The latest magic set has… possibly the subtlest, weirdest take on the Magic color wheel so far. The 5 factions are each a different college within a magical university, each an enemy-color-pair.
The most obvious reference here is Harry Potter. And in Harry Potter, the houses map (relatively) neatly to various magic colors, or color pairs.
Slytherin is basically canonical MTG Black. Gryffindor is basically Red. Ravenclaw is basically blue. Hufflepuff sort of green/white. There are differences between Hogwarts houses and Magic colors, but they are aspiring to very similar archetypes. And that’s what I was initially expecting out of “Wizards of the Coast makes a magic set inspired by Magical School YA Fiction.”
But, each of the factions in Strixhaven is *quite weird*, at least by MTG standards. At first I was very confused. Now that I’ve had more time to think about it I am pretty impressed.
Each faction is basically a department focused on particular clusters of classes and interests. They are each defined by *a major philosophical argument that divides the field*, where people argue what the point of the field is and what paradigm it should be operating under.
One of the more straightforward ones is, say, the college of the arts, which is Blue/Red. Everyone involved agrees you’re supposed to make good, skillful art. But, they argue over whether the point of art is to make you *think*, and philosophically engage with things, or to make you *feel*, and convey raw emotion.
A weirder one is the humanities department – history, psychology, anthropology. The humanities in this school are White/Red, and their defining debate is “is core human condition (er, ‘humanoid’ condition) primarily about how people relate to the systems and rules they created, or about the close relations and bonds that individuals created themselves?”
The college of mathematics is Blue/Green, with shared love of fractals, the laws governing nature, etc… who debate whether mathematics is a “natural, platonic thing” that sentients merely discovered, or is it a tool they created?
And then...
...there’s the communication department. Which is White/Black. Whose central debate is about whether the point of communication is to serve the public good and benefit society, or to manipulate the social fabric to benefit yourself.
I mentioned this last bit to Jim Babcock, who said “WHAT!? *Neither* of those is the point of communication!”
And I said “Yeah it sure would be better if the communications department was Blue, wouldn’t it? Good thing this is just a fantasy world created for fun and not at all reflective of the real world.”
The latest magic set has… possibly the subtlest, weirdest take on the Magic color wheel so far. The 5 factions are each a different college within a magical university, each an enemy-color-pair.
The most obvious reference here is Harry Potter. And in Harry Potter, the houses map (relatively) neatly to various magic colors, or color pairs.
Slytherin is basically canonical MTG Black. Gryffindor is basically Red. Ravenclaw is basically blue. Hufflepuff sort of green/white. There are differences between Hogwarts houses and Magic colors, but they are aspiring to very similar archetypes. And that’s what I was initially expecting out of “Wizards of the Coast makes a magic set inspired by Magical School YA Fiction.”
But, each of the factions in Strixhaven is *quite weird*, at least by MTG standards. At first I was very confused. Now that I’ve had more time to think about it I am pretty impressed.
Each faction is basically a department focused on particular clusters of classes and interests. They are each defined by *a major philosophical argument that divides the field*, where people argue what the point of the field is and what paradigm it should be operating under.
One of the more straightforward ones is, say, the college of the arts, which is Blue/Red. Everyone involved agrees you’re supposed to make good, skillful art. But, they argue over whether the point of art is to make you *think*, and philosophically engage with things, or to make you *feel*, and convey raw emotion.
A weirder one is the humanities department – history, psychology, anthropology. The humanities in this school are White/Red, and their defining debate is “is core human condition (er, ‘humanoid’ condition) primarily about how people relate to the systems and rules they created, or about the close relations and bonds that individuals created themselves?”
The college of mathematics is Blue/Green, with shared love of fractals, the laws governing nature, etc… who debate whether mathematics is a “natural, platonic thing” that sentients merely discovered, or is it a tool they created?
And then...
...there’s the communication department. Which is White/Black. Whose central debate is about whether the point of communication is to serve the public good and benefit society, or to manipulate the social fabric to benefit yourself.
I mentioned this last bit to Jim Babcock, who said “WHAT!? *Neither* of those is the point of communication!”
And I said “Yeah it sure would be better if the communications department was Blue, wouldn’t it? Good thing this is just a fantasy world created for fun and not at all reflective of the real world.”
What about Black/Green?
They’re the biology department, who disagree about whether the primary force underlying ecosystems is life/death/growth/decay.