Monogreen Control. Not exactly a phrase you hear often. But with a little ingenuity, a little work, a little poking and prodding and teasing those forests into the right shapes… Monogreen Control can be a real thing. Green has an enormous capacity to recur spells and permanents of all types, it has a powerful draw engine in the enchantress creatures, and it has interesting cards and abilities that most traditional green decks do not explore. So while monogreen control may not be the #1 option for super-cutthroat killers, it’s an intriguing and viable archetype for those of us who want to play something a little different.
There are a couple good threadsouttherealready, and a lot of what follows I owe to them. But I thought it would be nice to present a kind of primer and collect all of our monogreen control insights into one place. Although I’ve naturally chosen a particular way of building the deck that I prefer (an enchantress build helmed by Nissa), there are a lot of styles you can employ when building monogreen control, and I’ll try to do justice to those as we go.
But first, why should you listen to me?
Well, inspired by some of the aforementioned lists, and looking to build something more interesting than the classic play-creatures-declare-the-attack-phase kind of deck, I built a monogreen control deck a good while ago, and ever since I’ve been tuning the ideas and seeing what works. So I’m not totally inexperienced. I should mention though that my meta is not hyper-competitive, so the list I present here will be what some people call a 75% build - a decklist that could be more cutthroat, but has been scaled down a bit to be more fun and fair. I’ll note cards you could use to make the deck a little crueler as we go, and if that’s what you’re into, check out the Alternate Strategies section under ‘Potentially Powerful and Intentionally Omitted’.
But even if you trust me, why should you even consider monogreen control?
Well, it is possible that you may enjoy this style of play if:
- you like playing unusual strategies/generals
- you like playing weird old cards that most people have forgotten about (so many style points)
- you like drawing tons of cards (and not even playing blue)
- you think the combat phase is for n00bs
- you like control, but don’t like being “that guy with all the counterspells”
You will not, however, enjoy it if:
- you’re all about that combat phase
- you want to play super-cool combo decks that go infinite on turn two
- you can’t handle the possibility that someone will play something and you won’t have a counterspell
- your meta involves a lot of combo decks (unfortunately, we don’t have a ton of answers to combo)
- your meta doesn't like repeated fog effects (we play fog-locks and it makes some people mad)
- you think that green is dumb
- you’re ugly
- well to be honest I’m having trouble thinking of any real reasons here, it’s just such a cool concept, so let’s get on with it!
WHY NISSA?
Well, because she’s awesome, of course. Nissa finds you that fourth land if you’re stalling, and once she flips (which is soooo easy to do) she turns into your own personal draw engine that just so happens to ramp when you want her to. And once you’ve been doing that for a while and are ready to kill someone, just turn all your lands into giants and step all over your opponents. In sum, Nissa is gives you extra land, card advantage, and a win condition - she was almost perfectly designed for monogreen control. And if you want evidence that she’s good, note that she’s pretty hot in French Duel Commander, and we all know how competitive those guys are (though admittedly she’s just ramping into Eldrazi over there, geez they have no imagination).
In addition to serving as a ramp/draw/win engine, Nissa has a number of other advantages: (1) she is cheap, and even finds you the mana you would need to recast her should she die. (2) she is fairly unassuming as a creature, so you can play her early and people will probably just let her be. (3) as a planeswalker she is harder to remove than other commanders, especially in a deck that shuts down combat. (4) she can be played, flipped, and activated in the same turn, meaning that you can get immediate value from her without having to invest in any Lightning Greaves shenanigans. 3 mana for "search your deck for a forest, then reveal the top card of your library, if it's a land put it into play, otherwise put it into your hand" isn't such a bad effect on it's own.
But of course, there are other strong choices for monogreen control (in fact there are a lot of them, which is why this is spoilered):
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa: This guy is a powerhouse. He provides you with a excellent win condition, and his turn-lands-into-creatures thing is a strong rattlesnake that will make people think twice about playing wrath effects. He makes an excellent general for this kind of deck, as does his little, less-awesome-but-more-stylish-in-my-book-sister Jolrael, Empress of Beasts. That said, neither of them give you any card-drawing power.
Yeva, Nature's Herald: Yeva is a very cool choice, and she can definitely lead a more control-oriented green strategy. But since she is more creature-focused, I won’t be considering her here, though you might check the alternate strategies section toward the end of this page for some ideas about a more creature-focused control playstyle.
Dosan the Falling Leaf: Also a good call. Dosan messes with other people’s instant-speed shenanigans, and that’s exactly the kind of disruption we’re all about. And he protects all your big moves from counters and fogs. Like Kamahl, he doesn’t draw you any cards, but he does shut down a lot of your opponent’s cards - virtual card advantage is a thing, right?
Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger: I do not play Vorinclex for the simple reason that I hate it when other people play him. That said, he is obviously powerful. I think he might be best as one of the 99, however, because he’s relatively expensive and doesn’t draw cards (seeing a theme here?)
Azusa, Lost but Seeking: Seems you can’t mention any green commanders without talking about Azusa. Well, she plays a lot lands, but Azusa is best suited (in my opinion) to a more aggressive build. Plus she will tend to draw a lot of hate and doesn’t give you any card advantage on her own.
Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury: Freyalise has a lot going for her - ramp abilities, recurrable artifact/enchantment removal, and she’s hard to remove as a planeswalker. But her abilities are mostly creature-based, which runs counter to our general strategy, and she doesn’t actually draw cards herself (though repeated removal is card advantage). Since reliable card drawing would be ideal, Nissa wins out, but Freyalise would be a solid inclusion in the 99.
Patron of the Orochi: Like Azusa, this guy is capable of generating an enormous amount of mana. But like Freyalise he works best with more creatures in play, and he doesn’t draw cards (wow this is a real trend, huh?)
Ayumi, the Last Visitor, Lady Zhurong, Warrior Queen, Thrun, the Last Troll, etc.: These are pretty cool commanders, and they, like Kamahl, provide decent win conditions. And, if you were to play a ton of pumper-upper enchantments, you could definitely make good use of the enchantress suite. That said, these generals will ultimately end up being voltron generals, not really control.
THE DECK
At last, the greatest deck of all time. For your consideration:
In General
The deck’s strategy is actually fairly simple. We play lands. We use the lands to cast spells. Eventually we use our spells defeat our opponents. But of course the devil is in the details so… here we go!
There are three main things that makes this deck a control deck, as opposed to a play-craterhoof behemoth-and-go-to-combat deck: (1) a large portion of the deck is dedicated to drawing cards, manipulating draws, and accruing card advantage; and (2) the deck is designed to play defensively, controlling the flow of the game until it is ready to strike with (3) a select set of resilient finishers. So let’s look at these features in turn.
Card Draw: As noted above, the deck is an enchantress deck. That means it relies on playing one of the various enchantress effects to make a large portion of the deck into cantrips or better. This, together with Nissa and the various effects that allow you to play more than one land allows you to cycle through the deck rather quickly. Just to make sure, we threw in Tireless Tracker and Seer's Sundial so you could really go into overdrive. The deck also has a number of ways of making sure it gets what it needs with tutors like Primal Command and Crop Rotation. And in addition to drawing cards, it has a number of recursion engines to get added value out of cards already used. Holistic Wisdom and Genesis are all-stars here, but Wildest Dreams and Nostalgic Dreams deserve mention as well.
Win Conditions: Now that no one can kill us, we will have to do them the mercy of killing them. The deck has a number of win conditions: Hurricane, Squall Line (usually in combination with Glacial Chasm), Goblin Charbelcher (especially with Boundless Realms), Dark Depths, Emrakul, the Promised End and Nissa herself, if you use her ultimate. Ritual of Subdual can also just make people concede. Obviously the most stylish of these is the giant Hurricane win, but making someone kill themselves with Emrakul gives new meaning to the word ‘control’.
Now, if you will join me in observing how the typical game pans out…
fully expect this card to be banned in the near future
The Typical Game, or How To Play
Early Game: In the early game, you should play lands and do your best to ramp and get Nissa online. Don’t be afraid to play her early just to fetch a forest, since you’ll easily be able to replay her later. The ramping thing, however, is simple and you probably figured it out already. So let me tell you something perhaps more interesting: your first priority in the early game is to put together some kind of protection. As noted above, we don’t have a ton of creatures to block with, and if someone tries to voltron us out, we are sitting ducks without Constant Mists to protect us. So when mulliganing, do your best to acquire either a draw engine, one of the repeatable fog effects we play, or at least Elephant Grass. Ideally, this won’t be Glacial Chasm, but don’t be afraid to pull it out if you need to. The deck also keeps a pretty low profile, and I’ll leave it to you to gauge this. If ramping too hard will draw hate (green scares some people), and you don’t have any defense, then maybe take it slow. Also, do not play your hate cards early if you think it will draw ire from the table.
Mid-Game: By now you’ve hopefully got a decent manabase set up, and hopefully some form of repeatable protection. So now your goal is to set up an enchantress/landfall draw engine and get the draws going. It’s even advisable to keep cheap enchantments in your hand until this point in the game so that they can lead to draws. Use these tools to dig through the deck for the various win-conditions, answers, and utility spells. Ideally, the table will get the message at this point that attacking you is not going to be profitable, and they’ll start turning on each other. Continue to keep a low profile and play out your lands and draw your cards. Playing janky enchantments like Mana Bloom also makes you look like more of a curiosity than a threat, which is nice, since your goal in this period is essentially to simply accrue resources.
Late Game: Hopefully your opponents have done a good job of beating each other up by this point. If not, play Emrakul and make them do right by each other. In all seriousness, this is when you throw down a mana doubler and play your Hurricane. If at first you don’t succeed, just try, try, tryagain. Although you may at this point become a target, do your best to keep your defensive mana up, since you can’t win if you don’t survive, and the deck will be able to recover from most any setback. This is where Glacial Chasm really comes into its own, since it costs nothing to maintain and protects you from your own Squall Line.
Weaknesses, or Things to Watch Out For: As you have probably noticed by now, the deck relies heavily on a fewkeycards to survive and win the game. So what will happen if you lose your Hurricane? Or if Constant Mists gets countered? Well, in these eventualities you will have to use one of your recursion tools to retrieve that card from the graveyard. It bites when you spend 50 mana to kill everyone and someone else spends 2 mana to counter that. If this is a common theme in your metagame, consider adding Boseiju, Who Shelters All. Worst of all is when someone exiles your keycards from the graveyard. In such a case, my friend, we are more or less out of luck, and have to rely on the redundancy in our protection effects and kill mechanisms to get over the hurdle.
And this concludes the main part of the presentation. What follows is the nitty-gritty of card choices, both in this deck and in the archetype as a whole, and hopefully it can serve as as resource to all us out there in trenches playing monogreen control.
MY CARD CHOICES
This is the part where we go through all the cards in my build one by one and say why they exist. There are obviously a lot of key cards that could be played, but that I am not playing for various reasons, some personal, some more, shall we say, rational. For those, see the next section.
The Commander Nissa, Vastwood Seer: Hopefully it is clear by now why I chose this general to lead the deck. If you have reading comprehension issues, please send me a direct message, I am a professional tutor.
The Ramp Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: This is enchantress, and the deck does nothing better than put permanents into play. So, this land is likely to tap for a lot of mana. Seems good to me.
Exploration, Gaea’s Touch: If you’re drawing a lot of cards, chances are some of them are lands. Why not play those lands? Notably absent from the deck is Exploration’s little brother, Burgeoning. More on that in the next section.
Mana Bloom: To be honest, this card is barely ever used for ramp. More often, it is a 1cc enchantment that come back to your hand to be played again every turn, giving you repeated enchantress triggers.
Courser of Kruphix: This guy doesn't actually speed up your land plays, but he can ensure that you hit land drops by effectively drawing the lands on the top of your deck. He is also an enchantment, so he can draw cards just by showing up, and he has good synergy with Nissa. If you know the top card is a land, you can decide whether or not to play it with Courser or just put it straight into play with Nissa.
cold corn porridge is for suckers
Wild Growth, Utopia Sprawl, Overgrowth, Fertile Ground: Enchantment-based ramp that will draw cards as well as improve our manabase. These are exceptionally strong with Ritual of Subdual since they allow you to have access to green mana despite that enchantment’s effect.
Vernal Bloom, Caged Sun, Zendikar Resurgent: Mana doublers make the world go round. Notably absent is Mana Reflection, and that is just because I don’t like the art and three doublers is plenty. If you like it, feel free to drop it in.
Early Harvest: Functions like a green Time Walk. After dropping a ton of lands and drawing a ton of cards, untap and do it all again. Or untap and cast that Hurricane, no need to wait.
The Draw Engine
There are two major card-drawing engines in the deck: enchantresses and landfall, but there are additional drawing effects as well, why not?
Argothian Enchantress, Verduran Enchantress, Enchantress’s Presence, Eidolon of Blossoms: Imagine a world where every time you played a card, you drew a card. Wouldn’t it be lovely to never run out of options and always have something new to drop? Well, with these effects, you can make that dream a reality. And if you get more than one in play, things will definitely get into overdrive. Getting one of these creatures out is a key part of the deck’s strategy, so try to do it early and often. There is a lot of recursion to bring them back, so don’t worry too much if they die, but don’t be too cavalier with them either.
Tireless Tracker, Seer’s Sundial: For a bit of an extra cost, these give cards for every land you play. With a mana doubler, you can sometimes just use the land itself to draw the cards. Tireless Tracker is especially strong since you don’t have to spend the mana right away, and she gets especially broken if you play a decent sized Boundless Realms - 10 clues seems good.
Harmonize: Well, I know it’s not an enchantress, but if you just want to draw cards right now, there are few better options than this little guy. Plus the flavor text is so on point.
Krosan Tusker: Both finds lands and gets cards. Note that you draw after you get the land, so there is a marginal deck-thinning effect before you draw. This is mostly included because it is recurrable with Genesis, thus allowing you to draw 2 extra cards a turn (granted, one of them is a land, but hey).
Viridian Revel: First of all, it’s an enchantment, so it’ll likely just get a you a few when it comes in. But drawing cards whenever an artifact dies will quickly get crazy. A lot of artifact decks enjoy cycling through their stuff (I’m looking at you, Glissa, and you Daretti), and now you get to draw answers every time they try it. Especially broken in combination with Creeping Corrosion, and if your opponent plays a Mycosynth Lattice things are really gonna go into overdrive.
Preferred Selection: This is my nod to the obviously broken Sylvan Library. It cycles through your deck, and is an enchantment to boot. And it draws a lot less hate than the library, while having a relatively similar (though admittedly weaker) effect. Feel free to drop it for the Library though, if you’re feeling more aggressive.
The Tutors Crop Rotation, Sylvan Scrying: Green loves lands, and these spells get you the ones you need. Crop Rotation, at instant speed, is an all star - you can fetch Dark Depths at the end of your opponent’s turn, or get Glacial Chasm just in the nick of time. Sylvan Scrying is a little less powerful, but there are enough valuable lands to make playing both of these worthwhile.
Green Sun’s Zenith, Primal Command, Hibernation’s End: These function basically as enchantresses #5-7. Enchantresses are the deck’s engine and it is important to try to get them online as soon as possible. Hibernation’s End is especially valuable since it’ll get you two of them in a row, albeit for a greater investment. And of course, Primal Command gives us the flexibility every control deck needs to respond to the contingencies of the situation.
Recursion
sometimes the fundamental unity of reality
just hits you right in the face
Regrowth, Nostalgic Dreams, Eternal Witness, Wildest Dreams: As far as I’m concerned, Regrowth and Witness are auto-includes in every green deck. Recycle your win conditions and answers so you can keep winning and answering. Nostalgic Dreams is in there because you will often have a gratuitous number of cards, and this lets you turn them into exactly what you want. Wildest Dreams scales well and can end up netting you a lot of cards.
Holistic Wisdom: This is one of the real all-stars, providing recurrable recursion for all your needs. Now all your cards are blurring together, the entirety of your past is like a giant resource and all you have to do is pick the right spell for the right moment. Holism is obviously the correct view in philosophy (see Hegel and Quine), and it is also correct in the ol’ MTG. And since it's MTG we're talking about after all, let me note one important interaction: with Holistic Wisdom in play, every forest in your deck can be pitched to become a Glacial Chasm, provided you've got one around. This enables you cut back on the life it costs you by sacrificing a land (and discarding one) instead. If you have Drownyard Temple part of the drawback is somewhat mitigated, though you still won't be able to build up your manabase without a ramp spell or two.
Genesis: Again, this is a key element in the deck’s toolbox. It provides a fog-lock with Spike Weaver, lets you block for days, brings your enchantresses back from the dead, and abuses Eternal Witness to get any card, any time. The only way we have for getting it into the graveyard is High Market, though it's also possible to discard it at the end step.
Utility and Good Stuff Revelation: This card is a personal inclusion. A cheap enchantment to draw cards with, but also gives you a lot of information and can take the pressure off you when the next player has some monster in his hand. That said there are probably better things you could do with this slot.
Lignify: Removes problem creatures. Extra good on generals, since now that player has to find a way to kill their own general before they can recast it. Song of the Dryads is also a good play, and there’s no harm playing both of them, though I’m not doing so in this list.
Seal of Primordium, Krosan Grip: Destroying artifacts and enchantments is what green does best, and you will do it very well. It can be surprising how much destroying the right artifact can mess your opponents up, and this also gives you a way to interact with creatures if they happen to be artifact creatures. I play Krosan Grip because split second is often relevant, but you can play Deglamer and other exiling effects if you see a lot of gods running around.
Calming Verse, Creeping Corrosion: Now you can destroy everything, not just that one problem permanent. Calming Verse is built to be one-sided, and will just wreck any other enchantress decks (because the mirror match is a real thing, obviously). Creeping Corrosion is more often relevant, and combos well with Viridian Revel. Recurring Creeping Corrosion repeatedly will give any artifact deck fits.
Titania’s Song: Remember what I said about controlling combat with fog effects? One way your opponents might try to get around that is to kill you or mess up the board with their fancy artifacts. But thanks to this killer jam, now artifacts have to go through the fog too. The music is so good that even Darksteel Forge stops being so high and mighty. And the best thing is that even when she stops singing, Titania’s melody still hangs in the air for the rest of turn, so it’s difficult to get out from under the music in a timely manner.
Beast Within: Destroy anything. Give them a stupid little 3/3 that is just gonna get lost in the mists anyway. Even kills planeswalkers, whoa. I guess there's a beast inside all of us.
Cyclone: This card will build up to repeatedly wrath the table. It is basically your only wrath effect, and is very slow. But it does double as a win-condition if you can keep it around for 7 turns or so. The only problem is that it kills your enchantresses, so be careful.
Ritual of Subdual: Shuts down your opponents’ manabases almost entirely. But of course, you planned ahead for this like every good control player, so you played Vernal Bloom just before this all went down. So now you have green mana and everyone else has a lot of useless lands. All you have to do is win the game before the cumulative upkeep gets too big.
Tornado: Completing our suite of ancient color-pie bending enchantments, there is Tornado. This is one of the few ways green has to deal with creatures. It’s actually very versatile in that it can destroy creatures and lands and enchantments and planeswalkers and well just about anything. If you’re feeling saucy, you could add Power Conduit to remove counters so it doesn't cost you too much life (thanks to Rogerandover for this suggestion).
Lifegift: An early game Lifegift will often net you 20+ life, especially in big games. Why are we gaining life? Because we need to have more life than everyone else on the table when we cast Squall Line in a bid for victory. Could theoretically be cut for something more aggressive, but one problem the deck has is with direct damage, and this helps little against those strategies.
Sapseep Forest: Gains you marginal amounts of life, and having the permanents isn't really a problem. Since it's our only tap-land, it's hardly going to make a huge impact on the deck's speed. Not much benefit, but not much cost - what can I say, I'm a sap.
High Market: Provides incidental lifegain, saves Spike Weaver from exile effects, provides recursive circles with Genesis, allows us to sac Genesis in the first place, and stops people from stealing Emrakul. All around it earns its keep.
Scavenging Ooze: A great utility creature that provides the deck with a little graveyard hate. Plus he's tutorable, and maybe you might even feel like attacking with him (imagine that!)
Maze of Ith: Sometime you only really need to fog that one creature, and this is the card that'll do it for you. Also useful for playing political games and attacking people risk-free.
Constant Mists & Drownyard Temple: Now no one will get through and you don’t even have to waste a land drop on the mists. Both cards are decent on their own, and get extra good when you have both. Constant Mists will just fog out the board for days, and Drownyard is also good for discarding for Nostalgic Dreams.
Moment’s Peace: This is mostly here for redundancy. You can’t completely rely on getting one of your recurrable fogs, so this one, which still staves off two attacks, is in there just in case you need a pinch hitter.
Elephant Grass: Green’s Propaganda, before Propaganda was a thing. Stops black decks cold, and most people will leave you alone if it costs them to attack you, especially since all you’re doing is playing enchantments, so you can’t be threatening, right?
Spike Weaver: The real MVP. Three counters is just the right amount to stop everyone from hitting you before it’s your turn again, should you somehow become the scariest person on the table (this happens rarely, even people who know what you’re gonna do will underestimate you since it’s hard to really get scared about a player who is just playing enchantments and lands). But the real reason this is so good is that it recurs with Genesis. You might want to include Spore Frog or Haze Frog for redundancy here, but I don’t find them necessary, and they do a lot less work than the weaver. A final note - people will try to exile this creature, especially once they catch on to your Genesis tricks. You can respond to their effect by removing all the counters from the weaver, however, at which point he will go to the graveyard as a state-based-effect, thus thwarting their plans.
Win Conditions Hurricane, Squall Line: These are the main ways the deck wins. They are the ideal method because these spells kill everyone at the table all at once, and can’t be stopped short of a few random white effects and counterspells (but then you’ll just Seedtime and do it again next turn, right?). It will take a lot of mana to get there, of course, but you with a doubler or two, or an Early Harvest, you won’t have much trouble getting there. Although they are primarily for killing people, don’t hesitate to use them to kill planeswalkers or things like Consecrated Sphinx - there shouldn’t be much trouble getting them back from the graveyard. Last, if you feel like there’s not enough, you can play the 3 Kingdoms version, but two copies seems to be enough, and hitting horsemanship is usually pointless.
Dark Depths & Thespian’s Stage: Although of course this is a combo, both are good on their own - you won’t have any trouble spending 30 mana to remove all ice from the depths.
Goblin Charbelcher: Especially good in conjunction with Boundless Realms, this is honestly more of a janky way to win, but it has the advantage that it can kill creatures if you need to. You could probably do without this if it’s not your style, but I like it.
Emrakul, the Promised End: So ramping into Eldrazi is lame. But I have a soft spot for Emrakul, and I just love her name and her art and all of it. So while you could easily do without her, it doesn’t hurt to have a tutorable titan in the deck somewhere. And it gives you a kind of an answer to combo and control players - since it’s a cast trigger it can’t be countered, and a turn with someone else’s deck will typically mess them up, especially if they’re not just about attacking people.
Primal Order: This card isn’t really going to win you the game, but it is a good tool for whittling down people’s life totals, and it does kill people on occasion. This and Early Harvest are the reason that the deck as built runs so many basic lands when there are a number of good nonbasics that could be included.
OTHER CARDS/STRATEGIES IN MONOGREEN CONTROL
This version of monogreen control is obviously an enchantress deck, which draws a lot of cards and goes for an explosive finisher while hiding behind a fog-lock. But there are lots of other ways to build monogreen control, and you don't need to go enchantress or avoid creatures at all. For my money, the two best alternative generals to take up would be Kamahl, Fist of Krosa or Yeva, Nature’s Herald. The former will lend itself to a strategy similar to ours, though perhaps a little more creature-focused, since his second ability can make mana dorks relevant. The latter would be a more creature-oriented list abusing ETB creatures and Temur Sabertooth, among other things. But those are just a few of the options in this wild world of monogreen control, and you could also go both these directions while keeping Nissa at the helm.
You can also opt for a more cutthroat version of the deck presented above, since there are a lot of cards I'm not running that might suit you or your meta or budget. There are a lot of them, so use your browser’s search function if there’s a specific one you’re looking for. The cards not on my list I’ve organized under the following main headings:
Potentially Powerful Cards Intentionally Omitted
Arboria: The ultimate turtle card. With this in play, you’re invincible! But you also can’t do anything, not even play lands. One way to get around this last restriction is to play Burgeoning, and this is one way in which Burgeoning beats out Exploration. If you include this, also consider Winding Canyons or Yeva as a way to get around the not-playing-creatures thing.
Bow of Nylea: As the man says, this is your swiss-army-knife. Personally, I usually end up using it to gain life, but the other effects can be useful in the right situation, especially if you’re close to decking yourself, or if you want to give Spike Weaver an extra counter.
Boseiju, Who Shelters All: Easily tutorable, relatively hard-to-remove protection for all your big spells. To be honest I should probably play this, but countermagic is not very common where I play.
Burgeoning: A little problematic in that you can’t play the lands on your own turn, so it is more difficult to get immediate advantage from the extra land drops. But it does go very nicely with Arboria, enabling you to side-step its restrictions.
City of Solitude, Dosan the Falling Leaf: Although these are powerful effects, they will do major damage to our own strategy, since they prevent us from using Constant Mists or other fog effects. So, as cool as they are, I choose not to play them. If you go a less fog-heavy route, then you may enjoy these more.
Creeping Renaissance: Occasionally, someone will wipe out all your enchantments. Now you will fake a tear and then play them all again and draw all your cards again. Having flashback is just extra juice. I cut this for Wildest Dreams, since getting back Hurricane seemed relevant, but you could even run both.
Dryad Arbor: It’s kind of cute to tutor up a land that’s a creature. We don’t play fetches, but if we did this could be even better. The problem is that having a random 1/1 creature just isn’t very good for us. It will allow us to dodge sacrifice effects, however, which can come up occasionally.
Fertilid: Gets lands, and can even block a little bit. What’s not to like? Extra good with Genesis, since he puts himself into your graveyard. Works well with kazandu if you run that.
Ifh-Bíff Efreet: Hurricane on a creature. Like that big storm, this little efreet can also work to finish people off, and as a creature he is much easier to tutor up than the other finishers. Bonus points if you play Urza’s Armor, since somehow even 50 damage from the efreet won’t hurt you if it comes in little chunks. I guess it’s true what they say - you gotta take your problems one at a time.
Hall of Gemstone: As the posts below indicate, this is something of a monogreen control staple (if we can legitimately speak of such a thing). Strong enough that people will occasionally just concede to it, Hall of Gemstone shuts down opponents on your turn, prevents people from casting their multi-colored generals, and generally is just a big headache for everyone that isn’t you. Personally, I don’t play it because I need green mana on my opponent’s turn to cast Constant Mists, but I’m starting to come round to it… If you do choose to run it, note that playing things like Wild Growth can get around its restriction, allowing you access to green on your opponent's turn.
Mirri's Guile: An excellent green enchantment to help you control your draws, and exceptionally good with Nissa, since you can control which card you reveal, ensuring that she cheats a land in (or doesn't). I'm not playing it mostly just because, but don't hesitate to include it yourself.
Oblivion Stone, Nevinyrral's Disk, All is Dust: One day, I hope that they print a colorless wrath that really just destroys creatures. As it stands, these effects will all destroy your enchantments and enchantresses, and, in the case of All is Dust, will even destroy Nissa. Given that we typically shut down combat with our mistymagic, this is just too high a cost to pay for too little benefit, especially as we have otherways to deal with things that aren't creatures.
Oracle of Mul Daya: Playing more lands per turn is a powerful effect, and he works well with Nissa, who can play the top land too. I don’t play this in part to keep the power level down, but it could easily find a place.
Plow Under, Fallow Earth: These were the tools of the trade for older monogreen control decks that did in fact once upon a time exist in the real world of 60-card decks. And they’re still interesting moves now, but they get a lot of hate (everyone hates land destruction, and denying your opponent two draws is almost as cruel), and their effects just aren’t strong enough in multiplayer. In 1v1 Plow Under is arguably on par with Time Warp, but in multiplayer it’s a niche choice. That said, if you can set up a recursion look with Eternal Witness and Genesis your opponent will be in for a very bad time.
Power Conduit: There are a lot of cummulative upkeep effects in here, and othercards with valuable counters as well. This could definitely see play, and it would also be useful to mess with your opponent's stuff. Thanks to Rogerandover for the suggestion.
Praetor’s Counsel: Well if you wanted recursion, here you go. Gets you everything you ever played, and you’ll easily get the mana you need to play it. I don’t play it for power-level reasons, but it’s obviously a powerful tool for any green deck, but especially for a control deck.
Predator, Flagship: Here in greenland we don’t have much creature removal. And when we do get it, it seems to only hit flying creatures. This helps our Hurricanes do double duty, and can serve as a mana sink for destroying problem creatures. A bit clunky, but it’ll do in a pinch.
Retreat to Kazandu: A decent tool for getting more counters onto Spike Weaver (and Fertilid if you play it), and the lifegain is nice since we need a lot of life to make Hurricane work without killing us. Doesn't do a lot more than that, but that might be enough if you want it to be.
Seasons Past: Really good. We can’t do the cute trick with a tutor, but still really good. If you want to run it over Wildest Dreams there is a definite argument for that. I like dreams for flexibility (often you just need that one card and the 3 extra mana would be prohibitive), but seasons generate a lot of value.
Song of the Dryads: This will be Lignify number 2. Probably a better card since it can hit non-creature permanents, even if it does cost one more.
Stunted Growth: Green discard spell that effectively nullifies three of your opponent’s next draw steps. This card’s style points are off the chart but unfortunately in a multiplayer format it does not have a particularly potent effect unless you can recur it indefinitely. That said, if you play it you will be my hero.
Sylvan Library: Duh. Again, not in my deck because I have a personal aversion to the card, but it is clearly broken, and clearly fits in any control deck that cares about its lands. Bonus points in green since all your land-fetching effects will shuffle your deck, resetting the library.
Willow Satyr: Another interesting effect that green just doesn’t get anymore, but which can really throw the game for a loop. Granted, he’s a fragile body, but if he sticks your opponent’s generals will suddenly fall deeply in love with the forests.
Worldy Tutor: Tutors are good, and we have enough valuable creatures that this would be a strong inclusion, functioning as an extra enchantress or an extra Spike Weaver. You could even add in Dryad Arbor and use Nissa to cheat it into play after tutoring it onto the top of your library. Wow such killer plays. Of course, tutors ruin the craziness of EDH (or so I'm told), so include this at your own peril?
Cards Suited to other Generals/Alternate Strategies
Acidic Slime: A strong utility creature, excellently suited to the archetype. In my deck I find that playing an enchantment that in effect does what he does is preferable. But then, I'm playing enchantress. In a more creature-oriented build this card would be an auto-include.
Asceticism: This card is really good in a more creature-oriented build. Saves your dudes from hate, and regenerates them through a wrath - everything you could want.
Crucible of Worlds: One way to add to this build or take the deck in an interesting other direction would be to focus the control elements around something else green does well - lands. Crucible of Worlds would be a part of such a set-up, allowing you to recycle Glacial Chasm and Dark Depths indefinitely, among other things.
Freyalise’s Winds: Slows everything down, like waaaay down. People who were hurting you bad will now hurt you much less bad. And your deck can even plan ways to get around it via cards like Early Harvest, Seedborn Muse, Patron of the Orochi, and Vitalize (especially in conjunction with Kamahl, Fist of Krosa). I see this as powerful in a deck that can break the symmetry with the above-listed untap effects, or in a monogreen stax-style deck. But since we can't (except in a mild way by cheating extra lands in with Nissa), I've listed this here.
Life from the Loam: This provides green with another card-drawing engine, this time in the form of recurring cycling lands for maximum effect. Life from the Loam also makes Dark Depths just that much more powerful, and can fit well with Splendid Reclamation. If you go this route, consider playing other non-basics and perhaps more graveyard-oriented effects and recursion, since you’ll be dredging things up a good deal.
Mouth of Ronom: Part of what might be called the "land package", going snow and using Mouth of Ronom would give us some actual creature removal. Given the number of waysgreen has to recurit, it seems like a good tool to have around.
Patron of the Orochi: Particularly powerful if you play mana dorks or in builds led by Yeva, but also good with Kamahl for untapping all your lands once you’ve turned them into creatures. In my deck there aren’t enough creatures to really abuse him or to break symmetry when your opponent untaps his forests too.
Rude Awakening, Natural Affinity, Jolrael, Empress of Beasts, Nissa, Worldwaker, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa and I’m sure I’m forgetting some: Cards that turn your lands into creatures, preferably en masse. Now you have a ton of creatures and you can probably just go kill that one guy who was messing with you. Bonus points if you can do this at instant speed to destroy someone’s lands in response to a wrath effect. Seems best suited to a Kamahl, Fist of Krosa style of play, though I could see Natural Affinity being a clutch 1-of to potentially catch sleeping opponents in a more enchantress-oriented list as well.
Realms Uncharted: Given the number of utility lands we run, and the ways we have to get them out of the graveyard, this seems like an interesting tool, and it also makes Splendid Reclamation that much better. If you do run this, consider adding more non-basics to the deck. Ice Floe, Scrying Sheets, Mouth of Ronom, and a set of cyclinglands come to mind. Would also fit well with [/c]Life from the Loam[/c].
Scrying Sheets: There is no reason not to play all snow lands and Scrying Sheets, and naturally the sheets fit very well with things like Mirri's Guile, Courser of Kruphix, or Oracle of Mul Daya. I personally like some variety in my forest artwork, but this could be a good move in a build more interesting in using its lands to great effect.
Seedborn Muse: Particularly good with Yeva, since it will let you play your creatures all over your opponent’s turns, over and over again. For my build it lacks punch since I don’t play a ton of instants.
Shaper’s Sanctuary: Kind of like Asceticism in that it helps preserve your creatures. I like the value it can bring, and it will probably at least draw you a few cards if it sticks. At 1cc, how can you say no?
Splendid Reclamation: I’m currently toying with the idea of playing this card. It seems like it could be very strong in the late game, especially as we tend to discard a good number of lands when we go down to hand size. If anyone has run this, let me know how it worked for you.
Stampeding Wildebeests, Stampeding Serow: I'm told these are too slow at the end of the day. Seem playable in a budget build of Yeva, allowing you recur your creatures, but there are probably better options out there (hint - Temur Sabretooth - hint)
Vorniclex, Voice of Hunger: Monogreen Stax can be a thing, and this guy would be king of that archetype. And since stax is a kind of control, after all, I'll go ahead and list him here.
Metagame Moves
Autumn’s Veil: if your meta runs a lot of counterspells and you’re worried that you’ll waste 50 mana on Squall Line only for it to get hit with the ol’ Envelop, then this might help you, especially if you'd rather not spring for Boseiju
Ground Seal: It shuts down graveyard shenanigans, the draw effect is nice, and it is an enchantment… but unfortunately it shuts down your own graveyard shenanigans too. In all, if graveyard hate is something you want, I’d say go for the ooze or pick up one of the artifacts that dothat.
Lifeforce: If you see a lot of black in the air, this card will be pretty powerful. Plus it's an enchantment, and one of those old-school super-fly ones that this deck is all about! Other good black hosers that might be worthwhile are Reap and Compost.
Null Rod: I play a good number of artifact hosers already, but this could be Titania's Song number 2. If your meta is very artifact heavy, this might be the right call.
Seedtime: Now for the real green Time Walk. There’s usually plenty of blue around, but if everyone in your meta is playing kraken decks or something then you might just drop this one out. It’s for that reason that I don’t run it myself.
MonoGreen Control on a Budget
Luckily we’re playing a lot of overlooked and underplayed cards, so the decklist given above is already relatively cheap, and shouldn’t run you more than about $200 (and probably a good deal less than that). But if that seems like a tall order, you can dramatically reduce the cost by removing the Dark Depths combo and cutting Emrakul, the Promised End. That alone will take out about $40 of the cost, and you can further remove some of the fancylands to bring it down further. For ideas on what to replace these with, see above.
SET REVIEWS Commander 2016
Overall Commander 2016 was a disappointment for the oh-so-popular archetype of mono-green control. When will Wizards learn to give the people what they really want? Wow guys, get with the program. What follows is a card-by-card summary.
Benefactor’s Draught: Perhaps a clever trick to help you draw cards? We don’t really have the tools to make much more of it than that. Seems highly situational and we can’t really abuse the “untap all creatures” part of it.
Seeds of Renewal: Not as good as any number of other options that are available, and the fact that it takes a relatively low commitment to green is irrelevant to us. Still, if you have this and don’t want to spend 25¢ on Wildest Dreams you may as well run it.
Stonehoof Chieftain, Primeval Protector: Big creatures are not relevant to our game plan, and the counters from the protector are of very limited value.
Armory Automaton: We don’t play any equipment, and stealing everyone else’s won’t be particularly valuable except in very unusual circumstances.
Boompile: Sometimes, admittedly, it would be nice to have some way to destroy a whole mess of creatures. But there are better, more consistent ways to blow up the world that I would play before this. Plus, destroying all our enchantments is not super fun.
Conqueror’s Flail: Equipment as a whole are more or less useless to us with our low creature density and disdain for the attack phase. It is nice that this card doesn’t affect our ability fog on an opponent’s turn, however, so if this is an effect you really want, then it may be a little better than City of Solitude or Hall of Gemstones and the like.
Crystalline Crawler, Prismatic Geoscope: Cards built to create or benefit from multiple colors of mana are more or less useless to monochromatic decks.
Aether Revolt
Unlike Commander 2016’s review, this time I’m not going to go over every card in the set, just some highlights that stuck out to me as useful. Overall, Aether Revolt generally contributed a lot of creature-oriented green cards (surprise of surprises), and in that respect was not super exciting from a monogreen control perspective. Still, there were some interesting tools to consider:
Rishkar’s Expertise: We can’t make as much of this as other green decks might, but it’ll usually draw at least 2-3 cards for us. And the ability to drop a random enchantment might justify using this over Harmonize. For my money, though, a consistent three cards is worth more than the free spell, especially if the free spell comes at the cost of two more mana and the risk of being useless to us.
Heroic Intervention: If your meta involves a lot of mass land destruction or mass enchantment removal, this might be worthwhile. If not, it’s too niche to really earn a spot, but worth being aware of.
Aid from the Cowl: This one is an enchantment, which is nice, and it fetches up permanents, which is also nice. I’m not sure how easily our deck will trigger revolt, though. Something to be aware of, but not an auto-include by any means.
Unbridled Growth: This is a cool little land-enchantment. Doesn’t actually ramp you at all, but gives the option of drawing a card. I’m going to stick with the extra-mana enchantments, but this one is interesting if card draw becomes more important. Also provides an extra way to get around Ritual of Subdual.
Heart of Kiran: Nissa can crew it! Which is kinda cool, and the vigilance means it can be a defensive machine as well. Still, a 4/4 isn’t that big in EDH, and we’re not really in the business of attacking.
Planar Bridge: This card is actually a little exciting. Seems very powerful, and the fact that is mana-intensive isn’t too big a deal for us. This isn’t the deck that will break it, but it could find a spot. If you try it out, let me know how it works. I think I’m going to leave it out for now, but will keep my eye on it and maybe try it out in the future.
Paradox Engine: We don’t have the mana-rocks or the elves to make this work for us, unfortunately. When will they print enchantments that tap for mana??
Hope of Ghirapur: Another way to dodge counterspells if that’s your thing. Autumn’s Veil and Boseiju, Who Shelters All still get my pick though. Might make a kind of pseudo-lock with Genesis, and we are fairly good at ignoring creatures. Still, outside of that interaction it’s fairly underwhelming in this deck.
Universal Solvent: I guess it’s creature removal in green? But maybe you should have just run Brittle Effigy if you’re that desperate?
Amonkhet
So I think I’ll keep this review limited to cards that you might want to play, and not waste everyone’s time dismissing the variousobviouslysuboptimal options. Unless I already did? Whoa. Anyway, here goes:
Sandwurm Convergence: This card I am actually going to test, and I have high hopes for it. It costs a ton of mana, which might be a problem, but it ticks all this decks boxes by being (1) an enchantment, (2) a powerful defensive tool, and (3) a wincon. Plus I loved the Dune books, so I’m happy to pay homage to Shai-Halud.
Shefet Monitor: Could be better than Krosan Tusker in that it puts the land in play. Is worse in that it costs more. That much I think you probably already figured out. Art on it is less cool, but I guess I’ll try it out anyway.
Sixth Sense: It’s an enchantment, it draws cards… but probably it isn’t good enough, and usually you’d be putting it on other people’s creatures, and I like having control over my card-drawing. Still, maybe.
Gift of Paradise: One more for the Wild Growth fan club. This one costs too much for my taste (we should be playing Nissa on turn 3) and the three life and extra mana doesn’t seem worth it.
Haze of Pollen: Lull with goofier art and a higher cycling cost. There are better fogs and we play those instead.
Dissenter’s Deliverance: Kind of nifty; I wouldn’t look down on people for playing this. At the same time, this is an eternal format, and we have betteroptions.
Vizier of the Menagerie: In creature-based lists, this seems awesome. In the list I’ve put up here, not so much.
Mouth // Feed: I like green card draw, and again this could be useful in creature-based builds. Though even in that connection there are probably better options.
Rhonas the Indomitable: We make a lot of mana, and he can trigger himself, so maybe we could use him as an alternative way to win? I dunno, really reaching on that one tbh.
Prowling Serpopod: If there are a lot of counterspells in your meta, and you’re playing a more creature-heavy build of mono green control, then maybe this would be good. Shame it doesn’t stop all your spells from being countered.
Champion of Rhonas: We don’t need to cheat anything into play. If your version does, then maybe this is good. For my money, Elvish Piper is still better.
Manglehorn: This seems good, especially in creature-based builds. Kills an artifact and is a hatebear. A lot of people compare it to Sage of Reclamation, but there’s no reason to not run both as far as I can see. Especially if you have some chance to recur it.
Benefaction of Rhonas: This seems kinda cool, but I don’t think it’ll quite make the cut. I like my card draw to do more than draw cards, though filling the graveyard is somewhat nice?
Watchers of the Dead: I know it’s not perfect, but it does seem like good grave hate. Hits all players, doesn’t hit you. In this deck we have a lot recursion so holding on to our graveyard is important, so we can’t run Tormod’s Crypt.
Hour of Devastation
Hour of Promise: It seems solid to me. Getting two lands also means (as I'm sure you've noticed) that it can directly fetch Stage + Depths, which is nice. There aren't a lot of deserts that I like tho tbh, except maaaaaaaybe the cycling one, since I guess there's not harm in playing another cycling land if we're going all-in on the Life from the Loam plan. Which is to say, the zombie effect is meaningless to us and kind of just makes the card less beautiful and streamlined.
Nissa's Defeat: Wow don't play this unless you're profoundly masochistic or enjoy strange ironies. Really just a sad card.
Uncage the Menagerie: Not totally bad actually. Set at 3 it gets you three card-drawcreatures. Or Eternal Witness to do it all again. Set at 2 it gets one enchantress and Scavenging Ooze which is not too bad either. Set at 4 it gets you fogs and enchantress. I think it could be useful as it is always at least a 2-for-1 and gives access to whatever we need, be it card draw, protection, recursion, or win cons. Drawback is it's kind of expensive and probably takes up the whole turn you cast it.
Ramunap Extractor: I'd rather have Crucible of Worlds but then again I'd rather pay my rent. And also this one is tutorable with creature tutors. I don't think Crucible effects are at their very best here, but it wouldn't be hard to throw in the relevant nonbasics and go down that path.
Mirage Mirror: I kind of like this in the way I like all kind of weird effects that I don't really know where to put. We have the mana to use it (though it can only be used once a turn, which is kind of un-great). Could be good for doing random things? I dunno but I'm interested by it. One extra cool interaction is that if you copy Tornado you'll get a few blasts with a lesser life payment. Or if you copy Sandwurm Convergence you'll get twice the sandwurms. Most of all though I think you'll be copying your opponent's stuff for random interactions, which is usually fun, though probably not the best way to win in a competitive environment.
Dagger of the Worthy: Look if you equip this to Nissa, and then attack 6 times, while also never playing that 7th land, and your opponent does not block or disrupt you in any way, you will win the game. AUTO-INCLUDE
Desert of the Indomitable: one more cycling land can't be that bad. ETB tap is bad of course, but if you're into the Life from the Loam package, you could do worse than throwing this in there.
Nissa, Genesis Mage: Big and slow and dumb version for n00bs. That is my official assessment.
Commander 2017
Nothing good in this set y’all. Some Cat stuff, Hungry Lynx is cute, and the rest is tribal junk and equipments. Here’s hoping Commander 2018’s theme is breaking the color pie!
Ixalan
Deathgorger Scavenger: seems kinda cool. If you're going the ETB route you could do worse. If you want dedicated grave hate Loam Shaman is probably better, but this guy could become a beater? Marginal, but you get style points for playing a dinosaur.
Growing Rites of Itlimoc: again could be cool in the creature-oriented versions. Provides filtering, and I imagine flipping it won't be too hard. I think Toc plays a more creature-y version, so maybe he could say better how many creatures he often has in play and whether this would be worth it.
Ripjaw Raptor: man I really like this card but I don't know if it fits here. Could be a good blocker? Probably not good enough and we don't have any good way to abuse it. If you played a Sekki, Seasons' Guide version of MonoGreen Control with all the sweet combo finishes that involve pinging though... Might just have to explore that route, haha
Shaper's Sanctuary: again interesting, but there are probably better things to do. Mirri's Guile seems stronger, especially as in many games my only creatures are Nissa and Enchantresses. Don't like depending on my opponents. If you play a lot of creatures, usually it's wraths that I'd worry about.
Waker of the Wilds: this guy could work as a finisher. We make tons of mana, and Hurricane is classy and all, but with this we can animate just one monster land (so we don't get blown out by wraths) and can keep doing it over and over. Worth a try I'd say.
Blinding Fog: if you wanted a more flexible fog, could use this? It lacks recursion though
Crushing Canopy: I know they have Crushing Vines... why don't they just make a modal disenchant that kills flying creatures??? I like the idea of having straight-out creature removal, even if it is conditional. Probably not good enough though, especially as flying creatures already have answers in Hurricane and co.
Ancient Brontodon: c'mon so much style points. Imagine Nissa just wandering the Vastwood on one of these. Tell me it's not amazing.
Thaumatic Compass: easy to flip. turns into Maze of Ith and finds you lands. Might actually be better than the Maze since it finds you lands; the problem with Maze is that it’s a land drop and doesn't tap for mana. Could try swapping them and seeing how it feels.
Primal Amulet: we have a decent number of instants and sorceries, so could flip this and benefit from its front side, especially if you don't do the enchantress thing (I think Roger, your list is creature-light but also not enchantress, so maybe extra good for you?). Flip side makes the Hurricane kill a lot easier, so I'd put this on the maybe pile.
Rivals of Ixalan
PolyRaptor: O I want to break this card somehow, it just seems to so cool. But not really for us.
Jadelight Ranger: I haven't played enough limited to get a feel for explore. This might be kind of cool? It's cheap, blocks, could be an easy draw-2... I dunno. Probably better stuff we could be doing, but if your build emphasizes ETB effects, this might be worth exploring (get it??)
Path of Discovery: I don't do the creature thing too much, but again, if your build is in that way, this might be worth looking into
Tendershoot Dryad: I like that it's a Verdant Force type effect in that it happens each upkeep, not just your own. Actually this card is just better than Verdant Force and tbh that makes me a little sad, I always like that old guy. Probably not a fit for what we're trying to do but powerful stuff nonetheless.
Wayward Swordtooth: I'm excited. Play more lands is always good. Now that we can run almost 4+ of that effect, might be even worth getting something like Horn of Greed into the deck, since we can break the symmetry pretty well. Plus he comes down early and can block, which is useful. Not sure I really love that he's a creature though, if we're being honest.
World Shaper: Another juicy one. Crucible effects are great, though you need the right build for it. I think the Life from the Loam package is gaining traction, with a lot of people trying it out, so this might be a good way to go. Combine with Crucible of Worlds and Ramunap Excavator for maximum power.
Plummet: I honestly kind of like this card. Lots of voltron commanders could be just killed by this. Nice to have a green card that says 'destroy target creature' even if there is the dumb flying clause in there (whoa you could run Evolution Charm for a sick combo though, c'mon now...)
Naturalize: Playable card. Was playable before this set even, since there were a lot of other ones. But if you like the art then hey rock on homie.
Arch of Orazca: Let's play it. Draws cards, is a mana sink, is a land... What's not to love. It doesn't tap for green I guess, and makes Vernal Bloom less good, but I think the upsides are worth it.
The Immortal Sun: Ok so don't run this if you're doing Nissa as you commander. But if you're a Kamahl player or maybe something else, then this could be pretty good. I imagine for Kamahl, having a static boost to your lands is hot, turning off opposing planeswalkers is marginal but not bad, and having all your spells be cheaper and your draws be stronger... I'm down.
Azor's Gateway: I kind of like it. Takes a lot of investment though, so I'm not sure. Once it's set up, it should make Hurricane happen more or less immediately. I'm not too excited though - if I spent 5 turns doing this, I could have just spent 5 turns dumping lands and drawing cards instead, so what have we really gained?
Tornado would be an excellent addition to deal with problematic permanents. If you had more creatures, I would suggest using wave of vitriol and all is dust. However, this deck would suffer terribly from using those cards. Enchantress decks depend heavily on overwhelming board presence and through excess cards drawn. I play a mono green enchantress build myself. It's quite effective. I go for a game ending lockout of vernal bloom + ritual of subdual (and the various land enchants I run). When this is online, all I have to do is set up one of several finishers and begin the beatdown. Hall of gemstone is one I also use, but that has already been suggested.
I agree with lignify, it is excellent commander removal. Why not also song of the dryads?
I want to second hall of gemstone, that card is awesome. I used to play a mono g control deck that ran dosan, the falling leaf as the commander. Nev's disk and oblivion stone are additional high quality wipes. You should make room for at least the disk if the stone isn't in your budget
Hall of Gemstone is really good and not too expensive financially... I guess I kind of worry about it politically since it can just lock people out, and no one likes that. What have been your experiences with that? I might just have to try it out with my playgroup and see what happens.
I worry that disk and stone would end up wiping too many of my enchants, much like all is dust (which was actually in there for a second). But it would be good to have a wipe that could kill creatures, right now the only response to creatures I have is fog effects.
PS I didn't know about the vernal bloom and ritual of subdual lock, that is just plain nasty! might have to think about putting that in if I start feeling extra cutthroat
And let me recommend mono-green-controls swiss army knife: Bow of Nylea. All four modes can be useful, and added deathtouch to attacking creatures is never bad, even though you might not attack much.
I tried playing with Hall of Gemstone and while it can really hurt multicolored decks, the problem I had was, that I sometimes needed the green mana when it wasn't my turn. I play with Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, and being able to pump him as a defence, was higher up then the Hall.
These changes were in response to some of the advice on here, and I've been very happy with them. Haven't had a chance to use Bow of Nylea yet, but it seems good. Moment's Peace was because having only 2 fog effects (3 if you count glacial chasm) was turning out to be too few. Still considering adding maybe one more. Didn't add Hall of Gemstones - the deck's main defense is fog effects, so I need to have green mana on my opponent's turn.
Overall the deck has been doing pretty well, it tends to either win or be very close to winning most games I play. That said, it kind of feels like a combo sometimes, where all I am doing is ramping and fogging and drawing cards until I have a huge Hurricane and a way to survive it. Which is fine, though perhaps not the original intention.
But with that in mind, I'm thinking of adding in Early Harvest, since it would make the turn I set up the Hurricane and the turn I play it be the same turn. Also considering Natural Affinity as an alternate win-con / land destruction.
Last let me just say Viridian Revel is amazing. Drew 18 cards at once last night.
I actually have a couple more recommendations for your list. I started out playing almost without non-basic lands, but I have ended up with a bunch of them. I like Myriad Landscape and Blighted Woodland, but I think it's a matter of temper. While relaying on Hurricane and Squall Line, Boseiju, Who Shelters All might get some work done. Oran-Rief, the Vastwood provides an extra fog to Spike Weaver. Sapseed Forest can give a tiny bit of life that sometimes helps you survive a Hurricane. It havn't been that good for me, but not bad either. Plus, it's still a forest. I also just added Maze of Ith and I really like it in this type of deck, and can even act as a political tool while helping others.
I also don't see Scavenging Ooze mentioned anywhere. Should be mono-greens goto for graveyard hate. It hits everything, and sometimes get so big, it can actually start beating face.
Oh, and try Tornado out. That card can be sick! I also play Power Conduit, because I'm playing all sorts of age-counters, and when I have both in play, I can Vindicate something every turn without taking too much damage. Just wish there were more ways to remove counters in green Tornado also gets absurd when you have Seedborn Muse or Patron of the Orochi.
You're totally right about the ooze, I'm taking out Spike Feeder for it. Don't know how I forgot.
I've always been a little non-excited about Myriad Landscape and Blighted Woodland, but I can see them being good. I included Boseiju in the (newly updated) alternate cards section. My meta doesn't really play countermagic, so I haven't had a need for it, but you're right that it's an important part of the deck. Sapseep Forest is interesting, I haven't seen that before. I'll give it a whirl, since it could definitely do work, and it's hardly a risky play. Oran-Rief seems workable, and Nissa is the vastwood seer after all... Maze of Ith is a powerhouse, I'm gonna put that one in now.
I just worry that with all the non-basics we'll comprise the value of certain other cards like Early Harvest, Primal Order, and Gaea's Touch. And it leaves more lands in the deck after Boundless Realms, so charbelcher is less likely to hit hard (though I don't think you play charbelcher). I guess these are little things, but have you noticed anything like that or has it been pretty much all-upside?
I've tried Tornado, but it always ends up being too clunky for me, and I don't think I really have ways to abuse muse or patron other than it... Still maybe I ought to give it another chance. I love the Power Conduit idea though, I'm gonna put that in the post if you don't mind
Incidentally, have you tried Life from the Loam or Splendid Reclamation at all? With things like Myriad Landscape they seem really good, and all you would have to do is add the cyclinglands and you could turn it into an extra sort of draw-engine. I haven't really tested it out, but I'm thinking of trying to squeeze something like that into the deck... (could also play Realms Uncharted for maximum profit with Life from the Loam)
You're totally right about the ooze, I'm taking out Spike Feeder for it. Don't know how I forgot.
I've always been a little non-excited about Myriad Landscape and Blighted Woodland, but I can see them being good. I included Boseiju in the (newly updated) alternate cards section. My meta doesn't really play countermagic, so I haven't had a need for it, but you're right that it's an important part of the deck. Sapseep Forest is interesting, I haven't seen that before. I'll give it a whirl, since it could definitely do work, and it's hardly a risky play. Oran-Rief seems workable, and Nissa is the vastwood seer after all... Maze of Ith is a powerhouse, I'm gonna put that one in now.
I just worry that with all the non-basics we'll comprise the value of certain other cards like Early Harvest, Primal Order, and Gaea's Touch. And it leaves more lands in the deck after Boundless Realms, so charbelcher is less likely to hit hard (though I don't think you play charbelcher). I guess these are little things, but have you noticed anything like that or has it been pretty much all-upside?
First off just FYI, I don't play competative, but I like playing weird-janky stuff (Power Conduit takes the price:)), so I don't only value cards on their effectiveness, but also how fun and janky a combo they can be part off.
But yeah, those cards will get worse by playing less basics, but personally I just love effects on lands, since they are so hard to deal with. I still have 23 basics out of 36, and Primal Order usually hits others harder then me.
I've tried Tornado, but it always ends up being too clunky for me, and I don't think I really have ways to abuse muse or patron other than it... Still maybe I ought to give it another chance. I love the Power Conduit idea though, I'm gonna put that in the post if you don't mind
Incidentally, have you tried Life from the Loam or Splendid Reclamation at all? With things like Myriad Landscape they seem really good, and all you would have to do is add the cyclinglands and you could turn it into an extra sort of draw-engine. I haven't really tested it out, but I'm thinking of trying to squeeze something like that into the deck... (could also play Realms Uncharted for maximum profit with Life from the Loam)
Hmmm you're right about Patron of the Orochi doubling a hurricane, I guess my only problem with him is you have to wait a whole turn to get anything out of him and he's a creature. I can see him being extra good in Kamahl, since you can untap your lands after you turn them into creatures, but as a mana doubler I think mana reflection would do better in my deck. Still, I'm gonna give tornado another shot soon, it's obviously got potential.
You ever try anything with Stampeding Wildebeests/Stampeding Serow? They seem doable but probably in a more creature-heavy version of the deck... Maybe if we played Acidic Slime too... but I'm kinda just spitballing here
And that's awesome, you'll have to tell me how the Life from the Loam idea works out! It's a realm shame we can't tutor it up, but none of the other cards seem too bad on their own (except maybe Realms Uncharted, but it's still good with just Splendid Reclamation)
@Hunding Gjornersen
Wow I don't know why, but I always read Utopia Sprawl as changing the color of mana your forest made, not giving you extra. Good call, will change it.
Yeah, Predator, Flagship is kinda clunky like you say, but I'm gonna put it in the 'other cards' section since it is a decent tool. I think Tornado would be stronger in most situations though.
PS do you guys know what's up with card tags that have apostrophes? I can't seem to get them to work...
Patron of the orochi is a dangerous card to play unless you're getting far more out of him than others and green is a powerful and common edh color. I play him in two decks, one Yeva, Nature's herald (a cross between etb creatures/instant speed and stax) and a reki deck for the unique effect he offers. He often doesn't get used until I can abuse him more than others. In the much slower version of the deck, I used to run the wildebeets and the serow, but the simple truth is that they were too slow and it wasn't all that uncommon taht they were the worst creatures on the battlefield. When temur sabertooth was printed I bought one and haven't looked back. Granted, I use him in yeva and that deck aims to get a patron of the orochi or seedborne muse out and then just abuse the crap out of it. In here, it's not good enough. However, seedborne muse+tornado lets you once around the table and just rip up boardstates.
For a deck looking to abuse enchantments and get lands out, it seems a crying shame you're not running oracle of mul daya and courser of kruphix. Both seem like gimmes here.
It won't work for you so well, but if you want a durdle fort card, my secret tech is arboria. In my Yeva deck, taht might as well read "I win"
You ever try anything with Stampeding Wildebeests/Stampeding Serow? They seem doable but probably in a more creature-heavy version of the deck... Maybe if we played Acidic Slime too... but I'm kinda just spitballing here
I was going to recommend Temur Sabertooth like weltkrieg, but I wouldn't play it unless I rely on ETB-effects, which I do in my hazeson Tamar deck.
I also play both Oracle of Mul Daya and Courser of Kruphix, and both are great. Oracle is obviously better, but the lifegain from Courser is nothing to scruff at, though Lifegift does it better.
Wait, I just noticed the lack of Sylvan Library. What's that about? Also, if you're comfortable running Titania's Song then how about Null Rod to really hate on artifacts?
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You would never guess, at the terrifying sight of the man, that Hunding was as charming a companion as one could wish for.
That's a good point, I had overlooked that Patron of the Orochi could untap your opponent's stuff as well. So maybe Seedborn Muse would be better overall. She seems really good with Tornado but aside from that I have few instants that I could really abuse her with.
But she's obviously much better in Yeva, Nature's Herald, where the whole deck is instants (sort of, anyway). Do you have a list? I'd be interested since that's another viable way to take a more controlling version of monogreen. Might even add a little bit to the "other strategies" section on her, since while she's really different from Nissa she's still monogreen control (at least that's how I think of her).
@weltkreig & Rogerandover
I think I'm gonna leave Oracle out of my personal build just to keep the power level down a little (I'll put her under 'other cards' when I get a chance), but I think I might add Courser of Kruphix in. Like you said, he's an enchantment, gains life, and seeing the top card is extra good with Nissa out, since she can play the land or draw the non-land to get you to the next land.
Hunding Gjornersen
Good call on Sylvan Library; I personally just don't like the card (dunno why but it rubs me wrong) but it's perfect for the deck. I'll put it in the list of 'other options' (wow that section is getting big, I'll have to organize it or something). I think Titania's Song is stronger than Null Rod since it shuts down artifacts with triggered abilities and static effects as well, and between song and creeping corrosion i feel like i've got enough mass artifact hate. Though rod does effect artifact creatures, so Memnarch can't work his magic...
thanks for all the suggestions! I'll be updating the post hopefully soonish, and I'll try to organize the 'other strategies' part a bit more - maybe a section for cards that work well with certain other generals (yeva, kamahl), one for cards that would just make the deck more powerful in general (library, oracle), and one for miscellaneous monogreen good stuff (arboria, predator, null rod)
I'll have to pull out my decklist. I've been playing her for years and while she packs some of the cheaper cards in comparison to the other 12+ decks I have, she's the most feared deck I have and possibly the most feared in the meta, and it ranges from battlecruiser to full on cutthroat hermit druid or azami with thousands of dollars in their decks. She isn't as fast as hermit druid, but I can draw as many cards as azami or more and it's funny to watch a blue deck and a green deck have a stack war (it's happened many times). Yeva plays more like a blue deck, honestly, (at least the version I play does) and the only artifact in it as a solitary duplicant.
Wanted to try Wildest Dreams since it seemed like it could be good with all the mana we generate, and it can get back Hurricane where Creeping Renaissance can't (though the flashback is nice)
Went in for the Ritual of Subdual package to give us a little more ooomph. Correspondingly, added the extra land enchantments. Also thought I'd try out Tornado again after all the good things I was hearing on here. Had to cut a few, so I let go of the bow and the retreat to make room. These seemed to mostly end up just gaining me life, and I wanted something a little more pro-active. Plus, with the addition of Courser of Kruphix and Scavenging Ooze there are a couple other ways to gain life, though they may not be as powerful.
Anyone have any experience with these? Winds seems interesting to slow down combat, and Nissa can sort of play through it by cheating lands into play. The Great Aurora would be great after Boundless Realms, but I'm not playing all the token-makers that would make it really busted (though enchantments are permanents, when it comes down to it)
Also, while shutting down combat hasn't been too tough, I'm finding myself some trouble with decks that aim to kill us with burn (things like Purphoros or Vicious Shadows or Exsanguinate). Anyone got any ideas on how to deal with these in green? Was considering something like Witchbane Orb, but I'm not sold on it yet...
I think I noticed an error in the decklist by function section: the protection says it has 6 cards but 7 are listed. I don't think drownyard temple is supposed to be there.
I don't know if the great aurora is perfect for your deck, but it sure sounds fun.
freyalise's winds would be bad in here. You don't want symmetric effects like that. I do run it in yeva, but I also tutor up patron of the orochi or seedborne muse to break the symmetry.
get ready to suffer some damage y'all, it's...
INTRODUCTION
- Introduction
- Why Nissa?
- Deck List
- How It Works
- Card Choices
- Alternate Strategies
- Set Reviews
- Change Log
Monogreen Control. Not exactly a phrase you hear often. But with a little ingenuity, a little work, a little poking and prodding and teasing those forests into the right shapes… Monogreen Control can be a real thing. Green has an enormous capacity to recur spells and permanents of all types, it has a powerful draw engine in the enchantress creatures, and it has interesting cards and abilities that most traditional green decks do not explore. So while monogreen control may not be the #1 option for super-cutthroat killers, it’s an intriguing and viable archetype for those of us who want to play something a little different.
There are a couple good threads out there already, and a lot of what follows I owe to them. But I thought it would be nice to present a kind of primer and collect all of our monogreen control insights into one place. Although I’ve naturally chosen a particular way of building the deck that I prefer (an enchantress build helmed by Nissa), there are a lot of styles you can employ when building monogreen control, and I’ll try to do justice to those as we go.
But first, why should you listen to me?
Well, inspired by some of the aforementioned lists, and looking to build something more interesting than the classic play-creatures-declare-the-attack-phase kind of deck, I built a monogreen control deck a good while ago, and ever since I’ve been tuning the ideas and seeing what works. So I’m not totally inexperienced. I should mention though that my meta is not hyper-competitive, so the list I present here will be what some people call a 75% build - a decklist that could be more cutthroat, but has been scaled down a bit to be more fun and fair. I’ll note cards you could use to make the deck a little crueler as we go, and if that’s what you’re into, check out the Alternate Strategies section under ‘Potentially Powerful and Intentionally Omitted’.
But even if you trust me, why should you even consider monogreen control?
Well, it is possible that you may enjoy this style of play if:
- you like playing weird old cards that most people have forgotten about (so many style points)
- you like drawing tons of cards (and not even playing blue)
- you think the combat phase is for n00bs
- you like control, but don’t like being “that guy with all the counterspells”
- you want to play super-cool combo decks that go infinite on turn two
- you can’t handle the possibility that someone will play something and you won’t have a counterspell
- your meta involves a lot of combo decks (unfortunately, we don’t have a ton of answers to combo)
- your meta doesn't like repeated fog effects (we play fog-locks and it makes some people mad)
- you think that green is dumb
- you’re ugly
- well to be honest I’m having trouble thinking of any real reasons here, it’s just such a cool concept, so let’s get on with it!
Well, because she’s awesome, of course. Nissa finds you that fourth land if you’re stalling, and once she flips (which is soooo easy to do) she turns into your own personal draw engine that just so happens to ramp when you want her to. And once you’ve been doing that for a while and are ready to kill someone, just turn all your lands into giants and step all over your opponents. In sum, Nissa is gives you extra land, card advantage, and a win condition - she was almost perfectly designed for monogreen control. And if you want evidence that she’s good, note that she’s pretty hot in French Duel Commander, and we all know how competitive those guys are (though admittedly she’s just ramping into Eldrazi over there, geez they have no imagination).
In addition to serving as a ramp/draw/win engine, Nissa has a number of other advantages: (1) she is cheap, and even finds you the mana you would need to recast her should she die. (2) she is fairly unassuming as a creature, so you can play her early and people will probably just let her be. (3) as a planeswalker she is harder to remove than other commanders, especially in a deck that shuts down combat. (4) she can be played, flipped, and activated in the same turn, meaning that you can get immediate value from her without having to invest in any Lightning Greaves shenanigans. 3 mana for "search your deck for a forest, then reveal the top card of your library, if it's a land put it into play, otherwise put it into your hand" isn't such a bad effect on it's own.
But of course, there are other strong choices for monogreen control (in fact there are a lot of them, which is why this is spoilered):
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa: This guy is a powerhouse. He provides you with a excellent win condition, and his turn-lands-into-creatures thing is a strong rattlesnake that will make people think twice about playing wrath effects. He makes an excellent general for this kind of deck, as does his little, less-awesome-but-more-stylish-in-my-book-sister Jolrael, Empress of Beasts. That said, neither of them give you any card-drawing power.
Yeva, Nature's Herald: Yeva is a very cool choice, and she can definitely lead a more control-oriented green strategy. But since she is more creature-focused, I won’t be considering her here, though you might check the alternate strategies section toward the end of this page for some ideas about a more creature-focused control playstyle.
Dosan the Falling Leaf: Also a good call. Dosan messes with other people’s instant-speed shenanigans, and that’s exactly the kind of disruption we’re all about. And he protects all your big moves from counters and fogs. Like Kamahl, he doesn’t draw you any cards, but he does shut down a lot of your opponent’s cards - virtual card advantage is a thing, right?
Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger: I do not play Vorinclex for the simple reason that I hate it when other people play him. That said, he is obviously powerful. I think he might be best as one of the 99, however, because he’s relatively expensive and doesn’t draw cards (seeing a theme here?)
Azusa, Lost but Seeking: Seems you can’t mention any green commanders without talking about Azusa. Well, she plays a lot lands, but Azusa is best suited (in my opinion) to a more aggressive build. Plus she will tend to draw a lot of hate and doesn’t give you any card advantage on her own.
Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury: Freyalise has a lot going for her - ramp abilities, recurrable artifact/enchantment removal, and she’s hard to remove as a planeswalker. But her abilities are mostly creature-based, which runs counter to our general strategy, and she doesn’t actually draw cards herself (though repeated removal is card advantage). Since reliable card drawing would be ideal, Nissa wins out, but Freyalise would be a solid inclusion in the 99.
Patron of the Orochi: Like Azusa, this guy is capable of generating an enormous amount of mana. But like Freyalise he works best with more creatures in play, and he doesn’t draw cards (wow this is a real trend, huh?)
Ayumi, the Last Visitor, Lady Zhurong, Warrior Queen, Thrun, the Last Troll, etc.: These are pretty cool commanders, and they, like Kamahl, provide decent win conditions. And, if you were to play a ton of pumper-upper enchantments, you could definitely make good use of the enchantress suite. That said, these generals will ultimately end up being voltron generals, not really control.
At last, the greatest deck of all time. For your consideration:
3 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
Ramp (20)
0 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
0 Blighted Woodland
1 Sol Ring
1 Exploration
1 Mana Bloom
1 Wild Growth
1 Utopia Sprawl
2 Gaea's Touch
2 Fertile Ground
3 Nissa's Pilgrimage
3 Far Wanderings
3 Overgrowth
3 Early Harvest
3 Yavimaya Elder
3 Burnished Hart
3 Courser of Kruphix
4 Vernal Bloom
6 Caged Sun
7 Boundless Realms
7 Zendikar Resurgent
Draw/Tutors (15)
1 Crop Rotation
1x Green Sun's Zenith
2 Sylvan Scrying
2 Argothian Enchantress
2 Verduran Enchantress
3 Tireless Tracker
3 Krosan Tusker
3 Viridian Revel
3 Enchantress's Presence
4 Eidolon of Blossoms
4 Seer's Sundial
4 Harmonize
4 Preferred Selection
5 Primal Command
5 Hibernation's End
0 Dark Depths
0 Thespian’s Stage
1x Hurricane
2x Squall Line
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Primal Order
13 Emrakul, the Promised End
Recursion (6)
1x Wildest Dreams
2 Regrowth
2 Nostalgic Dreams
3 Eternal Witness
3 Holistic Wisdom
5 Genesis
Utility (15)
0 Sapseep Foreset
0 High Market
1 Revelation
2 Lignify
2 Seal of Primordium
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Beast Within
3 Krosan Grip
3 Lifegift
4 Calming Verse
4 Creeping Corrosion
4 Cyclone
4 Titania's Song
5 Tornado
6 Ritual of Subdual
0 Maze of Ith
0 Glacial Chasm
0 Drownyard Temple
1 Elephant Grass
2 Constant Mists
2 Moment's Peace
4 Spike Weaver
Basic Lands (29)
0 Forest
The decklist by card type:
3 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
Artifact (4)
1 Sol Ring
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Seer's Sundial
6 Caged Sun
Sorcery (13)
1x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Hurricane
1x Wildest Dreams
2 Sylvan Scrying
2 Regrowth
2 Nostalgic Dreams
3 Nissa's Pilgrimage
3 Far Wanderings
4 Calming Verse
4 Harmonize
4 Creeping Corrosion
5 Primal Command
7 Boundless Realms
Creature (13)
2 Argothian Enchantress
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Verduran Enchantress
3 Courser of Kruphix
3 Yavimaya Elder
3 Eternal Witness
3 Burnished Hart
3 Tireless Tracker
4 Eidolon of Blossoms
4 Spike Weaver
5 Genesis
7 Krosan Tusker
13 Emrakul, the Promised End
1 Crop Rotation
2 Constant Mists
2 Moment's Peace
2x Squall Line
3 Beast Within
3 Krosan Grip
3 Early Harvest
Enchantment (24)
1 Elephant Grass
1 Exploration
1 Revelation
1 Mana Bloom
1 Wild Growth
1 Utopia Sprawl
2 Lignify
2 Fertile Ground
2 Seal of Primordium
2 Gaea's Touch
3 Holistic Wisdom
3 Viridian Revel
3 Overgrowth
3 Lifegift
3 Enchantress's Presence
4 Titania's Song
4 Preferred Selection
4 Cyclone
4 Primal Order
4 Vernal Bloom
5 Hibernation's End
5 Tornado
6 Ritual of Subdual
7 Zendikar Resurgent
0 Forest (x29)
0 Blighted Woodland
0 Sapseep Forest
0 High Market
0 Maze of Ith
0 Dark Depths
0 Thespian’s Stage
0 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
0 Glacial Chasm
0 Drownyard Temple
In General
The deck’s strategy is actually fairly simple. We play lands. We use the lands to cast spells. Eventually we use our spells defeat our opponents. But of course the devil is in the details so… here we go!
There are three main things that makes this deck a control deck, as opposed to a play-craterhoof behemoth-and-go-to-combat deck: (1) a large portion of the deck is dedicated to drawing cards, manipulating draws, and accruing card advantage; and (2) the deck is designed to play defensively, controlling the flow of the game until it is ready to strike with (3) a select set of resilient finishers. So let’s look at these features in turn.
Card Draw: As noted above, the deck is an enchantress deck. That means it relies on playing one of the various enchantress effects to make a large portion of the deck into cantrips or better. This, together with Nissa and the various effects that allow you to play more than one land allows you to cycle through the deck rather quickly. Just to make sure, we threw in Tireless Tracker and Seer's Sundial so you could really go into overdrive. The deck also has a number of ways of making sure it gets what it needs with tutors like Primal Command and Crop Rotation. And in addition to drawing cards, it has a number of recursion engines to get added value out of cards already used. Holistic Wisdom and Genesis are all-stars here, but Wildest Dreams and Nostalgic Dreams deserve mention as well.
The Protection Package©: All this is well and good, but people are likely to kill us if we just sit around playing enchantments all day. So the second element of control is having answers to the various threats you will face. The most common cause of game-loss in EDH is, at least in non-combo-obsessed metagames, combat. That means that the biggest threat is combat, and Nissa came to the party ready to make combat not fun for anyone. The deck packs a solid number of cards that will make attacking us seem more or less pointless. And in keeping with the card-advantage element here, most of these tools are repeatable. Elephant Grass, Maze of Ith, and Glacial Chasm hang around for turns on end. But most important are the two combos of Constant Mists + Drownyard Temple and Spike Weaver + Genesis. Any one of those cards is good on its own, but together we set up a pretty solid lock that many combat-oriented decks have trouble dealing with.
Win Conditions: Now that no one can kill us, we will have to do them the mercy of killing them. The deck has a number of win conditions: Hurricane, Squall Line (usually in combination with Glacial Chasm), Goblin Charbelcher (especially with Boundless Realms), Dark Depths, Emrakul, the Promised End and Nissa herself, if you use her ultimate. Ritual of Subdual can also just make people concede. Obviously the most stylish of these is the giant Hurricane win, but making someone kill themselves with Emrakul gives new meaning to the word ‘control’.
Now, if you will join me in observing how the typical game pans out…
Early Game: In the early game, you should play lands and do your best to ramp and get Nissa online. Don’t be afraid to play her early just to fetch a forest, since you’ll easily be able to replay her later. The ramping thing, however, is simple and you probably figured it out already. So let me tell you something perhaps more interesting: your first priority in the early game is to put together some kind of protection. As noted above, we don’t have a ton of creatures to block with, and if someone tries to voltron us out, we are sitting ducks without Constant Mists to protect us. So when mulliganing, do your best to acquire either a draw engine, one of the repeatable fog effects we play, or at least Elephant Grass. Ideally, this won’t be Glacial Chasm, but don’t be afraid to pull it out if you need to. The deck also keeps a pretty low profile, and I’ll leave it to you to gauge this. If ramping too hard will draw hate (green scares some people), and you don’t have any defense, then maybe take it slow. Also, do not play your hate cards early if you think it will draw ire from the table.
Mid-Game: By now you’ve hopefully got a decent manabase set up, and hopefully some form of repeatable protection. So now your goal is to set up an enchantress/landfall draw engine and get the draws going. It’s even advisable to keep cheap enchantments in your hand until this point in the game so that they can lead to draws. Use these tools to dig through the deck for the various win-conditions, answers, and utility spells. Ideally, the table will get the message at this point that attacking you is not going to be profitable, and they’ll start turning on each other. Continue to keep a low profile and play out your lands and draw your cards. Playing janky enchantments like Mana Bloom also makes you look like more of a curiosity than a threat, which is nice, since your goal in this period is essentially to simply accrue resources.
Late Game: Hopefully your opponents have done a good job of beating each other up by this point. If not, play Emrakul and make them do right by each other. In all seriousness, this is when you throw down a mana doubler and play your Hurricane. If at first you don’t succeed, just try, try, try again. Although you may at this point become a target, do your best to keep your defensive mana up, since you can’t win if you don’t survive, and the deck will be able to recover from most any setback. This is where Glacial Chasm really comes into its own, since it costs nothing to maintain and protects you from your own Squall Line.
Weaknesses, or Things to Watch Out For: As you have probably noticed by now, the deck relies heavily on a few key cards to survive and win the game. So what will happen if you lose your Hurricane? Or if Constant Mists gets countered? Well, in these eventualities you will have to use one of your recursion tools to retrieve that card from the graveyard. It bites when you spend 50 mana to kill everyone and someone else spends 2 mana to counter that. If this is a common theme in your metagame, consider adding Boseiju, Who Shelters All. Worst of all is when someone exiles your key cards from the graveyard. In such a case, my friend, we are more or less out of luck, and have to rely on the redundancy in our protection effects and kill mechanisms to get over the hurdle.
And this concludes the main part of the presentation. What follows is the nitty-gritty of card choices, both in this deck and in the archetype as a whole, and hopefully it can serve as as resource to all us out there in trenches playing monogreen control.
MY CARD CHOICES
The Commander
Nissa, Vastwood Seer: Hopefully it is clear by now why I chose this general to lead the deck. If you have reading comprehension issues, please send me a direct message, I am a professional tutor.
The Ramp
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: This is enchantress, and the deck does nothing better than put permanents into play. So, this land is likely to tap for a lot of mana. Seems good to me.
Sol Ring: Don’t know what to tell ya, it’s Sol Ring.
Exploration, Gaea’s Touch: If you’re drawing a lot of cards, chances are some of them are lands. Why not play those lands? Notably absent from the deck is Exploration’s little brother, Burgeoning. More on that in the next section.
Mana Bloom: To be honest, this card is barely ever used for ramp. More often, it is a 1cc enchantment that come back to your hand to be played again every turn, giving you repeated enchantress triggers.
Courser of Kruphix: This guy doesn't actually speed up your land plays, but he can ensure that you hit land drops by effectively drawing the lands on the top of your deck. He is also an enchantment, so he can draw cards just by showing up, and he has good synergy with Nissa. If you know the top card is a land, you can decide whether or not to play it with Courser or just put it straight into play with Nissa.
Nissa’s Pilgrimage, Far Wanderings, Yavimaya Elder, Burnished Hart, Blighted Woodland, Boundless Realms: These cards will dig all the lands out of your deck. Threshold is relatively easy to achieve for Far Wanderings, as is spell mastery for Nissa’s Pilgrimage, but don’t be afraid to cast them without those advantages. Both Yavimaya Elder and Burnished Hart are good friends with Genesis. Boundless Realms, is likely to just go get all the rest of the Forests in your deck, leaving Goblin Charbelcher in a good position to kill people. My meta doesn’t run mass land destruction, but if yours does, then be careful with this.
Vernal Bloom, Caged Sun, Zendikar Resurgent: Mana doublers make the world go round. Notably absent is Mana Reflection, and that is just because I don’t like the art and three doublers is plenty. If you like it, feel free to drop it in.
Early Harvest: Functions like a green Time Walk. After dropping a ton of lands and drawing a ton of cards, untap and do it all again. Or untap and cast that Hurricane, no need to wait.
The Draw Engine
There are two major card-drawing engines in the deck: enchantresses and landfall, but there are additional drawing effects as well, why not?
Argothian Enchantress, Verduran Enchantress, Enchantress’s Presence, Eidolon of Blossoms: Imagine a world where every time you played a card, you drew a card. Wouldn’t it be lovely to never run out of options and always have something new to drop? Well, with these effects, you can make that dream a reality. And if you get more than one in play, things will definitely get into overdrive. Getting one of these creatures out is a key part of the deck’s strategy, so try to do it early and often. There is a lot of recursion to bring them back, so don’t worry too much if they die, but don’t be too cavalier with them either.
Tireless Tracker, Seer’s Sundial: For a bit of an extra cost, these give cards for every land you play. With a mana doubler, you can sometimes just use the land itself to draw the cards. Tireless Tracker is especially strong since you don’t have to spend the mana right away, and she gets especially broken if you play a decent sized Boundless Realms - 10 clues seems good.
Harmonize: Well, I know it’s not an enchantress, but if you just want to draw cards right now, there are few better options than this little guy. Plus the flavor text is so on point.
Krosan Tusker: Both finds lands and gets cards. Note that you draw after you get the land, so there is a marginal deck-thinning effect before you draw. This is mostly included because it is recurrable with Genesis, thus allowing you to draw 2 extra cards a turn (granted, one of them is a land, but hey).
Viridian Revel: First of all, it’s an enchantment, so it’ll likely just get a you a few when it comes in. But drawing cards whenever an artifact dies will quickly get crazy. A lot of artifact decks enjoy cycling through their stuff (I’m looking at you, Glissa, and you Daretti), and now you get to draw answers every time they try it. Especially broken in combination with Creeping Corrosion, and if your opponent plays a Mycosynth Lattice things are really gonna go into overdrive.
Preferred Selection: This is my nod to the obviously broken Sylvan Library. It cycles through your deck, and is an enchantment to boot. And it draws a lot less hate than the library, while having a relatively similar (though admittedly weaker) effect. Feel free to drop it for the Library though, if you’re feeling more aggressive.
The Tutors
Crop Rotation, Sylvan Scrying: Green loves lands, and these spells get you the ones you need. Crop Rotation, at instant speed, is an all star - you can fetch Dark Depths at the end of your opponent’s turn, or get Glacial Chasm just in the nick of time. Sylvan Scrying is a little less powerful, but there are enough valuable lands to make playing both of these worthwhile.
Green Sun’s Zenith, Primal Command, Hibernation’s End: These function basically as enchantresses #5-7. Enchantresses are the deck’s engine and it is important to try to get them online as soon as possible. Hibernation’s End is especially valuable since it’ll get you two of them in a row, albeit for a greater investment. And of course, Primal Command gives us the flexibility every control deck needs to respond to the contingencies of the situation.
Recursion
sometimes the fundamental unity of reality
Regrowth, Nostalgic Dreams, Eternal Witness, Wildest Dreams: As far as I’m concerned, Regrowth and Witness are auto-includes in every green deck. Recycle your win conditions and answers so you can keep winning and answering. Nostalgic Dreams is in there because you will often have a gratuitous number of cards, and this lets you turn them into exactly what you want. Wildest Dreams scales well and can end up netting you a lot of cards.
Holistic Wisdom: This is one of the real all-stars, providing recurrable recursion for all your needs. Now all your cards are blurring together, the entirety of your past is like a giant resource and all you have to do is pick the right spell for the right moment. Holism is obviously the correct view in philosophy (see Hegel and Quine), and it is also correct in the ol’ MTG. And since it's MTG we're talking about after all, let me note one important interaction: with Holistic Wisdom in play, every forest in your deck can be pitched to become a Glacial Chasm, provided you've got one around. This enables you cut back on the life it costs you by sacrificing a land (and discarding one) instead. If you have Drownyard Temple part of the drawback is somewhat mitigated, though you still won't be able to build up your manabase without a ramp spell or two.
Genesis: Again, this is a key element in the deck’s toolbox. It provides a fog-lock with Spike Weaver, lets you block for days, brings your enchantresses back from the dead, and abuses Eternal Witness to get any card, any time. The only way we have for getting it into the graveyard is High Market, though it's also possible to discard it at the end step.
Utility and Good Stuff
Revelation: This card is a personal inclusion. A cheap enchantment to draw cards with, but also gives you a lot of information and can take the pressure off you when the next player has some monster in his hand. That said there are probably better things you could do with this slot.
Lignify: Removes problem creatures. Extra good on generals, since now that player has to find a way to kill their own general before they can recast it. Song of the Dryads is also a good play, and there’s no harm playing both of them, though I’m not doing so in this list.
Seal of Primordium, Krosan Grip: Destroying artifacts and enchantments is what green does best, and you will do it very well. It can be surprising how much destroying the right artifact can mess your opponents up, and this also gives you a way to interact with creatures if they happen to be artifact creatures. I play Krosan Grip because split second is often relevant, but you can play Deglamer and other exiling effects if you see a lot of gods running around.
Calming Verse, Creeping Corrosion: Now you can destroy everything, not just that one problem permanent. Calming Verse is built to be one-sided, and will just wreck any other enchantress decks (because the mirror match is a real thing, obviously). Creeping Corrosion is more often relevant, and combos well with Viridian Revel. Recurring Creeping Corrosion repeatedly will give any artifact deck fits.
Titania’s Song: Remember what I said about controlling combat with fog effects? One way your opponents might try to get around that is to kill you or mess up the board with their fancy artifacts. But thanks to this killer jam, now artifacts have to go through the fog too. The music is so good that even Darksteel Forge stops being so high and mighty. And the best thing is that even when she stops singing, Titania’s melody still hangs in the air for the rest of turn, so it’s difficult to get out from under the music in a timely manner.
Beast Within: Destroy anything. Give them a stupid little 3/3 that is just gonna get lost in the mists anyway. Even kills planeswalkers, whoa. I guess there's a beast inside all of us.
Cyclone: This card will build up to repeatedly wrath the table. It is basically your only wrath effect, and is very slow. But it does double as a win-condition if you can keep it around for 7 turns or so. The only problem is that it kills your enchantresses, so be careful.
Ritual of Subdual: Shuts down your opponents’ manabases almost entirely. But of course, you planned ahead for this like every good control player, so you played Vernal Bloom just before this all went down. So now you have green mana and everyone else has a lot of useless lands. All you have to do is win the game before the cumulative upkeep gets too big.
Tornado: Completing our suite of ancient color-pie bending enchantments, there is Tornado. This is one of the few ways green has to deal with creatures. It’s actually very versatile in that it can destroy creatures and lands and enchantments and planeswalkers and well just about anything. If you’re feeling saucy, you could add Power Conduit to remove counters so it doesn't cost you too much life (thanks to Rogerandover for this suggestion).
Lifegift: An early game Lifegift will often net you 20+ life, especially in big games. Why are we gaining life? Because we need to have more life than everyone else on the table when we cast Squall Line in a bid for victory. Could theoretically be cut for something more aggressive, but one problem the deck has is with direct damage, and this helps little against those strategies.
Sapseep Forest: Gains you marginal amounts of life, and having the permanents isn't really a problem. Since it's our only tap-land, it's hardly going to make a huge impact on the deck's speed. Not much benefit, but not much cost - what can I say, I'm a sap.
High Market: Provides incidental lifegain, saves Spike Weaver from exile effects, provides recursive circles with Genesis, allows us to sac Genesis in the first place, and stops people from stealing Emrakul. All around it earns its keep.
Scavenging Ooze: A great utility creature that provides the deck with a little graveyard hate. Plus he's tutorable, and maybe you might even feel like attacking with him (imagine that!)
Glacial Chasm: Tutorable at instant speed with Crop Rotation, this little beast will stop every damage-based strategy, even the ones that don’t go through combat. But primarily it is used to save us from the storm. Just be sure to remember that you can't attack with it on the field.
Maze of Ith: Sometime you only really need to fog that one creature, and this is the card that'll do it for you. Also useful for playing political games and attacking people risk-free.
Constant Mists & Drownyard Temple: Now no one will get through and you don’t even have to waste a land drop on the mists. Both cards are decent on their own, and get extra good when you have both. Constant Mists will just fog out the board for days, and Drownyard is also good for discarding for Nostalgic Dreams.
Moment’s Peace: This is mostly here for redundancy. You can’t completely rely on getting one of your recurrable fogs, so this one, which still staves off two attacks, is in there just in case you need a pinch hitter.
Elephant Grass: Green’s Propaganda, before Propaganda was a thing. Stops black decks cold, and most people will leave you alone if it costs them to attack you, especially since all you’re doing is playing enchantments, so you can’t be threatening, right?
Spike Weaver: The real MVP. Three counters is just the right amount to stop everyone from hitting you before it’s your turn again, should you somehow become the scariest person on the table (this happens rarely, even people who know what you’re gonna do will underestimate you since it’s hard to really get scared about a player who is just playing enchantments and lands). But the real reason this is so good is that it recurs with Genesis. You might want to include Spore Frog or Haze Frog for redundancy here, but I don’t find them necessary, and they do a lot less work than the weaver. A final note - people will try to exile this creature, especially once they catch on to your Genesis tricks. You can respond to their effect by removing all the counters from the weaver, however, at which point he will go to the graveyard as a state-based-effect, thus thwarting their plans.
Win Conditions
Hurricane, Squall Line: These are the main ways the deck wins. They are the ideal method because these spells kill everyone at the table all at once, and can’t be stopped short of a few random white effects and counterspells (but then you’ll just Seedtime and do it again next turn, right?). It will take a lot of mana to get there, of course, but you with a doubler or two, or an Early Harvest, you won’t have much trouble getting there. Although they are primarily for killing people, don’t hesitate to use them to kill planeswalkers or things like Consecrated Sphinx - there shouldn’t be much trouble getting them back from the graveyard. Last, if you feel like there’s not enough, you can play the 3 Kingdoms version, but two copies seems to be enough, and hitting horsemanship is usually pointless.
Dark Depths & Thespian’s Stage: Although of course this is a combo, both are good on their own - you won’t have any trouble spending 30 mana to remove all ice from the depths.
Goblin Charbelcher: Especially good in conjunction with Boundless Realms, this is honestly more of a janky way to win, but it has the advantage that it can kill creatures if you need to. You could probably do without this if it’s not your style, but I like it.
Emrakul, the Promised End: So ramping into Eldrazi is lame. But I have a soft spot for Emrakul, and I just love her name and her art and all of it. So while you could easily do without her, it doesn’t hurt to have a tutorable titan in the deck somewhere. And it gives you a kind of an answer to combo and control players - since it’s a cast trigger it can’t be countered, and a turn with someone else’s deck will typically mess them up, especially if they’re not just about attacking people.
Primal Order: This card isn’t really going to win you the game, but it is a good tool for whittling down people’s life totals, and it does kill people on occasion. This and Early Harvest are the reason that the deck as built runs so many basic lands when there are a number of good nonbasics that could be included.
You can also opt for a more cutthroat version of the deck presented above, since there are a lot of cards I'm not running that might suit you or your meta or budget. There are a lot of them, so use your browser’s search function if there’s a specific one you’re looking for. The cards not on my list I’ve organized under the following main headings:
Potentially Powerful Cards Intentionally Omitted
Bow of Nylea: As the man says, this is your swiss-army-knife. Personally, I usually end up using it to gain life, but the other effects can be useful in the right situation, especially if you’re close to decking yourself, or if you want to give Spike Weaver an extra counter.
Boseiju, Who Shelters All: Easily tutorable, relatively hard-to-remove protection for all your big spells. To be honest I should probably play this, but countermagic is not very common where I play.
Burgeoning: A little problematic in that you can’t play the lands on your own turn, so it is more difficult to get immediate advantage from the extra land drops. But it does go very nicely with Arboria, enabling you to side-step its restrictions.
City of Solitude, Dosan the Falling Leaf: Although these are powerful effects, they will do major damage to our own strategy, since they prevent us from using Constant Mists or other fog effects. So, as cool as they are, I choose not to play them. If you go a less fog-heavy route, then you may enjoy these more.
Creeping Renaissance: Occasionally, someone will wipe out all your enchantments. Now you will fake a tear and then play them all again and draw all your cards again. Having flashback is just extra juice. I cut this for Wildest Dreams, since getting back Hurricane seemed relevant, but you could even run both.
Dryad Arbor: It’s kind of cute to tutor up a land that’s a creature. We don’t play fetches, but if we did this could be even better. The problem is that having a random 1/1 creature just isn’t very good for us. It will allow us to dodge sacrifice effects, however, which can come up occasionally.
Fertilid: Gets lands, and can even block a little bit. What’s not to like? Extra good with Genesis, since he puts himself into your graveyard. Works well with kazandu if you run that.
Ifh-Bíff Efreet: Hurricane on a creature. Like that big storm, this little efreet can also work to finish people off, and as a creature he is much easier to tutor up than the other finishers. Bonus points if you play Urza’s Armor, since somehow even 50 damage from the efreet won’t hurt you if it comes in little chunks. I guess it’s true what they say - you gotta take your problems one at a time.
Hall of Gemstone: As the posts below indicate, this is something of a monogreen control staple (if we can legitimately speak of such a thing). Strong enough that people will occasionally just concede to it, Hall of Gemstone shuts down opponents on your turn, prevents people from casting their multi-colored generals, and generally is just a big headache for everyone that isn’t you. Personally, I don’t play it because I need green mana on my opponent’s turn to cast Constant Mists, but I’m starting to come round to it… If you do choose to run it, note that playing things like Wild Growth can get around its restriction, allowing you access to green on your opponent's turn.
Mirri's Guile: An excellent green enchantment to help you control your draws, and exceptionally good with Nissa, since you can control which card you reveal, ensuring that she cheats a land in (or doesn't). I'm not playing it mostly just because, but don't hesitate to include it yourself.
Oblivion Stone, Nevinyrral's Disk, All is Dust: One day, I hope that they print a colorless wrath that really just destroys creatures. As it stands, these effects will all destroy your enchantments and enchantresses, and, in the case of All is Dust, will even destroy Nissa. Given that we typically shut down combat with our misty magic, this is just too high a cost to pay for too little benefit, especially as we have other ways to deal with things that aren't creatures.
Oracle of Mul Daya: Playing more lands per turn is a powerful effect, and he works well with Nissa, who can play the top land too. I don’t play this in part to keep the power level down, but it could easily find a place.
Plow Under, Fallow Earth: These were the tools of the trade for older monogreen control decks that did in fact once upon a time exist in the real world of 60-card decks. And they’re still interesting moves now, but they get a lot of hate (everyone hates land destruction, and denying your opponent two draws is almost as cruel), and their effects just aren’t strong enough in multiplayer. In 1v1 Plow Under is arguably on par with Time Warp, but in multiplayer it’s a niche choice. That said, if you can set up a recursion look with Eternal Witness and Genesis your opponent will be in for a very bad time.
Power Conduit: There are a lot of cummulative upkeep effects in here, and other cards with valuable counters as well. This could definitely see play, and it would also be useful to mess with your opponent's stuff. Thanks to Rogerandover for the suggestion.
Praetor’s Counsel: Well if you wanted recursion, here you go. Gets you everything you ever played, and you’ll easily get the mana you need to play it. I don’t play it for power-level reasons, but it’s obviously a powerful tool for any green deck, but especially for a control deck.
Predator, Flagship: Here in greenland we don’t have much creature removal. And when we do get it, it seems to only hit flying creatures. This helps our Hurricanes do double duty, and can serve as a mana sink for destroying problem creatures. A bit clunky, but it’ll do in a pinch.
Retreat to Kazandu: A decent tool for getting more counters onto Spike Weaver (and Fertilid if you play it), and the lifegain is nice since we need a lot of life to make Hurricane work without killing us. Doesn't do a lot more than that, but that might be enough if you want it to be.
Seasons Past: Really good. We can’t do the cute trick with a tutor, but still really good. If you want to run it over Wildest Dreams there is a definite argument for that. I like dreams for flexibility (often you just need that one card and the 3 extra mana would be prohibitive), but seasons generate a lot of value.
Skyshroud Claim, Hunting Wilds, Cultivate, Kodama’s Reach, Nature’s Lore, Into the North, Explosive Vegetation, Ranger’s Path, and who knows what else: Other good spells for fetching up lands. Feel free to play them. I personally feel that 3 or so of these is enough, especially since my general also puts lands into play and I have enchantments to build up my mana base. That said, if you don’t run the enchantress suite you may get more mileage out of these than Wild Growth. Also, note that Into the North can fetch up Dark Depths, which is kind of nice.
Song of the Dryads: This will be Lignify number 2. Probably a better card since it can hit non-creature permanents, even if it does cost one more.
Stunted Growth: Green discard spell that effectively nullifies three of your opponent’s next draw steps. This card’s style points are off the chart but unfortunately in a multiplayer format it does not have a particularly potent effect unless you can recur it indefinitely. That said, if you play it you will be my hero.
Sylvan Library: Duh. Again, not in my deck because I have a personal aversion to the card, but it is clearly broken, and clearly fits in any control deck that cares about its lands. Bonus points in green since all your land-fetching effects will shuffle your deck, resetting the library.
Willow Satyr: Another interesting effect that green just doesn’t get anymore, but which can really throw the game for a loop. Granted, he’s a fragile body, but if he sticks your opponent’s generals will suddenly fall deeply in love with the forests.
Worldy Tutor: Tutors are good, and we have enough valuable creatures that this would be a strong inclusion, functioning as an extra enchantress or an extra Spike Weaver. You could even add in Dryad Arbor and use Nissa to cheat it into play after tutoring it onto the top of your library. Wow such killer plays. Of course, tutors ruin the craziness of EDH (or so I'm told), so include this at your own peril?
Asceticism: This card is really good in a more creature-oriented build. Saves your dudes from hate, and regenerates them through a wrath - everything you could want.
Crucible of Worlds: One way to add to this build or take the deck in an interesting other direction would be to focus the control elements around something else green does well - lands. Crucible of Worlds would be a part of such a set-up, allowing you to recycle Glacial Chasm and Dark Depths indefinitely, among other things.
Freyalise’s Winds: Slows everything down, like waaaay down. People who were hurting you bad will now hurt you much less bad. And your deck can even plan ways to get around it via cards like Early Harvest, Seedborn Muse, Patron of the Orochi, and Vitalize (especially in conjunction with Kamahl, Fist of Krosa). I see this as powerful in a deck that can break the symmetry with the above-listed untap effects, or in a monogreen stax-style deck. But since we can't (except in a mild way by cheating extra lands in with Nissa), I've listed this here.
Life from the Loam: This provides green with another card-drawing engine, this time in the form of recurring cycling lands for maximum effect. Life from the Loam also makes Dark Depths just that much more powerful, and can fit well with Splendid Reclamation. If you go this route, consider playing other non-basics and perhaps more graveyard-oriented effects and recursion, since you’ll be dredging things up a good deal.
Mouth of Ronom: Part of what might be called the "land package", going snow and using Mouth of Ronom would give us some actual creature removal. Given the number of ways green has to recur it, it seems like a good tool to have around.
Patron of the Orochi: Particularly powerful if you play mana dorks or in builds led by Yeva, but also good with Kamahl for untapping all your lands once you’ve turned them into creatures. In my deck there aren’t enough creatures to really abuse him or to break symmetry when your opponent untaps his forests too.
Rude Awakening, Natural Affinity, Jolrael, Empress of Beasts, Nissa, Worldwaker, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa and I’m sure I’m forgetting some: Cards that turn your lands into creatures, preferably en masse. Now you have a ton of creatures and you can probably just go kill that one guy who was messing with you. Bonus points if you can do this at instant speed to destroy someone’s lands in response to a wrath effect. Seems best suited to a Kamahl, Fist of Krosa style of play, though I could see Natural Affinity being a clutch 1-of to potentially catch sleeping opponents in a more enchantress-oriented list as well.
Realms Uncharted: Given the number of utility lands we run, and the ways we have to get them out of the graveyard, this seems like an interesting tool, and it also makes Splendid Reclamation that much better. If you do run this, consider adding more non-basics to the deck. Ice Floe, Scrying Sheets, Mouth of Ronom, and a set of cycling lands come to mind. Would also fit well with [/c]Life from the Loam[/c].
Scrying Sheets: There is no reason not to play all snow lands and Scrying Sheets, and naturally the sheets fit very well with things like Mirri's Guile, Courser of Kruphix, or Oracle of Mul Daya. I personally like some variety in my forest artwork, but this could be a good move in a build more interesting in using its lands to great effect.
Seedborn Muse: Particularly good with Yeva, since it will let you play your creatures all over your opponent’s turns, over and over again. For my build it lacks punch since I don’t play a ton of instants.
Shaper’s Sanctuary: Kind of like Asceticism in that it helps preserve your creatures. I like the value it can bring, and it will probably at least draw you a few cards if it sticks. At 1cc, how can you say no?
Splendid Reclamation: I’m currently toying with the idea of playing this card. It seems like it could be very strong in the late game, especially as we tend to discard a good number of lands when we go down to hand size. If anyone has run this, let me know how it worked for you.
Stampeding Wildebeests, Stampeding Serow: I'm told these are too slow at the end of the day. Seem playable in a budget build of Yeva, allowing you recur your creatures, but there are probably better options out there (hint - Temur Sabretooth - hint)
Temur Sabertooth: If you’re running a lot of ETB creatures, this guy is a beast; playing Eternal Witness turn after turn seems good, not to mention Acidic Slime or Terastodon. A must in any Yeva build, but good in others.
Vorniclex, Voice of Hunger: Monogreen Stax can be a thing, and this guy would be king of that archetype. And since stax is a kind of control, after all, I'll go ahead and list him here.
Ground Seal: It shuts down graveyard shenanigans, the draw effect is nice, and it is an enchantment… but unfortunately it shuts down your own graveyard shenanigans too. In all, if graveyard hate is something you want, I’d say go for the ooze or pick up one of the artifacts that do that.
Lifeforce: If you see a lot of black in the air, this card will be pretty powerful. Plus it's an enchantment, and one of those old-school super-fly ones that this deck is all about! Other good black hosers that might be worthwhile are Reap and Compost.
Nature's Wrath: So cool. Wish I could justify it.
Null Rod: I play a good number of artifact hosers already, but this could be Titania's Song number 2. If your meta is very artifact heavy, this might be the right call.
Seedtime: Now for the real green Time Walk. There’s usually plenty of blue around, but if everyone in your meta is playing kraken decks or something then you might just drop this one out. It’s for that reason that I don’t run it myself.
Commander 2016
Benefactor’s Draught: Perhaps a clever trick to help you draw cards? We don’t really have the tools to make much more of it than that. Seems highly situational and we can’t really abuse the “untap all creatures” part of it.
Evolutionary Escalation: We don’t care about +1/+1 counters except for Spike Weaver, and there are better ways of adding counters to him if that’s what you’re after.
Seeds of Renewal: Not as good as any number of other options that are available, and the fact that it takes a relatively low commitment to green is irrelevant to us. Still, if you have this and don’t want to spend 25¢ on Wildest Dreams you may as well run it.
Stonehoof Chieftain, Primeval Protector: Big creatures are not relevant to our game plan, and the counters from the protector are of very limited value.
Armory Automaton: We don’t play any equipment, and stealing everyone else’s won’t be particularly valuable except in very unusual circumstances.
Boompile: Sometimes, admittedly, it would be nice to have some way to destroy a whole mess of creatures. But there are better, more consistent ways to blow up the world that I would play before this. Plus, destroying all our enchantments is not super fun.
Conqueror’s Flail: Equipment as a whole are more or less useless to us with our low creature density and disdain for the attack phase. It is nice that this card doesn’t affect our ability fog on an opponent’s turn, however, so if this is an effect you really want, then it may be a little better than City of Solitude or Hall of Gemstones and the like.
Crystalline Crawler, Prismatic Geoscope: Cards built to create or benefit from multiple colors of mana are more or less useless to monochromatic decks.
Rishkar’s Expertise: We can’t make as much of this as other green decks might, but it’ll usually draw at least 2-3 cards for us. And the ability to drop a random enchantment might justify using this over Harmonize. For my money, though, a consistent three cards is worth more than the free spell, especially if the free spell comes at the cost of two more mana and the risk of being useless to us.
Heroic Intervention: If your meta involves a lot of mass land destruction or mass enchantment removal, this might be worthwhile. If not, it’s too niche to really earn a spot, but worth being aware of.
Aid from the Cowl: This one is an enchantment, which is nice, and it fetches up permanents, which is also nice. I’m not sure how easily our deck will trigger revolt, though. Something to be aware of, but not an auto-include by any means.
Unbridled Growth: This is a cool little land-enchantment. Doesn’t actually ramp you at all, but gives the option of drawing a card. I’m going to stick with the extra-mana enchantments, but this one is interesting if card draw becomes more important. Also provides an extra way to get around Ritual of Subdual.
Natural Obsolescence: I like this one. Not as good as Krosan Grip though.
Heart of Kiran: Nissa can crew it! Which is kinda cool, and the vigilance means it can be a defensive machine as well. Still, a 4/4 isn’t that big in EDH, and we’re not really in the business of attacking.
Planar Bridge: This card is actually a little exciting. Seems very powerful, and the fact that is mana-intensive isn’t too big a deal for us. This isn’t the deck that will break it, but it could find a spot. If you try it out, let me know how it works. I think I’m going to leave it out for now, but will keep my eye on it and maybe try it out in the future.
Paradox Engine: We don’t have the mana-rocks or the elves to make this work for us, unfortunately. When will they print enchantments that tap for mana??
Hope of Ghirapur: Another way to dodge counterspells if that’s your thing. Autumn’s Veil and Boseiju, Who Shelters All still get my pick though. Might make a kind of pseudo-lock with Genesis, and we are fairly good at ignoring creatures. Still, outside of that interaction it’s fairly underwhelming in this deck.
Universal Solvent: I guess it’s creature removal in green? But maybe you should have just run Brittle Effigy if you’re that desperate?
Sandwurm Convergence: This card I am actually going to test, and I have high hopes for it. It costs a ton of mana, which might be a problem, but it ticks all this decks boxes by being (1) an enchantment, (2) a powerful defensive tool, and (3) a wincon. Plus I loved the Dune books, so I’m happy to pay homage to Shai-Halud.
Shefet Monitor: Could be better than Krosan Tusker in that it puts the land in play. Is worse in that it costs more. That much I think you probably already figured out. Art on it is less cool, but I guess I’ll try it out anyway.
Sixth Sense: It’s an enchantment, it draws cards… but probably it isn’t good enough, and usually you’d be putting it on other people’s creatures, and I like having control over my card-drawing. Still, maybe.
Gift of Paradise: One more for the Wild Growth fan club. This one costs too much for my taste (we should be playing Nissa on turn 3) and the three life and extra mana doesn’t seem worth it.
Haze of Pollen: Lull with goofier art and a higher cycling cost. There are better fogs and we play those instead.
Dissenter’s Deliverance: Kind of nifty; I wouldn’t look down on people for playing this. At the same time, this is an eternal format, and we have better options.
Vizier of the Menagerie: In creature-based lists, this seems awesome. In the list I’ve put up here, not so much.
Mouth // Feed: I like green card draw, and again this could be useful in creature-based builds. Though even in that connection there are probably better options.
Rhonas the Indomitable: We make a lot of mana, and he can trigger himself, so maybe we could use him as an alternative way to win? I dunno, really reaching on that one tbh.
Prowling Serpopod: If there are a lot of counterspells in your meta, and you’re playing a more creature-heavy build of mono green control, then maybe this would be good. Shame it doesn’t stop all your spells from being countered.
Champion of Rhonas: We don’t need to cheat anything into play. If your version does, then maybe this is good. For my money, Elvish Piper is still better.
Manglehorn: This seems good, especially in creature-based builds. Kills an artifact and is a hatebear. A lot of people compare it to Sage of Reclamation, but there’s no reason to not run both as far as I can see. Especially if you have some chance to recur it.
Benefaction of Rhonas: This seems kinda cool, but I don’t think it’ll quite make the cut. I like my card draw to do more than draw cards, though filling the graveyard is somewhat nice?
Oracle’s Vault: Seems slow, has bad synergy with Titania’s Song, but could be good. I like free spells.
Watchers of the Dead: I know it’s not perfect, but it does seem like good grave hate. Hits all players, doesn’t hit you. In this deck we have a lot recursion so holding on to our graveyard is important, so we can’t run Tormod’s Crypt.
Nissa's Defeat: Wow don't play this unless you're profoundly masochistic or enjoy strange ironies. Really just a sad card.
Uncage the Menagerie: Not totally bad actually. Set at 3 it gets you three card-draw creatures. Or Eternal Witness to do it all again. Set at 2 it gets one enchantress and Scavenging Ooze which is not too bad either. Set at 4 it gets you fogs and enchantress. I think it could be useful as it is always at least a 2-for-1 and gives access to whatever we need, be it card draw, protection, recursion, or win cons. Drawback is it's kind of expensive and probably takes up the whole turn you cast it.
Ramunap Extractor: I'd rather have Crucible of Worlds but then again I'd rather pay my rent. And also this one is tutorable with creature tutors. I don't think Crucible effects are at their very best here, but it wouldn't be hard to throw in the relevant nonbasics and go down that path.
Mirage Mirror: I kind of like this in the way I like all kind of weird effects that I don't really know where to put. We have the mana to use it (though it can only be used once a turn, which is kind of un-great). Could be good for doing random things? I dunno but I'm interested by it. One extra cool interaction is that if you copy Tornado you'll get a few blasts with a lesser life payment. Or if you copy Sandwurm Convergence you'll get twice the sandwurms. Most of all though I think you'll be copying your opponent's stuff for random interactions, which is usually fun, though probably not the best way to win in a competitive environment.
Dagger of the Worthy: Look if you equip this to Nissa, and then attack 6 times, while also never playing that 7th land, and your opponent does not block or disrupt you in any way, you will win the game. AUTO-INCLUDE
Desert of the Indomitable: one more cycling land can't be that bad. ETB tap is bad of course, but if you're into the Life from the Loam package, you could do worse than throwing this in there.
Nissa, Genesis Mage: Big and slow and dumb version for n00bs. That is my official assessment.
Growing Rites of Itlimoc: again could be cool in the creature-oriented versions. Provides filtering, and I imagine flipping it won't be too hard. I think Toc plays a more creature-y version, so maybe he could say better how many creatures he often has in play and whether this would be worth it.
Ripjaw Raptor: man I really like this card but I don't know if it fits here. Could be a good blocker? Probably not good enough and we don't have any good way to abuse it. If you played a Sekki, Seasons' Guide version of MonoGreen Control with all the sweet combo finishes that involve pinging though... Might just have to explore that route, haha
Shaper's Sanctuary: again interesting, but there are probably better things to do. Mirri's Guile seems stronger, especially as in many games my only creatures are Nissa and Enchantresses. Don't like depending on my opponents. If you play a lot of creatures, usually it's wraths that I'd worry about.
Waker of the Wilds: this guy could work as a finisher. We make tons of mana, and Hurricane is classy and all, but with this we can animate just one monster land (so we don't get blown out by wraths) and can keep doing it over and over. Worth a try I'd say.
Blinding Fog: if you wanted a more flexible fog, could use this? It lacks recursion though
Crushing Canopy: I know they have Crushing Vines... why don't they just make a modal disenchant that kills flying creatures??? I like the idea of having straight-out creature removal, even if it is conditional. Probably not good enough though, especially as flying creatures already have answers in Hurricane and co.
Ancient Brontodon: c'mon so much style points. Imagine Nissa just wandering the Vastwood on one of these. Tell me it's not amazing.
Thaumatic Compass: easy to flip. turns into Maze of Ith and finds you lands. Might actually be better than the Maze since it finds you lands; the problem with Maze is that it’s a land drop and doesn't tap for mana. Could try swapping them and seeing how it feels.
Primal Amulet: we have a decent number of instants and sorceries, so could flip this and benefit from its front side, especially if you don't do the enchantress thing (I think Roger, your list is creature-light but also not enchantress, so maybe extra good for you?). Flip side makes the Hurricane kill a lot easier, so I'd put this on the maybe pile.
Jadelight Ranger: I haven't played enough limited to get a feel for explore. This might be kind of cool? It's cheap, blocks, could be an easy draw-2... I dunno. Probably better stuff we could be doing, but if your build emphasizes ETB effects, this might be worth exploring (get it??)
Path of Discovery: I don't do the creature thing too much, but again, if your build is in that way, this might be worth looking into
Tendershoot Dryad: I like that it's a Verdant Force type effect in that it happens each upkeep, not just your own. Actually this card is just better than Verdant Force and tbh that makes me a little sad, I always like that old guy. Probably not a fit for what we're trying to do but powerful stuff nonetheless.
Wayward Swordtooth: I'm excited. Play more lands is always good. Now that we can run almost 4+ of that effect, might be even worth getting something like Horn of Greed into the deck, since we can break the symmetry pretty well. Plus he comes down early and can block, which is useful. Not sure I really love that he's a creature though, if we're being honest.
World Shaper: Another juicy one. Crucible effects are great, though you need the right build for it. I think the Life from the Loam package is gaining traction, with a lot of people trying it out, so this might be a good way to go. Combine with Crucible of Worlds and Ramunap Excavator for maximum power.
Plummet: I honestly kind of like this card. Lots of voltron commanders could be just killed by this. Nice to have a green card that says 'destroy target creature' even if there is the dumb flying clause in there (whoa you could run Evolution Charm for a sick combo though, c'mon now...)
Naturalize: Playable card. Was playable before this set even, since there were a lot of other ones. But if you like the art then hey rock on homie.
Arch of Orazca: Let's play it. Draws cards, is a mana sink, is a land... What's not to love. It doesn't tap for green I guess, and makes Vernal Bloom less good, but I think the upsides are worth it.
The Immortal Sun: Ok so don't run this if you're doing Nissa as you commander. But if you're a Kamahl player or maybe something else, then this could be pretty good. I imagine for Kamahl, having a static boost to your lands is hot, turning off opposing planeswalkers is marginal but not bad, and having all your spells be cheaper and your draws be stronger... I'm down.
Azor's Gateway: I kind of like it. Takes a lot of investment though, so I'm not sure. Once it's set up, it should make Hurricane happen more or less immediately. I'm not too excited though - if I spent 5 turns doing this, I could have just spent 5 turns dumping lands and drawing cards instead, so what have we really gained?
Silent Gravestone: We have too much recursion to like this card
Awakened Amalgam: If you go the lands way this is kinda cute. But let's be real, this is EDH, a fat vanilla is basically a dead card.
- Creeping Renaissance
- Fertilid
- Seedtime
- Retreat to Kazandu
- Bow of Nylea
- Khalni Heart Expedition
- Forest x2
+ Wildest Dreams
+ Ritual of Subdual
+ Tornado
+ Yavimaya Elder
+ Fertile Ground
+ Overgrowth
+ Sapseep Forest
+ Blighted Woodland
Wildest Dreams serves as a more versatile version of Creeping Renaissance. Both cards can get a lot of value at once, but the dreams can fetch back Hurricane and other non-creatures.
Fertilid had a cute interaction with Retreat to Kazandu but wasn’t very strong on its own. So I replaced the bug with Yavimaya Elder as a better way to draw cards.
Retreat to Kazandu, Seedtime, Bowl of Nylea, and Khalni Heart Expedition were increasingly underwhelming, and I wanted to modify the deck to be more pro-active. Retreat and bowl too often just ended up gaining me a little life; Seedtime, while great when it hits, is too often just sitting there waiting for someone to try something. Khalni Heart Expedition was too slow. In place of these I put in Tornado and Ritual of Subdual as more aggressive tools for removal and lock-down. With Ritual of Subdual it’s important to have non-land access to green mana, so the Fertile ground and Overgrowth made sense as ramp that gets around the ritual.
Sapseep Forest and Blighted Woodland struck me as just better than standard forests. So in they went.
Tymna & Ishai, ie Esper Edric
Crosis Turbotrash
Creeping Renaissance
Both seem like great inclusions. You also might want some artifact wraths.
(U/B)(U/B)(U/B) JUMP IN THE LINE, ROCK YOUR BODY IN TIME
(R/W)(R/W)(R/W) RISING FROM THE NEON GLOOM, SHINING LIKE A CRAZY MOON
(U/R)(R/G)(G/U) STEALIN' WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN BUYIN'
I agree with lignify, it is excellent commander removal. Why not also song of the dryads?
Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
Hall of Gemstone is really good and not too expensive financially... I guess I kind of worry about it politically since it can just lock people out, and no one likes that. What have been your experiences with that? I might just have to try it out with my playgroup and see what happens.
Creeping Renaissance is amazing, don't know how i missed that.
Song of the Dryads also is really good, I'll have to find room for that
Anything you'd suggest cutting?
I worry that disk and stone would end up wiping too many of my enchants, much like all is dust (which was actually in there for a second). But it would be good to have a wipe that could kill creatures, right now the only response to creatures I have is fog effects.
PS I didn't know about the vernal bloom and ritual of subdual lock, that is just plain nasty! might have to think about putting that in if I start feeling extra cutthroat
Tymna & Ishai, ie Esper Edric
Crosis Turbotrash
Crop Rotation should be a must. Getting Glacial Chasm instant-speed is something that have saved me a couple of times.
With Constant Mists you should also play Drownyard Temple.
I kinda like Deglamer/Unravel the Aether better then Krosan Grip, but I guess it's a meta-call.
And let me recommend mono-green-controls swiss army knife: Bow of Nylea. All four modes can be useful, and added deathtouch to attacking creatures is never bad, even though you might not attack much.
I tried playing with Hall of Gemstone and while it can really hurt multicolored decks, the problem I had was, that I sometimes needed the green mana when it wasn't my turn. I play with Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, and being able to pump him as a defence, was higher up then the Hall.
- Nature's Spiral
- Ancestral Mask
- Arbor Elf
- 2x Forest
+ Creeping Renaissance
+ Bow of Nylea
+ Crop Rotation
+ Moment's Peace
+ Drownyard Temple
These changes were in response to some of the advice on here, and I've been very happy with them. Haven't had a chance to use Bow of Nylea yet, but it seems good. Moment's Peace was because having only 2 fog effects (3 if you count glacial chasm) was turning out to be too few. Still considering adding maybe one more. Didn't add Hall of Gemstones - the deck's main defense is fog effects, so I need to have green mana on my opponent's turn.
Overall the deck has been doing pretty well, it tends to either win or be very close to winning most games I play. That said, it kind of feels like a combo sometimes, where all I am doing is ramping and fogging and drawing cards until I have a huge Hurricane and a way to survive it. Which is fine, though perhaps not the original intention.
But with that in mind, I'm thinking of adding in Early Harvest, since it would make the turn I set up the Hurricane and the turn I play it be the same turn. Also considering Natural Affinity as an alternate win-con / land destruction.
Last let me just say Viridian Revel is amazing. Drew 18 cards at once last night.
As always, any input appreciated!
Tymna & Ishai, ie Esper Edric
Crosis Turbotrash
hope people enjoy, and if people are interested I think I will try to add more
or even if people aren't interested, since damn it i love this deck type and i'm gonna try to spread the word
Tymna & Ishai, ie Esper Edric
Crosis Turbotrash
Go on and spread the word, mono green control needs more love
Thanks and you're welcome! Glad you liked it and if there's anything you'd like to add, just let me know.
Just put up the rest of the discussion on my own decklist, discussion of alternative strategies coming soon.
Tymna & Ishai, ie Esper Edric
Crosis Turbotrash
I also don't see Scavenging Ooze mentioned anywhere. Should be mono-greens goto for graveyard hate. It hits everything, and sometimes get so big, it can actually start beating face.
Oh, and try Tornado out. That card can be sick! I also play Power Conduit, because I'm playing all sorts of age-counters, and when I have both in play, I can Vindicate something every turn without taking too much damage. Just wish there were more ways to remove counters in green
Tornado also gets absurd when you have Seedborn Muse or Patron of the Orochi.
You're totally right about the ooze, I'm taking out Spike Feeder for it. Don't know how I forgot.
I've always been a little non-excited about Myriad Landscape and Blighted Woodland, but I can see them being good. I included Boseiju in the (newly updated) alternate cards section. My meta doesn't really play countermagic, so I haven't had a need for it, but you're right that it's an important part of the deck. Sapseep Forest is interesting, I haven't seen that before. I'll give it a whirl, since it could definitely do work, and it's hardly a risky play. Oran-Rief seems workable, and Nissa is the vastwood seer after all... Maze of Ith is a powerhouse, I'm gonna put that one in now.
I just worry that with all the non-basics we'll comprise the value of certain other cards like Early Harvest, Primal Order, and Gaea's Touch. And it leaves more lands in the deck after Boundless Realms, so charbelcher is less likely to hit hard (though I don't think you play charbelcher). I guess these are little things, but have you noticed anything like that or has it been pretty much all-upside?
I've tried Tornado, but it always ends up being too clunky for me, and I don't think I really have ways to abuse muse or patron other than it... Still maybe I ought to give it another chance. I love the Power Conduit idea though, I'm gonna put that in the post if you don't mind
Incidentally, have you tried Life from the Loam or Splendid Reclamation at all? With things like Myriad Landscape they seem really good, and all you would have to do is add the cycling lands and you could turn it into an extra sort of draw-engine. I haven't really tested it out, but I'm thinking of trying to squeeze something like that into the deck... (could also play Realms Uncharted for maximum profit with Life from the Loam)
Tymna & Ishai, ie Esper Edric
Crosis Turbotrash
First off just FYI, I don't play competative, but I like playing weird-janky stuff (Power Conduit takes the price:)), so I don't only value cards on their effectiveness, but also how fun and janky a combo they can be part off.
But yeah, those cards will get worse by playing less basics, but personally I just love effects on lands, since they are so hard to deal with. I still have 23 basics out of 36, and Primal Order usually hits others harder then me.
Don't mind at all!
Patron of the Orochi can kinda double a Hurricane!
I guess great, green minds think alike. I just recently added Life from the Loam, Splendid Reclamation and Reals Uncharted for testing. I did already play the cycle lands, so thought Loam could do some work, but I havn't drawn it yet. I'd just wish there were some way to tutor for it! I did manage to Splendid Reclamation both Blighted Woodland, Myriad Landscape and a basic once - good times in rampland.
Hmmm you're right about Patron of the Orochi doubling a hurricane, I guess my only problem with him is you have to wait a whole turn to get anything out of him and he's a creature. I can see him being extra good in Kamahl, since you can untap your lands after you turn them into creatures, but as a mana doubler I think mana reflection would do better in my deck. Still, I'm gonna give tornado another shot soon, it's obviously got potential.
You ever try anything with Stampeding Wildebeests/Stampeding Serow? They seem doable but probably in a more creature-heavy version of the deck... Maybe if we played Acidic Slime too... but I'm kinda just spitballing here
And that's awesome, you'll have to tell me how the Life from the Loam idea works out! It's a realm shame we can't tutor it up, but none of the other cards seem too bad on their own (except maybe Realms Uncharted, but it's still good with just Splendid Reclamation)
@Hunding Gjornersen
Wow I don't know why, but I always read Utopia Sprawl as changing the color of mana your forest made, not giving you extra. Good call, will change it.
Yeah, Predator, Flagship is kinda clunky like you say, but I'm gonna put it in the 'other cards' section since it is a decent tool. I think Tornado would be stronger in most situations though.
PS do you guys know what's up with card tags that have apostrophes? I can't seem to get them to work...
Tymna & Ishai, ie Esper Edric
Crosis Turbotrash
For a deck looking to abuse enchantments and get lands out, it seems a crying shame you're not running oracle of mul daya and courser of kruphix. Both seem like gimmes here.
It won't work for you so well, but if you want a durdle fort card, my secret tech is arboria. In my Yeva deck, taht might as well read "I win"
Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
I was going to recommend Temur Sabertooth like weltkrieg, but I wouldn't play it unless I rely on ETB-effects, which I do in my hazeson Tamar deck.
I also play both Oracle of Mul Daya and Courser of Kruphix, and both are great. Oracle is obviously better, but the lifegain from Courser is nothing to scruff at, though Lifegift does it better.
That's a good point, I had overlooked that Patron of the Orochi could untap your opponent's stuff as well. So maybe Seedborn Muse would be better overall. She seems really good with Tornado but aside from that I have few instants that I could really abuse her with.
But she's obviously much better in Yeva, Nature's Herald, where the whole deck is instants (sort of, anyway). Do you have a list? I'd be interested since that's another viable way to take a more controlling version of monogreen. Might even add a little bit to the "other strategies" section on her, since while she's really different from Nissa she's still monogreen control (at least that's how I think of her).
@weltkreig & Rogerandover
I think I'm gonna leave Oracle out of my personal build just to keep the power level down a little (I'll put her under 'other cards' when I get a chance), but I think I might add Courser of Kruphix in. Like you said, he's an enchantment, gains life, and seeing the top card is extra good with Nissa out, since she can play the land or draw the non-land to get you to the next land.
Hunding Gjornersen
Good call on Sylvan Library; I personally just don't like the card (dunno why but it rubs me wrong) but it's perfect for the deck. I'll put it in the list of 'other options' (wow that section is getting big, I'll have to organize it or something). I think Titania's Song is stronger than Null Rod since it shuts down artifacts with triggered abilities and static effects as well, and between song and creeping corrosion i feel like i've got enough mass artifact hate. Though rod does effect artifact creatures, so Memnarch can't work his magic...
thanks for all the suggestions! I'll be updating the post hopefully soonish, and I'll try to organize the 'other strategies' part a bit more - maybe a section for cards that work well with certain other generals (yeva, kamahl), one for cards that would just make the deck more powerful in general (library, oracle), and one for miscellaneous monogreen good stuff (arboria, predator, null rod)
Tymna & Ishai, ie Esper Edric
Crosis Turbotrash
Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
Tymna & Ishai, ie Esper Edric
Crosis Turbotrash
- Creeping Renaissance
- Fertilid
- Seedtime
- Retreat to Kazandu
- Bow of Nylea
- Khalni Heart Expedition
- Forest x2
+ Wildest Dreams
+ Ritual of Subdual
+ Tornado
+ Yavimaya Elder
+ Fertile Ground
+ Overgrowth
+ Sapseep Forest
+ Blighted Woodland
Wanted to try Wildest Dreams since it seemed like it could be good with all the mana we generate, and it can get back Hurricane where Creeping Renaissance can't (though the flashback is nice)
Went in for the Ritual of Subdual package to give us a little more ooomph. Correspondingly, added the extra land enchantments. Also thought I'd try out Tornado again after all the good things I was hearing on here. Had to cut a few, so I let go of the bow and the retreat to make room. These seemed to mostly end up just gaining me life, and I wanted something a little more pro-active. Plus, with the addition of Courser of Kruphix and Scavenging Ooze there are a couple other ways to gain life, though they may not be as powerful.
Things I'm considering:
- Freyalise's Winds
- The Great Aurora
Anyone have any experience with these? Winds seems interesting to slow down combat, and Nissa can sort of play through it by cheating lands into play. The Great Aurora would be great after Boundless Realms, but I'm not playing all the token-makers that would make it really busted (though enchantments are permanents, when it comes down to it)
Also, while shutting down combat hasn't been too tough, I'm finding myself some trouble with decks that aim to kill us with burn (things like Purphoros or Vicious Shadows or Exsanguinate). Anyone got any ideas on how to deal with these in green? Was considering something like Witchbane Orb, but I'm not sold on it yet...
Tymna & Ishai, ie Esper Edric
Crosis Turbotrash
I think I noticed an error in the decklist by function section: the protection says it has 6 cards but 7 are listed. I don't think drownyard temple is supposed to be there.
I don't know if the great aurora is perfect for your deck, but it sure sounds fun.
Wish I could be more help.
Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
and thanks Justinkp! Drownyard is supposed to be in there (since it goes with Constant Mists), but I guess I'm not good at counting...
Tymna & Ishai, ie Esper Edric
Crosis Turbotrash