Magic: The Gathering Color Guide, part 3 - Green

Magic: The Gathering is a very complicated game, and one of the hardest initial decisions is choosing which color or colors of cards to use in creating a deck. The third color to cover is Green. The previous posts are here and here.

Green means growth. More than any other color, green offers ways to add extra mana to your pool to cast spells faster, and offers lots of ways to make your creatures bigger and stronger through instants, sorceries, enchantments, and creature abilities. Elves, treefolk, wolves, and giant beasts wander the forests, and you get to control them to overcome your adversaries.

Green decks can be built toward hordes of tokens and small creatures, herds of powerful creatures, or both. Elven tribal decks are very easy to build because many elf creature cards include abilities that are supported by other elves or lend support to other elves. Green doesn't have very many creatures with the "flying" ability, but it has a lot of creatures with "reach," which allows non-flyers to block the otherwise-unblockable flying creatures it may face. Green also has cards allowing you to pit your creatures against a chosen creature your opponent controls outside of the main combat phase of the game. However, as the most creature-focused color, green can be vulnerable to tactics that neutralize creatures or bypass creature combat altogether.

Green works well with all the other colors, in part due to its ability to expand the mana base of any deck. With red, its growth strategy helps stabilize the tendency of red to burn itself out. Green reinforces black's necromancy with regeneration and creature boosts. White especially benefits from the larger green creatures and power-boosting spells to back up its tendency toward armies of smaller soldiers. Blue likes growth to support its control and the bonuses green provides to its creatures.

If you feel the call of nature's primal power, the green forests are your home.

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