If you had to fit World of Warcraft classes to Magic Colors, how would you do it?

User avatar
Venedrex
Wait, we can have titles?
Posts: 1411
Joined: 3 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by Venedrex » 2 years ago

Lately I've been making a game out of trying to determine the best possible color pairs for the ten non-hero classes of WoW, and I was wondering what other WoW/MTG players thought. So far I've been puzzling them out using the established rules from ZNR, so Esper Clerics, (Priests) Mardu Warriors, Jeskai Wizards, (Mages) and Grixis rouges, only this time adding green to the mix instead of just being tertiary for all classes.

Going off of that, this is what I'm considering so far in this exercise in nerdiness:

Of note, the order of the colors doesn't determine whether a class is primary or seconadary in a color. I.E. Shamans are primary , secondary , and tertiary despite the ordering of the pips. The right side colors will be in the correct order.

Warriors
Priests
Rouges
Mages

Then adding:
Warlocks
Shamans
Hunters

However, three classes feel like they should be different.

Monks
Paladins
Druids

I think Monks should just be , Paladins , and Druids . This of course makes my eye twitch because it prevents things from being neat and orderly as ten three color pairs, but I don't know if these classes fit into the system all that well. Druids and Paladins don't make much sense outside of and respectively, and Monks don't make much sense in .

I guess I'm just wondering if anyone has any ideas for having all ten three color pairs representing all ten WoW classes, or if it will just have to be color imbalanced like AFR classes were.

Edit, my latest thought:

Warriors
Priests
Rouges
Mages
Warlocks
Shamans
Paladins
Druids
Monks
Hunters

I've finally decided Hunters should be Sultai, as of all the classes they fit the mentality of growth, survival, evolution, and exploring and learning about the world. Simic is also known for having big creatures, or at least making small creatures big over time, which fits the concept of Hunters taming beasts and buffing them. Hunters make sense to me in Simic because according to the lore, while big fans of nature, hunters are more than willing to improve upon it and shape it by preying on creatures and using technology to further their aims.
Last edited by Venedrex 2 years ago, edited 4 times in total.
Epicurean, EDH without Universes Beyond.

http://nxs.wf/np748831

user_938036
Posts: 338
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 21
Pronoun: he / him

Post by user_938036 » 2 years ago

The classes don't fit neatly into three colors. Most are two color and I think there is overlap in the ones that are three color. (I might be misremembering facts about the WoW classes and filling it in with magic info.)

Putting them into their best fit colors looks like this:
Warriors - Red
Priests - Black/White
Rouges - Blue/Black
Mages - Blue/Red
Warlocks - Red/Black
Shamans - Green/Red/Blue
Hunters - Green
Monks - White/Blue/Red
Paladins - White/Red
Druids - Green/Blue/Red

Only druids shamans and monks fit into three colors and druids and shamans fit into the same three colors.

Forcing them into three colors:
Warriors - Red/Black/Green
Priests - Black/White/Blue
Rouges - Blue/Black/Green
Mages - Blue/Red/Black
Warlocks - Red/Black/Blue
Shamans - Green/Red/Blue
Hunters - Green/Red/White
Monks - White/Blue/Red
Paladins - White/Red/Green
Druids - Green/Blue/Red

Most of these feel wrong because the third color is more along the lines of its more not the other two colors as opposed to being that color. We also have more overlap.

Forcibly dividing them between the ten three color pairs ends up feeling really weird on some:
Warriors - Red/Black/White
Priests - Black/White/Blue
Rouges - Blue/Black/Green
Mages - Blue/Red/Black
Warlocks - Red/Black/Blue
Shamans - Green/Red/Blue
Hunters - Green/Red/White
Monks - White/Blue/Red
Paladins - White/Red/Blue
Druids - Green/White/Black

wildfire393
Posts: 260
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 1
Pronoun: he / him

Post by wildfire393 » 2 years ago

Seems like two-color pairs might be better than three-color pairs. Three colors is traditionally fairly hard to flavor.

We can figure out the primary colors fairly easily:

Warrior - R
Hunter - G
Paladin - W
Priest - W
Mage - U
Warlock - B
Shaman - G
Druid - G
Rogue - B
Monk - W

Secondary colors becomes a bit more murky. The most obvious ones are Priest (WB), Rogue (BU), Mage (UR). Paladin, Mage, Warlock, and Hunter all lean red for their second color, but they can't all be because Warrior needs a second color. If we make Warrior RW, that leaves Paladin as WG? We're then left with blue and black for Shaman and Druid, which I guess goes blue to Druid for Shapeshifting, but GB Shaman feels a little odd.

Warrior - RW
Hunter - GR
Paladin - WG
Priest - WB
Mage - UR
Warlock - BR
Shaman - GB
Druid - GU
Rogue - BU
Monk - WU

If we instead make Warrior RG, that leaves Hunter as the odd man out, with Hunter/Druid/Shaman picking between B, U, and W for their secondary color. Druid again feels the most blue of the three, and Shaman feels pretty W with healing totems, which leaves Hunter as GB

Warrior - RG
Hunter - GB
Paladin - WR
Priest - WB
Mage - UR
Warlock - BR
Shaman - GW
Druid - GU
Rogue - BU
Monk - WU

The third option is to have warrior be RB, which leaves BG for Warlock, which again feels like an odd fit:

Warrior - RB
Hunter - GR
Paladin - WR
Priest - WB
Mage - UR
Warlock - BG
Shaman - GW
Druid - GU
Rogue - BU
Monk - WU

I guess ultimately the problem is that no class feels at home in GB.

User avatar
barbecube
Posts: 141
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: he / him
Location: London

Post by barbecube » 2 years ago

Classes have specializations that vary wildly in scope and gameplay. Enhancement shaman and resto shaman clearly don't have the same color identity. I think if you're going to do this, you have to narrow it down to spec, not just class.
formerly willows

User avatar
spacemonaut
Bauble reclaimer
Posts: 1374
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 10
Pronoun: she / her
Location: Scotland

Post by spacemonaut » 2 years ago

barbecube wrote:
2 years ago
Classes have specializations that vary wildly in scope and gameplay. Enhancement shaman and resto shaman clearly don't have the same color identity. I think if you're going to do this, you have to narrow it down to spec, not just class.
I think you're on the money here. Consider also a Holy or Discipline priest (both at least ) vs Shadow priest (BR).

But also: I don't think Blue's color pie even exists in World of Warcraft. Card draw, milling, surveillance, unblockable, bouncing, countermagic, cloning and copying, extra turns—these things don't exist. There's like, one Illusion spell, owned by the Mage, which makes them briefly impersonate another player, but the Mage is otherwise basically just burning things down with DPS and that's not a blue thing. There's one Mind Control spell, owned by the Shadow Priest, who is otherwise also definitely not blue. There's a whole bunch of crowd control effects (like fear, stun, slow, etc) but lots of classes have those, and that doesn't really make Warrior blue. Blue's entire identity almost entirely revolves around mechanics unique to a card game where players have a hand of cards and a deck to draw from.

Meanwhile, lots of critical WoW concepts do not exist in Magic: drawing threat, damage over time, splash damage, and any effect regarding positioning (whether it's Heroic Leap, Fear, or Gorefiend's Grasp). The Protection Warrior's entire identity of "make the enemy attack me and not anyone else, because I can take it" basically doesn't exist as a mechanic, or else is probably summed up as Lure. Arguably even the concept of healing damage doesn't exist in Magic the Gathering—Magic only has damage prevention.

The colors that do have things that relate to WoW are almost entirely white, green, and red, with some zombie creation on the side (but that's just token creation with some undead flavor).

User avatar
Venedrex
Wait, we can have titles?
Posts: 1411
Joined: 3 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by Venedrex » 2 years ago

barbecube wrote:
2 years ago
Classes have specializations that vary wildly in scope and gameplay. Enhancement shaman and resto shaman clearly don't have the same color identity. I think if you're going to do this, you have to narrow it down to spec, not just class.
100% agree. I've been thinking that myself, such as Shadow Priests, Holy Priests, and Discipline Priests. Shadow is of course , Holy , and Discipline .
Epicurean, EDH without Universes Beyond.

http://nxs.wf/np748831

User avatar
Venedrex
Wait, we can have titles?
Posts: 1411
Joined: 3 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by Venedrex » 2 years ago

spacemonaut wrote:
2 years ago
barbecube wrote:
2 years ago
Classes have specializations that vary wildly in scope and gameplay. Enhancement shaman and resto shaman clearly don't have the same color identity. I think if you're going to do this, you have to narrow it down to spec, not just class.
I think you're on the money here. Consider also a Holy or Discipline priest (both at least ) vs Shadow priest (BR).

But also: I don't think Blue's color pie even exists in World of Warcraft. Card draw, milling, surveillance, unblockable, bouncing, countermagic, cloning and copying, extra turns—these things don't exist. There's like, one Illusion spell, owned by the Mage, which makes them briefly impersonate another player, but the Mage is otherwise basically just burning things down with DPS and that's not a blue thing. There's one Mind Control spell, owned by the Shadow Priest, who is otherwise also definitely not blue. There's a whole bunch of crowd control effects (like fear, stun, slow, etc) but lots of classes have those, and that doesn't really make Warrior blue. Blue's entire identity almost entirely revolves around mechanics unique to a card game where players have a hand of cards and a deck to draw from.

Meanwhile, lots of critical WoW concepts do not exist in Magic: drawing threat, damage over time, splash damage, and any effect regarding positioning (whether it's Heroic Leap, Fear, or Gorefiend's Grasp). The Protection Warrior's entire identity of "make the enemy attack me and not anyone else, because I can take it" basically doesn't exist as a mechanic, or else is probably summed up as Lure. Arguably even the concept of healing damage doesn't exist in Magic the Gathering—Magic only has damage prevention.

The colors that do have things that relate to WoW are almost entirely white, green, and red, with some zombie creation on the side (but that's just token creation with some undead flavor).
Gonna have to disagree with you here, I do agree that not everything is a 1 for 1 translation, but I think there is more similarities than you might think. Take the Frost mage. Almost any frost based mage spell could easily be made into a blue magic card. Arcane mage spells as well, and priests in addition. Stealthy creatures representing rogues fit perfectly into blue, as we saw in Zendikar, and card draw can represent leveling up in general.

As far as healing and taunts go, I would argue that you could just make a red spell that makes a creature attack this turn if able, which is fairly close to taunting, only with you representing the warrior. In regards to healing, I think you may be overthinking it. Just make a spell called "Healing Wave" AKA Revitalize and have it gain 3 life and draw you a card. Obviously I understand that you're talking about literally healing other creatures, but I think this is a case where you have to pretend that you are a member of the group being healed, by a spell you cast on yourself or by a creature under your control. Again, not a 1-1 but I think it works fine.

The key imho is not so much making magic fit wow, but wow fit magic. Obviously when things line up perfectly you go for the flavor win, but I'd imagine just like Adventures in the Forgotten realms, you focus on getting the core cards you need in every set, but flavored for the IP. Just like how technically, Power Word Kill should flavorfully be able to kill players, it doesn't because it's a magic card first and foremost, and we don't do two mana instant speed player destruction.
Epicurean, EDH without Universes Beyond.

http://nxs.wf/np748831

user_938036
Posts: 338
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 21
Pronoun: he / him

Post by user_938036 » 2 years ago

Class specializations defintly effect color but if you were to do generalized class cards it would include all possible specializations.

As far as the colors not representing things in wow. Thats 100% a failure on your interpretation. The color wheel encompasses all things not just those represented in the card game.

As for linking concepts between mediums. You have to make concessions. Healing magic has always been life gain and while certain colors don't get direct damage. Magic of the elements is very defined and in reality most of those non damaging spells would actually hurt quite a bit.

User avatar
spacemonaut
Bauble reclaimer
Posts: 1374
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 10
Pronoun: she / her
Location: Scotland

Post by spacemonaut » 2 years ago

It's not a failure in interpretation to assert the mechanics don't translate well, thanks. The color wheel is not a source of universal truth, it's just a narrative device and game design device for one specific game. WoW has its own narrative and game design devices. There's no intrinsic reason to expect them to have cognates.

user_938036
Posts: 338
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 21
Pronoun: he / him

Post by user_938036 » 2 years ago

spacemonaut wrote:
2 years ago
It's not a failure in interpretation to assert the mechanics don't translate well, thanks. The color wheel is not a source of universal truth, it's just a narrative device and game design device for one specific game. WoW has its own narrative and game design devices. There's no intrinsic reason to expect them to have cognates.
You have misunderstood something somewhere. The color wheel is painted with broad enough strokes that it is essentially all encompassing. There are defintly problems when crossing media as what does drawing a card mean in an MMORPG like wow. Its not easy to translate everything into the specific scope of a different game but there is always an answer to "what color is this?" Even if sometimes the answer is "it could be multiple colors."

User avatar
spacemonaut
Bauble reclaimer
Posts: 1374
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 10
Pronoun: she / her
Location: Scotland

Post by spacemonaut » 2 years ago

user_938036 wrote:
2 years ago
spacemonaut wrote:
2 years ago
It's not a failure in interpretation to assert the mechanics don't translate well, thanks. The color wheel is not a source of universal truth, it's just a narrative device and game design device for one specific game. WoW has its own narrative and game design devices. There's no intrinsic reason to expect them to have cognates.
You have misunderstood something somewhere. The color wheel is painted with broad enough strokes that it is essentially all encompassing. There are defintly problems when crossing media as what does drawing a card mean in an MMORPG like wow. Its not easy to translate everything into the specific scope of a different game but there is always an answer to "what color is this?" Even if sometimes the answer is "it could be multiple colors."
Please stop suggesting that my failure to reach a similar conclusion to yours is a failure of my mental faculties: I can understand these things just fine and still reach a different conclusion to you. That does not mean I have somehow wholly failed to grasp the design of these games.

The color pie was, mechanically, designed to fit the needs of one specific card game, and most card games will find similarities with its mechanics. World of Warcraft is operating on a different platform with different principles however, It has its own platform-specific mechanics that do not have a cognate in this game, just as many mechanics in this game do not have a cognate in that one. World of Warcraft does not offer a cognate for drawing a card, and Magic the Gathering does not offer a cognate for positioning—there's nothing wrong with this, but it does mean those mechanics don't translate across.

Many mechanics could be narratively expressed in Magic under different colors, and have vaguely similar mechanics.

In considering the problem the question poses, I ask myself: what are the various key functions of this class, and what colors do they correlate to? If I were to draw a one-to-one comparison between each class and each closest mechanic, two colors (blue and black) would be disproportionately left out. Several functions that I consider core to the classes don't have a comparison. This is why I say the mechanics don't translate well to Magic.

Secondly, if I have to consider what color identity I'd tie classes to, I'd have to consider what colors they need access to, and most classes wind up with too many—Warrior dips into all five colors and that's not a very satisfactory answer.
Last edited by spacemonaut 2 years ago, edited 1 time in total.

user_938036
Posts: 338
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 21
Pronoun: he / him

Post by user_938036 » 2 years ago

spacemonaut wrote:
2 years ago

I've come to a different conclusion to you, and I'm sharing why. You've said that me coming to this different conclusion is a failure of interpretation and now a misunderstanding of the color pie. Please stop doing this; it's insulting. I understand these things fine. I have interpreted things and explained my justification; it differs from your conclusions but this does not make me a moron incapable of understanding and interpretation. I'm not out here calling you a moron either, so please don't imply I'm lacking sufficient mental faculties to handle this game design task.
I don't mean to be rude.

My word choice is because you say something like
I don't think Blue's color pie even exists in World of Warcraft.
This shows such a lack of understanding that I have to first point this out to even begin a conversation. Assuming we're talking about the MMORPG the mage class has two entire trees that are exclusively blue. Druid has its own mono blue tree while the shaman bleeds into blue constantly. Its harder to see in the rouge class because what it uses also bleeds into black which is its base color. If your only knowledge of the color pie is what is printed on cards then you have a very narrow view of the color pie. While I don't intend on come off as rude or condescending I do feel that pointing out the problem immediately then addressing it is key to communication.

User avatar
spacemonaut
Bauble reclaimer
Posts: 1374
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 10
Pronoun: she / her
Location: Scotland

Post by spacemonaut » 2 years ago

Sorry, I wound up editing my answer significantly because I found better ways to express my views. You may want to read what I've written there. (I tend to do this with most of my posts for at least a few minutes after posting them.)
user_938036 wrote:
2 years ago
If your only knowledge of the color pie is what is printed on cards then you have a very narrow view of the color pie. While I don't intend on come off as rude or condescending I do feel that pointing out the problem immediately then addressing it is key to communication.
Are we talking about the color pie as mechanics or as narrative?

If we're talking about it as narrative, sure, it's sweeping. I have read more things about this game than the cards. But the flavor and mechanics then mismatch: Warrior's Charge has a blue effect but a red flavor, making it hard to translate. (And then blue-red is consistently flavored differently still.) Doubly hard is that it has a core component that doesn't have a cognate in Magic: it changes your positioning.

If we're talking about it as mechanical, then yeah, I have read more than contents of cards. I'm not demanding you list your qualifications either. I am trusting you here that you've read your stuff, I ask you trust I have read my stuff too and am simply coming to different conclusions than you. Instead of me having to prove that yeah, I understand how Magic's design works, and yeah, I understand game design, and given I'm not putting you in a position where you have to strive to reassure me that you also do, we might have a better conversation where we just assume we both are sufficiently competent to examine this issue—we just come to different conclusions on it.

I admit I may be hazy on World of Warcraft mechanics at the moment. I haven't played since Wrath of the Lich King and they've restructured specialisations completely since then.

user_938036
Posts: 338
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 21
Pronoun: he / him

Post by user_938036 » 2 years ago

Its sounds like your trying to tie mechanics 1-to1. Don't do that. No game should translate to a different game. To translate a game via the color pie you take the ability. Decide what it actually is, assign it a color then assign it an effect in color. Trying to translate a 3D game into a 2D game is obviously doomed to fail with a direct approach. In the same way that translating a real time game into a turn based game is doomed to fail if you try a direct approach and this is trying to do both. The mechanics seen in magic are a translation of the color pie into a card game with specific rules. A different game will give different mechanics to the colors. In a game where every class needs to deal direct damage then obviously you can't have a color not do that. The same with minor stuns. If its something that's part of every class it can't be exclusive of any color. Fortunately the colors are known to overlap so abilities are divided as primary secondary and so on.

Warrior's Charge, if i recall correctly that closes the distant to an opponent, stuns them and builds rage and/or deals damage. To convert that to a magic card: its a warrior skill, warrior being a mono red class its obviously red. Its an engage skill so granting haste makes the most sense. The damage or rage generated would be a boost to attack. While the short stun isn't really a mechanic in magic so it's just dropped. While I am not up to date on all of each classes skills the ones I remember for warriors could easily translate into mono red cards.

It seems obvious now that we were talking past eachother. I'm not sure how to adjust so it doesn't happen again.

User avatar
spacemonaut
Bauble reclaimer
Posts: 1374
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 10
Pronoun: she / her
Location: Scotland

Post by spacemonaut » 2 years ago

When capturing one game or property in another, there's always multiple angles. Where you're coming from is one entirely reasonable angle, but I find it's an unsatisfying one: you've described something like Reckless Charge. And while that is Magic's version of a charge, it's not the Warrior's charge because of how much got lost.

And ultimately, what I'm talking about is this thing you mentioned here:
user_938036 wrote:
2 years ago
The mechanics seen in magic are a translation of the color pie into a card game with specific rules. A different game will give different mechanics to the colors. In a game where every class needs to deal direct damage then obviously you can't have a color not do that.
In World of Warcraft, every class deals direct damage. We could say the Frost Mage is just blue (maybe also white), because they do so much freezing and lockdown and crowd control generally, but also a major component of their class is how they do damage, so they have to be red.

Most classes have crowd control effects, and the closest approximation is white and blue. Most classes have damage, so they have to be red.

What we wind up is looking at the fact that World of Warcraft has a different mechanical setup to its identities: every class deals damage, so you can't have no class dealing damage. It's divided up by how those classes deal their damage, and in a way that translates very poorly to MTG.

So while we could say the closest equivalent to WoW's Frost Mage is MTG's Frost Mage (blue), it's not a satisfying translation and a lot gets lost in translation (like the stun effect you said didn't exist). If we settle on a MTG Frost Mage that's blue, we've just created MTG's Frost Mage, we haven't created anything really resembling WoW's Frost Mage.

And, like I said—so many mechanics in this would simply not be utilised as part of this process.

I'm simply alleging they translate so poorly the exercise is not very workable. It's like, asking us to translate X-Men into Spongebob doesn't inherently have answers available just because it's an exercise we could stipulate; sometimes there isn't a satisfying answer.
user_938036 wrote:
2 years ago
It seems obvious now that we were talking past eachother. I'm not sure how to adjust so it doesn't happen again.
In my experience it's just a learning from experience thing. Give the people we're talking to the benefit of the doubt that they probably know what they're talking about at least as much as we do. I always try to understand where the person I'm talking with is coming from.

User avatar
Venedrex
Wait, we can have titles?
Posts: 1411
Joined: 3 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by Venedrex » 1 year ago

After a lot of thought, here is my tentative thought process.

: Monk. This just makes a lot of sense because of how monks in both games are portrayed. Primary Tertiary
: Rouge. This matches up with Zendikar Rising's interpretation and mine. Primary Tertiary
: Warlock. I think red fits warlock very well, especially the destruction talent tree. Primary Tertiary
: Shaman. Elementals are typically found in Temur, and the focus of shamans is the elements. Primary Tertiary
: I really wanted to make this Hunters, but I think it needs to be Paladins. Other than Orzhov, no two color pair is more pious, and the mentality of the pair fits perfectly with Paladins, both mechanically and flavorfully. Primary Tertiary
: Priest. Meshes with clerics from ZNR and my own opinion. Primary Tertiary
: Frost and Fire mages, also ZNR yet again. Primary Tertiary
: This one seems weird, but makes a lot of sense when you dig into it. At first you might be like, what does death and decay have to do with being a druid? Easy, its part of the natural cycle. There is nothing more natural than things dying, and Druids hate change and love the natural cycle. Hence why they are Abzan with no artificial or arcane blue or red. Primary Tertiary
: ZNR again, and mastery of weapons and equipment and straightforward combat prowess. Primary Tertiary
: Green for obvious reasons, blue to represent cunning, willingness to improve upon nature and actively participate and shape it by hunting, rather than just let it play out. Tricks and traps and a liking of technology as well. Primary Tertiary

I wanted to put paladins in Azorius, but I think that makes more sense for Monks, and I don't think there is much that is blue about paladins.
Epicurean, EDH without Universes Beyond.

http://nxs.wf/np748831

User avatar
Venedrex
Wait, we can have titles?
Posts: 1411
Joined: 3 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by Venedrex » 1 year ago

And now for the races:

: Blood elves, the outsiders of the horde who are all about the arcane and the unnatural. They have no gruul, and no shamans.
: Forsaken. They are also shaman and druid-less and don't mesh well with the horde on everything, hence no green just like blood elves.
: Orcs. Warlocks and Shamans are the main guiding classes of the Orcs.
: Tauren. Gentle Giants with hearts of gold and a hatred of deceit. Notice they can't be rouges. (yes I know the latest update will finally allow them to be, but that doesn't matter for this.)
: Draenei: Interplanar? Space Cows who are the most goodie goodies around. Also they have hunters and shamans so green makes a lot of sense.
: Night Elves. Could they be anything but Abzan? Proud, stoic, defensive, ancient, deep mistrust of the arcane (blue-red).
: Humans. Spirited, organized, mages, warriors, fit jeskai pretty well.
: Trolls. Dark mysticism, schemes, jungle. I mean if the shoe fits.
: Stubborn, famous tempers, not big fans of nature, love artifacts, warriors, priests, warlocks.
: This one I might catch some flak for. Gnomes? In temur???? It's more likely than you think. One thing to remember is, this is a temur where blue is the primary, not green, and these three colors represent the fact that gnomes are wildly creative, unrestrained by traditions.

Feedback would be appreciated!
Epicurean, EDH without Universes Beyond.

http://nxs.wf/np748831

Post Reply Previous topicNext topic

Return to “Custom Cards”