One word wins every argument:
Blackwatch Plaid
In no particular order...
Frank wrote:Green cards have a little leaf pattern in the border and the Red cards would have a little flames motiff.
Agreed, but we should keep in mind that synaesthesia means green isn't green, it's "leafy", and red isn't red, it's "fiery." I think that's good, but I just wanted to point it out.
Frank wrote:There's going to be a lack of mirror symmetry in some senses no matter what you do
That's
partially true, and certainly from a game-mechanical standpoint. From a story-telling standpoint, if your colors are forces/philosophies and not just factions - then if they pair off in manichean dualism you have half as many; if the "Seelie" are just team-elf and they hate "team hungry wastes" that's one thing - if they're the "elf-force" and the elf-force is diametrically opposed to the "hungry wastes force" that's another. You can derive whatever the elf-force favors by taking whatever the hungry-wastes-force wants and inverting it.
Even if they
are just factions, it's still better to have an odd-number from a storytelling standpoint. From the list you gave,
why arrange those six factions in a polish firing squad of absolute hate?
Furthermore, total war is boring. If all
yellowburnished gold does every day is wake up and hate
purpleroyal velvet, where are their shifting allegiances and such? For that matter, why is there a wheel instead of just three hate-filled pairs? If burnished gold
just hates royal velvet all the time, then they aren't
neutral towards
redruby, they're permanent enemies assuming
ruby and
royal velvet are friends.
For either factions or forces, alliances only really make sense if you have shared enemies. Historical alliances are usually against some common foe.
On the other hand, if
burnished gold has two enemies,
cyanblue-tinted gunmental and
indigoblackwatch plaid, then they have a
reason in the form of shared emnity to make common cause with both
greenfresh leaves and
orangecitrus, and furthermore they have a legitimate reason to be
neutral towards
ruby because there is some possibility of building a common front even though
fresh leaves wants them in on the
ruby-hatred.
Frank wrote:[*]Sligh etc.
Look, I'm proposing
seven colors so I'm not exactly arguing with you, but I just said "harder", not "it can't be done".
If you wanted to design a
balanced game with only 3 of those, with enough strategic ambiguity that people would brew up decks that chose different strategies to pursue those, and filtered them into stretch and delay strategies
and etc., it would be much EASIER, right?
On top of that, you are criticizing your own design because there's no reason to build multi-faction decks with that!
More is harder, so if you want 6 instead of 7 you have a decent argument
on that basis.
Burnished Gold - Yellow is the only color that only humanoids see. Therefore, burnished gold is the creative force of exclusively human things, their magic is baked into currency and social organization.
Citrus - Orange is the color of holiness in asceticism, transcendence of the world of the senses. The fruit of the tree of knowledge is an Orange: Citrus is the power that cannot be within the material world, their magic is in both truth and illusion.
Ruby - Red is the color of blood, fire and warfare. Ruby is the power that is in strife, conflict and violence, without apology.
Pink flesh - Magenta is the color of flesh. Pink flesh is the power that is in the meat, in the viscera and in the immediate experience. It's sexy mutant vampires all the way down.
Blackwatch Plaid Indigo is the color closest to black. Blackwatch Plaid is the power of resignation to death, of embracing sorrow as a strength. It is totally emo.
Blue-tinted gunmetal Cyan is the color of the sky, and it is free and expansive and impractical. Whimsical flying vessels are made out of blue-tinted gunmetal, in which you can escape.
Plants Green is the color of agricultural productivity, as much as the natural world as such. Therefore, Plants is the power of growth and prosperity, although not of humanoids exclusively.
That... would need work, I think crystal/runes/etc. was probably a better starting point.