While Invasion was the first Magic: the Gathering set to focus on multicolored interactions, “gold” cards (so called because of the gold-colored outer frame on the card) had already been around for many years. “Enemy” pair colored cards first appeared in the Magic set Mirage. Mirage block also heralded the first “modern” style combo deck, Prosperous Bloom. In competitive Magic, a “combo deck” tries to win by assembling an unbeatable combination of cards as quickly as possible without allowing the opponent to interact with it. The Prosperous Bloom deck was a Blue/Black/Green deck combining Prosperity with Cadaverous Bloom to generate insane amounts of cards and mana, to finish the opponent off with some other final kill spell like Drain Life. Remember how I said that Magic: the Gathering is just a game of resource management? This I think is exactly what Blue/Black/Green excels at: generating an insanely massive resource advantage in order to just completely overwhelm the opponent.

There is a common science fiction scenario where some entity — whether technological, biological, or something else — swarms over the world consuming everything in sight. Eventually, as this gray goo grows unabated, it covers the entire world. This seems to me to be the most succinct way to describe the goals and motivations of Blue/Black/Green. Unconstrained growth — to hell with Malthus! This comes about from Blue being the color of progress, Black being the color of self, and Green being the color of life and growth. Furthermore, Black/Green are the colors of the processes of life and death, and Green/Blue are the colors of evolution. Blue/Black/Green’s growth however is entirely unnatural, corrupted by the influences of Blue and Black, which are the colors of secrecy and subversion. In the stories, the heroes are never aware of the gray goo until it is almost too late.

It’s like all of the worst charges against unchecked capitalism and industrialism, but without any of their virtues. Blue/Black/Green doesn’t seek profit or efficiency — it is instead the colors of growth simply for the sake of growth, at the direct expense of everything else around it.

It was suggested on reddit that I mention the Commander decks that came out over the summer. While Wizards of the Coast haven’t officially explored the wedge color combinations in the same way that they’ve explored the dual color combinations or the allied “shard” combinations, they did release five multiplayer-friendly decks for each of the “wedge” color combinations. I came to my ideas on the philosophies of each of the wedge combinations independently of the Commander decks, but I’m pleased to find that what I came up with seems to fit into the flavors of each of the five decks. For instance, the White/Blue/Red deck is all about political power shenanigans. The Blue/Black/Green one is called “Devour for Power”, which definitely fits in to my description of Blue/Black/Green above.

So what is Blue/Black/Green against? Blue/Black/Green has no internal hierarchy, no passion or zeal for what it does, and no honor whatsoever. Hence White and Red are opposed to it. Blue/Black/Green is almost as unstoppable as a force of nature, but with some dark, mysterious, unfathomable intent. This reminded me of another deity of the ancient Greek pantheon: Poseidon. He may not embody the unconstrained growth so much, but he does have a malevolent streak, and was known to cause such natural disasters as earthquakes and floods. He is the force of nature with sometimes dark intent.

I really like the idea of identifying a Greek god with these “wedge” color combinations. The Greek gods were always such a mess of contradictions, as I imagine these color combinations to be.

Coming up next (probably after the weekend), we take on Black/Red/White.