--- Andy Looney <andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I have long been planning to include a chart in 3HOUSE indicating
> which Xeno colors have which powers
Cool, that's the important thing.
Now I'm going to grind away at the minor point of WHICH color gets which power.
From: Josh Drobina <josh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> I thought this at first, but if you have Cyan as blue, Purple then shifts
> to being Green, which feels much more wrong to me since it's significantly
> farther away on the color wheel.
>
> --On July 25, 2006 9:59:12 PM -0700 Joseph Peterson <jeepeterson@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> > But Cyan is so close to blue... In fact, in my group, we prefer to use
> > Cyan instead of Blue in any case.
> >
> > --- Andy Looney <andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Cyan = Green
> > > Orange = Red
> > > Purple = Blue
> > > Clear = Yellow
> > >
> > > I've played with Josh using this color scheme and even though I lost,
> > > I
> > > favor these mappings. The fact that this is what the Klingons came up
> > > with
> > > as well makes me feel it's the right choice.
What Josh said is true IF cyan<->blue AND orange<->red. Then you're left with white, purple, and clear to match up with green and yellow. Yuck.
But if you want cyan<->blue and are willing to redo everything else, then you could go purple<->red and orange<->yellow. This leaves either white or clear for green.
More graphically:
> green
cyan <
> blue
purple <
> red
orange <
> yellow
Should white/clear go at the TOP of the left column so that each Xeno color matches up with the Rainbow color BELOW it? Or should white or clear go at the BOTTOM, so that each Xeno corresponds to the Rainbow ABOVE it? Followup question: Is the other way obviously wrong?
As I mentioned in my initial email, the fact that there are TWO arguably correct ways to match up Xeno and Rainbow colors based on a color wheel means that NEITHER one is great. Pick either one and you'll always have someone asking why you didn't pick the other.
The only way keep the "blue is like purple" people and the "blue is like cyan" people happy is to ignore the Rainbow colors altogether and assign Xeno colors to BH powers without any regard whatsoever to the Rainbow set. Out of purple, orange, cyan, clear and white, what color says "Attack" to you? What says "Construct(ion)"? What says "Trade"? "Move"?
I can understand Josh's assignment of firey Orange<->Attack. His Clear/White<->Move works for him, but I don't get the allusion. Cyan<->Construct because cyan looks like water goes right past me, since water is closer to clear that it is to cyan. Trade<->Purple because it's a strange "mercurial" color? I would have called cyan stranger than purple, since it's not included in a box of 16 Crayolas. I hope I'm not mischaracterizing Josh's assignments, but those explanations sound more like an attempt to rationalize/remember one of the colorwheel schemes rather than attempt to come up with an intuitive scheme from the ground up.
I think we can do better if we don't allow the Rainbow set to tie one figurative hand behind our collective back.
IS a scheme where the Rainbow color to Xeno color mapping makes "sense" better than some other scheme? Well, when would it matter? Only when a Rainbow player and a Xeno player got together. In that scenario, would (as I've asserted) the existence of TWO reasonable colorwheel schemes make it hard to remember which one you're actually using, thus forcing you to just memorize what boils down to an arbitrary mapping? If that's the case, does it really matter what that arbitrary mapping is?
BESIDES, as Porter235 points out, orange isn't available in an IceTowers boxed set. Any scheme that uses Orange leaves IceTowers owners out in the cold (so to speak).
In that case, how about this:
Yellow - Move - Clear (as in I'm gonna clear outa here over to there)
Blue - Trade - White (like silver coins, often used in trade)
Red - Attack - Purple (like your bruises after I'm done)
Green - Construct - Cyan (cyan looks like water, which is needed to grow stuff)
Ok, so I had to cop out and use the Cyan<->Construct justification that I just gave Josh a hard time about. :-) Nonetheless... This assignment of powers to Xeno colors isn't HORRIBLE.
Hmmm... even the Rainbow color <-> Xeno color matchup isn't bad. In fact, IF you were going to come up with a scheme to match Xeno colors and Rainbow colors WITHOUT orange, this is probably as good as any. Yellow "obviously" matches clear. What should match white? Well for ICEhouse pieces, the answer is blue. That leaves red and green and for purple and cyan, and those beocome obvious.
Pros:
- It uses the colors available in the IceTowers boxed set.
- It's more-or-less intuitive how the Xeno colors match up with the Homeworlds powers.
- It's more-or-less intuitive how the Xeno colors match up with the Rainbow colors.
Cons:
- It's not exactly one of the colorwheel schemes.
- It's not what Andy has used.
- It's not what Josh has used.
Ryan