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Among theMagic: The Gatheringcolor pie, green is known for its extensive repertoire of giant monsters, enchantment destruction, anaversion to flying, and producing tons of mana (mana ramp). Green is often seen as the weakest single color in Magic as its best cards are easily answered by mana efficient removal spells present in just about every deck.
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Green loves to play creatures more than any other card type. Comparatively, these creatures have some of the highest power and toughness available in the game and usually at a better mana rate. Despite its reputation as a “weak” color, green provides some rather unique gameplay opportunities. It is the favorite if you love nature and all the myriad creatures that live in the natural world.
Green’s Philosophy
These include the roles of predator and prey, the importance of community, acceptance of your place in the natural order, and the age-old rules of evolution that see the strong survive while the weak fall to the wayside.
Green is uninterested in any level of subtlety or planning, instead favoring the ideal that strength matters most above all else.
This is exemplified through green creatures typically having larger power and toughness scores than creatures found in other colors.
Green believes that if you are thestrongest creature on the battlefield, that is enough to assure victory.
Green’s adherence to the natural order of things can lead many to see this color as uncaring or uncompassionate. In fact, green believes that sacrifice is a necessary component of harmony between all things and that those who fail to make this connection will inevitably interrupt the cycle of life.
This is a much loftier worldview than many creatures are capable of digesting, but it’s one that ultimately honors thesanctity of all life as opposed to the importance of one’s own life.
As a consequence of sanctifying nature,green dislikes civilization, magic, and artifice,it sees these things as affronts to the natural world and attempts to control the force of nature: a force better left to run its own course.
Primary Mechanics
Green is home to a plethora of unique mechanics that are either rarely found or never found at all in other parts of the color pie. However, the most important of these mechanics includemana ramp, artifact and enchantment destruction, and a variety of keywords that amplify its larger creatures.
Below is a table that includes all of the mechanics found in green and brief descriptions of how they work.
Description
Mana Ramp
A permanent increase to the amount of mana you have available through an effect that allows you to place more than one land on the battlefield per turn.
Artifact and Enchantment Destruction
Effects that destroy artifacts and enchantments.
Trample
A keyword that makes extra damage a creature would deal to a blocker carry over to its controller’s life points.
A keyword that allows a creature to block flying creatures.
Hexproof
A keyword that makes a creature untargetable by opposing spells and abilities.
Deathtouch
A keyword that makes any amount of damage a creature inflicts deadly against other creatures.
Flash
A keyword that allows you to play a creature at instant speed.
Fight
A removal spell that makes a creature you control and a creature an opponent controls deal their damage to one another. Works with lifelink and deathtouch.
Card draw that’s dependent on your current board state.
Anti-Flying
Spells and effects that destroy target creature with flying as well as the reach keyword.
Regeneration
A creature ability that allows you to pay green mana in order to prevent a creature from dying.
These cards simply say “This spell can’t be countered”.
Growth Spells (Combat Tricks)
Spells that provide temporary power and toughness boosts to your creatures.
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Key Creature Types
Every color in Magic has a characteristic creature type and an iconic creature type. Characteristic creatures are the creature type most commonly printed at all rarities. Meanwhile, the iconic creature type is the creature that best represents the color’s core identity.
Characteristic Creature Type: Elves
Elves are a fan-favorite creature type, withElf decks present in various formatsacross Magic: The Gathering, includingModern, Pioneer, and Legacy.
Elves are known forquickly flooding the board, the ability to produce absurd amounts of mana,and swinging in for a lethal alpha strike thanks to a temporary power and toughness boost.
Some of the most popular Elves in Magic history include Llanowar Elves, Allosaurus Shepherd, Nettle Sentinel, Heritage Druid, Elvish Visionary, and Ezuri, Renegade Leader.
Elves with a more recent claim to fame consist of Shaman of the Pack, Leaf-Crowned Visionary, and Dwynen’s Elite. It’s also worth mentioning that Craterhoof Behemoth is an age-old finisher in Elf decks.
Iconic Creature Type: Hydras
Hydras best represent greendue to theirability to grow infinitely, the fact that their heads literally replace themselves with more heads, and their existence as many parts of one whole. They are also themost monstrous, primal, and savage creatures in all of Magic, with their power being primarily derived from pure strength.
Powerful Hydras printed in Magic’s past include Polukranos, World Eater / Voracious Hydra / Protean Hydra / Zaxara, the Exemplary / and Gargos, Vicious Watcher.
Hydras that can be counted as having seen success in recent years are Hungering Hydra / Polukranos Reborn / Polukranos, Unchained / Bristling Hydra / and Managorger Hydra. While not a Hydra, Doubling Season is a Hydra-inspired enchantment that’s often referred to as the best green card in Commander.
Strengths
Green’s strengths lie in abusing thelarger power and toughness scoresof its creatures andproducing more mana than your opponent can keep up with.
Green’s versatility in dealing with artifacts and enchantments is a more niche strength but still well worth noting.
Big Creatures
While it’s certainly a boon to have the biggest creatures on the battlefield, big creatures in themselves aren’t especially helpful at winning a game of Magic. This is due to the combat advantage players who are blocking have over players who are attacking.
Players declaring blockers get to choose which creatures deal damage to one another and also canassign multiple blockers to a single creature. On top of this,chump blockerscan make even the biggest creatures feeluseless for multiple turns.
This often results in scenarios where your big creatures become a lot less impactful than they might have appeared at first glance.
However, big creatures withkeywords such as trample, reach, hexproof, and deathtouchare much more effective as these keywords allow them to be a more threatening offensive force.
Additionally, using big creatures with fight spells and combat tricks can easily result in outcomes where you end up 2-for-1 trading with your opponent. Big creatures are a great strength, but only when used with other cards and abilities.
One of the problems with big creatures is that they cost a lot of mana. Thankfully, green has access tomana rampto help you produce more mana earlier in the game.
Mana ramp is usually best in dedicated mana ramp decks that look to get a ton of lands onto the battlefield and then cast an extremely powerful card that can win the game on its own.
If you spend more mana than your opponent on cards, then you’re very likely to win the game. However, an issue arises when you either run out of cards in hand or don’t provide yourself with enough protection to survive to later turns where you may spend your mana.
Consequently,mana rampis best used withcards that provide you early defensesas well as give you somesort of card advantage.
It can be said that mana ramp is a card advantage in itself as it does place extra lands on your side of the battlefield, which you would have had to draw otherwise. That being said,you’ll still need some spells that provide actual card advantageonce you’ve unlocked a deeper mana pool.
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Weaknesses
As mentioned in the introduction,green is very weak to removal spellswhich are some of the most commonly played cards in the game.
Green can also be seen as weak to aggression though more recent green decks have actually taken the role of aggressor themselves, so this isn’t as much of a problem as it used to be. Another card type green has historically struggled against is counterspells.
Removal
There’s no worse feeling in Magic than paying a ton of mana for a huge creature only for it to be immediately removed by your opponent for only two or three mana on their part. Unfortunately, this is why green is often considered the weakest color in Magic.
Removal spells are a key componentof just about every deck in the Magic metagame, so there’s no getting around the distinct possibility that your opponent has removal in hand.
However, you’re able to play around opposing removal by using creatures with hexproof,baiting removal spell usage onto your smaller creatures, and including cards in your deck like Tyvar’s Stand whichprovide temporary removal protection.
Counterspells
Okay, so there is one worse feeling in Magic than seeing your mana intensive creature instantly removed, and that’s when it doesn’t even enter the battlefield in the first place.Counterspells are supremely effective against high mana value cards,and green is full of creatures and other cards with high mana values.
Thankfully, there are some green cards like Carnage Tyrant that are completely uncounterable. However, this is definitely the exception to the rule. You can play around counterspells like you can play around removal by baiting opposing counterspells on your less important plays.
Unfortunately, you’re still ultimately at the whims of your opponent in these cases, so cross your fingers they don’t see that bead of sweat on your brow.
