does anyone want to give their super early impressions of Green?
in the three Cockatrice drafts i did, i've yet to find myself pulled into Green. largely because i can't find any enticing Timmy-Johnny pieces [unlike, say, Surge or trying to jam in colourless sources for powerful colourless cards and hoping i can get away with it], but also because.. i cannot tell even what would pull Spikes into green.
so tell me: what would it take to pull you into Green, even knowing there is a Battle for Zendikar pack to go through at the end?
As of right now, I'm still on the "Avoid green at all costs" plan until proven wrong. I just don't think green got enough good stuff to justify playing it. A color needs more than just efficient bodies to fill out a good limited deck, and I don't think green got that.
Greens 3 drops (scion summoner and netcaster spider) and the rootwalla bear are very good this time around. I could see being pushed into green by taking an early seed guardian / nissa fight spell and following that up with the high quality creatures. The main difference between green here and BFZ is that the common creatures are much better than that of bfzs. I would say green has 4 3.0 creatures this time around (the bear, spider, summoner, pathwarden), compared to really just the gnarlid back in BFZ, and that is probably going to push green into the realm of borderline playability. The problem is that the pack of bfz is still garbage for you, but I cant imagine the only green drafter on the table getting like 4 rootwalla bears and scion summoners doing poorly for him/herself. The common curve of rootwalla bear -> scion summoner -> optional saddlebac lagac os much stronger than anything bfz green can muster
That includes 5 out of 12 green commons, and 3 of 8 uncommons.
There are other cards I would certainly play in green decks, but I wouldn't consider picking them in a draft as any sort of a reason to be a "green deck". If these were the best cards I saw coming around, I would think I was supposed to be green, and I'd be largely okay with it.
Who knows how likely these are to be the best cards coming around, though. Of these, the only ones I think are actually exciting early picks are Seed Guardian and the rares.
The Nissa fight spell is one of the best variants of this effect in a while. Yes, Sorcery-speed and 5-mana, but a one-sided fight that grows two creatures and takes out an actual threat? That is business. However, I still see Green as a support color. You'll need Red for good removal, Blue for tempo, or White for other efficient dudes and decent removal. I still don't think GB is a thing, though you sure as hell would want to splash a Baloth Null if you could.
Green is still on the weak side IMO. Its creature quality is still low, which is a major downside for the "creature" color. Many creatures in other colors have extra abilities tied to them while still being decent bodies. Green creatures are just big and dumb, and even at that job they aren't that much ahead of other colors save for 2 or 3 cards. The Green non-creature stuff doesn't pick up the slack, either. As great a trick as Vines of the Recluse is and as powerful as Nissa's Judgment may be, they will never compare to the efficiency that the other colors offer.
Plus, green has few synergies with other strategies. Green has very few allies, so it doesn't play all that great with the Cohort in White, Red, and Black. Green has only two cards at common/uncommon that care about colorless, one which plays modestly without colorless support and one which doesn't even have that big a payoff. Green also doesn't have any Surge cards. Worse still, Green doesn't seem to have any central strategies of its own. Support, the G/W mainstay, is just generally usable for any decks. Also, two of the four cards that reward you for putting counters on creatures already have Support tacked on them. Green Ramping is almost nonexistent. Ruin in their Wake will usually be a mana fixer with an occasional ramp bonus. Scion Summoner only ramps for one turn. Plus, all decks has access to ramp if they need it with Seer's Lantern, Warden of Geometries, and Hedron Crawler. Besides, Green doesn't have major payoffs for ramping. Landfall is downplayed significantly. Embodiment of Insight is the only green card with Landfall, and that is just an excellent card to use in and outside of landfall decks.
Then there's the Green bombs, or lack thereof. Vile Redeemer, Sylvan Advocate, and Mina and Denn, Wildborn are just big efficient bodies. World Breaker is difficult to abuse since saccing lands makes it harder to recast late game. Zendikar Resurgent requires a stable board position to abuse and very poor when you're behind. Gladehart Cavalry is decent in this stall-heavy format, and Nissa is Nissa, although they aren't "I win" levels of good like what White and Black has. At uncommon, Green does very well in the bomb department with Embodiment of Insight and Joraga Auxiliary, or as I like to call her the mini Munda's Vanguard.
Here are the only reasons I'd go Green. I'm white, I don't have a secondary color yet, and I see a Joraga Auxiliary. I get passed a good number of the pushed Green uncommons like Embodiment of Insight and Seed Guardian. I open up a Nissa or Gladehart Cavalry. That's it. If I see Green cards getting pulled mid draft, I will steer clear of it. If I'm dipping my toes in green and I'm met with resistance later, I would consider going another route. In OGW, Green is just not a color worth fighting for.
My first impression of green in OGW is that it is the worst color but not so much that I would completely avoid it as I do in BFZ (only 3 of my 60 or so BFZ draft decks have included green).
Green seems solid in OGW. The Nissa fight spell, scion summoner and then the RG legendary elf ally that lets you play an extra land and bounce them to give trample seems good
I won a Sealed Deck release event today, piloting White-Green. Green was actually my main colour, and White wasn't a crazy removal fest like it often is. I really felt that Joraga Auxiliary, Netcaster Spider and Saddleback Lagac carried the day, as with the amount of Support available my creatures were just getting huge. The Auxiliary in particular makes it VERY hard to block profitablynif you have enough mana to use its ability. To the people who say that Green's creature quality is low, I really think you should try them for yourself and see how they do
To be specific, I feel Green's creature quality is low at common and rare. I noted how its uncommons are quite pushed and I even pointed out how Joraga Auxiliary compares with Munda's Vanguard who is a game busting rare. However I've found it difficult for a Green deck to fill gaps at common because even if Tajuru Pathwarden and Netcaster Spider are good bodies, they don't add much value aside for being big bodies. I find this format to be very grindy and prone to board stalls, so if your creatures can't attack, they have to do more than just wait to block something. At common White can tap creatures down, gain life, or put counters on creatures. Black can gain Deathtouch, cause life loss, or ramp. Blue can tap creatures down, give another creature flying, or ramp. Red can ping or dig for better cards. Green just makes some creatures bigger.
There is one thing that Green does best in this set and that is having an explosive start. I don't doubt that you won your event with GW because W just plays naturally with such a playstyle. Going T2 drop a 2/2, T3 drop a 3/2, then chaining a series of Support cards is back breaking. Disrupting that Plan A sets Green very behind, though, so that's where W's cards come in to recover with their removal and Cohort board grinding. That, and Joraga Auxiliary is absurdly powerful in this format.
To be specific, I feel Green's creature quality is low at common and rare. I noted how its uncommons are quite pushed and I even pointed out how Joraga Auxiliary compares with Munda's Vanguard who is a game busting rare. However I've found it difficult for a Green deck to fill gaps at common because even if Tajuru Pathwarden and Netcaster Spider are good bodies, they don't add much value aside for being big bodies. I find this format to be very grindy and prone to board stalls, so if your creatures can't attack, they have to do more than just wait to block something. At common White can tap creatures down, gain life, or put counters on creatures. Black can gain Deathtouch, cause life loss, or ramp. Blue can tap creatures down, give another creature flying, or ramp. Red can ping or dig for better cards. Green just makes some creatures bigger.
There is one thing that Green does best in this set and that is having an explosive start. I don't doubt that you won your event with GW because W just plays naturally with such a playstyle. Going T2 drop a 2/2, T3 drop a 3/2, then chaining a series of Support cards is back breaking. Disrupting that Plan A sets Green very behind, though, so that's where W's cards come in to recover with their removal and Cohort board grinding. That, and Joraga Auxiliary is absurdly powerful in this format.
Some of your examples don't really make sense (black - drain life is at uncommon, ramp is irrelevant in board stalls, white - "put counters on creatures" is something that green does as well, etc), but the general idea makes sense. I think the real issue here is that green just doesn't have any cohort cards or fliers at common, which are the main cards needed to break board stalls, and which this format is somewhat prone to. Decks really need a way to get past 4 toughness creatures in this format (Vampire Envoy might be a format-defining card for that reason), and green doesn't really have a great way to do that besides Tajuru Pathwarden. Stalking Drone -> Scion Summoner is probably the best start in the format though, so the color is already way better than what it was in BFZ.
I personally found 4 and 5 toughness creatures to typically be a non-issue, because Support gets so dumb so fast that I could often attack profitably into 4-5T creatures without issue.
green has weak removal and evasion which is mandatory in limited. so a 3rd color choice wouldn't be a bad idea if running green. i played gladeheart cavalry on almost 6 creatures and still lost the game. because the board was stablized with evasion and removal on the opponent's board.
Greens idea of "removal" is to just make their guys bigger than what the enemys board can handle apparently. Just did a GW draft where i was in W and forced green to see what the archetype was like, and what i learned is that saddlebac lagac is a real card, and is probably underrated by most of the people here. Curving 2/2 into 3/2 into lagac isnt that hard to do in this format, and will put you substantially ahead from most starts this format. The plan is slightly fragile since if you dont cutve out then support obviously gets way worse, but whenever I had that curve it felt hard to lose. Even if the overall stats might not seem insane for 4 mana, forcing through guys with support really ends up being much better than you would think. Upgrading your 2/2 to a 3/3 and 3/2 to a 4/3 is a huge deal if your opponent just has a 2/3 on board, for instance in the best case. Even in the average case, ive generally been able to get value out of it (like making my guy 4 power and forcing a trade with my
Opponents 4/4).
I might try drafting Green at my next event. I only drafted once at the release day, and Green was crazy open. Why fight for colors everyone wants when Green is completely wide open, and you can really fill a deck with curve and bomb finishers! I do agree that it should be paired with another color, so play it by ear.
I think green has made great strides in this format. Its commons are all very synergistic and mostly playable, and it gets some more good sideboard options. Green common bodies are relevantly larger or cheaper than alternatives in other colors (especially Tajuru Pathwarden and Stalking Drone if you can activate it), and it picks up a very good uncommon removal spell in Nissa's Judgement. Your last pack is still going to be mostly awful, which makes it critical to have a strong support color you can expect to pick up niche playables in, and probably not blue or black (the green/black cards in BFZ are doing very different things from the G/B cards in Oath).
I think the problem with green in Battle was 3 fold.
1. The format was highly synergy driven and all green synergies were either weak or non-existant.
2. Due to the Grixis colors getting large numbers of eldrazi scions, Green no longer had the ramp advantage.
3. Most of the best common and uncommon finishers in the format were colorless, Green no longer held a monopoly on high cmc finishers, which was further complicated by the high powerlevel of non-Green rares.
Thanks to the release of Oath, a large chunk of these issues have been removed or rectified.
1. Oath is less synergy driven and more of a normal good-stuff meta, so the synergy advantage has been marginalized.
2. Non-Green colors get less scions now, so Green's ramp strategy has been revitalized. Also the present of colorless matters, means that Greens ability to fix for Waste, means Green's ability to splash the high end colorless finishers is more effective.
3. Colorless Finishers are no longer as present and Greens commons (Scion Summoner, etc) and uncommons (Birthing Hulk ,etc) are better cards and present better finishers than most other colors can reliably produce anymore.
Personally, I think that we have returned to a much more bread and butter draft environment with the innovation of having a restrictive 6th color, which happens to re-normalize the relative power level of the colors.
I think that it is now A-OK to draft green if the signals put you into it.
Bfz had a real strong green presence with landfall creatures so I think that's the reason it was weak in oath,to balance it out with bfz.Using the two sets one can get a fairly decent deck running green.One guy has a really strong mono green deck that's pretty impressive. I've seen others perform better than green but he did a good job with his and is a tough opponent.The general word around everyone I play with is they all feel the block was a let down and was way over exaggerated for greatness.they are already looking at the new set as being the one to have all the "playable" cards.
And I'd say, with maybe the exception of Loam Larva (which can still be quite good in decks that need the fixing), all these cards are quite strong. I would hesitate to cut most of them from a deck that was properly built to accommodate them.
For comparison, looking through the other colors, I'd say blue has like 6~7 cards on this level, all of white's commons are playable but most are not on the level of greens at all, red has 6, black has like 6~7.
Green has the strongest commons in the set, and with the focus taken away from synergy decks, BFZ's green commons see a significant boost as well. I am not looking to stay away from green at all. On the contrary. It seems good and playable and it would be a big mistake to dismiss its power.
I think Green is fine even as a primary color (16+ cards). B, W, R all have removal you can snap up early and play as secondary color.
It *is* a beat down color, so play 2 drops. GB is more value-oriented. Maybe 3 "color" with Loam Larva
UG (as usual) has very little hard removal, and is a bit mixed up between tempo and devoid, so this is a tricky deck.
GC(x) is also kind of odd -- there are a couple green cards that want [mc]C[/mc], and scions produce it but it's a very minor theme.
But maybe that's where Guc comes in Cultivator Drone plus Hedron Crawler???
Lists of card and even color values can vary quite a bit from one person to the next as there is plenty of subjectivity, so I was surprised when I agreed to such a high degree with his pick order for the most part in the 3 colors I think are best white, black, and blue. However, for green he lists Tajuru Pathwarden as only the 8th best common/uncommon in the set, even below cards I would not want to play in my deck.
I think that he values very low curve cards much more than some other pros, which I guess leads to his apparently thinking this 5-drop is only decent. He also lists Embodiment of Insight 9th whereas I believe many others would list that among the top few green commons/uncommons. He lists Netcaster Spider at 13th so he apparently also has a strong leaning towards aggression, because I think that many of us consider this as a good card (even I like it).
I guess it's just interesting to see such a wide variance in views.
I think Pascal might very well be right about picking bears > other playables. I think he's very wrong about Baloth Null (as I commented in the FB thread).
It is very, very easy to draft a deck in OOG with nothing but "good" 4s and 5s in it. It's been a while since we had a format that curve was really that important. Origins it was pretty important but there were so many 2/2s you could almost always grab a couple (just not the Topan Freeblades)
Lists of card and even color values can vary quite a bit from one person to the next as there is plenty of subjectivity, so I was surprised when I agreed to such a high degree with his pick order for the most part in the 3 colors I think are best white, black, and blue. However, for green he lists Tajuru Pathwarden as only the 8th best common/uncommon in the set, even below cards I would not want to play in my deck.
I think that he values very low curve cards much more than some other pros, which I guess leads to his apparently thinking this 5-drop is only decent. He also lists Embodiment of Insight 9th whereas I believe many others would list that among the top few green commons/uncommons. He lists Netcaster Spider at 13th so he apparently also has a strong leaning towards aggression, because I think that many of us consider this as a good card (even I like it).
I guess it's just interesting to see such a wide variance in views.
Yeah. IMO some of those opinions have been overly warped by the early success of Support.dec. In that deck 1-3 drops are at a premium, and you don't want many 5+, so his rankings make sense when viewed through that lens. But...personally I don't buy the notion that green is that one-dimensional. I've played with/against slower versions that were pretty good. My best deck in the format so far was a GRb midrange build that just had better dudes than the opponent and played them faster thanks to 3xCrawler. I also won with and lost to some nice GB decks that were more controlling and more reliant on colorless mana to put them over the top in terms of power level.
Yes, if you can get the great curve plus Laggacs that might be the strongest thing you can be doing with green, but not by such a gap that I'd put Pathwarden way down at 8th.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
in the three Cockatrice drafts i did, i've yet to find myself pulled into Green. largely because i can't find any enticing Timmy-Johnny pieces [unlike, say, Surge or trying to jam in colourless sources for powerful colourless cards and hoping i can get away with it], but also because.. i cannot tell even what would pull Spikes into green.
so tell me: what would it take to pull you into Green, even knowing there is a Battle for Zendikar pack to go through at the end?
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
"no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
That includes 5 out of 12 green commons, and 3 of 8 uncommons.
There are other cards I would certainly play in green decks, but I wouldn't consider picking them in a draft as any sort of a reason to be a "green deck". If these were the best cards I saw coming around, I would think I was supposed to be green, and I'd be largely okay with it.
Who knows how likely these are to be the best cards coming around, though. Of these, the only ones I think are actually exciting early picks are Seed Guardian and the rares.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
Plus, green has few synergies with other strategies. Green has very few allies, so it doesn't play all that great with the Cohort in White, Red, and Black. Green has only two cards at common/uncommon that care about colorless, one which plays modestly without colorless support and one which doesn't even have that big a payoff. Green also doesn't have any Surge cards. Worse still, Green doesn't seem to have any central strategies of its own. Support, the G/W mainstay, is just generally usable for any decks. Also, two of the four cards that reward you for putting counters on creatures already have Support tacked on them. Green Ramping is almost nonexistent. Ruin in their Wake will usually be a mana fixer with an occasional ramp bonus. Scion Summoner only ramps for one turn. Plus, all decks has access to ramp if they need it with Seer's Lantern, Warden of Geometries, and Hedron Crawler. Besides, Green doesn't have major payoffs for ramping. Landfall is downplayed significantly. Embodiment of Insight is the only green card with Landfall, and that is just an excellent card to use in and outside of landfall decks.
Then there's the Green bombs, or lack thereof. Vile Redeemer, Sylvan Advocate, and Mina and Denn, Wildborn are just big efficient bodies. World Breaker is difficult to abuse since saccing lands makes it harder to recast late game. Zendikar Resurgent requires a stable board position to abuse and very poor when you're behind. Gladehart Cavalry is decent in this stall-heavy format, and Nissa is Nissa, although they aren't "I win" levels of good like what White and Black has. At uncommon, Green does very well in the bomb department with Embodiment of Insight and Joraga Auxiliary, or as I like to call her the mini Munda's Vanguard.
Here are the only reasons I'd go Green. I'm white, I don't have a secondary color yet, and I see a Joraga Auxiliary. I get passed a good number of the pushed Green uncommons like Embodiment of Insight and Seed Guardian. I open up a Nissa or Gladehart Cavalry. That's it. If I see Green cards getting pulled mid draft, I will steer clear of it. If I'm dipping my toes in green and I'm met with resistance later, I would consider going another route. In OGW, Green is just not a color worth fighting for.
There is one thing that Green does best in this set and that is having an explosive start. I don't doubt that you won your event with GW because W just plays naturally with such a playstyle. Going T2 drop a 2/2, T3 drop a 3/2, then chaining a series of Support cards is back breaking. Disrupting that Plan A sets Green very behind, though, so that's where W's cards come in to recover with their removal and Cohort board grinding. That, and Joraga Auxiliary is absurdly powerful in this format.
Some of your examples don't really make sense (black - drain life is at uncommon, ramp is irrelevant in board stalls, white - "put counters on creatures" is something that green does as well, etc), but the general idea makes sense. I think the real issue here is that green just doesn't have any cohort cards or fliers at common, which are the main cards needed to break board stalls, and which this format is somewhat prone to. Decks really need a way to get past 4 toughness creatures in this format (Vampire Envoy might be a format-defining card for that reason), and green doesn't really have a great way to do that besides Tajuru Pathwarden. Stalking Drone -> Scion Summoner is probably the best start in the format though, so the color is already way better than what it was in BFZ.
Maybe I was in a really low power event today? :/
Opponents 4/4).
1. The format was highly synergy driven and all green synergies were either weak or non-existant.
2. Due to the Grixis colors getting large numbers of eldrazi scions, Green no longer had the ramp advantage.
3. Most of the best common and uncommon finishers in the format were colorless, Green no longer held a monopoly on high cmc finishers, which was further complicated by the high powerlevel of non-Green rares.
Thanks to the release of Oath, a large chunk of these issues have been removed or rectified.
1. Oath is less synergy driven and more of a normal good-stuff meta, so the synergy advantage has been marginalized.
2. Non-Green colors get less scions now, so Green's ramp strategy has been revitalized. Also the present of colorless matters, means that Greens ability to fix for Waste, means Green's ability to splash the high end colorless finishers is more effective.
3. Colorless Finishers are no longer as present and Greens commons (Scion Summoner, etc) and uncommons (Birthing Hulk ,etc) are better cards and present better finishers than most other colors can reliably produce anymore.
Personally, I think that we have returned to a much more bread and butter draft environment with the innovation of having a restrictive 6th color, which happens to re-normalize the relative power level of the colors.
I think that it is now A-OK to draft green if the signals put you into it.
- Loam Larva
- Netcaster Spider
- Pulse of Murasa
- Saddleback Lagac
- Scion Summoner
- Stalking Drone
- Tajuru Pathwarden
- Vines of the recluse
And I'd say, with maybe the exception of Loam Larva (which can still be quite good in decks that need the fixing), all these cards are quite strong. I would hesitate to cut most of them from a deck that was properly built to accommodate them.For comparison, looking through the other colors, I'd say blue has like 6~7 cards on this level, all of white's commons are playable but most are not on the level of greens at all, red has 6, black has like 6~7.
Green has the strongest commons in the set, and with the focus taken away from synergy decks, BFZ's green commons see a significant boost as well. I am not looking to stay away from green at all. On the contrary. It seems good and playable and it would be a big mistake to dismiss its power.
It *is* a beat down color, so play 2 drops. GB is more value-oriented. Maybe 3 "color" with Loam Larva
UG (as usual) has very little hard removal, and is a bit mixed up between tempo and devoid, so this is a tricky deck.
GC(x) is also kind of odd -- there are a couple green cards that want [mc]C[/mc], and scions produce it but it's a very minor theme.
But maybe that's where Guc comes in Cultivator Drone plus Hedron Crawler???
Lists of card and even color values can vary quite a bit from one person to the next as there is plenty of subjectivity, so I was surprised when I agreed to such a high degree with his pick order for the most part in the 3 colors I think are best white, black, and blue. However, for green he lists Tajuru Pathwarden as only the 8th best common/uncommon in the set, even below cards I would not want to play in my deck.
I think that he values very low curve cards much more than some other pros, which I guess leads to his apparently thinking this 5-drop is only decent. He also lists Embodiment of Insight 9th whereas I believe many others would list that among the top few green commons/uncommons. He lists Netcaster Spider at 13th so he apparently also has a strong leaning towards aggression, because I think that many of us consider this as a good card (even I like it).
I guess it's just interesting to see such a wide variance in views.
It is very, very easy to draft a deck in OOG with nothing but "good" 4s and 5s in it. It's been a while since we had a format that curve was really that important. Origins it was pretty important but there were so many 2/2s you could almost always grab a couple (just not the Topan Freeblades)
Signature courtesy of Rivenor and Miraculous Recovery
EDH Altered Cards by Galspanic (Seriously, this guy's awesome.)
My Pauper Cube
Tapped-Out Simulator
My Trade Thread
-Decks-
Commander:
GWR Rith, the Awakener RWG
U Kami of the Crescent Moon U (Flagship Deck)
BW Teysa, Orzhov Scion WB
Under Construction:
UBR Crosis, the Purger RBU
Cube:
WUBRGX Pauper XGRBUW
Yeah. IMO some of those opinions have been overly warped by the early success of Support.dec. In that deck 1-3 drops are at a premium, and you don't want many 5+, so his rankings make sense when viewed through that lens. But...personally I don't buy the notion that green is that one-dimensional. I've played with/against slower versions that were pretty good. My best deck in the format so far was a GRb midrange build that just had better dudes than the opponent and played them faster thanks to 3xCrawler. I also won with and lost to some nice GB decks that were more controlling and more reliant on colorless mana to put them over the top in terms of power level.
Yes, if you can get the great curve plus Laggacs that might be the strongest thing you can be doing with green, but not by such a gap that I'd put Pathwarden way down at 8th.