GREEN MANA: THE ENSIFERANS

Photo: Mark Yokoyama

Magic, as you may know, is divided into five primarily card colors, representing the five colors of mana (magical energy) that fuel its entire multiverse. You probably won't be surprised to learn that green is "nature magic," right? Well, yes and no, because the colors of Magic aren't such simple "elemental forces." According to official materials, Green has a core philosophy that the world is already perfect on its own, and it's up to you to adapt to your suitable place in it rather than bend it to your own liking. It's the magic of nature's impersonal anarchy, basically, with themes of vitality, adaptation, symbiosis, evolutionary competition and everything it means to be "wild." Green cards tend to focus heavily on creatures, from multiplying swarms of little fellas to the biggest and beefiest rampaging beasts, and it not only happens to be one of the go-to colors for insect cards already, but it's also the domain of innumerable fungus cards, including the Thallids.

Photo: Andreas Kay

So I guess it's just a no-brainer that in a bug type setting, we would finally have some entomopathogenic fungus cards. Most people already know about cordyceps and its "zombie ants," but there's a whole world of insect-eating mushrooms adapted to just about every type of arthropod on our planet, so to give ants a rare break from mycelial infection, my choice for Green's dominant race would be based on the Ensifera; the katydids and crickets! They might range from tiny little hoppers to weta-like megafauna, but the average Ensiferan would lean mostly towards mole cricket, and whatever the size or shape, every member of the species would live encased in a symbiotic fungal exoskeleton, possibly even playing with spore counters and saprolings like the Thallids. Far from parasitized victims, these creatures would be humble farmers who tend colonies of tremendous mushrooms, lichens and algae - the "forests" of this setting - and become one with a godlike mycelial entity when their insect half finally passes on. Thus, some Ensiferans would be Insect-Fungus cards, while others might be Zombie-Fungus cards whose insect bodies have long rotten away, and still others might be Insect-Zombie-Fungi in a transitional state.

I imagine this set might be heavy with spells, enchantments, artifacts and card abilities that target specific creature types. Ensiferans could possibly have an overarching gimmick of adding or removing those three possible types, not only from themselves but from other insect cards. Another possible gimmick for the species might be the ability to become forest cards when they're no longer of use as creatures, since their forests would be part of the same fungal network.

On another note, giant serpentine "wurms" are a traditional Green creature type, but actual invertebrate worms are much rarer in the game. This setting would of course flip that on its head, with a number of gargantuan worms, with an "O," as the go-to giant beasts of the fungus forests.

BLACK MANA: THE SATURNIIDS

Photo: Dean Morley

Of all insects, few have more mainstream appeal than Lepidoptera; butterflies are considered almost universally innocent and beautiful, moths have seen increasing appreciation as adorably fluffy, and caterpillars might be the only insect larvae consistently framed as cute, colorful and whimsical in most media. If you're either a gardener or a plant, on the other hand, you might see at least the larval stage as more of a destructive horror, and nature is right with you; if not for the constant hard work of their many predators, especially wasps, many caterpillar species would ravenously expend their food supplies, collapse entire food webs and wipe themselves out in the process.

That's why a Lepidopteran race is my pick for black. This is, of course, where Magic traditionally dumps everything dark, gruesome and morbid, though not necessarily "evil," per se. Drawing power from swamps, it's a magical energy associated with death, undeath, illness, decay, sacrifice and extinction as part of a "survival at all costs" mentality; the sorcery you delve into when you need to succeed at absolutely any and all possible cost, to yourself or to everyone and everything around you.

Photo: Aleta Rodriguez

The Saturniids wouldn't be "good" or "evil" one way or another, but they would devote their lives exclusively to the well being of their beloved children, and their children would just happen to be an all-consuming wave of death. The barbed, toxic caterpillars would devour everything in their path, whether actually organic or merely "chewable," and excrete enough waste to leave a sea of festering, poisonous sludge in their wake. These swamps would, however, support this setting's only actual plant life, erupting with eerie flowers the other races might regard as repulsive symbols of darkness. All except the crickets, of course; once the flowers have consumed the last of the rot and finally wither, there's no better medium for a thriving new fungus-jungle.

Indifferent to all other life and oblivious to their own role in the ecosystem, adult Saturniids might live a sort of insular, hedonistic lifestyle, content to watch their precious babies turn "undeveloped wasteland" into more of their beautiful flower-fens while "lesser" creatures keep their proper distance. The fact that their floral towers are doomed to wilt wouldn't phase them at all; they wouldn't be caught dead still living in last year's colors, anyway. It's called modern progress! In terms of gameplay, larval Saturniids could actually have just one creature card, but one of those that permit a limitless number of copies in the same deck. Meanwhile, adult Saturniids could have abilities that tap multiple larvae in order to destroy other cards, especially lands.

For other black creature types, I'd obviously want to bring back Thrulls for this, but what kind of Thrulls might be made by a race of aristocratic, industrialist moths? Plant thrulls, of course! Heinous amalgamations of beautiful flowers and undead insects, both loyal servants and trendy artistic statements.

I also want to say that some Saturniids might also be vampires, especially at the higher levels of their society. Blood-sucking moths exist in real life, but there are also butterflies that occasionally feed on the larvae of their own species, so it's hard to resist doing something with that theme. Do the rest of the moths know their politicians are literal baby-eaters??

WHITE MANA: THE TACHINIDS

Photo: Katja Schulz

I remember when white cards were, thematically, the most boring and forgettable in the game. Drawing power from open plains and defined as the magic of morality, order, peace and prosperity, the majority of white cards in the game's early years were centered on humans, with the occasional pegasus or angel, and traditionally stereotyped as the "good" magic to counter black's "evil" magic. White cards have branched out into some much more interesting places by now, of course; there are even sets with white-flavored undead creatures, and it goes without saying that even the magic of "peace" and "order" isn't always objectively the hero, or when it isn't, it isn't always necessarily a well-behaved and pretty looking hero. In recent sets, they've even been willing to give white its own zombies, something that would have seemed almost sacriligeous to players in the early days.

Flies are most commonly thought of as the insect face of disease and death, but those that feed on corpses are of course keeping the rest of our world cleaner in the process. The majority of flies are pollinators, too, with arguably more impact than bees, and parasitoid flies are integral in maintaining the population balance of countless other insects, notably working together with wasps to keep caterpillars under control. With a little finangling, a white-aligned fly race could incorporate several of these roles; they might be parasites in their larval stage and corpse-eaters in the adult stage, but live in careful balance with the other species as custodians, grave keepers, even doctors, possibly the only thing that really keeps the moths under control. I imagine these fly-people as desert dwellers and possibly sun worshipers, seeing themselves as an extension of the light's cleansing properties. Mechanically, they could move counters between other creatures that represent their parasitic larvae, and perhaps have healing or protective effects on the "host" creature - unless the host is black-aligned?

Photo: Thomas Shahan

We also tend to think of flies as the go-to prey item of spiders, and spiders have always had presence in Magic, but it would be interesting to see them get a much bigger role. It's tempting to make spiders one of the major "races" here, but also somewhat obvious. I think it would be a bit more interesting if spiders in this setting were also its dragons, with dual creature typing, and while there might be a dragon-spider or two for every mana color, the flies could ironically be the only race that "tames" dragons, as well as smaller drake-spiders they might use as their primary mounts and guardians.

RED MANA: THE POMPILOIDS

Photo: Robin Gwen Agarwal

Red Mana is the magic of "impulse and chaos," with motifs of earth, fire, war, violence, conquest and raw brute power. It's the color with maniacal armies of goblins, classic fire-breathing dragons, lumbering rock elementals and spells that just plain make things explode. There's truly nothing in the insect world that could embody any of this better than the Hymenoptera - the bees, ants and wasps. Most may be harmless to humans and they're all ecologically precious (including if not ESPECIALLY the wasps, actually) but we know many of their members best for the fact that they're not afraid to defend their nests to the death against anything, of any size, that makes them feel threatened enough, and to smaller-scale wildlife, an army of ants is an unstoppable army of terror. Pompiloidea is a group containing both the tarantula hawk wasps and the wingless wasps we call "velvet ants," both infamous for their intensely agonizing stings, and I think those make a pretty good springboard for a generalized Hymenopteran race; cute, fuzzy bee-like wasps with a wide array of both winged and wingless social castes in massive ant-like colonies...which could actually double as the only "mountains" of the whole setting. They wouldn't actually sting with venom, but like many species of ant, their warriors would squirt acid, and like other species of ant, they could also have the capability to swell up and explode like living acid bombs. Large numbers of small creatures with a self-destruct mechanic would be their core gameplay gimmick, but maybe they could also be the setting's obligatory "tinkers," possibly using their own acid as fuel for all manner of weapons and war machines. Maybe they even use themselves, physically, as machine components, the way various ants can chain themselves together to form structures?

Rather than the cold, ruthless invaders we've come to expect from fictional eusocial insectoids, I like to think these would be whimsical, fun-loving little bugs, a little more like the setting's usual goblins. But with such short, fast lives, they wouldn't have a strong concept of individuality, and death wouldn't weigh on them like it does other creatures. Their entire society would revolve around perpetual war between hives, but it would all be fun and games in their eyes, and they might have difficulty grasping that their antics aren't so thrilling to their various neighbors. It's here that a bit of a story twist occurs to me, because their leadership might not have so simple of a world view, but could in fact be deliberately, secretly training them into an ever deadlier combat force. Is that master plan malevolent, or do they fear some greater threat to the entire realm? And is their true master even one of their own, or a being from some other plane?

BLUE MANA: THE EPHEMEROPTIDS

Photo: Mario Quevedo

The last of the five mana colors to go over is officially the magic of "logic and technology," with cards pertaining to intellect, magical science, cosmic forces and control over the forces of nature. But aesthetically, it's also the color of water and air, packed with fish and crabs and squids and mer-people and atmospheric gas-bag critters and sentient clouds.

These surface motifs are tailor made for any of the many flying insects that develop in water, and I think the most interesting for the role would be mayflies. An incredibly short adult life isn't really rare for insects, but it's of course most famously a trait of mayflies, which take wing only just long enough to reproduce and die in enormous numbers. What's not quite such common knowledge is the fact that their immature, aquatic stage actually lives for multiple years, depending on the species, which means that the total lifespan of a mayfly, from egg to death, is actually a bit longer than that of many other insects.

Photo: Ian Boyd

A mayfly-inspired race would take this to an extreme, of course; the Ephemeroptids might spend centuries as essentially insect-merfolk before the entire population molts into beautiful, crystal-winged angels for only a few hours as they mindlessly mate, lay eggs, and promptly drop dead. So what exactly would that do to a culture? Hundreds of years trapped underwater, watching the air-breathing races explore the world as they please, knowing all the while that they'll only have that same freedom once their life is already over? Even knowing precisely when you're going to die is enough to drive somebody mad as it is, let alone an entire society at once. In fact, if their growth rate is that drawn out, it probably takes at least a few decades for them to mature past a tiny, helpless hatchling, right? And by then, whatever they previously built would have already fallen to ruin.

I could see this species evolving a fairly dark outlook on existence, to say the least, especially if even the most advanced technology, magic, or magical technology has consistently failed to alter their life cycle...at least not without producing all manner of horrifying mutations, a theme that already has some precedent in blue cards.

Even compared to the moths or the wasps, then, the "mayflies" would be the greatest threat to the setting, driven mad with the fear of their own mortality, resentment of other species and desperation for what they see as true freedom. After thousands of years of this same horrible cycle, they might even have become one massive, fanatical death cult, perhaps believing that other species "stole" the longevity that was rightfully theirs.

In a final twist, I'm going to say all other blue creatures in the set are predators and parasites of arthropods, including (but not limited to) the only vertebrates in the setting. Ravenous monster fish, amphibians, leeches, freshwater cnidarians, carnivorous water plants, even water shrews and wading birds, making its few aquatic environments a perpetual nightmare for anything with a crunchy exoskeleton.