Yes, I agree this isn't the best way to do gold design.
You mean "colored" right?
One could argue that making a couple of big creatures (especially if they're efficiently costed) is green and white. (White makes tokens better than green; green gets bigger creatures than white.)
Unfortunately, as everyone knows, one color always seems to be second at what the other is first, so Worldspine Wurm , Feed the Pack and even Parallel Lives demonstrate green also gets away with making multiple tokens easily.
For the sake of discussion, we'll consider Colored mana (C), a Different color of mana (D), and colorless mana (1, 2,... ).
If you think about a card which could be printed in either one color (C) or two (CD) for at fixed rarity, one color is going to be easier to pull off. A cost of 2CC is an option in mono-color decks whereas a cost of 2CD isn't. Also, to reliably get the second color on an early turn, more of your deck has to be committed to the second color, and you still run the risk of missing a critical drop and falling a turn behind due to color screw.
If you compare two print cards that are similar, one mono-colored and one gold, you tend to see one with a cost like 3CC and another with a cost like 2CD. The 1 colorless mana difference (essentially a delay by 1 turn) compensates the riskier multi-color deck build. (At the very least, it keeps the multi-color player from being strongly punished for not playing a stricly-better mono-colored creature).
You see a similar thing in compaing costs within a single color: a CC spell and a 2C spell will have similar power level, the CC spell will just be more broadly applicable to compensate for a strong color commitment. Also, colorless artifacts (in particular artifact creatures) tend to have a CMC which is 1 higher than the CMC of an equivalent colored creature
A rough rule of thumb I've noticed, if you were to reduce every every cost to a colorless "cost metric" for comparison, with higher numbers means harder to pull off on earlier turns: metric = CMC + 1 for each colored mana (C or D), + 1 for each color you would need beyond the first 4 (artifact) = 4 3C = 5 2CC = 6 2CD (2-color gold) = 7 1CCD (2-color gold) = 8 1CDA (3-color gold) = 9 This is just my observation from sifting through gatherer, but it tends to hold pretty well.
True two-color hybrid mana (H = {C/D}) gets tricky, since that's an inverse of the situation with gold mana requirements (that is, it's "almost colorless"). You tend to see things along the lines of HH being equivalent in power to 1C, but you also have some cards where a single H is equivalent to C or D, on effects that are now not considered as strong as when they were originally priced (for example, the way Dawnglow Infusion obsoletes Stream of Life and is roughly the same level of power as the more flexible Alabaster Potion .)
Edit: You know, I spent so much time on the mana side that I forgot to comment on the color issue.
Worldspine Wurm , Feed the Pack and Parallel Lives are all not quite the same as white's token making. White gets to pay mana, turn the crank, and get a fist full of tokens, as with Midnight Haunting or Lingering Souls . Feed the Pack invites you to spend six mana and sacrifice a creature to double your power. In other words, it invites you to take that 5/5 you ramped up to that's always going to be chump blocked, and, in lieu of the 6/6 you should get this turn, double and spread out that power to five 2/2s that are harder to chump block. There are ways to game this, but it cannot be called easy creatures. Parallel lives lets you pay less to double oyur power as creatures come into play... provided that creature is already a token. Again, still not easy. Its an investment. Worldspine Wurm similarly works after a fashion of "investment" in the real 15/15 wurm. This is not easy, but is also an example of a different theme at work: reslience.
Thragtusk is the other recent addition to the token resilience club, a proud tradition that includes the Symbiotic creature and Penumbra creature vertical cycles, where a dying creature replaces itself. Those are a specialty of triggered resilience, which also includes persist creatures and undying creatures . (To keep cost-free triggers from firing off in an infinite loop, the creature has to change state by coming back from the graveyard or coming back "as a token". In either case you get a different object, so some change in status or ability -- like the presence/absence of a counter, or the fact that it's a not-quite-exact-copy token -- is necessary to indicate that it has already returned once. If you didn't have some way to track how many times it came back, it would be effectively indestructible.)
Undying and persist also dovetail nicely with diminishing mechanics (like the counter removal seen on the Phantom creature vertical cycle and some hydras .
The purest form of resilience is, of course, regeneration , but since it doesn't really leave you with any useful state change, it can't be free.
Green gets a lot of resilience, and sometimes that involves counter manipulation, and sometimes that involves tokens, both of which are mechanics it toys with a lot. But at all times, the mechanics serve the theme of a hard-to-kill creature.
The point is: tokens are in green, but cheap, plentiful tokens are not.
Armada Wurm is a green wurm, except that you get a token as a teammate (as an ETB effect), not as a replacement (as a death trigger effect), which is definitely more white. Loxodon Smiter feels more green than white (creature type excepted), because discard (in black) is an enemy to both green and white, while counters (in blue) are a mostly-green flavor enemy. Vigilance in green is pretty weird, and it's cheap for the P/T, so Risen Sanctuary feels like a fair gold card to me. Overall, the Smiter is the only one that feels a little off to me, and even then, not by much.
Yeah, LSmiter would have to be GGG in any other case, and have his flavor completely changed into something else entirely. He probably wouldn't be a loxodon, he wouldn't be a soldier, he may not have that aggressive a cost (he could be 2GG as well), etc. White really provided the flavor and cheapened up the card to be something really cool and supportable instead of just another midrange fatty.
"Convoke did a wonderful job of conveying a sense of closeness between the creatures because they have to work together to cast spells."
The problem being that none of that closeness between the creatures actually worked together for the player. Covoke had to be overcosted in order to keep people from powering out 3/3 creatures on turn 3. If you were lucky.
It was a horribly inefficient use of resources. If I can generate 4 creatures, why use them to create mana: why not just attack? If I am using mana to cast a creature, the amount I've put into that creature is far greater than the mana it can provide for Convoke, saving a Llanowar Elf, which I can just tap for mana anyway!
If I can't attack, then how is using them (and thus taking away my defensive capabilities) for mana to provide me with one creature (or other, similar non-impactful spells) going to help?
So Convoke actually left this player feeling like the creatures he'd summoned were abandoning him. The instants were the exception to this but even those weren't very good, saving Chord of the Calling.
So now we move to Populate and while I'd agree that this is a better representation of the guild the problem with it is stated in the article itself: "One, the populate part of the two-tier system was parasitic. It didn't mean anything without the other piece."
Then, for redundancy's sake we get "Two, common populate cards had the problem of stranding players with populate cards without tokens." Which is just a specific instance of the first problem.
More relevantly, Populate, as with Convoke, had to be overcosted in order to make it fair. Paying 4 for two 1/1 fliers is generally not how one wants to spend turn 4 but it has to be this way, in order to prevent token overruns.
However the real flaw is what some posters in this thread have pointed out: The Selsneya guild is about conversion: brainwashing subjects to their side: You join us/become one of us. This is a blue theme! How do you get Green/White to accurately express that?
Which leads to the next issue, which previous posters have commented on: where are the control elements? If Azorus is about control through the rule of law, then Selsneya is going to be about control through the power of conformity. Everyone is going to be like us and those unlike us will be turned or destroyed.
But this isn't reflected in the mechanics nor the cards. The 'white' element of the guild is missing and that's unfortunate because it could have been really interesting.
So do people realize that "members agree to ignore their own desires for the purposes of strengthening the whole" doesn't actually mean "we brainwash everyone in the world into confortmity and cackle maniacally"? No? That's how everyone thinks it works? Okay.
So do people realize that "members agree to ignore their own desires for the purposes of strengthening the whole" doesn't actually mean "we brainwash everyone in the world into confortmity and cackle maniacally"? No? That's how everyone thinks it works? Okay.
Isn't that a matter of persective? The Wiki, while not the be all/end all of data, suggests that there is more to the guild than the pure upsides you are.
And that is a far more interesting thing.
In addition, talking down to the rest of us is not a very good way to make your case.
One has vigilance! Heh, but yeah, that's true. Those other two do feel very mono green. Kinda like Rafiq of the Many or Giltspire Avenger from Bant. Both could have easily been monowhite. Could have at least given Rafiq something blue like Hexproof...
So do people realize that "members agree to ignore their own desires for the purposes of strengthening the whole" doesn't actually mean "we brainwash everyone in the world into confortmity and cackle maniacally"? No? That's how everyone thinks it works? Okay.
Yeah, I've felt the same way. It feels just like the Azorius problems really. People want them to be one-dimensional, brainwashing, cultish, badguys. So that's the only thing they remember.
So do people realize that "members agree to ignore their own desires for the purposes of strengthening the whole" doesn't actually mean "we brainwash everyone in the world into confortmity and cackle maniacally"? No? That's how everyone thinks it works? Okay.
Isn't that a matter of persective? The Wiki, while not the be all/end all of data, suggests that there is more to the guild than the pure upsides you are.
And that is a far more interesting thing.
In addition, talking down to the rest of us is not a very good way to make your case.
Quoting MtGSalvation's wiki -- of all things -- is never a good argument. Especially when the most it says about them are
Despite their superficial, and readily misapprehended, appearance of being a "good" and "peace-loving" guild, the Conclave, often employing their quietmen and other members to silence the civilians of Ravnica and wreak havoc to Ravnica, are, in truth, hypocritical and as sinister, if not more so, than other Ravnican guilds.
I am reluctant to call such impressions of a very thinnly-sketched, fictitious organization "paranoid"... but its a fitting description.
White is authoritarian, and does seek harmony over individual freedom. Those are natural drawbacks to counter balance the inherent "good" qualities of white magic. It's not "white magic" for nothing. Magic was not born in a vacuum. I carries forward a lot of fantasy tradition. And yet there are a lot of posters in recent threads that seem bent on describing all things white as a two faced plot. It just doesn't make sense.
However the real flaw is what some posters in this thread have pointed out: The Selsneya guild is about conversion: brainwashing subjects to their side: You join us/become one of us. This is a blue theme! How do you get Green/White to accurately express that?
Wait, what? Who said they were about brainwashing? And who said that brainwashing was blue? Every color gets some take on the control of creatures. Blue deceives and black enslaves. Red leads by charisma, and green dominates as an alpha over a pack. White inspires and convinces . As a planeswalker, each player has control over his creatures. How do you think that happens if control is only blue?
Yeah, I've felt the same way. It feels just like the Azorius problems really. People want them to be one-dimensional, brainwashing, cultish, badguys. So that's the only thing they remember.
For the Azorius, the appeal of having them be emotionless automata is that is shows how they've given themselves over mind and body to the system. That is a pretty good example of white/blue overlap. Blue is the color of ego, which wants to organize all understanding to achieve control. White is the color of order, which holds out the promise that everything in the world is already orderly. The way the two colors view and approach reality are complementary in that respect. I don't see why they should be the bad guy (except that people like to root for an individualist a lot more than they like to root for a standardizer), but the highly legalist interpretation works pretty well for the colors.
While it is true that white and green are often more similar than what it is desirable and their combination can almost look like incest, they have enough difference as long as people are willing to see. 1 Green: likes to get as much lands as possible (Rampant Growth) White: gets lands just to keep pace with the opponent (Land Tax) 2 Green: gets mana from even nonland permanents (Llanowar elves) White: puts mana taxation on opponents beyond playing spells (Ghostly Prison, Magus of the Tabernacle). 3 Green: appreciate creatures and whenever it destroys them its almost always throught fights (Prey upon) White: destroys all creatures or pick them indirectly on the combat step (Condemn, for the sake of the argument let's ignore the offenders Swords and Path). 4 Green: untaps permaments (Ley Druid) White: taps permanents (Gideon's Lawkeeper) 5 Green: destroy discrete lands by targeting (Plow Under) White: destroys all lands. (Armageddon) 6 Green: graveyard recursion in terms of returning cards from the graveyard to the hand. (Regrowth, Praetor's counsel) White: graveyard recursion through reanimation or by bouncing back to the battlefield (Faith's reward, Second Sunrise)
You get the idea: green is about generating resouces while white is about denying them. I think some sort of theme about "my resources deny yours" could have been great for Selesnya, expanding the previous card Glare of Subdual . I can see two arguments against this:
a) Most particularities about green and white are exploited on other guilds. In #6 green applies to Golgari and white to Orzhov, in #4 green applies to Simic and white to Azorious, etc. Although this reply is legit, I can't help feeling Selesnya got really shafted then: "let's put all the interesting stuff on the other guilds and throw the vanilla creature ripoff to Selesnya".
b) Which I fear it's probably true: all the differences between green and white have been deemed the evil of all things fun in the NWO. No way we were going to see something close to #5 and even #2 is probably too unfun for modern design purposes.
Overall, I feel this was a wasted chance to show how cool the GW pair can be and instead it just confirmed everyone's expectation about GW meaning redundancy. Flagship cards such as Armada Wurm and Loxodon Smiter sum how I feel about the guild: one-dimensional and not even that good.
If Limited gets in the way of printing good Constructed cards...
Isn't that a matter of persective? The Wiki, while not the be all/end all of data, suggests that there is more to the guild than the pure upsides you are.
It's a Wiki! I'm not here to pull the "all Wikis are unreliable" card, but the first line, "The guild is one of peace, life, and community", has a goddamn "citation needed" tag! That's not something you need a citation for, it's their freaking modus operandi! And then it immediately goes on to emphasize their "brainwashing" nature. That page was pretty clearly edited by someone with a chip on his shoulder against Selesnya and just wanted to make them seem like malicious villains when they're one of the most selfless guilds. Why don't you cite some of the bios on the guild from the actual Wizards site, where all it says is that they're all about unity and togetherness?
Yes, when you join Selesnya, you put your own wants and desires aside to further the whole, and yes, when you accomplish something, it's considered a victory for the guild, and not a personal victory for you. But there's nothing WRONG with that, and they're not brainwashing people into joining. If you want to join, awesome, here's our rules that we need you to follow. If you don't, that's okay, our doors are always open.
I dunno, I'm just so tired of seeing groups in stories that are about togetherness and unity, which tend to be the groups I favor, and seeing everyone fall over themselves to discover every single fault and negative interpretation they can to demonize them. Just let me have my goddamn hippie conclave.
