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How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

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Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#31

Post by Izkata »

Kednicma wrote: post #8

It is fun to see how much of this overlaps with the official guidelines for colors [0]. I think that the five colors are better explained in terms of deck strategies and win conditions. Crucially, by design, no color is best, nor is any combination of colors best. White represents not dying, both by preventing damage and by healing damage. White wins by having more health than their opponents, and outlasting them in…

I'd put blue down to slightly more generic "manipulation and control". It's the primary place for counterspells and other ways to screw with the opponent.

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#32

Post by bena »

norswap wrote: post #10
bena wrote: post #4

I hate these things. Richard Garfield took the concept from a fantasy novel, kind of said "Yeah, kind of like that" and didn't think any more of it. The reason is to limit the players' choices. If everyone has access to everything, there is no variety. There's a lot of bleed between the colors and a lot of things that just don't quite make sense. And they're also wrong according to Mark Rosewater, the current lead de…

All models are wrong, some are useful, yadda yadda. Of course it doesn't explain humanity, that's just bad clickbait. But clustering things together helps analyzing things according to a certain theory/outlook. You can use MBTI that way too, even if its fundation is unscientific. Ask any set of correlated-enough question, and you end up with a cluster of people/events that correlate with a slew of other things.

If you said the Earth was flat you'd be wrong, if you said the Earth was a sphere, you'd also be wrong, but if you said the second was just as wrong as the first, you'd be more wrong than either. Yadda yadda.

The article is flat Earth wrong.

Garfield needed a design reason to force players to include and exclude whole swaths of cards. Separating them by some arbitrary distinction solved that. Then he slapped some flavor on top of that.

There are serious color-pie breaks in the first set. Why? Because the philosophy wasn't a primary or even secondary concern.

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#34

Post by alexpotato »

tcgthrowaway wrote: post #12

On a side note: If you were successful in MtG and other 'deep' games, would you list it on your CV? Or does it still have the image of a children's card game?

Not necessarily related to card games but as a hiring manager I do take into account non work related hobbies.

For example, I played on a nationally ranked college club sport team(paintball) and was also the club president and team captain at the same time. This was on top of getting a dual-BA/MBA. Running the club and team was essentially the same as running a small business or medium sized department in a larger firm with a budget of $50K (this was all volunteer) and a "staff" of 20+ people.

The experience taught me that anyone who has done:

- full time college

- played, at a minimum, a club sport or was part of a debate team, competitive dance whatever

- was also an officer in said organization

had the wherewithal to "volunteer" three times for activities that required a large amount of commitment, discipline and organizational abilities. In other words, they chose to do more than the people who were just students.

I am, of course, biased because this was my background. That being said, I have always found a strong correlation between people with the trifecta of college/extracurricular/officer and the skills necessary to do well in a work setting.

YMMMV

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#35

Post by GuB-42 »

gpderetta wrote: post #14
Kednicma wrote: post #8

It is fun to see how much of this overlaps with the official guidelines for colors [0]. I think that the five colors are better explained in terms of deck strategies and win conditions. Crucially, by design, no color is best, nor is any combination of colors best. White represents not dying, both by preventing damage and by healing damage. White wins by having more health than their opponents, and outlasting them in…

> Crucially, by design, no color is best Except for blue of course.

It was definitely the case in the early days. It is evidenced by the "boons", cards that cost 1 and do 3 of one thing the color is supposed to do best.

The white one, Healing Salve, is very weak, it has later been replaced by a strictly better card.

The red (Lightning Bolt), green (Giant Growth) and black (Dark Ritual) are very solid cards and were seen in most decks of their respective colors in the early days of Magic, would be a bit too powerful today.

The blue one, Ancestral Recall, is part of the "power 9": the 9 most famous, overpowered and expensive Magic cards. It didn't make it past the ironically called "unlimited" edition.

https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Boon

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#37

Post by smallnamespace »

seph-reed wrote: post #26

The whole opposites/balance motif is just something humans are really into about right now because we can't yet compare more than two things in our brain at a time. In reality all of these things are orthogonal, and while we do have words to distinguish them, they are only "opposing" in the sense that there is a word specifically meant to distinguish between them. Whatever that word is, it's just an over-simplified s…

You might find Hegelian dialectics to mirror your train of thought here, if you weren’t already aware of it:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-dialectics/

I think where Hegel differs from you though is that the resolution of a contradiction can be something new and different, rather than just being an aspect of the original definitions.

Take ‘order’ vs ‘chaos’ - a resolution does not require choice between one and the other, but can consist of asking a novel question like what structure (order) of society best maximizes individual freedom (chaos)?

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#38

Post by saghm »

GuB-42 wrote: post #35
gpderetta wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crucially, by design, no color is best Except for blue of course.

It was definitely the case in the early days. It is evidenced by the "boons", cards that cost 1 and do 3 of one thing the color is supposed to do best. The white one, Healing Salve, is very weak, it has later been replaced by a strictly better card. The red (Lightning Bolt), green (Giant Growth) and black (Dark Ritual) are very solid cards and were seen in most decks of their respective colors in the early days of Ma…

> The red (Lightning Bolt), green (Giant Growth) and black (Dark Ritual) are very solid cards and were seen in most decks of their respective colors in the early days of Magic, would be a bit too powerful today.

I don't think those three are super comparable; Dark Ritual is much stronger than Lighting Bolt, which is much stronger than Giant Growth. Dark Ritual has purposely not been printed in a "standard legal" set since 1999; it's not legal in the Modern format (cards printed in standard sets since 2003), only in formats that allow cards from any time period. Lighting Bolt is legal in Modern, with its last standard printing being in 2010, although the head designer has indicated that they wouldn't print it in a standard set now. Giant Growth was printed in a standard legal set just last year, meaning it's still currently legal to play in the Standard format (roughly speaking, cards printed in standard sets in the past two calendar years).

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#39

Post by naravara »

seph-reed wrote: post #26

The whole opposites/balance motif is just something humans are really into about right now because we can't yet compare more than two things in our brain at a time. In reality all of these things are orthogonal, and while we do have words to distinguish them, they are only "opposing" in the sense that there is a word specifically meant to distinguish between them. Whatever that word is, it's just an over-simplified s…

Magic has terms for that too. Most decks aren’t mono-colored, people blend colors and those decks take a character and personality of their own.

A Green/Blue hybrid deck is called “Simic” and does encompass both sides. It refers to a kind of cerebral approach to cultivating nature, like a biologist or a gardener. The faction is comprised of weird genetic engineered organisms.

Black/White is called “Orzhov” and blends the desire for order with a willingness to cut throats to achieve your goals. The faction runs a sort of high value loan sharking operation.

Re: How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity

#40

Post by TheDauthi »

GuB-42 wrote: post #35
gpderetta wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crucially, by design, no color is best Except for blue of course.

It was definitely the case in the early days. It is evidenced by the "boons", cards that cost 1 and do 3 of one thing the color is supposed to do best. The white one, Healing Salve, is very weak, it has later been replaced by a strictly better card. The red (Lightning Bolt), green (Giant Growth) and black (Dark Ritual) are very solid cards and were seen in most decks of their respective colors in the early days of Ma…

Growth still gets printed pretty frequently. Pretty sure it's legal in standard right now.

But don't forget all of the other broken stuff blue had from the start: timewalk and timetwister, to name two.

We old people used to joke that the most powerful card printed of all item was "island".

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