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Episode 177: Shifting the Colors of Us
324 Plays2 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! The goblins are all back to talk about a new Melthos topic. In this episode the hosts talk about when characters have received new cards with new colors, and how that can be both a mechanical and story decision. They also use that discussion to talk about the concept of real life “color pie” changes.
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Transcript
Introduction & Sponsor Acknowledgment
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. I say we because we got the whole cast here, spoiler alert, which I don't know, maybe not a spoiler alert, whatever. Expectation alert? We're setting the expectations high because I'm excited about this. This is actually a topic that I've had in a Google Doc for a while, and then I thought it was really cool, and then I forgot about it. Then I wrote it in a different Google Doc and then forgot about it again.
00:00:58
Speaker
and then found it recently and started talking to these goblins about it and it was like everybody seemed to really get on board and get excited about this topic idea so I'm excited to finally bring this to fruition today. But before we get to that
00:01:15
Speaker
We got to thank the Grinding Coffee Company. Two episodes in a row. I did the opening and I remembered. That is probably a new record for me. Good shot. I mean, I am impressed. We love them. We love them. And unfortunately, I tend to forget and then have to throw it in at the end, which I always love thinking. I'm always glad to get it in there, but I want to try to remember at the beginning. It's the Grinding Coffee Company.
00:01:38
Speaker
When people haven't like realized that we're so off the rails that they've like shut off the episode. Yeah. Okay. Yes. So the Granny Coffee Company is a minority owned and LGBTQ ran coffee company that likes to support gamers and they've been supporting us for a while.
00:01:56
Speaker
I as I like to say I don't drink coffee myself. So that's not a thing for me. But I love a I know Hobbs does and Hobbs loves their coffee. And I love his stories about
Personal Color Identities in Magic: The Gathering
00:02:06
Speaker
their coffee that he drinks and makes into weird things that are I just got a couple of new bags. I'm trying to remember which ones I got. But I think I might need to make a coffee. Okay, simple syrup for alcohol drinks.
00:02:22
Speaker
So I'm going to derail the episode while we're doing the shout out for the sponsor. We should do a color pie episode of things you can turn your coffee into.
00:02:37
Speaker
But they're great. They also support us with all the charity stuff we do, which is fantastic. It's February as we're recording this. So we're a couple months away from mental health awareness month. And we have pride month and we're going to be doing stuff then and I'm, you know, we'll talk to Granny coffee company, but they've been great partners in the past. I'm sure that they will be helping us with these things again. So it's we love them. We love being supported by them. Always want to thank them. And if
00:03:02
Speaker
You're interested in coffee. Check out the show notes. We have a code there. We have our link tree, which has all of our links and all of our discounts because we have various other discounts that are available, too. But you realize that it's already halfway through February. May is going to be here before we know it. Mm hmm.
00:03:23
Speaker
We're not going to talk about that. I'm going to keep bringing it up because we've got a lot to plan for May for various things that we'll be talking about as we get closer. Mental health awareness month is a big thing we've done every year. We're multiple years now. I think since the second year of this cast, which is a lot at this point now, we're coming up on.
00:03:43
Speaker
Five years. Anyway, that I'm not going to talk about. So today we're here to talk about none of those things. That's for the future. But for the present, I want to talk about the topic of not just legendary, but creatures and characters who kind of came back and had different colors and some of their identity. And so speaking about characters and identities, I'm going to introduce myself because that's a thing that we do usually sometimes near the first half of the shows.
00:04:11
Speaker
I'm Alex. Maybe some new listeners are listening and haven't turned us off yet. So we could introduce ourselves. Yeah. So I'm Alex found on Twitter here and there.
00:04:25
Speaker
at Mel underscore chronicler. My pronouns are he, him. And I'm going to start this off. We like to do an opening question when we think of one at least five or 10 minutes before the show starts recording. And today we just figured we're talking about color identity. We're talking about characters. So we thought nice to just kind of start with our own color identities and kind of where we see ourselves.
00:04:45
Speaker
And I've talked about this a little bit, but I realize it has actually been a while. I, by and large, mostly, I see myself mostly in the lore hold colors, red, white. I like to say lore hold because it's not Boros. Both are red, white, but both have different representations of how to kind of be red, white, which was one of my favorite things about Cirque Saven. It gave several of those enemy color pairs.
00:05:11
Speaker
really new sort of versions, new ways to sort of mix those colors together and come up with something different. And that's where I see myself a lot like the
00:05:22
Speaker
the, there's definitely some strong organization and stuff within the White, but there's also, I have a strong spontaneity and I need some ability to do that. And so we talk about goal planning and things that I don't want to get too detailed into that. But for myself, it took me a long time to sort of find good ways to make goals for myself, because if they're too structured and rigid,
00:05:44
Speaker
then i feel constrained by them and i said i stop and if they're too open ended that i'm not working toward anything and they're just not useful and so it's been for me it's been trying to find that balance between those two. Sort of on the surface seemingly conflicting things but you can find ways to make that work and there's ways and places where they overlap and work well so that's kinda where i'm at.
00:06:09
Speaker
Taya, wanna? Hi, I'm Taya, at Taya Transcends on Twitter, pronouns are she, her, they, them. And my color identity is just guy with a capital R in U and a lowercase W and definitely the least on the white side, but heavily
Character Evolution & Color Identity Changes
00:06:30
Speaker
centered in red and pulling in those two enemy colors for balance, but the,
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah, I've always kind of felt that best represents me where I've been in life my past few years, and we'll discuss a little bit more about that later on in the episode. But, you know, I'm very much that...
00:06:57
Speaker
fiery center and passionate person, but have some, some order and, um, my life to at least, you know, I think that comes from the autistic side. It's being autistic and having ADHD means you want things to be the same, but not for long. Yeah, that's yeah. Yeah. I like that analogy.
00:07:21
Speaker
So I think that really describes Jeskai too, is you want continual change, but you want some kind of control to how that change is happening. And yeah, so I mean, more than necessarily the monastic Jeskai as a portrayed, I would say I'm more likely, I'm more like, is it splashing white than, you know, a monk in a tower?
00:07:48
Speaker
style, but that's kind of where my color identity is. We don't have an alternate representation of the wedge color, so I'll have to see. Maybe someday they do come out with one that's not quite as bookish or monkish as the Jeskai themselves are, but for now that's what I claim for my color identity.
00:08:09
Speaker
This could always, oh sorry, yeah, like I even introduced myself, but I was just thinking like this always could come back to what we've talked a lot about on the show, right? Like naming conventions are interesting so that we have ways to talk about like a shared thing, but like, yeah, red, white, blue is not necessarily the same as Jess Guy. It's been helpful to have the lore hold or the Strixhaven was really nice to highlight something that Alex, you've talked about this from a mechanical and just flavor standpoint for a long time, so.
00:08:37
Speaker
Yeah, and and it's interesting because you talk about and to, you know, Bogart the mic even longer to make it harder for the our third house to introduce themselves. The the just guy or an interesting thing and we might even get into this a little bit is we see when the topic, but the way that set was built, they were intentionally capital.
00:08:56
Speaker
you know, you for blue capital W for white with a lowercase r for the red, because of how that set was built. And that's a different sort of configuration from how you describe yourself. So it's interesting. I hadn't really thought of that with the guilds. Yeah.
00:09:15
Speaker
Hi, I am Hobbs Q. I'm back. I get to be here this week. I can now fully hear out of both ears again, which is a really awesome, amazing thing. You were missed last week. I missed that topic. That was a bummer. I was really bummed. But yeah, I just couldn't really hear out of one ear, which made recording awkward because everything felt centered off. I actually felt a little disoriented that way because I could
00:09:44
Speaker
like new sound was coming in, but then it was clearly only coming in on once. It was weird. So for me,
00:09:53
Speaker
I am base red, blue as well. So there's a reason that I'm on the show and I get along with my co-hosts. And I will say, you know, we all have this red piece of alignment to us. And Tay, I know you and I have talked a lot about the blue piece too. And I think that
00:10:15
Speaker
of the red-blue, I would actually fit in with the Izzet. The description of them being obsessive-keen and creative, who often have short attention spans, and are known to perform magical experiments with reckless abandon and spectacular but severe results. It just kind of seems like they don't necessarily want, if you think of them from
00:10:38
Speaker
Like their role, they don't necessarily want the guild to have like a homogenous approach to things, right? Or like the city. They don't want it to just be like this giant, like, what's the word? Hegemony? Is that how it's pronounced?
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah like I never knew like I've read like all those books for Ender's game all my life and was like I don't that's a word I still can't pronounce but anyway like I think that they would do that if I were to add on another color and this is something that I think is interesting when we think of like uh most of us like think about like you know like all these different aspects I would probably pick up
00:11:16
Speaker
a minor minority in like black and pushing me more towards like a Grixxis type build. There is that element that is I think to do with knowledge, but more knowledge is power. And just a fanboy confirmed. Yeah, I was like, let's be honest here. And, you know, I don't want to jump too far ahead. But what's interesting is this is a shift for me in where I
00:11:44
Speaker
This is a shift for me, like prior to finishing grad school. And that's all I'm gonna say for now, because it's gonna, yeah.
00:11:51
Speaker
All right, this is a shift. There we go. So I think maybe we've lampshaded this pretty strongly. Maybe we've highlighted or underlined it pretty boldly. But at this point, this is the topic where we're going to talk about characters and things. And I think there's some definite real-world parallels we could talk about and use some stuff from ourselves. So we'll get into the actual topics. I want to start.
00:12:18
Speaker
From this, one of the reasons this fascinated me is kind of from the Melthos angle, which is both the Mel sort of mechanical, looking at the player psychographics and why people like the game and how the people engage with the game. And you kind of have, from the aesthetic side, you have the Mel who like mechanical things and then the Vorthos, which are about story things. And these two
00:12:38
Speaker
aren't opposed to each other. There's just two different meters that you can kind of be at different points, you know, or the same point on both or whatever. So as Taya, myself in particular, talked a lot about meld though stuff on this cast, I think we're both kind of in that bucket where we really like not just mechanical things and flavor things, but we love when those things sort of meld
00:13:01
Speaker
And this is one of those topics that is really strong. Much like Slobad and Bosch. Oh, sorry, Alex. Oh, God. Yikes. Oh, man. Wow, Hobbs. Just coming in aggressive there. Well, it was so perfect. And then I was like, oh, crap. I know. Sorry about that, buddy. That's fine. Don't pay attention to that. Slobad's fine.
00:13:24
Speaker
Yeah, no, I slow. Bad is still dead. It's fine. It's fine. He's still dead. Wait, that's not anyway. Well, that's a thing. That's, that's a whole like several other conversations. So the point I'm trying to get at is this whole idea of not just obviously there's a lot of characters that come back.
00:13:41
Speaker
for various reasons, sorry, story reasons, various, we wanna fill out a set reasons, you know, you're looking at your dominarias and there's all sorts of like people who are coming back or their descendants or both. I mean, there's all of these things and there's specifically what interested me. I mean, those are cool and I love seeing those things, but what fascinated me in this sort of slice of these characters who come back and have different colors.
00:14:09
Speaker
within their card and where that represents, where that is a mechanical representation of a story thing that is developing in their character or is happening sort of in their life or in the plot that is sort of maybe a new setting where this character is cast in a different relief to what's going on and this puts them into a different color identity.
00:14:34
Speaker
I think one of the easier ones to talk about, if you've been around for a while, I guess I realize he hasn't been a character who's been relevant for a while, but Sarkin, the planeswalker Sarkin Volk kind of had this journey, and it will go into one of the several worlds where this is used more widely, where it's not just a single character, but where wizards intentionally use this as a tool, I think, to cast for this whole set, or multiple sets.
00:14:58
Speaker
And Sarkin started, he started, did he start? Green Red. He was green red as a planeswalker. Very sort of in that, that gruel sort of in the wilds and sort of, he was about dragons and he loved dragons and he's from this world where the dragons were all extinct.
00:15:14
Speaker
He loved going out finding dragons and I know he had more story to that But this this sort of led him and then he found bolus and got manipulated. He ended up black red He was in this bad headspace and he was reacting and then this sort of led him back to Tarkir He had the ghost of an elder dragon stuck in his head, you know, that's bound to cause some problems and
00:15:37
Speaker
Yes exactly and so he's biting my tongue, led him on this journey that then brought him back to Tarkir where he sort of Marty McFly'd his way into reinventing the timeline and bringing dragons back and then he
00:15:53
Speaker
Sort of ironically, was green, red, blue, bringing back the green again, bringing back that nature, tying him back to the colors of one of the clans on Tarkir after he erased them from history.
00:16:08
Speaker
But like, this is not new. So it's this, there was this definite, and then you'll see him in a lot of different places. He shows up mono red that I think is more filling the set or like we need a mono red Walker for this set. And we have 15 versions of Chandra already. Let's put circuit in this slot.
00:16:29
Speaker
And so there's possibly something there, but I think that the green-red to the green-black to the blue-green-red was a very clear story and mechanical journey for this character. Before I sit too long on the mic, because I could transition to the character that really got me wanting to talk about this episode, do you guys have anything you wanted to start off the bat?
00:16:56
Speaker
Well, I just want to go with one that's always been a disappointment to me because I can't run one version in the other deck. But Doretti, my favorite goblin, having his original red version from Commander set, which was largely defined by the fact that they were all monocolored commanders. And this is the first time we're introduced to him. And he's kind of just wants to build his stuff and do his thing and get back.
00:17:22
Speaker
They bring him back into the story and conspiracy too. He's red black and he's gotten a little murder. He's taking lessons from Grenzo on how to get back at people. So he's hanging out with Grenzo, maybe not the best crowd.
00:17:43
Speaker
learning, learning how to be a little on the murdery side, uh, picks up black and more than just the chaos. It's like he's learning how to be a goblin that isn't a goblin academic, which he was previously. Yeah. He was even, was he like, did they put iconic class? What was his subtitle in that? Yeah. His, uh, his.
00:18:06
Speaker
Ingenious Iconic Class is his red-black class. Which is a word that I learned from a video game podcast means to like try to tear down a system or something about religion. Which is kind of neat. So unfortunately, you know, I can't play them both in the same, I can't play Newer Doretti in the old Doretti deck and I've never gotten to have them hang out together and I've never really built a deck where the Newer Doretti fits in.
00:18:35
Speaker
Yeah, when you go from being a poorly respected academic to deciding maybe you can deal with people's long tenure by throwing them out windows, you didn't pick up black in your color pie at that point. Mm-hmm. Black is the color of defenestration. Yeah. And it's a card, isn't it? It is a card. It's one of my favorite words, too. Yeah, it's a wonderful word.
00:19:05
Speaker
Um, I guess before we move on to like Alex, I know the other character you wanted to bring up, but Sarkin, I want to highlight, um, one last thing. Yeah. The interesting thing was Sarkin picking up blue was Sarkin was mono red in the earlier version of Tarkir, uh, in the earliest, in the first storyline of it. So that could like turn into a dragon, um, within the time when there wasn't any, the wild thing to me is.
00:19:35
Speaker
The picking up a blue is one of the few that I have a harder time making a story for other than
00:19:43
Speaker
Picking up part of the clan, you know, like it's it really I guess it is A little bit and fate reforged and all of a sudden he was blue when he came back, right? So that's the one of the other ones we're gonna talk about I pick it up a blue is one of the fascinating things to me Okay, so this is a weird connection I just made but I think this might tie into his blue in Tarkir
00:20:08
Speaker
it's sorry in the cons in the early part dragons are extinct but he is this planeswalker who loves dragons he went out and found dragons and sort of in this world without dragons like you said he was the only dragon he kind he kind of carried that memory well now that things have flipped he is the only person who remembers the clans and now with that blue he carries the teamer he carries the memory of the teamer forward so it's kind of that flip for him who he is and kind of what he
00:20:38
Speaker
represents I guess what he's carrying with him. I think what's really interesting to me is I guess it's and we'll talk about this but from a melt those perspective, the blue really isn't doing much. Yeah, yeah.
00:20:52
Speaker
Like, it doesn't match. It's not really doing anything in any of the abilities. Well, I mean, sort of. Blue is draw a card, but so is everyone. Blue, but one man of any color is not. But no, that's more greenish. But yeah, his thing and mechanically. Yeah, I see what you're saying. The blue is the weakest mechanically in that card. Yeah, but
00:21:19
Speaker
But still, I think that that is more story, and that might be a place where they're just like... And also, I mean, in a way, in a very literal sense, in the first set of that block, that was about these three-color clans, and now Sarkin, in the last set, is the only three-color card in the set. Yeah. Yeah, that is a nice mechanical riff that they did. It's also the best art on a new Sarkin. Oh my god, it's really good.
00:21:48
Speaker
Agreed. I think we can all agree on that. Do you want to talk about Grenzo before I move on to my next person? Yeah, so I mean, we get to, you know, Grenzo getting moving, Grenzo has only got two cards, so we haven't gotten to see it a little bit. You know, when we first see Grenzo initially, he's, oh wait, is he, now I'm forgetting...
00:22:10
Speaker
uh black red in the first conspiracy moves to red in the second that's right so like it's a very interesting losing of a color yeah for the next time we see him yeah he had adopted the redy apparently apparently because like they're hanging out he's teaching him to become more mercury
00:22:25
Speaker
yet he loses his red or black but yeah he starts out as a dungeon warden you know like that's the main thing we kind of think of he has you know the the black there i really i mean i like it because it lets me play it um but i mean it doesn't make sense he's like watching over this like dungeon he's able to let people in and out his ability is kind of this
00:22:48
Speaker
put a creature card into a graveyard and then bring it into play based on a mechanical ability, which feels very black. And despite the fact that, ostensibly, he's working for the monarchy, he's taking care of himself first by who he controls, who goes in and out of the dungeon. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, that's my read of his black, which is interesting. You look at the black identity for those two characters, I think how it manifests in their character is different than both of them.
00:23:16
Speaker
Doretti versus Grenzo exactly and I like said now I have fascinated but the losing of the black is just because it's like he'd like gets out and he just starts Raising havoc, but yet he's hanging around with Doretti. So like, you know, why would he lose the black? I don't know
00:23:32
Speaker
I don't know. There might be some representation. Now he's no longer using that system. He's no longer part of that system. So now it's just like pure chaos. It's pure chaos. Red is the color of chaos. Red is the color of emotion.
00:23:47
Speaker
And so maybe there's just like, and I lost my job. And so now I'm not a part of the system. So now fire is cool, I guess. I lost my job. Like he's just like, I mean, that's even in his flavor text. You burn our pillage. Just like, sure. That's what we do now. I think it was more of just, um, the main set of, um,
00:24:15
Speaker
Conspiracy one. Yeah, conspiracy two. I was just going to say that the main set of creatures or the rare cycle at least seems to be mono color. So this was one where they might have just made the change for purely cyclical reasons.
00:24:33
Speaker
Right, which is that interesting interplay, right? Like the mechanics here match up with his flavor, as you said, Alex, with the burning and pillaging. It's a lot more, it's Goding creatures and exiling cards to get through that kind of where you get to play other people's cards until the end of turn.
Personal Growth & Real-Life Color Identity Shifts
00:24:50
Speaker
From a story, it's kind of this interesting, almost like similar
00:24:55
Speaker
if i go down too far down this i'm just gonna be on a cranco rant pretty soon it's almost like he loses some of his strength as a character when he moves to mono red with this like he has less purpose and it's almost like you said it's like a burn and pillage thing he just becomes like a running around trampling goblin versus yeah we could go on the whole thing about both granzo and um
00:25:20
Speaker
Oh, am I blinking at his name from Ravnica? Cranko. Cranko. Yeah. Kind of getting a similar treatment of Goblin that has a job and now we're going to give them a new character and we don't know what to do so we're just going to make them about breaking stuff because Goblin like to break stuff. So I'm not going to go down that. Yeah, I'm not going deep down this otherwise I'll... Yeah.
00:25:40
Speaker
I will pick up black in my color to murder. He could have easily still been black though because he's having them cause the chaos and he's collecting all the the bridges during the chaos. He could have still easily been red black. So this is like one that isn't, yeah this is like an interesting issue.
00:26:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, sorry. Yeah, and this may be one where and this is again was that sort of Melville's intersection where colors of the cards is very much a mechanical thing that is in the game for gameplay reasons and game design reasons.
00:26:17
Speaker
But it also sometimes is used to create story and sometimes it's informed by story. I think more often it informs story. So story is written a little post hoc to justify color identity things. But that's where it can be. I don't know. I think that's an interesting place as opposed to it hitting a point where it's like, I guess it was just a mechanical thing feeling kind of like a just a sucky place to be. But I think it's that an interesting intersection to look at that.
00:26:45
Speaker
But I want to continue, and I'm going to mention, it's funny, I did not plan for this to work this way, but I mentioned before the cast that I discovered there were several plans where this was done intentionally, obviously, where we have multiple things where this is happening. And if you know the story and you know the legends and things, there's two fairly obvious examples, one of which we talked about a little bit with Tarkir, that we can get more into later, because I do want to talk about the cons.
00:27:11
Speaker
But the third one that was less obvious was conspiracy, because there's actually four characters that have a color identity change. The two we've talked about, one which is a little weaker, kind of like Grenzo. So I'll mention real quick, I think this fits a little bit. And then the one I want to talk about, which kind of spurred this whole idea for me. But sylvala goes from green-white to mono-green.
00:27:34
Speaker
From conspiracy one to two it must be as you're saying Yeah, yes there really must be this like we need to move to a single color and I think that I think that could have been some of it from a from a gameplay thing there feels like a tiny bit of justification in the story a little bit and
00:27:51
Speaker
If you look at Green White, Silvala from the first set is in the city, but reading the story like was thrown in jail and then was released by Grenzo and kind of spent a long time in the wilderness, now came back to the city and this is like the Green White is about being in the city. I think Devmono Green is a little more about her time spent out of the city. And so the city kind of brings in some white in the color identity, but it's a pretty weak justification, I think overall.
00:28:20
Speaker
But I think Marchesa is a much more interesting character to look at for this. And so Marchesa, the black rose from the first conspiracy, is black, red, and blue. And then through events of the story kind of in between the two conspiracy sets,
00:28:40
Speaker
which were represented on some cards in Conspiracy 2. The Brago, who is the ghost king of the kingdom of this city, is killed and Queen Marchesa takes the throne and then becomes Queen Marchesa.
00:28:58
Speaker
It remains red-black, but then drops that blue for a white color identity. And this is one that I think is represented more in story than just trying to justify and fit things. And some of it is a big character like this. They probably would inform that a little more from the story, especially in a sort of format like this, where they're making a mythic. They can be like, ah, the mythic can be three colors. It's fine if that makes more sense for the story, as opposed to, I guess, as opposed to all of them.
00:29:29
Speaker
Regardless, I think that kind of fit for this. When you look at both the mechanics, like this is using the new mechanic from Conspiracy 2. When Queen Marchesa comes in, you become the monarch. Mechanic that is still, I think, my favorite mechanic they've ever made, specifically for multiplayer play. I love the monarch. I mean, we got Monarch and Go both from Conspiracy 2.
00:29:57
Speaker
Conspiracy 2 is, I love a lot of the things that that set did for Commander in general, but Monarch, it lets you draw cards, but it also, if somebody hits you with a creature, you late gain the Monarch, and so it really encourages play without throwing huge things, it encourages a little bit of back and forth on the field, but to really sort of
00:30:20
Speaker
build a full Maelthos on this card, not only does she make you the monarch, she has Deathtouch and Haste, and if at the beginning of your upkeep, if an opponent is the monarch, you get a 1-1 Assassin token with Deathtouch and Haste on the battlefield. These are creatures that people are not going to want to block because a little 1-1 token costs you nothing, and it'll kill just about any creature that blocks it.
00:30:44
Speaker
And it's only one damage, but if they don't block it, that assassin can take the monarchy back for you. And I love that sort of Melthos card just in its own. I also love that she's now a human assassin, which I'm just noticing in that. I mean, she did have Bronco assassinated. That is fair.
00:31:06
Speaker
I like sort of that representation. I think in there's some illusion in story and stuff in the first conspiracy that Marchesa is sort of vying for power. And she's sort of planning, you know, for some stuff she even gives has dethroned and gives creatures dethroned a mechanic that makes it. Another cool mechanic. Another cool mechanic. Yes. I mean, this set, it makes sense that this had such cool things for
00:31:35
Speaker
commander because it was meant to be a multiplayer draft set, which is just yes, we'll do right. Like that's like what reasons like boxes of these are kept, you know, one of one of my favorite multiplayer experiences ever was the first conspiracy my my local store was just like, yeah, we'll just fire them until people stop showing up for them. So I did like three of these in a row one Saturday. And it was just amazing.
00:31:57
Speaker
but like so in in her first card she has that blue she has the planning she has the scheming but then she wins her schemes pay off and now she is on the throne and by and large white is the color of cities white is the colors of i mean yes she literally is the law at that point so exactly and so i love that
00:32:21
Speaker
And that kind of thinking about that, honestly, building a Queen Mark, trying to build a Queen Mark chase a deck is what I think kind of put the seed of the idea for this episode in my head. So like, let's, let's talk about what the actual idea for the episode is. I mean, we're talking about Melthos and we're talking about these like color changes. But I think that there is something to be said for how color changes are used. Like what is the purpose behind them? Like what do they actually represent?
00:32:47
Speaker
We've talked a little bit, I think, with where we've been so far. You know, thinking for myself, I mentioned at the very beginning, right? Like, I think about this when I was in grad school. I took one of those guild quizzes. And hilariously, like, at that point, I came back Azorius.
00:33:05
Speaker
It was this interesting thing for me. I was still finishing up a very heavy academic program. There's a lot more probably rules and bound things to it. So I'm kind of seeing these life events understanding or underscoring what can be my own shift. It's like the decisions for when Wizards uses them
00:33:30
Speaker
has been a fascinating thing for me. Like, this has been a topic that I've been interested in, just why do they use it? So, yeah. Yeah, I mean, and to speak to myself just a little bit, I know it's an interesting... To talk about color identity in this, again, is a thing I've kind of talked about here and there, but it's still a thing that I'm mindful of, like, despite my primary colors being red and white, and one thing I want to underline, too, and didn't quite in the opening, so I'm doing it now.
00:33:58
Speaker
a few number of years ago, people, you know, on Twitter would kind of do the little emoji thing like what are your colors and there was certain like sun for white and all of this. But like, most people would have a little bit of all five and then whichever ones they thought they had more you stack because by and large, just little bits of
00:34:14
Speaker
very few people are just like a thing or two box, you know, especially with the color pie, even as somewhat open as these things are, it's pretty narrow to be like one color. And so when I'm saying red, white, and I feel I think I can't speak for the two of you, but I think it's a similar thing where it's like, I mean, it doesn't mean there's nothing of the others. But like, these are the prominent things for me right now.
00:34:39
Speaker
But that also means like, one of the things that I've kind of I've been trying to do is intentionally keeping in mind there's there's an aspect of sort of the black color pie, that each person, this is just comes from like Mark Rosewater, and he sort of writes up big things about the philosophy of the different colors. But in black, one of the big things that black believes is each person is best suited to take care of themselves.
00:35:06
Speaker
There's lots of ways to take this often you know the sort of black characters of black in the color pie that are more villainous or like using this to be very you know take themselves regardless of what other circumstances are for other people but this is a thing for myself to keep in mind both for me there are times where i need to be more.
00:35:29
Speaker
I need to be more active in doing what I need to to take care of myself and not worry about other people as much. But also there's the thing of if I'm working with other people a lot, it's like I have to keep in mind that generally they are going to know how to take care of themselves better than I can. And even if I want to try to help, letting helping empower them to take care of themselves is better than me trying to take care of them.
00:35:53
Speaker
And so there's, for me, that's a big part of black that I don't really consider myself Mardu in that way, but that is a piece of the black color pie. I'm very specifically trying to sort of build it myself over the last few years. Yeah, I really like this thought of, you know, I mean,
00:36:13
Speaker
We've talked about this, right? Like Kamigawa, when black was like the representation, like white represented like the villain or the evil versus the black and like those flips that we have. And thinking about it for my own color pie, right? Like if I'm thinking of the red, blue, which qualities of red and blue am I referring to? Yeah.
00:36:37
Speaker
from a narrative perspective, like my own story, a narrative, like this is why I said it was interesting for me to think a little bit more about this in terms of like, where is the shift bit for me? Yeah, I mean, my case, I have a very clear shift, which is the point where I transitioned and
00:36:55
Speaker
You know, I was thinking about this earlier when we were discussing this topic and it's like, what was my color identity before? And I think it was pretty white, black in the lifeless sense where there's just nothing, there's no joy over anything. It's empty, empty routine, empty feeling. There's no,
00:37:19
Speaker
There's no positive in anything. And that really kind of feels very white-black to me, where it's just you trudge through, you follow, you do what you're supposed to do. You're not stepping outside the boundaries that have been set for you. And you're just surviving unless you're the person who's on top of the black-white hierarchy and then
00:37:48
Speaker
your life might be pretty good. But for most people, black and white together are an oppressive place to be. And it really is kind of that life without joy. You get to be a zombie, and that's kind of it. And that really was my life before transitioning. And now I've kind of shifted to the complete opposite side of the color pie. Well, and even the elements of white that you've retained,
00:38:17
Speaker
as you're saying, are a little bit different than those ones that were more about the slave to retain, or just going along.
Nissa's Character Development Through Color Changes
00:38:23
Speaker
So yeah, it's more. You know, I think what I want, you know, what what I've retained and white especially is more, you know, the care for the wider community and trying to do what's, you know, do what's best for a lot of people at once. And I think that
00:38:47
Speaker
Um, you know, you mentioned having that Azorius backset, you know, I, I have a lot of problems organizationally with Azorius because I think it's, it's a logic and rule without reason. So I think it really needs the red to be balanced. Um, maybe that's just the red mage in me saying that though. Um, give it some emotion. Yeah. You know, because otherwise you end up with a, you end up with a.
00:39:15
Speaker
system of law that doesn't work for everybody.
00:39:18
Speaker
And sometimes don't, does it work for anybody? Yes. Or sometimes just doesn't work. Yes. There's a, there's a like white, blue ish, you know, a zoriousness in the like runaway AI is that decide that humans are the biggest problem for human happiness, which I mean, they're incorrect, but, but then the next step of that means no humans means no issues is like, well, this is an issue as well. So, um, but.
00:39:48
Speaker
I think for me, it's kind of having that in the major life event where I don't think most people, you know, everybody has a little bit of everything that's, you don't have, you're not fixed in, you know, that way people aren't one dimensional like characters can be. And everybody has
00:40:09
Speaker
you know, aspects that are part of all colors, but, you know, it takes a thing of a fairly big life event to shift what your underlying color philosophy is. I know that the one that kind of is pointing me towards that is I think that the most fascinating one for me as we were kind of talking about this in the Discord and getting prepared has been the evolution to see Omnath.
00:40:35
Speaker
Like each time we turn around, I'm not this slowly picking up this move towards five color. You know, in a way that we've never seen in the story before, you know, we, I'm thinking of what we've seen characters become five color, and I'm going to need help to think beyond NIV, because NIV is the only other one I can think of. And it was really like a cataclysmic like world event.
00:41:00
Speaker
that pushed Niv into the five colors like being a reborn and to represent all of Ravnica. But Omnath is the only evolution that we've seen that's really moved us just like from mono green carrying about just the mana. Next time we see picked up a blue that's carrying a little bit more about the... Ah! Is that actually the order? Is it? The green red is the second one. Green, green, red. And then green, red.
00:41:29
Speaker
blue blue. Yeah. And then picked up white. And then picked up white. And I forget what the green red one is that the one that makes makes tokens makes out when things explode when you're explode. Green, green, green, red is angry amnath and is in my landstack. Nice angry. causes explosions. And that's great. Yeah.
00:41:47
Speaker
But each time we've been coming back to see Omnath, like they've been picking up another piece of the color pie. So like that to me is the most fascinating one to see like this evolution through everything to pick up being five color. Like we want to say everybody's got a little bit of it. Omnath is to me story and flavor wise for like each time the Malthus combination. Yeah, and you know, it starts as just it's something born of the royal itself.
00:42:15
Speaker
You know, as the flavor text on the original one is from the Royal Emerge, a ravenous primordial being of pure mana. So it starts as nothing but green mana, but as it wanders Zendikar, it picks up the aspects of the lands that it travels over. Yeah, and I, and maybe I'm not, my impression from the green red was because that was during the return to Zendikar when the
00:42:42
Speaker
It was the big thing with the war with the Eldrazi. And my impression was that the red or the angry Omnath kind of came from the destruction that was happening in Omnath sort of being more like striking back about them. Right, against the Eldrazi. Yeah, I mean, as far as this is a legendary character we have four cards for and has been in development for years. We have no real story about Omnath at all. Definitely. Yeah, we're seeing this represented only through card.
00:43:10
Speaker
Yeah, and my very cursory glance, which is going to miss some, but just Scryfall Legendary five colors, there's only three, I would say, that even change colors. And one is a sort of technicality and the other is Niv-Mizzet.
00:43:28
Speaker
It's the other one, Jessica. Yes, correct. Okay. And that's why that one's only sort of. We have characters that get combined into something else. Like that's a weird asterisk for this. The whole Odyssey storyline is a weird asterisk. When characters get melded or combined. I mean, we're here to talk about a togga togg, right? Yeah.
00:43:57
Speaker
Clearly growing from the original atog to grow up to be a toggatog. Yeah, obviously exactly A toggatog is just an atog that you know took the I'll try anything once approach and then decided that everything is delicious including other atogs Yep, I'll try anything once became I'll try everything once and there's a there's a difference there
00:44:28
Speaker
But yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I mean, kind of. Sticking to Zendikar, we also out of the planeswalkers, I think we've seen some of the biggest changes have been, you know, another one we have a lot of changes for as Nissa. Yes. You know, she's been mono green most of the time, but we got the blue green version when she was hanging out with Kefnet on Amonkhet.
00:44:55
Speaker
And, uh, which I'm going to, sorry, to distract just a moment to talk about that blue green, just a little bit in the, in the desert, because there was a weird, I had a weird little moment like this. This was resonant to a little bit of a, of a moment in my life when I went to California years and years ago, I was 12. So it was a long time ago.
00:45:16
Speaker
I at this point can say decades ago to visit my my grandpa who lived out there at the time. And we went to the Botanical Garden out there. And I there was a lot of stuff that was this is like plant life that lives in the desert and being in Minnesota and growing up on TV and cartoons. My impression of the desert was there are this exact one type of cactus and that is all that lives in the. Just borrow cactuses and nothing else.
00:45:45
Speaker
nothing else. That idea of seeing all this different type of life that lives in the desert and how it is adapted to live in this different environment that would feel so foreign to a forest dwelling nature centric person. And then learns, oh, there's a different way for life to be in this environment was actually a pretty resonant moment for me. Yeah. And, um,
00:46:12
Speaker
You know, she really does for a little bit kind of thinks of, you know, what's the bigger picture and thinks things through. I always thought it was a little bit of a stretch that she got another color just for that set. I can see mechanically why they did it. It fit mechanically with the set. It fits mechanically with the card.
00:46:31
Speaker
And my reading, which I actually, I read the stories a little bit around there too, is I think it was kind of two sets in a row. Cause it felt like it was a little bit of Caladesh where she had a similar thing, which is like, this is a big city. Life isn't going to exist here in a way that matters. And then she went to the desert and was like, okay, now I'm starting to get this idea that
00:46:52
Speaker
things can be different in a different place. Right. Yeah. Well, in the Kaladesh that she had all the time with Yehenni and kind of developing that idea of like life might be different, you know, life doesn't have to be the same or even artificial life, like the Aetherborns that come out of nowhere as part of a manufacturing process, you know, are still life.
00:47:17
Speaker
So she had a lot of introspection in that part and then carried it into Amonkhet, where she actually got along pretty good with Kefnet. Before the rest of that set happened. Yeah, before all the rest happened. But another just amazing piece of art. But then we get the green-black version in Return to Zendikar, or Zendikar Rising.
00:47:44
Speaker
And this one is the one that to me made very little sense other than mechanically. She's back on her home plane. She's depressed about everything that happened in War of the Sparks. She could definitely use some professional help with some counseling or therapy or something. She's having a pretty bad time, but she's there on her home plane and everything's kind of going her direction. I don't know why she took a black in this.
00:48:14
Speaker
instance Yeah, I it's it's a bummer I mean, I mean maybe this speaks to kind of what the issues with writing Nissa I mean or or designing Nissa cards They like want to add a color to Nissa just because maybe they feel that they're so like they've Exhausted a lot of what they can do with mono green especially if they've kind of filled that slot with other characters like
00:48:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Vivian's become kind of the main monoreme planeswalker. But yeah, I just like, I like the black doesn't really make sense. Yeah. Story wise, it didn't. I mean, she's there. Zendikar's recovering. It's getting healthy.
00:49:02
Speaker
She does make some selfish decisions about, you know, how she proceeds through the story and basically she's like, I'm going to protect Zendikar my way and I don't care what in here he wants, but that doesn't make you.
00:49:14
Speaker
That doesn't be a black color alignment. That's more, you know, she's doing what she wants to do. And that can be any color. And this is a little post hoc justification. But there is a I think there might be a little sliver or maybe again, this is me just trying to justify it. But after she left the gate watch,
00:49:38
Speaker
on Dominaria in the story, this is the next time we see her. And in a lot of ways, she did that for her own mental health. She did that for her own well-being. And that's a little bit of that black color she shows up in War of the Spark. Oh, you're right. And that is mono green.
00:49:56
Speaker
Yes, yes, you're right. Yeah. She drives it like a mech and ends up getting it totaled. Yeah. Once again, since that never happened, this really is the next time that we see Nissa. So I think Alex is still correct, just because you know,
00:50:17
Speaker
This is the black that is the black of self-care, right? Alex liked the burnout nissa, like she left the gate watch for her own thing and since war didn't happen.
Omnath's Unique Journey to Five-Color Status
00:50:29
Speaker
Yes, speaking of post hoc justification. I mean, I like that post hoc justification to look at black as a choice and intentionality towards self-care. Like that's the part of, you're like, this is where I would love to see it explored. Yeah, exactly. That's the thing that we are reading it. We're now giving it to her.
00:50:50
Speaker
Yeah, we're reading it into the story and it isn't necessarily there, but well, isn't necessarily maybe a strong term for it, but it would be nice to see maybe more of that show up in story as things move forward and the universe isn't actively on fire right now like it is right now. Once we've moved past that, it would be great to see some of these smaller character things happening amongst characters who have
00:51:16
Speaker
Yeah, I hope we get some more breathing time, you know, with some more character development. And, you know, I think there's some promising stuff coming with the story from what Seanan said, and just the story structure and everything. So we'll see how that turns out over the next year. Yeah, I mean, and I do appreciate
00:51:39
Speaker
In general, again, someone's news listening, you may not realize I am mostly I'm doing my best to avoid, like actively knowing anything about what's going on in the story and not doing a great job. Well, unfortunately, just it's hard. But there's some elements of the story that I just have a very hard time with. And so I'm trying to avoid the magic story as much as I can currently with the whole phyrexian thing going on.
00:52:03
Speaker
but from things I've seen just getting in new people to write and a lot of the stuff that I've seen even in the last few years before the Phyrexian stuff kicked off there's just a better and maybe better a stronger emphasis for story and trying to have some some good cool story stuff and even just things like Commander Legends that printed a few years ago I thought was a really
00:52:27
Speaker
and writing story for these characters was a cool, I mean, and we had some of that with some of the Commander products a little bit, but this was like, no, we're going to give you a blurb for every single legend in this set. And even if it's not a ton of story, it helps to flesh out the world, the world's, it helps to build more flavor and character, literally.
00:52:49
Speaker
Yeah. And we've gotten, they've carried that forward. I know you're, you're tuning out of the story right now, but we did get a legends of New Phyrexia or Phyrexia all will be one. So they've been doing that where every legendary gets at least a blurb about them. That's fantastic. I love seeing that.
00:53:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's been probably one of the better things to at least be done, I think. Because like you said, this is to me a clear example, like we have so much on Omnath without having anything on Omnath, right?
Conclusion & Listener Engagement
00:53:15
Speaker
Which is interesting to me, especially when we're likely to return to a five color Omnath at some point. Yeah, I mean, at this point, it is just a
00:53:25
Speaker
open loop like it at this point. It's a it's a cycle that's income an incomplete cycle. Clearly going to I want to see them psych everybody out and take a color away. Just build it back. Oh, green. Oh, no, just take green away. There we go. Like I'm not somehow just loses green. See I need I want that justification now.
00:53:51
Speaker
Ramp it back down into colorless Omnath. Yeah. Yeah. At that point, he's just an Eldrazi. There are a handful of non-Eldrazi colorless things. Most of them are all good. He's a giant force of nature, so he pretty much is a... Yeah, it's hard to... I was also like, there's not very many colorless things on Zendikar. Yeah, that's also fair. Those are not Eldrazi.
00:54:22
Speaker
Well, I think we kicked this topics, but yeah, I like this. Like I said, I, I love looking at color representation and why changes happen. So yeah. And I would like to say, you know, who are your characters that have changed color that we have, we didn't discuss or didn't talk about, you know, let us know, you know,
00:54:42
Speaker
Um, we want to hear about it. There's a lot speaking of. Yeah. Say speaking of open cycles. I mentioned that there were three sets and then only, we only talked about two. We never talked about the third one. Does, does other people get you onto what that one is? No. I think, I think, I think we leave that open and let the listeners figure that one out themselves. Yeah. And that's our show for today. You can find all of the hosts on Twitter for now.
00:55:12
Speaker
Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ, Tay can be found at Tayatransends, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the Goblin Lord pod on Twitter or email us at goblinlordpodcast at gmail.com.
00:55:29
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood Gob's Hugs, our link trade can be found on our Twitter account and in the description of today's show. This has everything from various discount codes to the link for our Patreon. The music for today's show was by Wintergotten, who can be found at vintergotten at bandcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at stevereffel on Twitter. Gob and Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content.
00:55:57
Speaker
Check them out on Twitter at hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.