The Gaming Den

done them well? Like there's evil White phyrexians in the setting when all colors were phyrexian.

Kamigawa kinda sorta had some good black rebels vs a white dictatorship, but then all the skull eating monsters were black and the noble helper spirits were white.

I've been playing FFXiV, the Shadowbringers plot with the Sin-Eaters and Sinners struck me as what MtG never quite did with Black vs White

Kaladesh, sort of.

The story of the set was that the White council of Ghirapur was turning super authoritarian and restricting the magic resources, under the control of a WU villain, while a mono-Blue villain was running around being outright fascist in their name. They were opposed by a B/R/G resistance force, with a notable mono-Black hero, Yahenni of the Aetherborn race.

OgreBattle wrote:done them well? Like there's evil White phyrexians in the setting when all colors were phyrexian.

Kamigawa kinda sorta had some good black rebels vs a white dictatorship, but then all the skull eating monsters were black and the noble helper spirits were white.

I've been playing FFXiV, the Shadowbringers plot with the Sin-Eaters and Sinners struck me as what MtG never quite did with Black vs White

In Kaladesh, the good guys are the Revolt, and the bad guys are the Consulate. Both the Revolt and the Consulate have cards in all colors. But the leaders of the Revolt are Black and Red (Yahenni and Pia), and the leaders of the Consulate are White and Blue (Dovin Baan and Sram). There are also Black villains and White heroes, but in the specific conflict between Sram and Yahenni, you are very definitely supposed to take the side of Black over White.

More frequently when we have a Black hero it's like Liliana versus Bolas, where Liliana is Black and Bolas is also Black at the conclusion of War of the Spark. And more frequently when we have a White villain, the hero is also White, as is the case with Elspeth versus Heliod in Theros Beyond Death.

But Kaladesh/Aether Revolt is a segment where one of the main heroes is Black and is intended to confront a main villain who is White.

-Username17

In Kaladesh is there an inherent menace to White mana or inherent comfort in Black mana? Like the way a lot of MtG sets have Black monsters & White angels, inherently evil Black magic and inherently goodly White magic.

The closest I can recall is Gisela & B... something, the White angels corrupted by Eldrazi into a colorless double monster, but in that case it's White purity being corrupted by Eldrazi and not an inherent evil in White mana of that plane.

OgreBattle wrote:In Kaladesh is there an inherent menace to White mana or inherent comfort in Black mana? Like the way a lot of MtG sets have Black monsters & White angels, inherently evil Black magic and inherently goodly White magic.

The closest I can recall is Gisela & B... something, the White angels corrupted by Eldrazi into a colorless double monster, but in that case it's White purity being corrupted by Eldrazi and not an inherent evil in White mana of that plane.

I'm not sure I understand the question.

The movements of the Consulate are depicted with White cards Some Blue cards too, but mostly White. Consulate Surveillance, Consulate Crackdown, and Captured by the Consulate are story pieces as well as cards, and they are all White cards. The movements of the Revolt are depicted with Black cards, honestly more Red cards than Black cards, but a significant number of Black cards. Renegade's Getaway, Daring Demolition, and Fatal Push are all story pieces in addition to being cards, and they are all Black and depict actions of the heroes. But while Fatal Push is by far the most well known of cards from Aether Revolt due to its utility in multiple formats, it's a pretty minor portion of the story. A much more important card for the Revolt from a story standpoint is Pia's Revolution, which is Red.

But even though there's definite alignment of the colors, there are still cards that cross over. Call For Unity is White despite being a Revolt card, and Battle at the Bridge is Black despite being a Consulate card. Revolutionaries and Consulate Authority appear in all five colors and colorless (The Consulate Dreadnaught is a colorless artifact). The overall theme of the colors is pretty clear, with the heroic Revolt being primary Red and secondary Black and the villainous Consulate being primary White and secondary Blue.

The Guilds of Ravnica to War of the Spark storyline explicitly had an even split of five of the color pairs working for the big bad and five of the color pairs on team good-guy. And the White/Black, Red/Blue, and Green/Black villains having heroic conversions at the end with only the White/Blue and Red/Green villains staying baddies to the end. But then the final villain was Black/Red/Blue, so that's kind of a wash.

-Username17

The info you gave helped explain Kaladesh, thanks.


Though to explain myself more...
If we look at a bunch of MtG cards with 'no context', most black removal and creatures are things that if you plopped them in a village it would be a bad thing like hideous disease and skull collecting demons. White removal includes 'good' things like giving up war for peace, and creatures tend to be the villagers themselves or their guardians. There's also indiscriminate cleansing, which edges towards very bad but is presented as a 'divine creator will' sort of thing as it's the real world American god's wrath and not a specific MtG divine entity.

I remember now that The Dark did have some 'inherently bad' White stuff, brainwashing, persecution, mob hatred and so on.

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Sear ... Dark%22%5D

But that set had "Inquisition" a black card instead of a White zeal thing, later sets tend to have anger as red and mind control as blue.

I guess my ultimate goal is some kinda "heartbreaker mtg of my own" where each piece of the color pie can have good and evil.

The title of your question asks about plots, the body asks about theming and setting, and your ultimate goal seems to be the same as what MtG actually sometimes does, with some good in Black and some evil in White.

I'm not sure that it goes as far as hoped. When an Angel does good things, it is a white card. When an angel does bad things, it becomes a black card.

If angels could be good or evil, why not be always white?

The morality scales in MtG are generally very favorable to white and very unfavorable to black. If you're trying to make a game where all sides are equally good guys and bad guys, Magic has some nods in that direction but it isn't really a good example.

Well, the flavor text on Shatter the Sky is "When the gods go to war, mortals pay the highest price." Which seems kinda bad.

I think Black and White are bad conceptually, but lately WotC have gotten better at producing Black Heroes and White Villains as well as making actions and "stuff" that is White or Black but not obviously "white hat" or "black hat." Black in Theros manages to be scary without being morally wrong.


But yeah, in my own head canon, there is no Black and no White. All the colors have both heroes and villains in them.

-Username17