
How the Magic: The Gathering Color Wheel Explains Humanity - exolymph
https://humanparts.medium.com/the-mtg-color-wheel-c9700a7cf36d
======
js8
On some level, I love this, it's just wonderful, lots of neat diagrams and
words and numbers that make intuitive sense. But "explains" is a rather strong
word. It's pseudoscientific mysticism, in the spirit of Pythagoreans or Jordan
B. Peterson. As long as we all understand this, good.

~~~
Garlef
The reason why it seems so appealing might be some kind of barnum effect [0] -
the effect that makes horoscopes work:

There's a lot of tiny bits of concepts that might resonate with someone (or
rather resonate with the learned cultural stereotypes carried by this person)
and so one buys into the whole package, disregarding the parts that don't
pattern match.

This idea is also applied at a larger scale by Susan Blackmore in her
definition of a `memeplex` [1].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memeplex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memeplex)

(Sidenote: I think a lot of the current cultural clashes in the western world
can be interpreted as two big memeplexes fighting each other, having each
developed strategies to be incommensurable [2] to the other side.)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-
Fran%C3%A7ois_Lyotard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-
Fran%C3%A7ois_Lyotard)

~~~
belly_joe
I think this is basically correct, and that the comparison to the way
memeplexes (lol memeplices?)construct worldviews is a good point that goes
unnoticed in a great deal of political discussion. Almost every ideology is
anchored to the real world by some element of truth.

Regarding the OP taxonomy, it makes me wonder if there's a way to aggregate
these taxonomies to see if extracting the relevant principal components (that
do map to the real world) from the subjective noise is possible.

One could imagine testing the Barnum effect in this way, writing a large
number of these personality descriptions and seeing if real personality traits
can emerge by having individuals rank which Barnum profiles best describe
them.

------
mynegation
Every time “Magic: The Gathering” is mentioned it seriously throws off my
phrase parsing for like half a minute. What about “the magic”? What is “the
gathering color wheel”? I wish “Magic: The Gathering” was in quotes.

~~~
aasasd
By now I'm pretty sure that English-speakers are gradually forgetting what
punctuation is. Quotes and commas are already basically dead—instead, we
receive titlecase and italics, and convoluted stream-of-words sentences.

~~~
praptak
Yeah, runs of nouns and gerunds are notoriously hard to parse. Even a short
phrase like "Finding Nemo Audience" cannot be parsed unambiguously. That's
what you get when most words can function as nouns verbs and adjectives alike.

"The old man the boat." \- a grammatically correct sentence in English. It's
like Perl of human languages :)

~~~
pwdisswordfish2
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-
path_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence)

Doesn’t really apply to the post title, though. Quotes would help. In Germany
we have a thing called “Durchkopplung”. Basically, there are no spaces allowed
inside nouns, so compounds are either concatenated or “durchgekoppelt” (which
nobody does, unfortunately): The Magic-The-Gathering-Color-Wheel. However, in
this case, the most elegant solution would simply be a more clear
construction: “The color wheel of ‘Magic: The Gathering’” or, less fortunate,
“Magic-The-Gathering’s color wheel”.

------
GuiA
The human brain loves finding patterns, meaning, and explanations ( _" the
platonic rises to the top"_, per Taleb), so you'll be able to do something
like this for pretty much any configuration of objects (all numbers are
interesting after all! [0]).

One could write a similarly convincing post about how the Terrans, Zergs, and
Protoss embody the 3 core pillars of humanity, complete with esoteric looking
diagrams. Read some Carl Jung, some Joseph Campbell, some TVTropes, and you
too can make your own grand unifying theory of human psychology at home!

The real insight for me came when I learned to hear what people were really
saying, when on a first date or job interview or meeting at a party, they were
telling me they were INWP or enneagram 14 second wing or a Capricorn rising
Gemini.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox)

~~~
dnautics
While I agree in the general, it's pretty clear that magic the gathering draws
considerable inspiration from human literature and culture, and was
exceptionally well planned and very carefully evolved over decades so if even
if these arrangements aren't intentional, they certainly aren't accidental.

~~~
buzzkillington
> was exceptionally well planned and very carefully evolved over decades

Have you seen the number of banned cards?

Or the fact that it's accidentally Turing complete?

This is a card game, nothing more nothing less.

~~~
dnautics
I was more referring to the cultural content (names, flavor text, art) than
the game mechanics. Besides which, Turing completeness, accidental or not, is
a silly metric that doesn't say anything about a game.

~~~
buzzkillington
>Turing completeness, accidental or not, is a silly metric that doesn't say
anything about a game.

You can literally crash the game so you never know if you've won or lost.

~~~
saghm
If you're referring to the Turing completeness, the algorithm and cards that
were found require both players to be acting in concert to achieve the Turing
machine; either player could stop at any time. I don't see the fact that
players can choose to act strangely in a game to be a reflection of the game
itself.

If you're talking about things like combining effects together that happen to
cause an unbreakable infinite loop, then I'd argue that you're wrong; there's
a rule that defines unbreakable infinite loops as a tie, so you know whether
you won or lost (i.e. you did neither; it's not an xor, although it is a
nand).

~~~
rcxdude
Your first statement is no longer true with the newest approach: it only
requires a tournament-legal deck and the player piloting it to set up (and it
could do so turn 1, though it's very unlikely to do so), and once set up it
continues with only mandatory actions (neither player has any choices to make
in the game, though either player could in principle concede).

But such things are not something which comes up in general play in practice:
to set up such a machine you have to ignore several opportunities to just win
the game. I've yet to even see an infinite loop which causes a tie.

~~~
saghm
> [https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/20325/will-
> in...](https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/20325/will-infinite-
> loops-still-force-a-draw-if-i-have-a-way-to-end-them)

See
[https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Ending_the_game](https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Ending_the_game):

> 104.4b If a game that’s not using the limited range of influence option
> (including a two-player game) somehow enters a “loop” of mandatory actions,
> repeating a sequence of events with no way to stop, the game is a draw.
> Loops that contain an optional action don’t result in a draw.

One (very contrived) example is the "three Oblivion Ring[0]" loop. Start with
no non-land permanents on the battlefield, then cast an Oblivion Ring. There
are no valid targets for the "ETB" (enters the battlefield) trigger, so
nothing happens. Then cast a second Oblivion Ring; the only valid target is
the first Oblivion Ring, so it's exiled until the second one leaves the
battlefield. Finally, cast a third Oblivion Ring; the only valid target is the
first Oblivion Ring, which is then exiled, causing the first one to come back.
The only valid target for the first one is the third one, so that one is
exiled and the second one comes back. The only valid target for the second one
is the first one, so that one is exiled and the third comes back. This goes on
infinitely, assuming no player has any cards that can respond to the ETB
triggers by either countering it, removing the Oblivion Ring currently on the
battlefield in some way, or putting another valid target for an Oblivion Ring
on the battlefield. This isn't likely to ever happen in a game, but with the
current rules, it's technically possible.

[0]:
[https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive...](https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=397760)

~~~
rcxdude
That rule is exactly where the the construction used becomes interesting: it's
built in such a way so that if the turing machine halts, the player who set it
up wins the game. If it doesn't, by the rule above, it's a draw. So it's
fundamentally impossible to tell the result of an arbitrary setup (and in
practice you could set it up such that it halts iff some unknown conjecture is
true).

Regarding the oblivion ring loop, there's an example of it being used on MTGO,
which doesn't end well (basically seems to crash the server and/or client):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGXG5rNe_tI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGXG5rNe_tI)

And here's the paper on the latest turing machine construction in mtg:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.09828](https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.09828)

~~~
saghm
> Regarding the oblivion ring loop, there's an example of it being used on
> MTGO, which doesn't end well (basically seems to crash the server and/or
> client):
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGXG5rNe_tI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGXG5rNe_tI)

Oh wow, I should have realized that somebody would try it out online just to
see what happens! I'm not surprised it ends up with some sort of clash; given
that it's Turing complete, the game engine obviously can't detect whether a
current state will end up halting or not...

> And here's the paper on the latest turing machine construction in mtg:
> [https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.09828](https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.09828)

Awesome, thanks! I'll definitely check that out

------
Kednicma
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
battle.

Blue represents drawing the right card, mostly by drawing a lot of cards. Blue
wins by controlling spells and hands. (When the article says "knowledge", note
that the MTG deck in play is called "the library"!)

Black represents destruction. Black wins by controlling battlefields and
removing blockers.

Red represents opportunities in the current moment and the random possibility
of change. Red wins by playing on offensive tempo (the "upswing") and
attacking vulnerable targets with instant abilities. ("Tempo" here is not
quite as in music; it means playing cards turn after turn with a reliable
ramping up in cost and effectiveness.)

Green represents growth and the potential for planning. Green wins by playing
on defensive tempo (the "downswing") and tilting the battlefield in their
favor over many turns.

Ideally, this system of categorizing by color works because there aren't any
big strategies to winning that aren't color-aligned. "Milling", the strategy
of deliberately destroying your opponent's library, is closely tied to blue
and black, which are all about libraries and destruction. Keeping a "zoo", a
battlefield full of mid-range on-tempo creatures, is closely tied to red and
green, which are the two colors tied to tempo.

[0] [https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Color](https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Color)

~~~
gpderetta
> Crucially, by design, no color is best

Except for blue of course.

~~~
GuB-42
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](https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Boon)

~~~
throwaway4447
No blue also got the best cards afterwards. Jace the Mind Sculptor, True Name
Nemesis, Delver of Secrets, Snapcaster Mage, Narset Parting Veil, Ponder,
Urza, Oko, Uro, etc.

Blue's color identity is just 'being really good at Magic' it seems

~~~
amyjess
Blue is the color of intellectualism and prioritizing logic. By its nature,
blue is prone to being good at strategy. Magic is a strategy game, so it makes
sense blue is inherently good at it.

And that's a bit tongue in cheek, but in all seriousness blue is the color of
mind tricks and the hacker mentality, so it makes sense blue prefers
manipulating game state in ways other colors just won't think of doing, and
unfortunately the game's designers grossly underestimated just how powerful
"manipulating game state" is.

~~~
throwaway4447
No I mean blue also got the best aggressive creatures and planeswalkers and
value creatures at aggressive rates. It has little to do with 'logic' they
just plain gave blue a 3/2 flier for one mana.

------
omni
> To keep reading this story, create a free account.

Yeah, no. If you're the author of this piece or you have a blog on Medium, get
off it. There are plenty of other, less user-hostile options.

~~~
ericsoderstrom
What do you recommend?

~~~
wsc981
HackerNoon might be a decent alternative, but I never tried posting there
myself: [https://www.hackernoon.com/](https://www.hackernoon.com/)

------
seph-reed
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 symbol in your brain.

There is always a solution that includes both "opposites" but is too
paradoxical feeling for us to yet see.

Overall, these "opposing" concepts are really just different means of reaching
the same juicy core of sentience, but nothing less than all at once will get
us the entire way.

~~~
scotty79
Yes. Things are complex and multidimensional. But projections to lower
dimensional spaces help us grasp it. Even if they distort the complex thing
somewhat. If you see enough projections you can get the idea and some
intuition about multidimensional thing. Much more than you could achieve just
trying to see it in its full complexity at once.

~~~
seph-reed
Super into this perspective. Unfortunately, I find myself around many people
who don't see the modality as a dimension lowering, but instead as the truth.
Which is fine, we're still very, very, very primitive. But I've been done with
the whole "balance" thing for ~6 years and philosophy gets pretty lonely
passed that hurdle.

For what it's worth, if anyone is interested, "paradox" has been _the thing_
for me since.

~~~
uoaei
What does the transition from "duality" to "paradox" look like?

~~~
seph-reed
Just going to wall of text this one.

For me, it was neurotic as fuck. I started to question how predictable I was,
and whether or not I could prove that the world around we wasn't just a tiny
fake spec generated in real time based off predictions of what I would do
next. The notion that my entire world could actually be very, very tiny as
long as I was predictable enough kind of got to me. I started trying to do
things I wouldn't do, and that was sort of a paradox. Eventually I began to
use randomization to try to throw off the feeling. Nothing really worked,
there's no way to prove that this isn't the tiniest matrix using advanced
predictions to generate just a little more than what I sense. Also can't prove
it's not a giant amazing universe. What-if-ism means: if it doesn't hurt to
believe something, and you're willing to cede it's probably not reality, go
for it. I like to believe in the universe as it's normally described.

Anyways, I find that the more I think about something, the closer I get to a
paradox. What's the point of philosophy? To prove there is no point. What's
the meaning of life? To understand there is no meaning. How do I achieve x
goal? Stop caring about achieving it.

In a few words, rather than things existing as opposites, they exist as a
paradox. They really shouldn't exist together.

As a WIP tangential thought (take it with a grain of salt, it's just for fun
right now): as much as we take it for granted, I think there's something
fucked up about a universe with both Cartesian and radial coordinates. Like,
they shouldn't be together. And why just those two? Why not more? Why not just
one? Seemingly things should be either universally relative, or personally
relative, but not both simultaneously. It's like we're trying to survive in a
universe with two disparate rule sets that by all accounts shouldn't be able
to happen at the same time, and yet they are. It's a fucking paradox.

~~~
uoaei
Thanks. It sounds like you spent a lot of time in Western philosophy and
paradigms of thought. These themes you describe are basically the complete
substance of Buddhism's various formulations and indeed most "Eastern"
religions. Though you are not using the forms of description employed in the
East, you are approaching the same ideas.

As a relevant example, consider the yin/yang symbol. It is composed of a
duality which at first glance seems mutually exclusive, but what is most
interesting about the two is actually where they interact. The paradox is that
one cannot exist at the same (space-)time as the other, but each requires the
other's existence to fully specify itself in terms of a cohesive concept. The
light and dark sides are descriptors of two sides of the same coin. Finding
the way to conceptualize that coin, rather than its sides, leads you to
paradox that paradoxically makes sense! Just goes to show how "rationality" in
the Greco-Roman sense is just one way to conceptualize our understanding, and
that there are more ways than that.

We understand reality through language primarily built on identifying by what
things _are_ and what things _are not_. But maybe this form of understanding
is limiting because it pre-supposes those dualities that make the language
work.

To your point about coordinate systems -- there's something to be said about
the ability to rationalize our sensory experiences into a formal logical
system of description. However the paradox is actually that neither of those
coordinate systems are "canonical" in the universal (literally and
metaphorically) sense. They are first-order approximations to make our methods
of reasoning (i.e., math) easier. But they do not reflect reality because, if
you take the dominant theories of physics as true, the idea of space with
curvature 0 or curvature +1 is a platonic ideal that cannot exist because
matter and energy are distributed inhomogenously throughout space and time.

------
h0l0cube
In talking about linking colour to ways of thinking, there's also de Bono's
hats:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats)

    
    
        BLUE   "The Big Picture"
        WHITE  "Facts & Information"
        RED    "Feelings & Emotions"
        BLACK  "Critical Judgement"
        YELLOW "Positive"
        GREEN  "New Ideas"

~~~
whatshisface
There's also the Whatshisface Schema:

BLACK: Big-picture executive thinking.

RED: Thinking like a Reddit commenter. (Glib, humorous oneliners)

ORANGE: Thinking like a Hackernews commenter. (Glib, contrarian milti-liners.)

YELLOW: The color of the sun, sunflowers, lions, and therefore courage and the
heart, as in middle ages medicine.

GREEN: Thinking about the environment, or money, or both.

CYAN: Coming up with business ideas similar to the printer ink pricing model.

BLUE: Thinking about celestial objects that are moving towards us, like
Andromeda.

VIOLET: Being violent.

~~~
bjourne
What about PURPLE?

~~~
usrusr
Following the scheme established by GP's list surely it would be something
about purpose? This won't stand well in a translation...

~~~
whatshisface
A translation would add to the mystique, remember that period when it was in
style to use everyday Japanese words as if they were all deep and mysterious?

------
platz
FYI - you can play mtg (even edh) online with your friends or randos:
[https://cockatrice.github.io/](https://cockatrice.github.io/)

~~~
Everlag
I'm obligated to mention xmage: [http://xmage.de/](http://xmage.de/)

Think cockatrice that trades ergonomics for a rules engine. Much easier to
play when the game just 'works'. It even has loop detection for when you go
infinite with triggers.

One thing to note is the community run servers are plagued with performance
hitches at peak time. If you play regularly on xmage with friends, I'd
recommend making an image on your preferred VPS provider and spinning up an
instance when y'all want to play.

~~~
schoen
> It even has loop detection for when you go infinite with triggers.

Apparently since you can construct a Turing machine in Magic: The Gathering,
this is a case where halting is formally undecidable in general. :-)

(not to suggest that any actual players have ever achieved a position in real
play that would be undecidable by this engine)

~~~
whatshisface
Uncomputable problems in MTG were an issue for a while but can be handily
solved with this card[0].

[0]
[https://scryfall.com/card/pvan/304/oracle?utm_source=mw_MTGW...](https://scryfall.com/card/pvan/304/oracle?utm_source=mw_MTGWiki)

------
aerovistae
This got me reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which is so
far a fantastic fan-fiction.

------
twic
Not the author's intent, but the descriptions would make fantastic mottoes for
a totalitarian state:

PEACE THROUGH ORDER

HARMONY THROUGH ACCEPTANCE (of your place in society)

PERFECTION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE (of the Party's teachings)

FREEDOM THROUGH ACTION (go to work in the factory, that is the true freedom!)

SATISFACTION THROUGH RUTHLESSNESS

~~~
mcv
They have little to do with how Magic works out in practice, though:

WHITE: swarm everything with little guys

GREEN: trample everything with giant monsters

RED: burn everything

BLUE: twist everything beyond recognition

BLACK: keep dragging up old, dead stuff

There's certainly little harmony and acceptance in Green. It's the color of
rapid growth, of everything can be bigger. The others I can kinda see if quint
at them a bit, but not green.

~~~
igravious
WHITE: defensive, protection from, …

GREEN: creature growth, +1 counters, …

RED: direct attack spells (fireball, lightning strike), …

BLUE: counter-spells, …

BLACK: don't play it (don't know), graveyard stuff?

\---

COLORLESS: artifacts 'n such

------
lifeformed
People who do MTG color wheel analyses are Blue.

------
tcgthrowaway
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?

~~~
thom
For what it's worth, I know enough people who went on from MtG to make a ton
of money in poker and/or finance that I'd probably perk up if someone with
decent Grand Prix or Pro Tour finishes popped up during hiring. That said I am
also biased and sentimental.

~~~
hkmurakami
There's a whole team of them in SIG, Pikkula now works at Citadel, John Finkel
runs a $1B AUM HF, etc.

~~~
thom
Yup, and a few went to sportsbooks or gambling syndicates. I wouldn’t want to
over analyse it but I do think there’s something to be said for having
viscerally suffered at the hands of probability.

------
bena
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 designer
of the game. For example: Black isn't satisfaction, it's looking out for
yourself. It's a selfish philosophy. Whereas one can find satisfaction through
altruistic acts. And you can argue every color is looking for satisfaction,
it's just that every color defines satisfaction in a different manner.

~~~
norswap
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.

~~~
bena
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.

~~~
chrisdirkis
You're using "wrong" to refer to the fact that the color pie was developed
arbitrarily, and so can't be descriptive of humanity or people.

The other poster, and the article, aren't claiming that the color pie was
developed with humanity or culture as a basis. They don't think that people
can be solely described by a color and a description thought up by Garfield as
a background for a card game. They don't disagree with you.

What they do think is: This is a useful lens to view people through. That's
why the article refers to the techniques as an intuition pump - they allow you
to use your intuition for a less complex space to solve more complex problems.
I think I believe that this lens is a good one, but I'm not sure your comments
engage with that angle at all.

Flat Earth is a great lens situationally, btw. If it's 3km East to the shops,
and 4km North to work, then I know that they're 5km apart. Maybe not exactly
right, but right enough. Easier to do that math in my head in a flat scenario
than to try use some GIS tool or an oblate spheroid model.

~~~
bena
But it's not a useful lens. It's overly simplistic and holds no predictive
power. It can only be applied in hindsight. Even as a narrative scaffold, it
fails because it creates one-dimensional characters unless you're pulling from
so many colors that you're not really using it anyway.

And the metaphor isn't the point. So trying to defend the flat Earth model is
missing the point of the metaphor entirely. It's an "ahksually" retort.

~~~
chrisdirkis
That's more the meat and potatoes I was interested in reading, so I appreciate
the response.

I think there are probably better lenses that are equally simple (maybe Big
5/MBTI, though I know little about them), but the advantage of the colour pie
is that MTG players already spend time engaging with it and have a broad
understanding of the tropes/stereotypes/etc. There's an example of applying it
in the article, but I'm guessing you think that that's an outlier situation,
and that it wouldn't broadly be useful. I can respect that, and I'm not sure I
disagree yet. Call me back in a year or two.

Hadn't thought of using it as a narrative scaffold, and can definitely see why
you wouldn't want it as your sole source for such. Having 5 possible character
themes and 10-15 possible relationships does not an interesting story make.

I thought that demonstrating the use of the flat Earth model as a lens would
be interesting, so apologies if it came across as a retort.

------
VectorLock
I'm sure there is a management/leadership training company out there who is
leveraging this in their materials.

------
Zanderax
If you want to learn more about the MTG color wheel or MTG design in general
check out the "Drive to Work" podcast by Mark Rosewater, the lead designer of
magic. Dude is wicked smart and very humble.

~~~
suyjuris
Drive to Work [1] is a great podcast. Most of it is, of course, about MtG, but
there are a lot of episodes about various things like writing, creativity, or
communication. Mark Rosewater is the head _designer_ , which means that he is
responsible for creating the general structure of a set [2] and not the
various stages of fine tuning that happen later on.

So there is a lot of content about designing for humans and little about
detailed number-crunching and game balance.

He also explains most terminology and concepts, so a passing familiarity
should be more than enough to understand the MtG-related content.

Also, no ads.

[1]
[https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Drive_to_Work](https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Drive_to_Work)

[2] Cards are released in groups, called sets. A set (usually) takes place on
a particular world and is connected to a part of the larger story, which are
reflected in its gameplay.

~~~
mapleoin
Could you or GP recommend a few best of episodes?

~~~
suyjuris
Just off the top of my head: Feedback (545, 199), Human Nature (329), Teaching
(415), Creativity (77, 551), Complexity (455), Stand-Up Comedy (347, 543),
Interviews (335).

------
b0rsuk
You may want to check out Blue Moon (Legends), a very enjoyable duelling card
game with limited construction aspect. It has 9 carefully constructed decks
that play very differently. It's a joy to see how differently they approach
victory and how well-balanced they are. The free application, with ML-powered
AI, is available at keldon.net

Do you know other card games with interesting and consistently defined roles?

------
mariocesar
I can't read it ...

Reading the comments here feels like when I was a kid and I listen to the TV's
neighbour and tried to imagine what about the movie was

------
atemerev
I respectfully disagree. Green in MtG is about growth, power of life,
abundance (not harmony). Black is about destruction, death and suppression
(not “individualism” or “at all costs mentality”). You can build your strategy
on all these.

~~~
brandnewlow
Sounds like you started playing in the 90s! Wizards has sanitized Black a good
deal since then to being less METAL and more META.

~~~
atemerev
Ah, OK. But is Blue still about clever tricks and negation? Or the author is
correct, and now they represent "knowledge" in general?

------
simonsarris
A much shorter version I made in 2018:
[https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/966111482395136000](https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/966111482395136000)

------
mattrp
Seems very similar to this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22064530](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22064530)
(Which isn’t exactly a great thing)...

------
swebs
Site appears to be down. Here's an archive

[http://archive.is/YALTz](http://archive.is/YALTz)

------
ai_ja_nai
Such a fresh piecce still today.

------
bikamonki
Under current events, I'd argue it does explain Humanity: look at a card
upright, white is at the top while black is at the bottom :(

~~~
tmsh
I 100% agree. This is where systemic racism comes from (black as destruction?
White as godliness?)

This is messed up and shame on those who don’t realize this and downvote you.

~~~
smabie
Black is bad because it represents the night, an evolutionary dangerous time.
Light/white is good because daylight is safe. Humanity has had these
associations long before race was ever considered.

