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The Flavor of MTG's Color Pie: Part 3

Due to the length of this article I have split it into parts. You can read the first part here(https://douglysium.tumblr.com/private/672979718186975232/tumblr_r5hjo0WAWg1ycm9nu), the previous part here(https://douglysium.tumblr.com/private/674492017813995520/tumblr_r6cgia0ylr1ycm9nu) and the archive for all the parts here(https://douglysium.tumblr.com/private/674925836218056704/tumblr_r6lbqjvvcs1ycm9nu).

Factions

As always before we talk about something we must first define it. According to Mark Rosewater’s “FACTION PACKED” article there are four requirements that must be met for a group to be considered a “faction” in a Magic the Gathering set or block. #1: The set has elements that, mechanically and flavorfully, represent various groups, #2: Each group has a mechanical identity, #3: Each group has a creative identity, and #4: The relationship between the groups defines the set.

Mark extrapolates on each of these points and I think it is important to at least skim over them in order to get a better understanding of what he’s talking about, starting with his first point.

Flavor-wise, factions can represent any number of things. It can be anything from students majoring in different things in Strixhaven, to the occupants residing on different worlds, such as how Alara’s shards once were, to different groups that are all living together across a plane, such as the tribes on Innistrad. While there are plenty of factions who fight each other, such as the two sides of the Mirrodin/New Phyrexia conflict and the guilds of Ravnica, there are factions that live in peace with each other, such as the colleges of Strixhaven. What the goal and identity of each faction can vary greatly, but one of their most important features is that one faction is going to have to coexist with at least one other faction in some way, and said world tends to be affected or shaped by whatever kind of relationship the factions have with each other in some way(because what’s the point of having only one faction with nothing else for them to bounce off of?). The contrast between the factions is also important, or else you risk them all just muddling together either mechanically or flavorfully with no distinct difference.

While there are many different things that can define a faction, they tend to be balanced around the color pie in some way. This balance can be as specific as a unique mechanic or gameplay style, such as the keywords of the Ravnican guilds and the gameplay styles of the Strixhaven colleges, or as simple as what colors a faction is made up of and has access to. Due to the fact that there are five colors in Magic factions tend to show up in sets of five or ten. They also tend to have access to the same number of colors but this is not a hard rule and factions, such as the ones on Ixalan, can each have a different number of colors, and there do exist sets and planes with less than five or ten factions. The color pie also tends to influence the goals, workings, and culture of a faction

One of the most popular ways to give a faction a clear and easy-to-understand mechanical identity is via a keyword.

Maro highlights the fact that while there are cases with factions having more than one keyword, there will usually only be one keyword per faction if there are more than four factions. This means that only one faction can have said keywords. This doesn’t mean that there can NEVER be a card outside of the faction that has that keyword, it just means that the other factions in the set or world cannot have said keyword.

If the Selesnya has Convoke then none of the other Ravnican guilds can have Convoke, even if there might be a card in some other non-Ravnican set that has Convoke.

Factions also tend to have a certain playstyle they lean into or gravitate towards that also helps reinforce what the faction is all about. If you were drafting a Ravnica set and decided to draft Red and Blue it is pretty clear that you are going to be casting a lot of instants and sorceries, and keywords like Overload and Jump-Start not only reward you for choosing to play instants and sorceries but also helps give you the vibe of a bunch of mad scientists tinkering with spells and magic in a manner that can sometimes lead to some destructively explosive consequences.

Sometimes a faction’s theme can be reinforced without the use of a keyword. For example, Strixhaven’s Lorehold college cares and rewards you for playing stuff from the graveyard which helps tie into how they focus on digging up history and the past while also setting them apart from other Red and White factions, like the militaristic Boros.

Sometimes factions will have strong mechanical themes that care about a specific part of the game, typically something the other factions they are in contact with don’t care about. The Esper shard of Alara cares about artifacts while none of the other shards do and the Izzet League cares about slinging instants and sorceries while none of the other guilds do. Another popular aspect of the game that factions can be built around is creature types. When a faction is built around a creature type a considerable chunk of the faction will share that creature type and mechanically care/reward you for playing said creature types. A good example of this would be the five major factions on Innistrad(humans, werewolves, spirits, vampires, and zombies).

One thing that is EXTREMELY important to not just factions but Magic the Gathering as a whole is the art direction and creative identity of the game and its groups. This is especially true for factions. Factions in MTG tend to have different appearances and names, unless the name is just whatever creature type a faction revolves around(ie. The zombies on Innistrad). Technically, names like “Izzet” have no mechanical relevance. It’s not a keyword and if you were to not put the word on a single card the cards themselves would still function as intended. Names such as these are still extremely important, however, as they show up in card titles, flavor text, and help make factions more distinct from each other and easier to identify. It’s easier to imagine the Izzet League and understand the type of people in its faction than it is to try to understand some nebulous group of Red and Blue aligned people. This also helps the world feel more complete and lived in and since the factions are more distinct it makes it harder to confuse the Izzet League with the Blue and Red factions of other planes, like the Prismari. Art direction is also important since it’s crucial that you are usually able to tell which faction is which at a glance. This is often done in the card art via wardrobe/uniforms, tools, weapons, expressions, spells, colors color palette, etc.

For example, the Izzet League is a group of mad scientists so their spells are often wild and experimental(often with lightning or energy shooting out from somewhere), their expressions are often full of strong/powerful emotions, and their outfits or designs are often asymmetrical in order to make their designs more dynamic or unbalanced. Not to mention that when they are depicted casting a spell they are often seen doing it with the aid of some sort of technology to help show that their technological inventions are an important facet of their identity.

(Costume and weapon references are from the “GUILDPACT STYLE GUIDE: IZZET” article)

The moment you see them you are probably going to get vibes like “exciting,” “risky,” “explosive,” “innovative,” etc., and you would never mistake an Izzet spell gone haywire for the bright, controlled, focused, and restraining law magic of the Azorius Senate.

The art of the Izzet League also has a lot of focus placed on their spells and experiments which acts as yet another way of subtly guiding the player to the fact that the Izzet are a faction that slings spells. As opposed to a faction like the Simic or the Gruul which clearly display creatures as their main focus.

With the Simic Combine, we see a lot of their mutant creatures, which shows us that they’re all about messing with your own creatures in order to make them better or bigger, and with the Gruul Clans we see their creatures often lashing out in order to attack or destroy things, which plays into their aggressive big creature-based gameplay(If you want to hear more about art direction in Ravnica, and Magic the Gathering in general, I would recommend Ravnican Artist’s videos on the subject- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrj4rH5XlhA&list=PL-gCV1NKMUP4g_Vtl9X3EMvd7zgv39HoP&ab_channel=RavnicanArtist).

How a faction’s community works and how each faction feels towards itself and other factions is usually clearly defined. The conflict between the Strixhaven colleges is usually a friendly rivalry, as opposed to any serious conflicts, and the conflict between Mirrodin Resistance and the Phyrexians is one where the Phyrexians want to forcefully convert all the inhabitants of the world into biomechanical abominations, and of course, the Resistance does not want that. Also, factions will often have a symbol representing their group, and said symbol is often put onto cards in the form of a watermark. Symbols, being art, also help to define or recognize the guild in the same way card art or a uniform can in order to give you a feeling of the faction’s general vibe.

Some factions also have things associated with them in order to make their Magic more recognizable or help symbolize certain aspects about them.

The lightning of the Izzet often makes what they do look more dangerous, erratic, unstable, and energetic while the Gruul’s association with fire, rock, and earth makes them come off as more ferocious, aggressive, passionate, wild, strong, and tough.

One thing Mark stresses is important to factions is that players need to be able to identify with factions. To this end, it is important that each faction has a strong voice, outlook, and point of view. “What are the goals of this faction?” “What is it like to be in this faction?” If asked, a player should be able to, at the very least, tell you what the faction represents and what their motivation is. For example, the Gruul want to protect the few remaining natural wilds on Ravnica and they see the city as a whole as something that must be destroyed so that nature can flourish. So at the end of the day, their goal is to protect nature and restore Ravnica to a natural state. The factions also need to be unique from each other, because if they all blur together due to having the exact same philosophies, attitudes, and the exact same gameplay then there isn’t much of a reason for a player to identify with any specific faction. One of the tricks Maro mentions using in order to help understand the feel of a faction is to ask what sort of emotional response a faction invokes and then capturing that emotional response in the faction’s gameplay and flavor. For example, if one looks at the Gruul the first emotion that comes to mind is probably anger or rage which ties into their extremely aggressive playstyle with mechanics like Riot.

The Izzet on the other hand are more excited and frantic which ties into them being encouraged to sling a bunch of spells or being able to suddenly pump one of their spells with a bunch of mana for a massive effect. Keywords like Jump-start can allow you to cast a spell multiple times which can invoke a feeling of excitement, frantic experimentation, or sudden spell casting and keywords like Overload create massive effects akin to an “unnatural” disaster or a massive experiment going haywire for your opponents.

The feel of a faction extends to not just the flavor but also the gameplay. There are the obvious mechanics and card abilities but there are also other questions that Mark brings up like “What deck archetype is it? What speed of play does it entail? What is its curve like? What game components does it care about? What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses? How does it win?” How do the Gruul win a game? Smash the enemy with big creatures as fast as possible. How do the Boros win a game? Go wide with a bunch of small creatures and attack with your army as fast as possible. How does the Azorius Senate win the game? By leaning into a control playstyle in order to try to restrain the opponent’s choices and win over time. If the faction is based on something the audience already knows about then it is important to take into consideration audience expectations. If someone thinks of a zombie they usually think of a rotting shambling undead corpse. So the Zombie faction in Innistrad is designed to have gameplay that leans into being a bit slower and focuses on overwhelming the opponent. When people think of vampires they often think of their blood-drinking. So the vampire faction on Innistrad cares about dealing damage to other players in order to mimic this. This is all not to say that you can never purposefully subvert expectations with faction or card design. You just usually need a REALLY good reason for it, or else you risk having a faction that doesn’t feel right to most players.

When it comes to faction-based sets it goes without saying that the relationship between the groups in the set is almost always going to be what a set revolves around. Maybe the factions are at war(such as the Dominarians and the invading Phyrexians), maybe they are all racing to achieve some sort of goal or objective before the other(such as the major groups on Ixalan), maybe the groups live in harmony(such as Strixhaven’s colleges or the followers of Amonkhet’s gods). While the specific nuances of the relationships between these can have a nearly endless amount of possibilities in how they manifest it is ultimately important for these relationships to have some level of importance to the world(s) they take place in. If the factions don’t mean anything or don’t have any real impact on the world they are in there is not much of a point in making them the focus of a set.

Now that we have properly defined a faction, and touched upon some of the things that make them unique or important, we should also go into a little more detail about the design of the faction in terms of set and gameplay design.

We have already gone over the fact that a set with factions is almost always going to have those sets revolving around said faction. But what do the factions themselves revolve around? Well, there are a few things that one must sort out before they go about creating and fleshing out their faction. What are the colors of said factions, what creature types do said factions have access to, and what are the mechanics of each faction? I’ve already touched upon this stuff earlier in this section so I won’t spend too much time going over these points.

Considering how integral the Color Pie is to Magic, deciding on the color of a faction is the first and most obvious step in design. Factions in any given set tend to be balanced in such a way that each color has about the same number of cards in a set when you add all the factions up. Although, Mark does state that the one big exception to this rule is two faction sets. Two faction sets are usually, but not always, flavored as one side fighting against another and they tend to give both sides access to all five colors, although not always in an equal amount. A good example of this would be Mirrodin vs the Phyrexians as both sides have access to all colors of mana.

The feel of a faction extends to not just the flavor but also the gameplay. There are the obvious mechanics and card abilities but there are also other questions that Mark brings up like “What deck archetype is it? What speed of play does it entail? What is its curve like? What game components does it care about? What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses? How does it win?” How do the Gruul win a game? Smash the enemy with big creatures as fast as possible. How do the Boros win a game? Go wide with a bunch of small creatures and attack with your army as fast as possible. How does the Azorius Senate win the game? By leaning into a control playstyle in order to try to restrain the opponent’s choices and win over time. If the faction is based on something the audience already knows about then it is important to take into consideration audience expectations. If someone thinks of a zombie they usually think of a rotting shambling undead corpse. So the Zombie faction in Innistrad is designed to have gameplay that leans into being a bit slower and focuses on overwhelming the opponent. When people think of vampires they often think of their blood-drinking. So the vampire faction on Innistrad cares about dealing damage to other players in order to mimic this. This is all not to say that you can never purposefully subvert expectations with faction or card design. You just usually need a REALLY good reason for it, or else you risk having a faction that doesn’t feel right to most players.

When it comes to faction-based sets it goes without saying that the relationship between the groups in the set is almost always going to be what a set revolves around. Maybe the factions are at war(such as the Dominarians and the invading Phyrexians), maybe they are all racing to achieve some sort of goal or objective before the other(such as the major groups on Ixalan), maybe the groups live in harmony(such as Strixhaven’s colleges or the followers of Amonkhet’s gods). While the specific nuances of the relationships between these can have a nearly endless amount of possibilities in how they manifest it is ultimately important for these relationships to have some level of importance to the world(s) they take place in. If the factions don’t mean anything or don’t have any real impact on the world they are in there is not much of a point in making them the focus of a set.

Now that we have properly defined a faction, and touched upon some of the things that make them unique or important, we should also go into a little more detail about the design of the faction in terms of set and gameplay design.

We have already gone over the fact that a set with factions is almost always going to have those sets revolving around said faction. But what do the factions themselves revolve around? Well, there are a few things that one must sort out before they go about creating and fleshing out their faction. What are the colors of said factions, what creature types do said factions have access to, and what are the mechanics of each faction? I’ve already touched upon this stuff earlier in this section so I won’t spend too much time going over these points.

Considering how integral the Color Pie is to Magic, deciding on the color of a faction is the first and most obvious step in design. Factions in any given set tend to be balanced in such a way that each color has about the same number of cards in a set when you add all the factions up. Although, Mark does state that the one big exception to this rule is two faction sets. Two faction sets are usually, but not always, flavored as one side fighting against another and they tend to give both sides access to all five colors, although not always in an equal amount. A good example of this would be Mirrodin vs the Phyrexians as both sides have access to all colors of mana.

Finally, there are the mechanics. As mentioned before, the easiest and most obvious way to give factions a clear mechanical identity is by giving said factions one or more keywords that the other factions do not have access to. However, one could also opt to have their own combination of keywords to set them apart from the other factions(i.e. having specific keyword combinations as opposed to focusing on the individual keywords being unique). The third way is to have each faction have access to all the important/unique keywords in a set but subdivide how each faction uses said keyword. An example of this would be the Magecraft keyword in Strixthaven. All the factions and groups have access to said keyword but they all tend to use them in different ways, typically varying on the color of the card and the faction that said card is supposed to be aligned with. For example, a Silverquill card may use its Magecraft in order to encourage you to be more aggressive and attack by temporarily giving an increase in the card’s power and toughness, or just its power, whenever you cast an Instant or Sorcery, or it may allow you to grant the card Flying in order to score in some extra damage that the opponent may have trouble stopping.

However, Witherbloom is a faction that cares about gaining life. So it may use Magecraft as a way to gain life or drain the opponent of their life whenever you cast an Instant or Sorcery.

So ultimately the most important attributes of a faction are its color alignment, what creature types it has access to, its mechanical identity, and its artistic/flavor identity. Also, while factions can be very helpful to a set by giving it a structure and identity a lot of thought needs to go into the faction in order to maximize their usage and impact.

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