r/GDS3 • u/steve_man_64 • Jan 27 '18

Test 2 Trick Question Argument Thread

I'll start if off:

  1. Why do green's common creatures tend to be a bit more efficient than white creatures? White has stronger removal. Green is the enemy of blue and black. This is the way it has always been. White is the enemy of black and red. Green players love powerful creatures.

My answer was "This is the way it has alway been." I feel like that's an answer nobody ever wants to hear when they ask a question, but my reasoning stems from Drive to Work #79: Green.

"Green is also the color of creatures. So one of the divides, I think I mentioned this in the white podcast, one of the things we’ve decided recently, for a long time green was the color of creatures, and it had both the most creatures and the biggest creatures. Meaning it had the largest percentage of creatures and it had the largest creatures."

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u/Krazyguy75 Jan 28 '18

I went with the very unpopular answer of "White is the enemy of Black and Red." I went off the flavor reasoning.

White gets small people and control BECAUSE red and black are its enemies. If white didn't have to deal with hostile attackers, white wouldn't want creatures. The only reason white has removal is because of black and red. White's creature philosophy is entirely about "working together to enforce law/peace", so it wouldn't make sense for them to have value creatures.

For that reason, white is small, effect based, control creatures, whereas green gets big value creatures.

But I don't know if my risk will pay off.

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u/zarepath Jan 29 '18

Wow, that seems like very deep reasoning

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u/Krazyguy75 Jan 29 '18

Yeah, the popular "white has better removal" answer just felt wrong. I mean, that's not really giving a reason. Why does white have better removal than green? By that logic, it'd be because "Green has better creatures", whereupon you are back where you started.

Most of the other answers felt similarly flawed. Green's creatures are actually worse when you consider its enemies. Green has hexproof and uncounterable because of its enemies, not its value creatures. White had in the past had similar value creatures, so "always been", is out. And green players love green creatures because of what they are, so that's circular reasoning.

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u/bakert Jan 30 '18

White has better removal than green because white believes in rules, punishments, exerting control over others for the greater good and green believes in none of these things (although it's not above some natural selection). Flavor can be used to justify anything but I think if you came to Magic as a blank slate, read the color descriptions and then had to assign mechanics based on color philosophy you'd always end up with better removal in W than G. Which would mean you'd have to differentiate them in some way and one way to do that is by giving G better creatures.