In light of foo_intherain's thread on RWU, I thought it would be constructive to have more discussions on the philosophy and flavor of the wedges. So I propose an examination of my personal favorite wedge - indeed, the color combination I identify with - GUB.
Despite my fondness for GUB, it seems much more problematic to pin down. I'll try the excluded-color analysis I used in the RWU thread.
The colors excluded from GUB are Red and White. These colors could be described as the most ideological. Their ideologies are deeply opposed - Red is individualistic, White is collectivistic - but Red and White are the colors most concerned with the nature and organization of governance. Green, Blue, and Black care much less about the particulars of how kingdoms are run. As long as the natural way is respected, Green doesn't care much about matters political, and is flexible and accepting of a variety of lifeways. Blue believes the world can be perfected, and doesn't shrink from politics. However, Blue's rationalism is much more flexible than the individualism of Red and the collectivism of White. Black is willing to do anything in its pursuit of power. GUB is flexible.
But is flexibility really meaningful as the core of GUB? I'm not convinced, so I'm going to try another avenue of attack. I'm going to look at each color, and how the other two modify it.
Blue is all about reason. What does it see in Black and Green? As I discussed in the RWU thread, these are the most realistic colors, that believe they understand how the world works. Blue wants to understand how the world works. Blue in GUB goes back to the beginning, seeking to understand the way the world really is.
Black is defined by its ambition. Where is that ambition channeled in GUB? Green and Blue both seek self-improvement - Green through growth and finding one's place in the world and Blue through learning and making one's place. Black in GUB seeks to understand its place in the world so that it can perfect itself.
Green, at its core, is about survival and growth. UB is cunning, always looking for the unexpected route to victory. Green in GUB is flexible, pursuing any avenue it has to to survive and thrive. Sounds like the conclusion I arrived at in my excluded-color analysis above.
GUB is the flexible, moderate politician, contorting his positions whatever way he must to pursue power. It is the intellectual tearing the veil from reality to see what lies beneath. It is the Borg, understanding through assimilation, assimilating through subversion, and subverting through understanding, until it can bring overwhelming force to bear.
What's your take on GUB? What kind of world might GUB create? What kinds of mechanics could represent it?
Will keep this short for now, perhaps to expand upon later.
Green mana is the mana that concerns itself with life.
This makes it oppose the color the concerns itself with death.
mana concerns itself with the elements and flows of Time.
Life > Death > Time makes for a type of very sentient GUB. One that would perhaps play around with Hourglasses, the sands of time and Destiny. This type of philosophy could also be WUB however.
Some type of library manipulation effect such as Scry combined with graveyard interaction.
A world with only GUB mana would be unstablemaleable and prone to rapidgradual change and manipulation.
The kind of instability you suggest screams "Red" to me. I think the overall feel of GUB is more evolutionary than revolutionary, as Rancored_elf mentions.
I'm envisioning a treacherous, rainforest-type environment, something like Skyshroud/Rootwater, as a GUB environment. A Phyrexian take could also work (there are probably deep philosophical reasons why these colors were the first to be corrupted by Phyrexia in Scars block).
Will keep this short for now, perhaps to expand upon later.
Green mana is the mana that concerns itself with life.
This makes it oppose the color the concerns itself with death.
mana concerns itself with the elements and flows of Time.
Life > Death > Time makes for a type of very sentient GUB. One that would perhaps play around with Hourglasses, the sands of time and Destiny. This type of philosophy could also be WUB however.
Some type of library manipulation effect such as Scry combined with graveyard interaction.
I agree with what you're saying about mechanics, particularly library manipulation, as these three colors are certainly the strongest in that area. Graveyard manipulation, I'm not as confident about. While Black and Green certainly share it, it's not much of a Blue thing. Certainly a part of a GUB world, but graveyard manipulation is probably going to be a wedge set's defining BGW mechanic.
I'm not so sure about what you're saying flavor-wise. Like you seem to realize, a deep concern with time and destiny (particularly destiny) seems more WUB.
Each color's view of the world is heavily influenced by the thing it values most. What does green value most? Nature. The way green sees it, the world has gotten it right. There is no force more powerful, more peaceful, or more elegant than nature. Its end goal is simply to let the natural way evolve. Green, in its heart, wants nothing more than to sit back and watch life unfurl around it. Thus, green's ultimate goal is growth. Green would be happiest in a world where nature has been allowed to run rampant.
In blue, green sees an enemy that does not respect the value of nature. Blue wishes to tear down all that is natural to construct its own artificial world. Blue has no respect for the importance of instinct choosing to value knowledge over one's gut. Blue looks to its cold impersonal future always forsaking the warmth of its past. Green must preemptively destroy blue before it destroys green.
In black, green sees a selfish, selfish color. Green understands the importance of the cycle of life. As such it respects the role of death. Black, on the other hand, uses death unnaturally as a tool for its own means. If green is to protect nature, it must stop black before it kills all living things for its own twisted agenda.
Going right to the source (so to speak), what does this tell us of the UGB Wedge, as a place?
Growth rules all. Like Naya, much of the world would be wild. Along with that, it would be monstrous in it. Great swathes of it would likely be untamed, and it's civilized populaces would either live amongst the vast wilderness or be actively trying to bring it to heel/keep it at bay. Here is the crux of the issue: do you represent a plane in which the people are harmonized with its environs and make use of the bounty so offered to improve (themselves, their lives, or in rarer cases, others lives) or are they existing in struggle against those forces, making their best effort at guiding the endless growth to their benefit or to a more managable end point?
In terms of mechanical identity, this Wedge is the +1/+1 counter wedge. Green, Black and Blue use a lot more counters than most, and while splicing both +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters could happen, it seems unlikely, but being able to remove +1/+1 counters definitely helps make the wedge more Black. I would argue that, of any mechanical ties the three colours have, +1/+1 counters is the one that works the best with the thematic elements of the wedge. It's been proven to have a lot of mechanical depth and would be easy to identify (this is important, as Naya is regarded as a mechanical failure because the '5 power matters' theme was not as directly conveyed as it needed to be for a new player to grasp), as well as being an easy bleed into other wedges. As long as there's creatures, there'll want +1/+1 counters.
In terms of mechanical identity, this Wedge is the +1/+1 counter wedge.
I can't agree with this sentiment. The BGW wedge is far and away the strongest in + and - counters alike. I think Mister M wraps up the ideas he reviewed very cleanly, agreein' with those.
Lemme go from the Naya argument and take it in a different direction: Naya is a jungle in which the strongest beasts, the survivors, are celebrated. White (within the plane) prizes this aspect of green for its nobility and its awe-inspiring grandeur, going as far as to worship and venerate the beasts as gods; red prizes this aspect of green because of its power and, from this power, the ability to do whatever the holder desires, in addition to perceived chaos in the minds of the beasties.
How can we apply this to GUB? Let's break it down to the Ravnica guilds. The Simic seek to perfect biology. They're concerned with evolution and using blue's knowledge to bring the natural in green to its epitome, and they're willing to take huge risks (Kraj) to do so. They're biomancers, wizards that deal with biology and physical perfection. The Golgari embrace life and death as equals, a continuum. Growth and power. The Golgari are necromancers, wizards who deal with death and resurrection. Blue loves green in this wedge because it sees a puzzle to perfect, which benefits green because it wins the survival-of-the-fittest contest; black loves green here because it can parasite off of green's strength (and vice versa) and still have a mutually beneficial relationship, as long as they're working together.
Taking these two ideas together, I'd conclude that GUB would go so far as to attempt to redefine life itself, if they found a version of "life" that they found superior. This is why Phyrexia corrupted these colors first; these colors are what Phyrexia became. GUB likes Living Death, but they'd love it if they got to graft some extra arms and pincers onto the corpses first. They would settle for Divination in a pinch, but they'd much prefer to glean their knowledge by poring over corpses and poking at their brains (physically and mentally) to see how they could improve their work. They love a good Mitotic Slime, because they can really use those corpses for the greater good (if only they could operate on them and maybe make them indestructible or something, that'd be cool).
Bionecromancer beastriders with mad surgical skills.
- Eternity. Life, death and time come together in this shard.
- Lack of Empathy, Remorse, Solidarity: Green is deprived from the WR influences that conjugate the good parts of nature. There is no pack, no family to care for.
- A Grand Design: Green is mindless in its motivations, blue and black are the opposite. When you put them together, you get that there is an underlying goal, but that objective is seen as the inevitable end of pursuing one's path.
For example, I came up with a race for UBG that was sort of like eldritch abominations. Each monster, though had its own mutations, and these lived in a fen where they hunted each other to absorb their prey's life and mana, grow, and expand their brood.
However, they were sapient. They are no concerned with political business or building tribes, they only care about expanding their progeny, so the most powerful arcane monsters thrive and consume the whole universe within themselves.
Their goal is to evolve into a being that can comprehend the whole plane, and become a living ecosystem.
There are huge versions of these creatures that live beneath the ground, growing secretly. These bigger monsters send whispers to the creatures above, to sway them to do their will - kill a competitor, bring them sustenance, or just drive them insane to dispense with them.
I've always seen GUB as having a duplicitous take on survival of the fittest: survival of the cunning. Size, strength and numbers don't ensure survival; intelligence, savvy and duplicity will. Adaptability is a big ideal, with those too slow/dumb to adapt are conquered by those that do. It's about a thinking man's predator. Jurassic Park's velociraptors are a decent example.
It's a cold and calculating take on the food chain where appearances are deceiving and weaknesses may in fact just be a trap. It's immoral, uncompromising and not at all trustworthy. Loyalty isn't a value and the individual is mostly only concerned for its own survival with alliances and groups being temporary and hard to trust. GUB is all about treachery in nature and how deceit makes you a better predator. Morph is a fairly good mechanical representation of GUB ideals, treachery in combat (combat here being a mechanical analog for the hunt).
Yeah, that's why I see it as the color of eldritch abominations that whisper into your nightmares.
I can see it. I think as long as strength and force are downplayed in favor of being calculating, unpredictable and inscrutable, the predator is firmly within GUB-range. GUB calculates and schemes, it doesn't run on base instinct.
I can't agree with this sentiment. The BGW wedge is far and away the strongest in + and - counters alike.
True, and not true. Recently, Wizards talked about which colours manipulate +1/+1 counters the most, and while Green is the king of this, it turns out that Black and Blue are the second for counter manipulation (not just +1/+1 counters, but all forms of counters); White, because it gets a lot of creature pump that only increases power/toughness by small amounts, does dip its toes into the +1/+1 counter theme but it does not manipulate those counters. This is why Simic had such a prominent +1/+1 counter theme in the first Ravnica Block. The main reason I would not make GWB the +1/+1 counter wedge is because it is not the most resonant mechanical theme between those colours: that wedge is the graveyard wedge.
@ilovesaprolings: While there could be graveyard related cards, this wegde is not the graveyard wedge because Blue cares nothing about the graveyard. As I mentioned, that would almost certainly be the WGB wedge, because all of those colours do care about the graveyard, and it makes sense that the Black wedge would have graveyard centered mechanics (since Black interacts with the graveyard the most).
mechanically, i see two aspects:
-graveyard focus, in a dredge-like way
- sharing and passing abilities to make the "perfect" creature. think about slivers or experiment kraj
an interesting idea for [mana]gub[/card] is a place with no sentient life. just nature and predators who kills each other in constant evolution to become better killers. but in this way blue could be a little underepresented
The kind of instability you suggest screams "Red" to me. I think the overall feel of GUB is more evolutionary than revolutionary, as Rancored_elf mentions.
I'm envisioning a treacherous, rainforest-type environment, something like Skyshroud/Rootwater, as a GUB environment. A Phyrexian take could also work (there are probably deep philosophical reasons why these colors were the first to be corrupted by Phyrexia in Scars block).
The GUB wedge based in massive rain forest is a good idea. It places green as the most important part of the plane, but there is still room for meandering rivers to represent islands and rotting swamps. And rain forests are full of vast biological diversity that sets up the potential for evolution, interbreeding, and any selective breeding experiments that the sentient life tries to execute.
I agree with what you're saying about mechanics, particularly library manipulation, as these three colors are certainly the strongest in that area. Graveyard manipulation, I'm not as confident about. While Black and Green certainly share it, it's not much of a Blue thing. Certainly a part of a GUB world, but graveyard manipulation is probably going to be a wedge set's defining BGW mechanic.
Presumably this would be part of a larger wedge based set. There could be a BGRegrowth that plays well with GUB but is flavored as being in the BGW wedge, and there could be a GUTimetwister that is flavored as being in the URG wedge. In fact, at least a little bit of intentional cross-wedge flavor-mixing for cards that are mechanically relevant in the next wedge over would be a good thing.
From Making Magic:
[QUOTE]Each color's view of the world is heavily influenced by the thing it values most. What does green value most? Nature. The way green sees it, the world has gotten it right. There is no force more powerful, more peaceful, or more elegant than nature. Its end goal is simply to let the natural way evolve. Green, in its heart, wants nothing more than to sit back and watch life unfurl around it. Thus, green's ultimate goal is growth. Green would be happiest in a world where nature has been allowed to run rampant.
In blue, green sees an enemy that does not respect the value of nature. Blue wishes to tear down all that is natural to construct its own artificial world. Blue has no respect for the importance of instinct choosing to value knowledge over one's gut. Blue looks to its cold impersonal future always forsaking the warmth of its past. Green must preemptively destroy blue before it destroys green.
In black, green sees a selfish, selfish color. Green understands the importance of the cycle of life. As such it respects the role of death. Black, on the other hand, uses death unnaturally as a tool for its own means. If green is to protect nature, it must stop black before it kills all living things for its own twisted agenda.
Going right to the source (so to speak), what does this tell us of the UGB Wedge, as a place?
The first important thing that I think you glossed over is that this is from MarRo's article It's Not Easy Being Green about the color identity of green. In two-color groups, like the Guilds of Ravnica, the two colors are balanced and equals. In three-color groups, like the Shards of Alara, one color is dominant and only equal with the other two combined. For tri-color arcs, like RGW, the central color is most important, in approximately a 1:2:1 ratio. A tri-color arc is about how the central color relates to its two allies. For tri-color wedges, like GUB, the first color is most important, in approximately a 2:1:1 ratio. A tri-color wedge is about how the first color relates to its two enemies.
Sorry for interrupting. I just wanted to identify the source and the reason for choosing it. Please continue:
Growth rules all. Like Naya, much of the world would be wild. Along with that, it would be monstrous in it. Great swathes of it would likely be untamed, and it's civilized populaces would either live amongst the vast wilderness or be actively trying to bring it to heel/keep it at bay. Here is the crux of the issue: do you represent a plane in which the people are harmonized with its environs and make use of the bounty so offered to improve (themselves, their lives, or in rarer cases, others lives) or are they existing in struggle against those forces, making their best effort at guiding the endless growth to their benefit or to a more managable end point?
I think the sentient life of the GUB plane would be able to harness and selectively breed the wild populations to fit their ideals. They would direct evolution and mate animals to enhance desirable traits and to diminish undesirable traits. This doesn't necessarily mean that they are taming the creatures of the plane; maybe one desirable trait on a GUB plane is giant uncontrollable monstrosities.
In terms of mechanical identity, this Wedge is the +1/+1 counter wedge. Green, Black and Blue use a lot more counters than most, and while splicing both +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters could happen, it seems unlikely, but being able to remove +1/+1 counters definitely helps make the wedge more Black. I would argue that, of any mechanical ties the three colours have, +1/+1 counters is the one that works the best with the thematic elements of the wedge. It's been proven to have a lot of mechanical depth and would be easy to identify (this is important, as Naya is regarded as a mechanical failure because the '5 power matters' theme was not as directly conveyed as it needed to be for a new player to grasp), as well as being an easy bleed into other wedges. As long as there's creatures, there'll want +1/+1 counters.
I'm not sure +1/+1 counters is the best way to go. The direction that a GUB mechanic focused on +1/+1 counters would want to go would necessitate a decent amount of +1/+1 counter use planned in the other wedges. The GUB use of +1/+1 counters would involve counter spreading among your own creatures like graft and Forgotten Ancient, but also counter stealing from other player's creatures like Arcbound Fiend, Fate Transfer, and Spike Cannibal. That would not be possible unless the other wedges had a decent amount of +1/+1 counter use or you did the taboo of mixing +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters.
How can we apply this to GUB? Let's break it down to the Ravnica guilds. The Simic seek to perfect biology. They're concerned with evolution and using blue's knowledge to bring the natural in green to its epitome, and they're willing to take huge risks (Kraj) to do so. They're biomancers, wizards that deal with biology and physical perfection. The Golgari embrace life and death as equals, a continuum. Growth and power. The Golgari are necromancers, wizards who deal with death and resurrection. Blue loves green in this wedge because it sees a puzzle to perfect, which benefits green because it wins the survival-of-the-fittest contest; black loves green here because it can parasite off of green's strength (and vice versa) and still have a mutually beneficial relationship, as long as they're working together.
In nature, creatures can adapt to a changing environment in order to survive, and new creatures are born with variations that allow them to out-perform older members of the species which then die off. GU could be the willful changing of the existing into something else, while BG could be intentional killing off of the old to make room for the new.
The kind of instability you suggest screams "Red" to me. I think the overall feel of GUB is more evolutionary than revolutionary, as Rancored_elf mentions.
If GUB means anything to me, it means the prospect for malformed, unwholesome but sustained and purposeful growth.
A hideous swelling decay that engulfs an entire city and then sinks into rot is BG. If it instead mires the city in a lingering, formless rot which absorbs the helpless townsfolk, then extrudes ghastly dopplegangers of them to prey on foolish future intruders... it's probably GUB.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"My will is my own. I won't bow to fate." - Volrath, Null Profusion
Plot of Dragon's Maze:
Niv-Mizzet plays Realmwright, chooses "Gate". Then a dramatic retelling of the ensuing argument.
I apologize, my "calculates and schemes" vs "base instinct" comment was relating specifically to predation and the hunt. I should have made that more clear. I think of it as Dimir sensibilities through the lens of the natural order. Everything from the predator/prey relationship to reproduction would have increased levels of duplicity involved. Nature can already be deceptive (camouflage, decoys, lures, unexpected poisons, mimicry, etc), UB is just isolating that in G and amplifying it.
What about a human of BUG? Where would they stand?
Would they be a callous, cold, and decisive individual, unswayed by anything and willing to do anything to advance beyond its peers?
Pretty much, yes. Where 'advancement' in this case is largely just survival. Sentient beings in GUB would be largely individualistic, amoral and uncompromising. They view allies as temporary tools to utilize until they are no longer helpful with the tight family unit being about the only stable grouping you'd see, based largely on the primary biological imperative: the successful survival of an individual's genes to the next generation. They'd be aloof, but exceptional survivors.
The first important thing that I think you glossed over is that this is from MarRo's article It's Not Easy Being Green about the color identity of green. In two-color groups, like the Guilds of Ravnica, the two colors are balanced and equals. In three-color groups, like the Shards of Alara, one color is dominant and only equal with the other two combined. For tri-color arcs, like RGW, the central color is most important, in approximately a 1:2:1 ratio. A tri-color arc is about how the central color relates to its two allies. For tri-color wedges, like GUB, the first color is most important, in approximately a 2:1:1 ratio. A tri-color wedge is about how the first color relates to its two enemies.
Sorry for interrupting. I just wanted to identify the source and the reason for choosing it. Please continue:
I think the sentient life of the GUB plane would be able to harness and selectively breed the wild populations to fit their ideals. They would direct evolution and mate animals to enhance desirable traits and to diminish undesirable traits. This doesn't necessarily mean that they are taming the creatures of the plane; maybe one desirable trait on a GUB plane is giant uncontrollable monstrosities.
I'm not sure +1/+1 counters is the best way to go. The direction that a GUB mechanic focused on +1/+1 counters would want to go would necessitate a decent amount of +1/+1 counter use planned in the other wedges. The GUB use of +1/+1 counters would involve counter spreading among your own creatures like graft and Forgotten Ancient, but also counter stealing from other player's creatures like Arcbound Fiend, Fate Transfer, and Spike Cannibal. That would not be possible unless the other wedges had a decent amount of +1/+1 counter use or you did the taboo of mixing +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters.
My apologies if any confusion arose from me entirely sitting my source (as it was from the aforementioned article, but I took out a chunk of text to make my post a bit more readable). And I agree with your assessment of how the thematic identity of a wedge. The relation between what Green cares about most (growth) with the colour's enemies is in, part, how those colours benefit from it. Blue, being clinical, sees the possibility of unfettered growth as a means to advance ideas at a greater rate. Black sees it as means to acquire more power for itself.
I think this part of the reason that, mechanically, a +1/+1 theme does work, but the obvious development roadblock you mentioned would make the execution of the idea perhaps too difficult. The one advantage of pressing the theme strongly in one wedge, however, is that those colours to whom those counters are, generally, a secondary or tertiary mechanic can, with regards to the wedge, use the mechanic as a primary mechanic to help establish the wedge's identity while diversifying +1/+1 counter creation to such a degree that only White and Red would (appropriately) feel lacking.
And of course, an added prevalence of +1/+1 counters being distributed by noncolored sources could help bridge the gap without comprising the wedge's mechanical and thematical identity.
And I agree that, barring dire circumstances, the mix of both +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters in a set is unlikely to achieve the desire aim.
I had considered Copying/Cloning as a possible mechanic for this wedge, but it seems to me that it would probably fit more with the infinite malleability and constant change of the GUR wedge.
As for tribes that could be prominent in the setting, Elves would liekly be dominant, as the go to Green tribe. But Blue and Black have a few tribes that could make up part of the wedge's diverse nature. The semi-savage Vampires of Zendikar seem like they would equally be at home in the wild, dark and treacherous landscape of this wedge, and given the likelyhood of massive undergrowths teeming with rivers and swampland, Merfolk might also find a home in the wedge. Other monsters of note could be giant, crocidilian predators, even ones of Leviathan-esque proportions, or semi-aquatic Wurms and Snakes.
Lastly, a card idea:
Parasitic Genesis UBG
Sorcery (R)
Destroy target creature, then put X +1/+1 counters on target creature you control, where X is the destroyed creature's power.
No, Fumar's right. In this case, survival and 'evolve' are much the same thing, as those creatures that manage to survive the longest on Jund grow to to become it's most powerful predators.
And while Blue might get self-milling, that only helps it put cards into the graveyard. It, typically, doesn't get any graveyard related mechanics. In any case, the graveyard is far more in color for WBG.
If GUB means anything to me, it means the prospect for malformed, unwholesome but sustained and purposeful growth.
Cancer. Perfect.
Keywords for GUB:
Adaptation
Evolution
Cancer
Vis-a-vis the discussion on counters, I think Proliferate is a very GUB ability, whether you're dealing with +1/+1 counters, -1/-1 and poison counters, or level counters.
There was a custom set project on the site some... 4-5 years ago, which looked at -all- the wedges. And I thought it got BUG pretty well.
It's a slime world. A swampy marshland teeming with parasites and oozes and maybe some merfolk, salamanders, and/or some kinda new black or green species. It's a wild plane, constantly dark from the thick brush growing just feet over the ground, yet covering layers upon layers of fractally complex activity. Cellular warfare occurs, inching out the tiniest advantages of one slime over another. Gases, poisons... attacks that employ dirt, spit; controlling the depths of swampland and moss...
Deaths here are terrifying and the concept of 'home' does not exist. Drowning, suffocation, being buried alive or eaten alive, by beetles or gnats. Ants don't exist here; they would require too much structure in their ornate anthills. Bees I guess don't exist either. Maybe wasps and flying insects, but probably little flight - since the plantlife is outright carnivorous.
Whomever is the most aware of their surroundings has the least chance of anticlimactic death.
It's the Black that thinks that conflict and competition is just part of a game, to keep going and see the end. It's the Green that shuts off its mind to the whole and becomes totally self-concerned with life. It's the Blue that is absorbed in questions of efficiency like the madman inventing Ice-9.
And for all of them, secrets rule. Green uses open secrets, the other two get even dirtier.
second edit: no, wait, it's even nastier than this. How to put it ... Red-White 's ways have been removed. This wedge is a subversion of life and growth. The way to live here is not by growing strong. The only way to live is to destroy your own weaknesses. Everything that has survived retreats into paranoia. You cannot hold onto anything without it being attacked, so you have to somehow survive by not existing. Slimes are nearly the greatest lifeform there is because of how they cannot be unmade. Anything with a brain can be subverted with toxins or parasites. But likewise, the parasites can try to turn more of the world to their own purposes. Hopelessly depressing unless the world without anything else to believe in hasn't lost anything in your view.
Still, if you don't constantly change your tack, you get annihilated, or become collateral damage to another parasitoid.
Why were you interested? If you're making a set have a look. In fact I could have sword it was silvercut but I guess not.
edit: I COULD HAVE SWORD, GUYZ.
Despite my fondness for GUB, it seems much more problematic to pin down. I'll try the excluded-color analysis I used in the RWU thread.
The colors excluded from GUB are Red and White. These colors could be described as the most ideological. Their ideologies are deeply opposed - Red is individualistic, White is collectivistic - but Red and White are the colors most concerned with the nature and organization of governance. Green, Blue, and Black care much less about the particulars of how kingdoms are run. As long as the natural way is respected, Green doesn't care much about matters political, and is flexible and accepting of a variety of lifeways. Blue believes the world can be perfected, and doesn't shrink from politics. However, Blue's rationalism is much more flexible than the individualism of Red and the collectivism of White. Black is willing to do anything in its pursuit of power. GUB is flexible.
But is flexibility really meaningful as the core of GUB? I'm not convinced, so I'm going to try another avenue of attack. I'm going to look at each color, and how the other two modify it.
Blue is all about reason. What does it see in Black and Green? As I discussed in the RWU thread, these are the most realistic colors, that believe they understand how the world works. Blue wants to understand how the world works. Blue in GUB goes back to the beginning, seeking to understand the way the world really is.
Black is defined by its ambition. Where is that ambition channeled in GUB? Green and Blue both seek self-improvement - Green through growth and finding one's place in the world and Blue through learning and making one's place. Black in GUB seeks to understand its place in the world so that it can perfect itself.
Green, at its core, is about survival and growth. UB is cunning, always looking for the unexpected route to victory. Green in GUB is flexible, pursuing any avenue it has to to survive and thrive. Sounds like the conclusion I arrived at in my excluded-color analysis above.
GUB is the flexible, moderate politician, contorting his positions whatever way he must to pursue power. It is the intellectual tearing the veil from reality to see what lies beneath. It is the Borg, understanding through assimilation, assimilating through subversion, and subverting through understanding, until it can bring overwhelming force to bear.
What's your take on GUB? What kind of world might GUB create? What kinds of mechanics could represent it?
RWU
GUB
WBR
URG
BGW
Mechanically this can manifest in many ways:
- Rapid growth +X/+X, decay -X/-X, and (for lack of a better word) distortion +X/-X and -X/+X. Maybe both at the same time like Consume Strength
- Use of +1/+1 counters and moving, removing, and stealing counters. Graft, Fogotten Ancient, Sage of Fables, Spike Cannibal
- Card draw, discard, tutoring, theft, exchange, trading one resource for another. Mind Games, Vendilion Clique, Primal Command, Mind Control, Spawn Broker, Harrow, transmute
- Copy effects, P/T setting, land manipulation and animation, transformative removal. Clone, Cytoshape, Turn to Frog, Sudden Spoiling, Wings of Velis Vel, Gigantomancer, Spreading Seas, Contaminated Ground, Living Terrain, Polymorph, Pongify, Ghost Quarter
Green mana is the mana that concerns itself with life.
This makes it oppose the color the concerns itself with death.
mana concerns itself with the elements and flows of Time.
Life > Death > Time makes for a type of very sentient GUB. One that would perhaps play around with Hourglasses, the sands of time and Destiny. This type of philosophy could also be WUB however.
Some type of library manipulation effect such as Scry combined with graveyard interaction.
Avalon: The Legend Begins :: Pirate Set :: Babel: The Æther Wars
Favorite Magic Card: Fowl Play
[Primer] [Barrin's Tome]: A Master Wizard's Spellbook.
The OP mentioned "the Borg", which I agree with. The Borg are probably BUG (perhaps with a bit of white to represent their collectivism).
I agree with a lot of silvercut's analysis.
.
UB: How can I benefit from nature?
Genetics, Eugenics, Farming, Land Sacrifice, Performance Enhancement, Parasitism.
The kind of instability you suggest screams "Red" to me. I think the overall feel of GUB is more evolutionary than revolutionary, as Rancored_elf mentions.
I'm envisioning a treacherous, rainforest-type environment, something like Skyshroud/Rootwater, as a GUB environment. A Phyrexian take could also work (there are probably deep philosophical reasons why these colors were the first to be corrupted by Phyrexia in Scars block).
I agree with what you're saying about mechanics, particularly library manipulation, as these three colors are certainly the strongest in that area. Graveyard manipulation, I'm not as confident about. While Black and Green certainly share it, it's not much of a Blue thing. Certainly a part of a GUB world, but graveyard manipulation is probably going to be a wedge set's defining BGW mechanic.
I'm not so sure about what you're saying flavor-wise. Like you seem to realize, a deep concern with time and destiny (particularly destiny) seems more WUB.
RWU
GUB
WBR
URG
BGW
Going right to the source (so to speak), what does this tell us of the UGB Wedge, as a place?
Growth rules all. Like Naya, much of the world would be wild. Along with that, it would be monstrous in it. Great swathes of it would likely be untamed, and it's civilized populaces would either live amongst the vast wilderness or be actively trying to bring it to heel/keep it at bay. Here is the crux of the issue: do you represent a plane in which the people are harmonized with its environs and make use of the bounty so offered to improve (themselves, their lives, or in rarer cases, others lives) or are they existing in struggle against those forces, making their best effort at guiding the endless growth to their benefit or to a more managable end point?
In terms of mechanical identity, this Wedge is the +1/+1 counter wedge. Green, Black and Blue use a lot more counters than most, and while splicing both +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters could happen, it seems unlikely, but being able to remove +1/+1 counters definitely helps make the wedge more Black. I would argue that, of any mechanical ties the three colours have, +1/+1 counters is the one that works the best with the thematic elements of the wedge. It's been proven to have a lot of mechanical depth and would be easy to identify (this is important, as Naya is regarded as a mechanical failure because the '5 power matters' theme was not as directly conveyed as it needed to be for a new player to grasp), as well as being an easy bleed into other wedges. As long as there's creatures, there'll want +1/+1 counters.
I can't agree with this sentiment. The BGW wedge is far and away the strongest in + and - counters alike. I think Mister M wraps up the ideas he reviewed very cleanly, agreein' with those.
Lemme go from the Naya argument and take it in a different direction: Naya is a jungle in which the strongest beasts, the survivors, are celebrated. White (within the plane) prizes this aspect of green for its nobility and its awe-inspiring grandeur, going as far as to worship and venerate the beasts as gods; red prizes this aspect of green because of its power and, from this power, the ability to do whatever the holder desires, in addition to perceived chaos in the minds of the beasties.
How can we apply this to GUB? Let's break it down to the Ravnica guilds. The Simic seek to perfect biology. They're concerned with evolution and using blue's knowledge to bring the natural in green to its epitome, and they're willing to take huge risks (Kraj) to do so. They're biomancers, wizards that deal with biology and physical perfection. The Golgari embrace life and death as equals, a continuum. Growth and power. The Golgari are necromancers, wizards who deal with death and resurrection. Blue loves green in this wedge because it sees a puzzle to perfect, which benefits green because it wins the survival-of-the-fittest contest; black loves green here because it can parasite off of green's strength (and vice versa) and still have a mutually beneficial relationship, as long as they're working together.
Taking these two ideas together, I'd conclude that GUB would go so far as to attempt to redefine life itself, if they found a version of "life" that they found superior. This is why Phyrexia corrupted these colors first; these colors are what Phyrexia became. GUB likes Living Death, but they'd love it if they got to graft some extra arms and pincers onto the corpses first. They would settle for Divination in a pinch, but they'd much prefer to glean their knowledge by poring over corpses and poking at their brains (physically and mentally) to see how they could improve their work. They love a good Mitotic Slime, because they can really use those corpses for the greater good (if only they could operate on them and maybe make them indestructible or something, that'd be cool).
Bionecromancer beastriders with mad surgical skills.
I don't have a conclusion, so there's my ideas.
- Eternity. Life, death and time come together in this shard.
- Lack of Empathy, Remorse, Solidarity: Green is deprived from the WR influences that conjugate the good parts of nature. There is no pack, no family to care for.
- A Grand Design: Green is mindless in its motivations, blue and black are the opposite. When you put them together, you get that there is an underlying goal, but that objective is seen as the inevitable end of pursuing one's path.
For example, I came up with a race for UBG that was sort of like eldritch abominations. Each monster, though had its own mutations, and these lived in a fen where they hunted each other to absorb their prey's life and mana, grow, and expand their brood.
However, they were sapient. They are no concerned with political business or building tribes, they only care about expanding their progeny, so the most powerful arcane monsters thrive and consume the whole universe within themselves.
Their goal is to evolve into a being that can comprehend the whole plane, and become a living ecosystem.
There are huge versions of these creatures that live beneath the ground, growing secretly. These bigger monsters send whispers to the creatures above, to sway them to do their will - kill a competitor, bring them sustenance, or just drive them insane to dispense with them.
All in all, Old Ones kind of.
It's a cold and calculating take on the food chain where appearances are deceiving and weaknesses may in fact just be a trap. It's immoral, uncompromising and not at all trustworthy. Loyalty isn't a value and the individual is mostly only concerned for its own survival with alliances and groups being temporary and hard to trust. GUB is all about treachery in nature and how deceit makes you a better predator. Morph is a fairly good mechanical representation of GUB ideals, treachery in combat (combat here being a mechanical analog for the hunt).
Archatmos
Excellion
Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
Yeah, that's why I see it as the color of eldritch abominations that whisper into your nightmares.
I can see it. I think as long as strength and force are downplayed in favor of being calculating, unpredictable and inscrutable, the predator is firmly within GUB-range. GUB calculates and schemes, it doesn't run on base instinct.
Archatmos
Excellion
Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
True, and not true. Recently, Wizards talked about which colours manipulate +1/+1 counters the most, and while Green is the king of this, it turns out that Black and Blue are the second for counter manipulation (not just +1/+1 counters, but all forms of counters); White, because it gets a lot of creature pump that only increases power/toughness by small amounts, does dip its toes into the +1/+1 counter theme but it does not manipulate those counters. This is why Simic had such a prominent +1/+1 counter theme in the first Ravnica Block. The main reason I would not make GWB the +1/+1 counter wedge is because it is not the most resonant mechanical theme between those colours: that wedge is the graveyard wedge.
@ilovesaprolings: While there could be graveyard related cards, this wegde is not the graveyard wedge because Blue cares nothing about the graveyard. As I mentioned, that would almost certainly be the WGB wedge, because all of those colours do care about the graveyard, and it makes sense that the Black wedge would have graveyard centered mechanics (since Black interacts with the graveyard the most).
That's BRG, you just described Jund.
Would they be a callous, cold, and decisive individual, unswayed by anything and willing to do anything to advance beyond its peers?
RRR Khorenthos - The Red Block (Feedback needed!) RRR
true. The terms rapid and unstale would fit better for URG. Maybe a world of fantasy and illusion that quickly appears and disappears, forever growing and changing into new things. Sneak Attack, Chaos Warp, Natural Order, Master Transmuter, Show and Tell, Hypergenesis, Evacuation.
Different thread though.
The GUB wedge based in massive rain forest is a good idea. It places green as the most important part of the plane, but there is still room for meandering rivers to represent islands and rotting swamps. And rain forests are full of vast biological diversity that sets up the potential for evolution, interbreeding, and any selective breeding experiments that the sentient life tries to execute.
The first important thing that I think you glossed over is that this is from MarRo's article It's Not Easy Being Green about the color identity of green. In two-color groups, like the Guilds of Ravnica, the two colors are balanced and equals. In three-color groups, like the Shards of Alara, one color is dominant and only equal with the other two combined. For tri-color arcs, like RGW, the central color is most important, in approximately a 1:2:1 ratio. A tri-color arc is about how the central color relates to its two allies. For tri-color wedges, like GUB, the first color is most important, in approximately a 2:1:1 ratio. A tri-color wedge is about how the first color relates to its two enemies.
Sorry for interrupting. I just wanted to identify the source and the reason for choosing it. Please continue:
I think the sentient life of the GUB plane would be able to harness and selectively breed the wild populations to fit their ideals. They would direct evolution and mate animals to enhance desirable traits and to diminish undesirable traits. This doesn't necessarily mean that they are taming the creatures of the plane; maybe one desirable trait on a GUB plane is giant uncontrollable monstrosities.
I'm not sure +1/+1 counters is the best way to go. The direction that a GUB mechanic focused on +1/+1 counters would want to go would necessitate a decent amount of +1/+1 counter use planned in the other wedges. The GUB use of +1/+1 counters would involve counter spreading among your own creatures like graft and Forgotten Ancient, but also counter stealing from other player's creatures like Arcbound Fiend, Fate Transfer, and Spike Cannibal. That would not be possible unless the other wedges had a decent amount of +1/+1 counter use or you did the taboo of mixing +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters.
In nature, creatures can adapt to a changing environment in order to survive, and new creatures are born with variations that allow them to out-perform older members of the species which then die off. GU could be the willful changing of the existing into something else, while BG could be intentional killing off of the old to make room for the new.
If GUB means anything to me, it means the prospect for malformed, unwholesome but sustained and purposeful growth.
A hideous swelling decay that engulfs an entire city and then sinks into rot is BG. If it instead mires the city in a lingering, formless rot which absorbs the helpless townsfolk, then extrudes ghastly dopplegangers of them to prey on foolish future intruders... it's probably GUB.
Plot of Dragon's Maze:
Niv-Mizzet plays Realmwright, chooses "Gate". Then a dramatic retelling of the ensuing argument.
I apologize, my "calculates and schemes" vs "base instinct" comment was relating specifically to predation and the hunt. I should have made that more clear. I think of it as Dimir sensibilities through the lens of the natural order. Everything from the predator/prey relationship to reproduction would have increased levels of duplicity involved. Nature can already be deceptive (camouflage, decoys, lures, unexpected poisons, mimicry, etc), UB is just isolating that in G and amplifying it.
Pretty much, yes. Where 'advancement' in this case is largely just survival. Sentient beings in GUB would be largely individualistic, amoral and uncompromising. They view allies as temporary tools to utilize until they are no longer helpful with the tight family unit being about the only stable grouping you'd see, based largely on the primary biological imperative: the successful survival of an individual's genes to the next generation. They'd be aloof, but exceptional survivors.
Archatmos
Excellion
Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
Pirates of the Caribbean
Robinson Crusoe
Avalon: The Legend Begins :: Pirate Set :: Babel: The Æther Wars
Favorite Magic Card: Fowl Play
[Primer] [Barrin's Tome]: A Master Wizard's Spellbook.
My apologies if any confusion arose from me entirely sitting my source (as it was from the aforementioned article, but I took out a chunk of text to make my post a bit more readable). And I agree with your assessment of how the thematic identity of a wedge. The relation between what Green cares about most (growth) with the colour's enemies is in, part, how those colours benefit from it. Blue, being clinical, sees the possibility of unfettered growth as a means to advance ideas at a greater rate. Black sees it as means to acquire more power for itself.
I think this part of the reason that, mechanically, a +1/+1 theme does work, but the obvious development roadblock you mentioned would make the execution of the idea perhaps too difficult. The one advantage of pressing the theme strongly in one wedge, however, is that those colours to whom those counters are, generally, a secondary or tertiary mechanic can, with regards to the wedge, use the mechanic as a primary mechanic to help establish the wedge's identity while diversifying +1/+1 counter creation to such a degree that only White and Red would (appropriately) feel lacking.
And of course, an added prevalence of +1/+1 counters being distributed by noncolored sources could help bridge the gap without comprising the wedge's mechanical and thematical identity.
And I agree that, barring dire circumstances, the mix of both +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters in a set is unlikely to achieve the desire aim.
I had considered Copying/Cloning as a possible mechanic for this wedge, but it seems to me that it would probably fit more with the infinite malleability and constant change of the GUR wedge.
As for tribes that could be prominent in the setting, Elves would liekly be dominant, as the go to Green tribe. But Blue and Black have a few tribes that could make up part of the wedge's diverse nature. The semi-savage Vampires of Zendikar seem like they would equally be at home in the wild, dark and treacherous landscape of this wedge, and given the likelyhood of massive undergrowths teeming with rivers and swampland, Merfolk might also find a home in the wedge. Other monsters of note could be giant, crocidilian predators, even ones of Leviathan-esque proportions, or semi-aquatic Wurms and Snakes.
Lastly, a card idea:
Parasitic Genesis UBG
Sorcery (R)
Destroy target creature, then put X +1/+1 counters on target creature you control, where X is the destroyed creature's power.
And while Blue might get self-milling, that only helps it put cards into the graveyard. It, typically, doesn't get any graveyard related mechanics. In any case, the graveyard is far more in color for WBG.
This.
Cancer. Perfect.
Keywords for GUB:
Adaptation
Evolution
Cancer
Vis-a-vis the discussion on counters, I think Proliferate is a very GUB ability, whether you're dealing with +1/+1 counters, -1/-1 and poison counters, or level counters.
RWU
GUB
WBR
URG
BGW
It's a slime world. A swampy marshland teeming with parasites and oozes and maybe some merfolk, salamanders, and/or some kinda new black or green species. It's a wild plane, constantly dark from the thick brush growing just feet over the ground, yet covering layers upon layers of fractally complex activity. Cellular warfare occurs, inching out the tiniest advantages of one slime over another. Gases, poisons... attacks that employ dirt, spit; controlling the depths of swampland and moss...
Deaths here are terrifying and the concept of 'home' does not exist. Drowning, suffocation, being buried alive or eaten alive, by beetles or gnats. Ants don't exist here; they would require too much structure in their ornate anthills. Bees I guess don't exist either. Maybe wasps and flying insects, but probably little flight - since the plantlife is outright carnivorous.
Whomever is the most aware of their surroundings has the least chance of anticlimactic death.
It's the Black that thinks that conflict and competition is just part of a game, to keep going and see the end. It's the Green that shuts off its mind to the whole and becomes totally self-concerned with life. It's the Blue that is absorbed in questions of efficiency like the madman inventing Ice-9.And for all of them, secrets rule. Green uses open secrets, the other two get even dirtier.
second edit: no, wait, it's even nastier than this. How to put it ... Red-White 's ways have been removed. This wedge is a subversion of life and growth. The way to live here is not by growing strong. The only way to live is to destroy your own weaknesses. Everything that has survived retreats into paranoia. You cannot hold onto anything without it being attacked, so you have to somehow survive by not existing. Slimes are nearly the greatest lifeform there is because of how they cannot be unmade. Anything with a brain can be subverted with toxins or parasites. But likewise, the parasites can try to turn more of the world to their own purposes. Hopelessly depressing unless the world without anything else to believe in hasn't lost anything in your view.
Still, if you don't constantly change your tack, you get annihilated, or become collateral damage to another parasitoid.
Why were you interested? If you're making a set have a look. In fact I could have sword it was silvercut but I guess not.
edit: I COULD HAVE SWORD, GUYZ.
Parasitoids. Those. Yes. Damn, Nature. You scary.
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