Color and Philosophy in Magic: The Gathering

I’ve long felt that Magic: The Gathering deserves to be viewed as a fantasy setting supported by a trading card game, rather than the other way around. While Magic is best known for introducing the trading card game as a tabletop category, both within and beyond the game’s framework it has always been a fantasy property first and foremost, with its core focus being the five colors of magic itself, along with the philosophies and ideals they encompass. Now, with a Magic Netflix series on the horizon, it’s a good time to start exploring these colors, both in terms of what they mean to the setting and with regard to how they can be applied to other fiction and, arguably, real-life concerns.

Each color—white, blue, black, red, and green—aligns itself with a set of principles, which in turn determine the kinds of spells it can manifest and how it views the other four colors. In the image below, each color is allies with the two colors adjacent to it, and enemies with the two colors across from it (not adjacent). This has no effect on gameplay or deck building, but, philosophically, allies tend to see eye to eye with one another more often than not, whereas enemies have at least one area in which they cannot coexist. Mark Rosewater, Magic’s design lead, is a well-known defender and fan of the “color pie” and has a lot to say about the specifics of each color’s beliefs and mechanical identity. I listen to his podcast, Drive to Work, regularly, and I have developed a pretty good sense of what the five colors are about, what they’re trying to achieve, and how they agree and disagree with one another.

White likes blue and green but dislikes black and red, blue likes white and black but dislikes red and green, and so on. Wizards of the Coast

White

White is the color of order and structure, both worldly (laws) and spiritual (morality), and it uses these in the interest of forging a lasting peace. It insists that there is an objective right and wrong and that choosing wrongly is what disrupts peace. While white is not necessarily good—there have been some notable counterexamples in Magic lore—its beliefs align most consistently with what an average person in the real world might consider good. It believes in making sacrifices for the good of the group and is the most willing to die in the service of others. Though it seeks peace as an end goal, it is not pacifistic in seeking it, and it creates wards against anything it perceives as a danger to its ideal. For this reason, white is the only color capable of answering any threat in the game. However, as it is also the most naïve and closed-minded of the five colors, it thus has the least access to card draw, meaning it doesn’t always have the right answer at the right time. White finds its allies in blue, with which it shares a desire to improve the world, and green, which likewise has a group-above-self mentality. Its enemies are black, which acts out of self-interest at anyone else’s expense, and red, which seeks freedom from any kind of governance. Many Star Trek captains demonstrate a white mindset when they obey the Prime Directive at the expense of a particular planet or culture, and the sacrifices Janeway regularly makes in the earlier seasons of Star Trek: Voyager make her, to my mind, a paragon of white philosophy.

Blue

Blue is the color of intelligence and forethought. It seeks the perfection of itself and society, and it believes that the road to perfection lies in research and the acquisition of knowledge. If blue wants to solve a problem, it immediately works to understand the nature of the problem. This means that blue is the most reactive color, rarely making a move until it knows how to deal correctly with its obstacles. In a game called Magic, blue has spent a great deal of time studying the nature of magic and what makes it tick, and so it is the only color that is allowed to have counters—spells that nullify other spells’ effects at the time they are cast. It is also a strong proponent of physical improvements, i.e., tools, and, as such, it has a lot of cards that play well with artifacts. It is allies with white, which proposes structure as a means to solve problems, and with black, which shares blue’s interest in improving itself. Its enemies are red, which does what makes sense in the moment rather than planning for the future, and green, which believes that all necessary knowledge is instinctual, and that “perfecting” oneself only distorts one’s natural perfection. Many crime or tech dramas have at least one character who is completely blue. Likewise, Sherlock Holmes is often portrayed as a blue character . . . with varying levels of black.

Black

Black is the color of self-service. It sees a world in which is everyone is for themselves, and it thus seeks power to protect itself and will capitalize on every opportunity to achieve such power. Just as white is not inherently good but embodies many commonly agreed-upon “good” values, black is the opposite, and it harbors views that many would consider evil. Black disagrees with this, however, and denies the very existence of good and evil, claiming that they are social constructs invented by its enemies, namely white and green, to control others’ behavior. Black says, if you aren’t going to look after your own self, then it’s on you when nobody else will, either. In Magic, one of the things that makes black nevertheless seem villainous is that it has accepted death as the ultimate tool that the other colors shirk away from, and it is willing to use its own life and (preferably) others’ lives as resources, conjuring sickness and decay and raising vast hordes of the undead to do its bidding. It is allies with blue, which uses knowledge to gather power, and with red, which seeks absolute freedom. Its enemies are white, whose selfless and righteous motives are anathema, and green, which believes that everyone and everything is connected, so that promoting oneself at the expense of others is a self-defeating agenda. Naturally, few true heroes exist in black, as the more of the color’s mentality a character exhibits the less heroic they tend to be. Mark Rosewater offers George Costanza from Seinfeld as a slightly more sympathetic take on black.

Red

Red is the color of passion and doing what feels right. It seeks freedom to do what it wants, and it takes immediate action to pursue that goal. Red trusts its heart as its guide, and, while every color has emotion, red is the color that exemplifies letting one’s emotions flow freely, that does what makes sense in the moment, and that encourages others to do the same. As a result, red is the most creative color, and its primary weakness is its relative inability to think long-term. A lot of Magic fans misunderstand red as purely destructive. Red is a destructive color, preferring to solve its problems with lightning and fireballs, but it has tender emotions as well. And yet, a game about dueling wizards has trouble expressing that side of red. Because it believes in action rather than planning, red tends to focus on the early game, and it’s a great color for going for the early victory. However, the longer an opponent manages to hold out against red’s aggression, the harder a time red has closing things out. Red’s allies are black, which pursues power as its own kind of freedom, and green, which similarly values looking within oneself to find answers. Its enemies are white, which is responsible for the barriers that stifle red’s impulses, and blue, which emphasizes logic and thinking things through, as these tactics take too much time for red’s tastes. Ferris in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a prime example of red, doing things because he wants to, consequences be damned. He even drives (well, borrows) a shiny red sports car!

Green

Green is the color of nature and of harmony with oneself and with the universe. Its only goal is to preserve that harmony. While the other colors all seek to change themselves or the world in some way, green believes both are good the way they are, and that perfection only comes through acceptance of one’s part of the greater whole and the interdependence of all things. It is willing to accept change, but only if the change is natural and not instigated by people tampering with the order of things. It cherishes all forms of life and is the color of healing. Green has a wild side, though, as nature can be dangerous and predatory. Unlike black, however, green does not believe in hunting for sport, only for sustenance. It willingly accepts death, knowing that death plays a necessary role in furthering life, even if one’s own life must end to see life as a whole continue. In the game, green is the color of the land, and because mana in the setting comes from the land, green is very good at building its own resources, and it can easily incorporate other colors into its strategy. It plays a patient game, letting itself grow until it is too big to be impeded. Green’s allies are white, which looks out for the group even at the expense of itself, and red, which acts with its gut rather than overthinking things. Its enemies are blue, which pursues innovation that defies the natural state, and black, which shirks its responsibility to the group in favor of its own gain. Newt Scamander from the Wizarding World is a very green protagonist, as is Ace Ventura; they both have a love of all nature that pushes them into dangerous territory.

It’s important to note that the best characters are nuanced, and hardly anyone in the real world is solely one of these colors all of the time. Just as many cards in Magic are more than one color, we all exhibit aspects of each, but by teasing out our primary motivations or those of the characters we create, and finding the color(s) that represent these, we can find where they align with or oppose the other colors and what they represent. This can be a handy tool in creating supporting characters, as well as understanding why people in the real world are able to have such contradictory perspectives from our own.