a keyword mechanic that overlaps between blue and red. Likewise, the keyword overlaps between blue and black.

Flying right now, the problem with flying is, both blue/white and blue/black, their only overlap is flying. And so we need one more mechanic. Blue and white kind of want to be the flying overlap, because blue and white are the two flying colors. Black is for sure third in flying. So making flying the blue/black thing is problematic because really blue/white wants to be the flying thing. So finding the blue/black overlap and finding the red/blue overlap in a keyword mechanic is… anyway. An ongoing quest. (???)

One of the things that we do in R&D is, there’s things that we want that we kind of write down that we know we’re always looking for. And the fact that we haven’t found it yet just means that it’s not sitting in an obvious place. But anyway, we have a list of things that we are looking for.

And like for example, I talked today about both rummaging and about impulsive drawing. And both of those are relatively new. One of the things we’ve been playing around with red has been “Can you take abilities that you see in other colors, but have a more short-term feel to them?” That red can do it, but it has to do it quickly and immediately. Where the other color normally gets more time to do it.

And so both these abilities obviously where it’s going to blue, there is interesting thematic. One of the things that’s very neat about enemy colors is, that there is something every enemy color—like, obviously the allies have something in common. I mean, the entire nature of the color wheel makes them have this huge philosophical overlap.

The neat thing about the enemy colors is definitely the idea of, there is something about them that’s familiar even though they represent opposite ends of the spectrum. That blue and red are the spell colors, even though they’re radically different. Even though one’s the intellect color and one’s the emotion color. There still is an element to them that overlaps.

And I think—I mean, I think black/white is probably the most iconic of the conflicts. But blue/red is probably number two. Emotion/intellect’s pretty big. And then even down to the idea of fire and ice, of just heat and cold, that there’s this quality to red and blue that really feel as opposite ends of the spectrum.

Like, I just find it very funny, like, when I just look at a faucet, like there’s red and blue on every faucet. Because red is the color for heat and blue is the color for cold. And that is just something that’s—the iconography is there in us. Just like black and white are very much obviously iconography opposite colors. That the yin and the yang is black and white. And that when you want to see contrast, a checkerboard is black/white and stuff like that. It’s interesting that blue/red’s another thing with this color combination where there’s clear opposites that you’ll just see show up in everyday objects.

But anyway, I’m almost to work. You can tell I’m trying to wax poetically here. I am blue/red, for those that do not know this. I’m Izzet, I am a passionate, curiosity sort of guy. Within me I have a love and a quest for knowledge. I very much want to constantly perfect myself and get better and learn and improve. But I also am an emotional person and I very much act on my emotions. And I’m famous for saying what’s on my mind, and I get in trouble all the time for sort of voicing what I’m feeling. So it’s very funny how when you combine those two together, that like they’re very much, the two color combination that I by far most identify with is blue/red. I see the blue in me, I see the red in me.

So one of the things, by the way, that’s fascinating for those that have never done it is, it is neat to try to self-identify. I know people do that a lot when we do the guild things. But one of the best ways to understand the color pie is to apply it to things that you know well and sort of see, “Oh, well what color am I? What color are my friends?” We do a lot of—on my blog, we do a lot of pop culture. What color is Thor, or what color is Yoda? And that it is fun to sort of look at characters and sort of get a sense of what their motivations are, what are the tools available to them, stuff like that.

So blue and red… oh, by the way. Blue/red, by the way, when you look at all the guilds and you say to the public, “What is your favorite guild?” By self-identification, Izzet is number one by self-identification. That when we say “Hey,” you know, “You can join a guild and you can pick whatever you want,” that people tend to gravitate toward blue/red.

I’m not sure what that says. It’s very interesting. We know that blue as a color tends to peak very highly for Magic players, just because game players in general tend to have a little bit more of the intellectual side. Shared with blue.

Anyway, a little tidbit, that Izzet is the number one self-identified guild. And I’m in the guild.

But anyway, my friends, I am now arriving at work. We have a little less traffic today, so you got a bonus extended version of blue/red. So obviously, last time I talked white/black, which means next time I will talk black/green. We will learn all about life and death and the conflict there.

But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the little tiny peek into the world of blue and red. But I have just parked in the parking space. So we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking Magic, it’s time for me to be making Magic. See you guys next time.