The recent trend in Magic design: color pie first
Looking at the big picture of Magic design, I wonder if Rosewater has come to the conclusion that the color pie is such a central aspect of Magic that it is impossible to design a block that does not focus on it, one where, whatever the theme of the block is, it is tweaked and adjusted in such a way that it serves to illustrate the current R&D philosophy regarding the color pie, rather than being developed on its own as a theme and then divided and slotted into the color pie without any fanfare.
Right now, we have a multi-color block that focuses on the synergies between the mechanics and flavor assigned to different colors -- "what red ability, what green ability and what black ability would fit together on a card to make a good red/green/black gold card?"
Before Alara, we had Shadowmoor and hybrid where the focus was on the overlap of the different parts of the color pie -- "what ability do red and black share that would make a good red/black hybrid card?"
Before Shadowmoor, we had Lorwyn where one of the main innovations over Onslaught was that the tribes spread into two colors instead of having one color per tribe (the other main innovation was making use of the class/tribe dichotomy, and I suppose you could count the changeling ability as well). It might seem like the connection between Lorwyn's theme and the nature of the color pie is weak (it's certainly weaker than the surrounding blocks), but still for me a large part of what was going on in Lorwyn was the exploration of the interaction between creature types and the color pie. "What makes a black elf?", "What makes a black goblin?", "What makes a white goblin?" "How do Kithkin and Giants overlap in the white slice of the color pie?" There was even some continuation of this exploration of the relation between color mechanics and creature type into Shadowmoor -- Elves went from green/black to green/white back to monogreen while other creature types got cards in wacky colors -- like monogreen goblins and monoblack merfolk.
Before Lorwyn, Time Spiral was all about the color pie -- past, present, and future of it -- with the color shifting in Planar Chaos being the most obvious example. A lot of the nostalgia in Time Spiral and future directions in Future Sight were not really abilities that were incompatible with the current state of Magic at the time. They were noteworthy rather because the abilities had been moved into different sections of the color pie. Scryb Ranger for example was remarkable in part because it was a new green creature with flying. Future Sight did not have as much color pie stuff going on actually. But still the tone of the block was set by the first two sets.
Before Time Spiral was Ravnica. I don't need to say much about that one. It was much more an investigation of specific color pair synergies rather compared to Alara and it's several color synergies, but still the idea is similar.
Before that you have a slew of blocks in Kamigawa, Mirrodin, Onslaught, and Odyssey that I feel are much less color pie focused. They all have set themes based on mechanics and different aspects of game play. Kamigawa had card types (arcane and legendary plus shrines) and some tribal subthemes. Mirrodin had artifacts. Onslaught had tribal but in a way that focused much more on the creature types than the colors and color overlap of tribes. Odyssey had the graveyard.
Investigating the color pie is obviously fruitful based on the make-up of the last five blocks' quality. I have nothing against investigating the color pie, but I think it'd be a nice change of pace to see another set that was more about mechanics and another aspect of game play than the color pie. Go back to the graveyard or choose a card type like enchantments. Or maybe another aspect that has never been a full block theme. Obviously the colors will still be there but I'd like to see a block where the focus was on something other than the color pie and the color pie just served to break that theme into sections rather than the color serving as the framework to which the theme must compromise itself.
posted by will at 9:17 AM
3 Comments:
On Onslaught-Lorwyn comparatives - I disagree. A lot of Onslaught tribal was Wizards doing blue things and Clerics doing white things (wizards drew cards and countered spells, clerics gained life and stuff like that) whereas Lorwyn is a lot more about the tribal identities - fae and merfolk play very differently, even if they're both in blue. The same goes for kithkin and giants, elves and boggarts - each tribe is focused on itself rather than its color.
1:22 PM
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8:34 AM
Thanks for the comment, Chris. I agree with your assessment of Onslaught, but I draw the opposite conclusion from it. Perhaps my point is so subtle that it's not worth making, but I'll try to clarify.
The color pie will always be central to any Magic set. By this I mean there will always (I hope) be roughly an equal mixture of cards from each of the five colors. Each color has its own identity so blue cards will always do "blue" things while green cards always do "green" things. I feel the version of tribal in Onslaught block follows this pattern. Wizards are the blue version of tribal while clerics are the white version.
With Lorwyn, the tribes were abstracted from the colors but then investigated through them. Before Lorwyn, elves were almost always monogreen. Most players who had been playing for a while could tell you what a green card would like and what a uniquely "elf"-style green card would look like. With Lorwyn, the innovation was the taking that unique elf identity and looking at through the lens of green-black. Opening up elves to black, the question becomes "what makes an elf green?" or "what makes an elf black?"
Perhaps if the Lorwyn tribes had been ones with less monocolored histories, it would not seem so obvious that this multicolored weighing of identity was going on. But with tribes like goblins, elves, and merfolk so firmly rooted in red, green, and blue, to me it felt like one of the main thrusts of Lorwyn was to look at tribal identity through the lens of color pairs (or a triad in the case of treefolk, or um elementals, they're a little too messy to discuss briefly).
I do think I could be overanalyzing things though. Even Torment had its investigation of the color black. Still I feel like, just looking at all the blocks ever printed, that Ice Age, Mirage, Tempest, Urza Block, Masques Block, Odyssey, Onslaught, Mirrodin, and Kamigawa were less focused on the nature of the color pie than Ravnica, Time Spiral, Lorwyn, Shadowmoor, or Alara Block (plus the earlier Invasion Block). My question is if it's still viable/desirable for R&D to make a block like one from the first list or if the designers have decided that the color pie is such a central part of the draw to Magic that every block must tap into it as a source of inspiration for the block theme and execution.
8:35 AM
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