Ever been a MTG set where Black wasn't evil? Was good?

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 4:50 am

Red and Blue strike me as the most neutral in terms of having sapient good and evil dudes.

Green tends to be filled with good sapient people and neutral animals. Usually not outright evil but it happens on occasion.

White is almost always good, or neutral human soldiers.

Black though... they seem to always be badguys. The most 'good' I can think of is Sorin but everyone associated with him, such as those vampires he came from, tend to be assholes at best.

So is there any case where Black is a goodguy faction in an MTG set?
If not, how would you envision an MTG set where Black is good?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 5:00 am

MaRo talks a lot about how Black and White aren't necessarily Evil and Good, but no, generally Black is painted as pretty evil due to semiotics. People see "Willing to do anything to win, even hurt oneself, use poison and disease and sleep murder" and think "Evil." Meanwhile they see "Order. Order and Conformity above all else, even to the detriment of the self." of White and think "Good (with a possibility of facism)"

I think they tried to do a Black good guy in Kamigawa, but it was one of the least popular sets.

Basically the colour philosophies/ideals are-
White- Order above all.
Green- Nature and Life
Red- Passion and emotion
Black- Win at any cost
Blue- The Mind and intellect

Insomniac · Post by **Insomniac** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 5:22 am

I think Black merging with Green kind of makes them a little "better," you know? The Golgari Swarm are the garbage collection and recyclers of the setting, the scrappy underdogs. It seems like they are Neutral Evil trending ever so slightly to Good.

Blue/Black is neutral evil, Black/Red is chaotic evil.

Black mixed with White seems like it would be the most evil combination as Lawful Evil. Kind of how Dungeons and Dragons gave its "X alignment is the worst alignment" description for Lawful Evil as...

"Lawful evil is the most dangerous alignment because it represents methodical, intentional, and frequently successful evil."

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 6:41 am

Even when sets come out and Black isn't the bad guys, they get retconned later into being bad guys. In Antiquities there are three types of Black cards. There's the Yawgmoth group who power themselves with artifacts. There's the Phyrexian group who disrupt and destroy enemy artifacts. And there's the ghosts who show up next to artifacts and wreck shit. None of that is actually evil or even implied to be evil in the original set.

But... Yawgmoth was eventually retconned into being the big bad of the setting and Phyrexia became a hungry hell dimension out to destroy all biological life. So even though there really isn't any art or flavor text to indicate that Black is a bad actor in the original set - the storyline has progressed to make those cards very explicitly wicked.

-Username17

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 7:13 am

Kamigawa had Black-colored main character. Then again, black factions there still were cackling villains and the story was mostly about bad people fighting worse people.[/i]

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 8:05 am

Similarly, Ravnica had a White/Black Orzhov heroine, but she was much more sympathetic than the rest of the Orzhov. The Orzhov are probably in the top 50% "least worst" in Ravnica, but that's damning with faint praise.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 11:09 am

Really? I don't know the storyline, only the cards, but the Orzhov came across to me as an unholy stew of corrupt religion, organized crime and economic exploitation -with necromancers, so your contract of slavery doesn't even end when you die. I'd place them pretty close to the bottom, really.

Edit: But I really came here to mention Kamigawa, where the main bad guys are White and the protagonists are Black. But it's true that the black factions in Kamigawa more broadly are still pretty evil. Invasion Block had the witches of Urborg as part of Urza's coalition against Phyrexia, but I don't know if they were good-ish or just "willing to join up against an existential threat". Plus, y'know, the existential threat itself was mainly Black, and most of the Black major characters on the coalition's side turned out to be traitors and/or bastards.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 2:34 pm

Orion wrote:Similarly, Ravnica had a White/Black Orzhov heroine, but she was much more sympathetic than the rest of the Orzhov. The Orzhov are probably in the top 50% "least worst" in Ravnica, but that's damning with faint praise.

Which five are worse?

I would rate the guilds in tiers: (these are based on RTR, not O!Ravnica, but I think they're pretty similar)

Good: Selesnya
Somewhat good: Boros, Azorius
Neutral: Simic, Izzet, maybe Golgari
Not so bad: Gruul, maybe Golgari
Awful: Dimir, Rakdos, Orzhov

Yeah, that puts the Golgari as the least-bad black guild.

The Abzan of Tarkir don't seem that bad either, and their main failing seems to be the {W} failing of xenophobia and insularity.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 3:30 pm

Wait wut, the Selesnya aren't good there whole shtick is that they a brainwashing cult that places very little value on the lives of it's members.

With Ravinica guilds everyone is various degrees of dicks. The good guilds are the ones that actually provide public services in addition squabbling for political power aka the Golgari, Izzet pre-RtR Boros Azorius and RtR Simic

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 4:02 pm

Gruul spend all day running around breaking things and killing people. I don't recall any indication that they did anything of value whatsoever. They're basically equivalent to rakdos except that they're more angry and less adistic, and possibly have more property damage and lower body counts. There is no way they're better than Orzhov

I'll grant that the three other white guilds are probably the top three in social value. I'd have gone Boros, Azorius, Selesnya, but whatever. I have a soft spot for Golgari because they recycle. I don't really remember anything about their agenda but whatever. So the wild cards here are Simic and Izzet. Now, with Orzhov, we have a pretty good idea what we're getting. It's a corrupt church that's basically like the catholic church except involved with street-level mafia crime except able to secretly procure for the wealthy any taboo indulgence they desireexcept with a staff of fake exorcists paid to solve non-problems or self-created problems. It's up in the air whether they do anything that's actually good. I would argue that their protection racket probably does come with actual protection. I mean, you can make an Orzhov deck and play Magic against a Gruul deck. I'm thinking they have enough ghosts and angels sitting around that they might actually save your house from a Rakdos party if your dues are paid up.

Simic and Izzet, on the other hand, are total ciphers. Both like to "do science" and both do a kind of science that has the potential to really upset people and the potential to end up involving bystanders without their consent. "Blowing things up" and "making giant monsters for the lulz and also playing with human subjects" aren't hobbies you want your neighbors to have. But the big question mark here is the fact that neither guild has an explicit political, or more importantly, ethical agenda. They're just about doing the work they happen to be doing. Now, when a person or group conspicuously identifies as neutral, that can mean one of two things. Either they're highly conscientious people who don't feel obligated to involve themselves in distant or global issues, but for whom maintaining "neutrality" requires scrupulous care to deal justly with the people you deal with and not interfere with the people you don't deal with. It could also just mean you're an asshole who constantly behave in thoughtless and unethical ways. I figure that Orzhov neighborhoods don't burn down, so if the Izzet regular set houses on fire, then they're worse than Orzhov, and if not, they're probably better.

It's also not clear how either of them pays for anything. Simic has some more obvious revenue streams. Izzet might actually be arms dealing who sell bombs to rakdos or something else terrible.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 4:29 pm

Lord Mistborn wrote:Wait wut, the Selesnya aren't good there whole shtick is that they a brainwashing cult that places very little value on the lives of it's members.

That doesn't come through on the cards, at least in RtR.

On the other hand, the Orzhov...

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 4:55 pm

The Seneslya are a brainwashing cult, but they're also genuinely pretty nice, and in the books some of the crazier bullshit they get up to is because a mad Golgari necromancer and the tenth signatory have infiltrated them and messed with their magic tree, which allowed them to influence the dryads on the leading council and tamper with their telepathic network.

Simic and Izzet are both pretty much mad scientists, but on the other hand their mad science produces genuinely useful stuff that they will sell.

Gruul are street gangs, but you can hire them as day labor and stuff. The Rakados pretty much exist because the guilds are required to power a plantwide spell and they needed a tenth, so by recognizing Rakados and his cultists as a guild they tamp down on their craziness and keep Rakados from personally going on a rampage on the surface, which he would otherwise totally do.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 5:32 pm

Orion wrote:It's also not clear how either of them pays for anything. Simic has some more obvious revenue streams. Izzet might actually be arms dealing who sell bombs to rakdos or something else terrible.

The Izzet run Ravnicas public works projects so that's probably how they get most of their money. The Izzet and Golgari are probably the most crucial guilds for Ravnicas day to day function because they're ones responsible for people having food and water.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon May 25, 2015 9:19 am

There's a new block out these days, and Black features prominently in some of the less-bad factions this time around. The Mardu Horde are your basic Mongol types and they are a multi-racial, multi-ethnic group of warriors and raiders who don't particularly seem to do anything terribly bad (other than of course fight and kill people). The Abzan Houses, in addition to winning all the time, are as close to "good" as any faction in Magic comes.

On the other hand, the Sultai are straight up brain eating villains, and their use of zombies is specifically inhumane and over-the-top. So the current block does the color moral ambivalence thing that they said they were going to do a long ass time ago. The Abzan are basically "good," the Mardu are basically "neutral," and the Sultai are basically "evil" and they all tap swamps for mana.

-Username17

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Mon May 25, 2015 9:58 am

I'm not sure this actually signifies anything though. The schtick of the new sets is "Wedges!", which means decks built using a specific three colours. Given that all the factions are tied to three colours and there are only 5 colours total, having any faction with black in it be "Eeeevil!" would mean over half the factions would be bad guys. Given they are going for a world based on warring factions rather than a straight Good versus Evil world, that seems pretty unlikely.

I'd say "White is Good, Black is Bad" is still a pretty common theme in MtG. In Lorwyn when they made Elves more evil they made them.. Green and Black. The Merfolk in Lorwyn are helpful and friendly and were made Blue / White. Conversely when the Shadowmoor happened Elves became nice again and were made Green / White, whilst Merfolk became cutthroats and brutish thugs, and were made Blue / Black. Innistrad, the Horror set, had all the horror monsters in other colours and the poor preyed upon humans in White - showing White is the colour of good even when all the other colours go bad. Theros had a Red/Green antagonist, but the heroes of the piece were a pair of White Planeswalkers.

So I don't really see Black having shifted away from defaulting to bad and White to good generally, just that for this set it wouldn't really make sense.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon May 25, 2015 10:38 am

Well the original question was whether there were any sets where Black wasn't the bad guys. And so I would argue that the fact that the fact we can name many sets where Black are the big bad guys or even just "extremely dickish" is irrelevant to the question. The current block is a multi-colored block, and within that context the Black/Red, Black/White, and Black/Green cards are neutral or good, and only the Black/Blue cards are senselessly evil.

So the answer to the original question posed in the first post is now "yes." The Tarkir sets have Black as being as nice a color as you'd need.

-Username17

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Mon May 25, 2015 12:24 pm

I would just like to point out that not only Kamigawa had a good black guy, the big bad was arguably the white emperor who had stolen the son of the supreme god and thus started the whole kami war thingy.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon May 25, 2015 7:32 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:So the current block does the color moral ambivalence thing that they said they were going to do a long ass time ago. The Abzan are basically "good," the Mardu are basically "neutral," and the Sultai are basically "evil" and they all tap swamps for mana.

-Username17

To expand on what Red_Rob said-

That's because the clans are all three colour, so Mardu is primarily Red with Black/White mixed in, and it's easier for people, both player and designers to see people who are "rah pathos" with a side of "win at all costs" and "order order order" as good. Abzan is primarily White, with Green/Black mixed in, so they have the same deal, except they're mostly "order order order" with a bit of "yay trees/life" and "win at all costs" mixed in. Sultai is primarily Black with Green/Blue mixed in, and people generally agree that Blue is the colour of dicks, and Green has always been pretty neutral, so Sultai is " WIN AT ALL COSTS" with a bit of "yay trees/life" and "I'm a colossal dick who is smarter than you" mixed in.

I mean, sure, to answer the basic question of the thread we can now point to Tarkir, but even Tarkir doesn't do a lot for this. Hell, for that matter, if we're just trying to find a set where black was a good guy, Ravnica had the black guilds mostly be dickish, but the Golgari were Ravnica's garbage disposal and farmers. Rakdos, Orzhov and Dimir may all have been dicks, but Golgari always seemed to be portrayed pretty positively.

Count Arioch the 28th · Mon May 25, 2015 7:48 pm

I haven't kept up with this for a very long time, I just know these guys got me ostracized from my M:tG group:

http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Thrulls

Not because I used the little buggers, because of the way I pronounced it. I was considered stupid because my group decided that they were called "thralls" and kept mocking me when I pointed out that was a "u", not an "a".

I found a better group later with fewer asshats.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon May 25, 2015 8:04 pm

Reminds me of playing tournaments when Kamigawa block was current as someone who'd taken Japanese in high school...

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Mon May 25, 2015 9:22 pm

Prak wrote:Reminds me of playing tournaments when Kamigawa block was current as someone who'd taken Japanese in high school...

Tell us about your pain.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon May 25, 2015 10:09 pm

OH! Or playing Mirrodin block and knowing that Myr were a reference to the Greek Myrmidons while, literally, every other tournament player somehow misconstrued it to be pronounced "mirror."

I have no words....

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue May 26, 2015 5:47 am

Prak wrote:OH! Or playing Mirrodin block and knowing that Myr were a reference to the Greek Myrmidons while, literally, every other tournament player somehow misconstrued it to be pronounced "mirror."

I have no words....

Myrs are intended to be pronounced like the first syllable of mirror. It's not even up for debate, that's how it's said.

Matt Gottlieb wrote:It's just an amazing coincidence that the word Myr happens to sound exactly the same as the first syllable of the planet they tend to, Mirrodin… a word derived from “mirror” (since the surface, when pristine, was smooth and reflective).

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue May 26, 2015 6:09 am

Yes, but they are not intended to be pronounced like the entire word mirror. Which is what I actually said.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Tue May 26, 2015 7:58 am

Oh, you mean like mirror-din?