My Slice of the Color Pie
Disclaimer: This article is inspired roughly by Pie Break’s inaugural episode, and I highly recommend you go watch it. Yes, I am once again telling you to go see content from a creator who is more popular than me.
Color Pie Quizzes
I’m sure everyone has seen a color pie quiz floating around a time or two. Like those ‘S shapes’ we drew as kids, Pokémon Cards, or Beyblades… they seem to lie dormant for a while and then resurface and make their rounds around the Magic community… and why wouldn’t they? As many Magic creators have explored (and as one of my old Playgroup’s friends was one enamored with), Magic’s color pie is the extensive, varied, but philosophically bound veritable Myers-Briggs test for MTG players.
Like the aforementioned test, it can be useful as a mirror for self-reflection when used inquisitively, playfully, and with a pinch of salt. When used prescriptively, however, they can certainly lead to problems (“I took out all this credit card debt because I’m red at heart - and I’ll do it again”). Still, alongside the psychographic profiles I’ve written about before in my most popular article “The Killspell Timmy,” they can be hella fun to think and write about.
Notably, by MTG color pie forerunner Mark Rosewater’s admission, everyone had a bit of all the colors in them, but they are often viewed as a hierarchy where “more” of some colors are present.
INTP
Not that it means anything, in earnest, but I thought I’d pull out a few quotes from the INTP page (from the Myers-Briggs test) that stuck with me.
People with this personality type hardly ever stop thinking. From the moment they wake up, their minds buzz with ideas, questions, and insights. At times, they may even find themselves conducting full-fledged debates in their own heads.
…
That said, the practical, everyday work of turning those ideas into reality doesn’t always hold their interest.
For me, this is pretty descriptive, for better or for worse I have an overactive way of thinking about things and jumping from one topic to another without fully coming to a practical conclusion. Notably, though, I often measure the worth of entertainment or games on how much I can focus my thoughts on them… games that are meant to “relax” or “become rote” often lose my interest very fast, and leave me feeling irritable, and I hate running out of options to consider.
This also points to a character weakness: having a hard time relaxing. While this weakness may have nothing to do with INTP and just be something everyone has to some extent, taking the quiz has helped me recognize and start to work on that weakness. After all, relaxation is necessary and much can be missed if one doesn’t take the time to slow down.
They have a reputation for being pensive, detached, and a bit reserved. That is, until they try to train all of their mental energy on the moment or the person at hand, which can be a bit uncomfortable for everyone.
I’ve definitely had my fair share of situations where the inner debate being “tamed on the topic at hand” and becoming an outer debate has made others feel uncomfortable. Recognizing this has helped me work on trying to be more self-aware about it (though, unfortunately, it’s a hard habit to break). In some ways, this blog is an outlet for that energy!
Ironically, Logicians shouldn’t always be held at their word. They rarely mean to be dishonest, but with their active minds, they sometimes overflow with ideas and theories that they haven’t thought through all the way. They may change their mind on anything from their weekend plans to a fundamental moral principle, without ever realizing that they’d appeared to have made up their mind in the first place.
This is something that has also led to some problems… though I’m sure everyone’s been victim to some misunderstanding. It can definitely be easy for me to get carried away in hypotheticals when chatting, and lead people to think I think or feel a certain way without me actually thinking that way about it.
As I noted before, being an INTP isn’t a source of these problems, but any chance for self-reflection is a chance to recognize how you act and have a positive effect on how you act in the future… and here, INTP has acted for a mirror for self-reflection in some of these aspects. Horoscopes do the same, as long as you don’t get caught up in the “I was born here so THIS IS ME” and just take what the horoscope says as a chance to consider what you’ve actually done and how it’s affected you, engaging in it can be very healthy. So too is color pie, so let’s cut to it.
White
What it’s about: White is the color of peace, structure, selflessness, and equality. A white mage’s goal is peace and their method of getting there is the structure of law. Their weakness is the inability to deviate from structure, leading them to be uncreative.
My in-game rank: In-game, white is in 3rd place, fairly middle down the line. It’s got good removal, but I don’t particularly like enforcing or taxing things. Many of its mechanical strategies feel a little direct. A few cool subthemes and cards that absolutely erase things into exile bring it a cut-up. I also like symmetrical effects like Alms Collector.
My ranking in personality: When it comes to my personality, I ranked white the highest. I highly value equality and equanimity, selflessness, and the structure of law. In politics, I prefer more equal systems to less equal ones and am in strong favor of social programs. In general, I greatly agree with the statement “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Further, I often feel like the idea of “self” needs to be set aside to truly listen to others, to truly understand things, and to create understanding and a space for success.
Blue
What it’s about: Blue is the color of knowledge, deliberating to perfection, and logic. A blue mage’s goal is omniscience, and they use their intellect and slow deliberation to get there. Their weakness is an inability to act without knowing, leading to inaction.
My in-game rank: In-game, blue is my second favorite color. I like the feeling of control that it offers me to have an abundance of cards in hand and access to countermagic, the game’s most esoteric form of removal. Similarly, I feel like the timing restrictions of countermagic and some of the strange stuff blue can do have led to some of the most skill-testing moments in my magic career; the color of knowledge and understanding has led me to understand more about magic more than any other color.
My ranking in personality: I also rated Blue as second in terms of my personality. That makes it the only color that got to the same rank both in-game and in personality for me. In real life, as in magic, I feel like you can only make good decisions if you have good information (and in place of good information, you at least need a working theory that you can update as you come by more information). In addition, many of my decisions are fueled by an endless curiosity about philosophical questions and the world around me.
Black
What it’s about: Black is the color of uninhibited ambition, self-interest, and pursuit of power. A black mage’s goal is omnipotence, and they use their selfishness and the sacrifice of others to get there. Their weakness is that they often assume others to be as selfish as they are, leading to paranoia and distrust.
My in-game rank: In-game, black is my number one. I love the power, the deception, the necromancy. Black is bar-none my favorite color, my go-to. If you check the list I accrued in Every Deck I Ever Built you’ll find that 50% of the commander decks I’ve built include black, and that includes building 40+ monoblack commanders. Further, I think spells that kill creatures are often among the coolest in the game (À la “The Killspell Timmy”).
My ranking in personality: As it pertains to my “personality quiz,” black is my least relatable. I don’t consider myself that ambitious (or else I’d start a YouTube channel instead of a blog!). I think, for me, the big discrepancy here is that I love flexing deception and cruelty and practicing necromancy in games… but in real life, I generally believe in generosity and Karma, and otherwise would not want to engage in practices that hurt others.
Red
What it’s about: Red is the color of freedom, impulse, and immediate action. The red mage’s desire is freedom, and they express their freedom by acting however they feel at any given moment. Their weakness is that their spontaneity often leads to a lack of planning for the future making many of their actions short-sighted.
My in-game rank: In-game, red is in 4th place for me. Its directness can often lead to games ending faster than I’d like, and short-sightedness can lead to being at a disadvantage in the long game. “A red deck either wins on turn 3 or starts losing on turn 4.” I do particularly enjoy some red-black effects.
My ranking in personality: As it pertains to my “personality quiz,” red is three, right below the blue. I think that Blue’s endless curiosity is great, but there is a chance to overthink. Thinking a lot is really healthy, but only if it translates into meaningful and healthy action… and decision paralysis is best broken by just doing something. Notably, the dichotomy between thinking everything through and acting in the moment is a false one. Yes, one can be shortsighted or overthink, but at the end of the day… if you do the best thing you can possibly do today… and the best thing you can possibly do the day after… and the best thing you can possibly do to the day after that… ad infinitum… it tends to lead to you being in a pretty alright spot. Also, I do consider myself to be relatively impulsive. I do things that I want to do at the moment that I’m in. I clean in short spurts of deep cleaning, rather than by routine.
Green
What it’s about: Green is the color of nature, spirituality, interdependence, and tradition. A green mage wants to grow spiritually and physically, and they want to use natural and traditional means to get there. Their weakness is naïveté, seeing only the natural way, the way things have been done before, and not taking into account how ruthlessly selfish or cruel people or uncaring systems can be.
My in-game rank: In-game, green is my least favorite color. It’s simple, and direct, it just makes things and makes them bigger. But despite being able to make things bigger, and having the weakness of naïveté, it feels like it has no weakness. Green players have all the tools so long as they have a creature to piggyback off of. Where as black players have to lose life to draw cards, feeling like they have to pay something, Green players often draw cards for having the creature, leading to it feeling like “win more” or “getting paid just to exist.” Green often feels like it gets paid just to exist, whether it's with its draw, ramp, or other parts of its toolkit.
My ranking in personality: As it pertains to my “personality quiz,” green is a four. I do consider myself to have a deep reverence for nature, but I’m significantly more pro-progress than I am pro-tradition. Though I think there is deep wisdom in stuff like, for example, the ancient teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, I am generally a “take ancient wisdom piecemeal and fit what works for you in your life in a way that works for you” rather than a “stick to traditional ways and deny progress.” As the aforementioned ancient philosopher taught, “Life is ever-changing,” so I believe we should use the tools we have to continue to change it for the better rather than be caught in the ways of the past and the institutions the past has created.
In Review
In-Game:
Black
Blue
White
Red
Green
As my personality:
White
Blue
Red
Green
Black
What did we learn?
Well, with a little introspection put into the text, you may know a little tiny bit more about how I view the world. Let me state a few observations:
White and Black swap the top spot for me, depending on whether we’re talking about real life or in-game. I think that, in that sense, Magic and similar games provide an avenue to explore types of things I wouldn’t do in real life.
Blue stayed firmly second in both rankings. Blue is a good supportive color, and in both cases, I am happy to use blue to support my goals. Knowledge is a tool, and it can be used to fuel selfish ambitious, or selfless mutual good.
My top three colors in-game are Esper. My first commander was also Esper and I also remember playing Brilliant Ultimatum in standard. I’m fairly transhumanist, and love the depiction of the shard of Esper’s machine utopia almost as much as I love Phyrexia.
My top three colors in personality are Jeskai. Sort of fitting considering my day job is teaching martial arts and I am enjoying a modern piecemeal version of the Buddhist tradition… then again, if it wasn’t fitting, why did I take a personality quiz?
And with all that in mind, truly, there isn’t that much of a lesson.
It’s a fun personality quiz. For fun.