Subdivisions (Part One)

With the intent to expand Red's mechanical repertoire, a desire sitting patiently at the front my mind as I toiled away at eighteen demoralizing Red commons, I decided to get meta (more meta than usual) and divide one of the many pies within the pie: the Time Pie. Of course, the Time Pie had yet to be referenced in any other piece of Magic design ephemera, so it was up to me to decide what that entailed.



Much like its parent, the Time Pie is (or: will be) a visual tool for representing how the different colors relate. The obvious distinguishing characteristic of the Time Pie is that it pertains specifically to a subset of gameplay connected to the flow of time. At a basic level, time is most often represented in-game through: the order of events; the passing of priority and turns; and a wide spectrum of player behaviors filed under the word "tempo", typically used to describe one player's aggression vs. another player's patience. The Time Pie incorporates the above, as well as more exciting stylistic manipulations of temporal concepts found in cards such as Time Walk and evergreen keywords like Haste and Flash.

As I began to outline color-time relationships, it occurred to me that the Time Pie didn't really make all that much sense as a "pie". Instead it took form as a 6-sided diamond, with three colors forming a central triangle and the remaining oppositional colors functioning as poles. This allows for the easy visualization of seven distinct "shards" and immediately restructures our traditional perspective of the color wheel, important because the goal of the Time Pie is to partially redefine Red. This is not to say that traditional notions of what defines each color should be discarded, but that we're hoping to reveal new intersections of time-oriented behaviors that still fit comfortably within the parent domain, and this alternative visualization can benefit that process.

Each color's position within the structure of the newly-titled Time Diamond was partially determined by a quick and dirty word-association exercise that resulted in the following list:

White - Quantum Identity
Blue  - Pause, Repeat, Present
Red   - Fast-Forward, Accelerate, Future
Black - Stop, Erode Time
Green - Rewind, Repair Time, Past

While they sit as far apart as possible on the diagram, Black and Green actually share status as the carrier of the "Past" attribute, with a line through the center demonstrating this interconnected and unusually complementary nature. To more tangibly demonstrate what I mean: Black and Green are the two colors most commonly associated with graveyard interactions, each frequently possessing the tools to recur resources, and often benefiting from the death (or processing) of "organic" matter on the battlefield. Together they offer a clear representation of time's passing, from Life to Death. Therefore each half of the diamond possesses three sides — representing Past, Present, and Future — which are then distinguished by whether they're aligned with Green or Black:

Red    / Blue    / Green - Future
Blue   / White  / Green - Present
Green / White  / Red    - Past

White / Red    / Blue  - A mysterious sensation.

Black  / Blue   / Red    - Past
Blue   / White  / Black - Present
Red    / White  / Black - Future

Comprised of 4 allied shards and 3 enemy wedges, this structure should feel harmonious with the existing color pie — each of the enemy wedges bear either a relationship with the future or with the mysterious "quantum identity". The next step is to start defining mechanical hierarchies that abide by this structure. This may feel irrational, as you might expect the visual guide to have come after the hierarchies had been defined. But in this situation where most of what I'm "defining" has already been defined, the order of events is largely irrelevant.


Green / White / Red - Past | Life

Though these colors are most commonly associated with a mutual love of combat and the wanton destruction of artifacts (as well as the occasional enchantment), their temporal connection is a shared reverence for the past. We see this everyday in White and Green's ability to recur certain permanents from their graveyard to their hand, but in order to ensnare Red within this conceptual net we need to also recognize how these colors evaluate the content of graveyards in order to increase the power of spells and creatures. This may seem like something that only happens in graveyard-themed sets, but Red has actually acquired two recent commons that demonstrate this quality, Roiling Terrain and Scrapyard Salvo. These cards build upon Red's history with such designs, a history that started sometime around Tempest with the printing of Kindle, which went on to inspire similar designs during Odyssey block.

(It's important to note that I'm only commenting on one or two mechanical ideas that I feel best help tie these color groupings to their position within the Diamond.)


Blue / White / Green - Present | Life

Winding its way through these three colors is the ability to tap or untap on-board permanents, a mechanic that functions both as a restriction on progress (keeping things from moving towards the future) and as a return to recent states of existence (bringing the past into the present). Blue has always held primary control over this ability, with Urza's block being the strongest indicator of its relationship to time, with cards like the various "free spells", Turnabout, and Exhaustion. As the secondary color, White has diminished ability with both tapping and untapping, being less capable of mass control over permanent positioning and often only able to untap its own creatures and tap opposing creatures. In modern Magic, Blue's control over lands has been almost entirely moved over to Green, as per Green's dominance over the natural world. With Green's tertiary position, this is all Green gets, no tapping of opposing objects, and no control over nonland, noncreature permanents.


Red / Blue / Green - Future | Life

Blue and Green possess easily identified representations of Future-centric ideas, ranging from Blue's aptly named Future Sight (which has inspired a number of Blue and Green designs) to Green's use of "ramp" and universal board acceleration spells like Rites of Flourishing and Hypergenesis. But here is where I'd like to start expanding Red's toolbox, pulling from some of the just-described functions, as well as giving Red primary control over both Haste and Flash. Red has long-since been defined by its hyper-aggressive tendency to win at all costs, often foregoing the potential for a late-game. But hopefully you kind readers are willing to reinterpret that behavior as a desire to see the future before all others, as "winning" is the ultimate goal of this game and therefore the terminal moment — the final point in a game's timeline. The first small shift to accentuate this point is moving Flash into Red's control.

Conceptually, Flash is best suited to showing off surprise tactics (like a Proto-Morph) and conveying disruptions in the flow of time, a theme that Time Spiral block was largely built upon. Something of a long-standing free agent, fitting in wherever R&D would like it, Flash is most often employed by Blue. This is presumably because Blue is the color of instants and therefore should also be the color of instant-speed creatures. However, maintaining the status quo isn't going to solve this problem, and as much as Blue is the color of trickery, it's odd that there's never been a goblin ambush of any sort. With Flash, a number of Red's core creature staples can be reshaped into more appealing forms, forms that act when you aren't expecting. Something like Viashino Spearhunter need not be just a piddling little critter incapable of doing as its title suggests; blessed with Flash, the Spearhunter suddenly has the capacity to actually hunt down unsuspecting two-toughness creatures. Imagine the flavor of a Berserker, like M12's Stormblood Berserker, except gifted with both Flash and Bloodthirst, providing new dimensions to how Red can use instant-speed burn and showcasing a bloodthirst that exists beyond a single turn. A shift of this sort resonates with the philosophy of the color without resorting to unnecessary invention or remolding existing functions, like looting.

---

Pausing here for the time being, I'll finishing things up later in the week with descriptions of the other four groupings and post various designs derived from this exercise.