In some of the recent core sets, though, green has been awful. In M10 and M11, I wouldn't touch green unless I opened an Overrun, and even then I wasn't happy about it. This was pretty directly related to the high-quality instant speed removal (Doom Blade specifically) available at common in those sets.
I'd be leery even then. You can't very well splash Overrun.
Basically, green has combat tricks and some ability to dodge removal (though white has better indestructible, blue has better hexproof, and black has better regenerate). What hurts green is, it's like the entire color is built around Lure, but then they don't print that often enough to matter. Instead they go for weaker versions like "must block this turn if able" or "must be blocked this turn if able".
One of the biggest issues is "replace flying with reach...if you're lucky" seems to be R&D's way of making creatures with reach. If green's supposed to have good creatures, then why? Why does a 2/4 still cost 4 mana when a 3/3 costs half that? Rock breaks scissors, scissors cuts paper, paper...gets torn in half when a rock is thrown at it? Though the greatest example is Archweaver: Seven mana for a 5/5 isn't a good deal, regardless of its rules text. (See, everyone? Emmara wasn't the worst card printed.)
Then there are the Plummets. They make for awkward deckbuilding and really don't do anything. They also add a wrinkle to the pie; I'm a fan of parsimony, thank you very much. Really, I'm convinced MaRo (or whoever else) has warped green's entire concept around a peculiar fetish for flying hate. When ironically, fight works better and means they're no longer needed (as if they ever were).
In Return to Ravnica, I just couldn't get over the fact that colorless mana fixing had greater as-fan than green mana fixing. And Archweaver. And the "defender matters" subtheme, which for some reason never appears in white.
In Innistrad, you had green/white humans (emphasis on white), then you had werewolves (who would be fine in an environment that didn't have flashback), and BUG dredge. Always treat dredge in limited with some skepticism, since combo is harder with one-ofs, and even being milled without any mill to speak of is a genuine threat in limited.
In Scars, I noticed green's artifact removal was really bad. That's really all I needed to know. In addition, it had the "mix infect with non-infect" issue. Green was perpetually awkward, going against theme, but not really hosing the theme either.
@TheSloth:
Yeah, that's nice for Constructed.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
In Scars, I noticed green's artifact removal was really bad. That's really all I needed to know.
Heresy! G was possibly the winningest color in SOM... Cystbearer and Fangren Marauder were both eeeasy first picks, and dinos was a bunch of fun.
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Green almost always has the highest average creature quality in terms of efficiency. Green also has a monopoly on cheap mana acceleration, which is one of the most powerful effects in the game. Green also has an above average number of good combat tricks.
And yet, despite these major advantages Green often struggles to be considered a strong primary color. The problem, in my experience, is that Green has two many flaws that leave open glaring vulnerabilities that an opponent can exploit for victory.
For example, its relatively difficult for Green to break through stalls. Usually it can't do it until it manages to stick a huge trampling fatty. And by that time the opponent has had opportunity to draw their removal spells.
As another example, Green leans heavily on Giant Spider (or whatever spider equivalent is in the set) and can collapse against an opponent with an aggressive flyer curve. Its not that hard for a smart opponent to save their removal for the Spider and win in the air.
Finally, Green often lags behind in the bomb department. I struggle to think of Rare green cards that make me say "wow, thats basically unbeatable if it sticks".
Heresy! G was possibly the winningest color in SOM... Cystbearer and Fangren Marauder were both eeeasy first picks, and dinos was a bunch of fun.
At my first SOM draft, there were five people playing infect. Yeah, the three of us who weren't...were the top three. Signal fail.
Not sure what your point is about Alpha Tyrannax or Fangren Marauder. One's a just-below-curve vanilla, and the other trades 1 power for some lifegain.
But yeah, the biggest issue with green is its tendency to rely on individual cards too much, and not even for instant wins, just to not lose.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
In Scars, I noticed green's artifact removal was really bad. That's really all I needed to know. In addition, it had the "mix infect with non-infect" issue. Green was perpetually awkward, going against theme, but not really hosing the theme either.
Green got a lot better in limited once they started to introduce fight mechanics.
Before, it was hard to make the size advantage of your big green creatures matter because they could just be chump blocked, or were helpless to stop/remove evasive creatures/bombs. Now, with fight mechanics, it becomes easier to be "king of the hill" with your big green fatties, forcing your opponent's creatures to interact with yours.
I personally feel that green is one of the strongest colors in m14 limited, as it has so much size, and that size is hard to counter effectively- There are very few Green cards in the m14 set that just plain suck, and you don't want to draft, where other colors seem to have more.
A lot of astute things have been said in this thread already, but I'd just like to take a moment to explicitly claim: No - Green is not usually the worst colour.
Also, whilst it's seldom the most powerful colour, G/X is almost always playable no matter what the other colour is. This alone is enough to make Green highly draftable in most formats.
If I had to name one colour which disproportionately gets the short end in modern Magic, it would be Red. Back when I started drafting (Onslaught) there was a long run of blocks in which Red was either the best or very close to the best colour. The reason was basically burn. It was removal that could deal damage to players, providing an extra finisher without needing room in your deck.
What changed? Creatures got better. Now there are often lots of important creatures even at Common that Red struggles to kill. And on top of that, Red often accumulates more unplayables than any other colour, making it a risky plan from pick one. Green, by contrast, gets a super deep cardpool which means you can draft it with confidence.
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<Limited Clan>
I don't know if its the best, but I'm ending up green in M14 a lot, and am generally always happy to be in it. B/G is one of the best archetypes imo.
I've also had some success running r/w tokens/aggro over the past week, which I didn't even know was possible (pyromancer/hive stirrings/fortifys/burn), I even had a devout invocation in one of them.
Blue looked very good initially, but after running it a few drafts early on....I really have started to kind of avoid it, unless I see phantom warriors/seakites/claustrophobias going late. It just seems rather weak, unless you pair it with green for solid blockers or black for removal.
Keep it short and sweet. THERE IS NO WORSE COLOR. Wizards doesn't make red or any color the best and the others not. They spend endless hours balancing cards for all. They all have their strong suits. If someone says a color is bad or not as good or hasn't been then they are expressing their preference. And that means because they refuse to go into that color that will hurt their drafting abilities.
Honestly hexproof plus enchantments is one of the most unbeatable combos. I think everyone can agree on that. Especially if its fast and ramped as well.
Let everyone have their preference it's what defines magic players.
Keep it short and sweet. THERE IS NO WORSE COLOR. Wizards doesn't make red or any color the best and the others not. They spend endless hours balancing cards for all. They all have their strong suits. If someone says a color is bad or not as good or hasn't been then they are expressing their preference. And that means because they refuse to go into that color that will hurt their drafting abilities.
Yeah, they always succeed at this, especially with black in Avacyn Restored, white in Scars of Mirrodin block, green in M12, blue in Zendikar, and white in Rise of the Eldrazi, to name a few standout examples of perfect balancing.
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Yeah, they always succeed at this, especially with black in Avacyn Restored, white in Scars of Mirrodin block, green in M12, blue in Zendikar, and white in Rise of the Eldrazi, to name a few standout examples of perfect balancing.
It's not balanced per set its balanced per format. Every set has its top cards obviously. But if it's not balanced as a format no one would play it. Hence certain cards never get reprinted. There's always multiple decks that rule the format. And some might have more strengths but they all have a deck they are weak too. If you want to complain about the thought they put into it that's fine. Try working there. But when it comes to drafting its not a bad color it's your drafting skills that make you end up with a bad deck. Not the color.
It's not balanced per set its balanced per format. Every set has its top cards obviously. But if it's not balanced as a format no one would play it. Hence certain cards never get reprinted. There's always multiple decks that rule the format. And some might have more strengths but they all have a deck they are weak too. If you want to complain about the thought they put into it that's fine. Try working there. But when it comes to drafting its not a bad color it's your drafting skills that make you end up with a bad deck. Not the color.
It's impossible to have a perfectly balanced color wheel in any given set or block.. the key word is "perfect." What does end up happening is people pick mediocre cards from powerful colors over good cards from weak colors so the drafters balance the format out. A fine example is GTC (subbing "colors" for "guilds" is a fair analogue, I think.) Boros was undoubtedly the strongest, Dimir the weakest. But since everyone was trying to get into Boros or Orzhov, you could spend the whole draft taking the best Dimir cards while they were fighting over fifth-pick Mastiffs.
People play markedly unbalanced formats, too. Just maybe not as long. They'll make more money if the format is varied and balanced (Why, yes, I did spend an uncomfortable amount of money on MMA, how did you know?)
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It's not balanced per set its balanced per format.
Semantics actually did list Formats, not Sets. Some Formats have only one Set in them. This was the case with Avacyn Restored, Rise of the Eldrazi, and every Core Set.
All I know is like blizzard entertainment balancing is their main priority. Even when jace was out it was perfectly beatable in standard just needed to be banned or restricted elsewhere. With 12000 unique cards balancing is impossible yes but like I said everyone stays out green because they think it's bad and like the guy above says let them fight for act of treason while I grab a 3/3 hexproof with troll hide and get first place.
balance is a goal, not a requirement. some formats are better balanced than others. balancing for limited is very very different than balancing for constructed also. there is no emergency tool available (banning a card). its also a fundamentally BIGGER card pool to balance.
you might think "that's crazy, limited has way less cards than constructed" but thats only true in the strictest sense. in reality Constructed has a card pool that is more or less restricted to only the 100 or so most powerful cards in the format. Limited has to be balanced for EVERY COMMON and EVERY UNCOMMON in the format. and not just individually, but on the aggregate as well. the statistical average power level of commons and uncommons for each color has to be approximately balanced. its really really hard to do. much harder than balancing for constructed, where you only have to make sure the best cards in each archetype (not even by color, just by archetype) are all good enough.
so they miss on balancing limited pretty regularly. sometimes you get a format like 3xGTC where the format was unbalanced in bias towards fast decks full of 2 drops. Sometimes you get a format like 3xAVR where the format was biased against the color black, since black simply didn't have ANY of the set's strongest mechanics. Sometimes you get a format like Scars of Mirrodin Block where one mechanic (infect) was just better than the other mechanics and the colors that could support it (green, black, and blue) were better than the colors that couldn't (white in particular).
the question asked in the OP of this thread might be interpreted as "why does it seem like Green ends up underpowered in alot of draft formats?". Its debatable whether or not green actually is underpowered, but its borderline frequently enough that we're sitting here talking about it.
Two of those are at sorcery speed, with all the issues that implies. The other costs four mana. But I stand corrected about one thing: Older Magic wasn't so bad to green. Verdigris isn't nearly as bad as a sorcery-speed Naturalize for 4G! That said, a 2/2 with infect for three mana that grants card advantage is worth something, I'm sure, though if you're not playing infect, it's just a worse Verdigris.
Keep it short and sweet. THERE IS NO WORSE COLOR. Wizards doesn't make red or any color the best and the others not. They spend endless hours balancing cards for all. They all have their strong suits. If someone says a color is bad or not as good or hasn't been then they are expressing their preference. And that means because they refuse to go into that color that will hurt their drafting abilities.
Ah, but that entire argument falls apart when one considers that Constructed even has banned lists. Hard to do that in limited, but even drafts have a metagame. And green's is...not good.
Even MaRo admits that his sense of balance is off, that he has the dubious honor of having designed the second-greatest number of banned cards of any Magic designer. (And Richard Garfield not only created the game, but the genre, so he has an excuse.)
Hexproof in a enchantment format. Ugh gg scoop next game.
Blue hexproof is better. And by "better", I mean completely bonkers. And by "completely bonkers", I mean the last creature with hexproof to make a huge splash was blue. And by "make a huge splash", I mean Furor of the Bitten, GG?
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Green is the second or third best color in M14.
Green suffers when other colors get good creatures and green doesn't, in return, get good removal.
If green has the best creatures by a large margin, it is good. If green gets other slices, it is ok.
In M14, green has the best creatures and relevant removal, it is a "good" color.
The only time it was the best color I can remember was triple ROE. It was also close to best in AVR.
After about 5 drafts, it seems to me that black in M2104 is just plain terrible and I won't draft it again. Pushing doomblade and corrupt to uncommon has just totally neutered the colour. quag sickness is weak in this format with auraed creatures everywhere, and you really don't want to go mono black in this. It's a shame that black can't kill stuff with ease anymore.
Two of those are at sorcery speed, with all the issues that implies. The other costs four mana. But I stand corrected about one thing: Older Magic wasn't so bad to green. Verdigris isn't nearly as bad as a sorcery-speed Naturalize for 4G! That said, a 2/2 with infect for three mana that grants card advantage is worth something, I'm sure, though if you're not playing infect, it's just a worse Verdigris.
What were these artifacts in scars of mirrodin that you needed instant speed removal for? I appreciate that you have read the cards, but around here I personally expect a higher level of analysis than simply telling me what the cards cost or do. Even despite your strange complaints that were entirely irrelevant in the format, those were still some of the best artifact removal in it. If you think infect creatures were unplayable or bad outside of an infect deck, you are clearly inexperienced with both the infect and wither mechanics.
I think this thread has definitively proven that green has been one of the strongest colors in several recent formats. You're just grasping at straws and anyone who has played a substantial amount of limited can easily see through your arguments.
Well, if you noticed, there's a whole bunch of equipment in the SOM block. Removing a Viridian Claw or Bladed Pinions at instant speed is a nice combat trick.
Especially dangerous, and needing instant-speed removal, is Infiltration Lens, which is basically "This is a punisher: Let me draw two cards, or lose the game to infect fairly quickly." (Which, BTW, is why I was surprised someone listed Cystbearer when I could argue your case better than you.) Oh, and casting it and equipping it costs only 2 total.
At least we're in agreement that Sylvok Replica is either sorcery-speed removal for 4G or gives your opponent too many ways to bluff it out.
But my point remains. My bigger issue is that Plummet is a troll card. On top of green's already present troll cards. (Green already gets a lifegain card and an overcosted spider at common in every set, on top of "every color gets some troll card or another".) And the funny thing is, if you splash any other color, you wouldn't want Plummet in any Core Set before M13 anyway. And from M13 on, we have fight, which fits green's flavor, and has resonance, something Plummet never had.
But the Question Marks have to praise how omgsuperawesome Plummet is because it lets them troll the color pie. Yeah, that's nice. Meanwhile I'm doing with one card what it takes you two to do.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Using a blue card to grant flying (Something blue can do) to a creature then using a green card to kill it (Something green can do) isn't really 'trolling to color pie' any more than the fact that Red/White have access to Essence Drain.
As for green in general.. Green seems fairly strong in M14. It's far from the weakest colour and it has quality cards at all rarities. Particularly, green's commons are fairly deep; there's no green common that's utterly unplayable (Though Fog and Verdant Haven come close) whereas at the same time the high end of strong green commons is very deep (Predatory sliver, rootwalla, rumbling baloth, deadly recluse, elvish mystic).
Green was also a very strong colour in Innistrad limited and DKR-INN-INN draft. It's really odd to me saying that green is always weakest in draft - there's usually a weak colour but it rotates.
I'd be leery even then. You can't very well splash Overrun.
Basically, green has combat tricks and some ability to dodge removal (though white has better indestructible, blue has better hexproof, and black has better regenerate). What hurts green is, it's like the entire color is built around Lure, but then they don't print that often enough to matter. Instead they go for weaker versions like "must block this turn if able" or "must be blocked this turn if able".
One of the biggest issues is "replace flying with reach...if you're lucky" seems to be R&D's way of making creatures with reach. If green's supposed to have good creatures, then why? Why does a 2/4 still cost 4 mana when a 3/3 costs half that? Rock breaks scissors, scissors cuts paper, paper...gets torn in half when a rock is thrown at it? Though the greatest example is Archweaver: Seven mana for a 5/5 isn't a good deal, regardless of its rules text. (See, everyone? Emmara wasn't the worst card printed.)
Then there are the Plummets. They make for awkward deckbuilding and really don't do anything. They also add a wrinkle to the pie; I'm a fan of parsimony, thank you very much. Really, I'm convinced MaRo (or whoever else) has warped green's entire concept around a peculiar fetish for flying hate. When ironically, fight works better and means they're no longer needed (as if they ever were).
In Return to Ravnica, I just couldn't get over the fact that colorless mana fixing had greater as-fan than green mana fixing. And Archweaver. And the "defender matters" subtheme, which for some reason never appears in white.
In Innistrad, you had green/white humans (emphasis on white), then you had werewolves (who would be fine in an environment that didn't have flashback), and BUG dredge. Always treat dredge in limited with some skepticism, since combo is harder with one-ofs, and even being milled without any mill to speak of is a genuine threat in limited.
In Scars, I noticed green's artifact removal was really bad. That's really all I needed to know. In addition, it had the "mix infect with non-infect" issue. Green was perpetually awkward, going against theme, but not really hosing the theme either.
@TheSloth:
Yeah, that's nice for Constructed.
On phasing:
Heresy! G was possibly the winningest color in SOM... Cystbearer and Fangren Marauder were both eeeasy first picks, and dinos was a bunch of fun.
My Decks:
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And yet, despite these major advantages Green often struggles to be considered a strong primary color. The problem, in my experience, is that Green has two many flaws that leave open glaring vulnerabilities that an opponent can exploit for victory.
For example, its relatively difficult for Green to break through stalls. Usually it can't do it until it manages to stick a huge trampling fatty. And by that time the opponent has had opportunity to draw their removal spells.
As another example, Green leans heavily on Giant Spider (or whatever spider equivalent is in the set) and can collapse against an opponent with an aggressive flyer curve. Its not that hard for a smart opponent to save their removal for the Spider and win in the air.
Finally, Green often lags behind in the bomb department. I struggle to think of Rare green cards that make me say "wow, thats basically unbeatable if it sticks".
At my first SOM draft, there were five people playing infect. Yeah, the three of us who weren't...were the top three. Signal fail.
Not sure what your point is about Alpha Tyrannax or Fangren Marauder. One's a just-below-curve vanilla, and the other trades 1 power for some lifegain.
But yeah, the biggest issue with green is its tendency to rely on individual cards too much, and not even for instant wins, just to not lose.
On phasing:
Uh, do you not remember viridian corrupter, sylvok replica, and slice in twain? Those were some of the best artifact removal spells in the format
*DCI Rules Advisor*
Before, it was hard to make the size advantage of your big green creatures matter because they could just be chump blocked, or were helpless to stop/remove evasive creatures/bombs. Now, with fight mechanics, it becomes easier to be "king of the hill" with your big green fatties, forcing your opponent's creatures to interact with yours.
I personally feel that green is one of the strongest colors in m14 limited, as it has so much size, and that size is hard to counter effectively- There are very few Green cards in the m14 set that just plain suck, and you don't want to draft, where other colors seem to have more.
Also, whilst it's seldom the most powerful colour, G/X is almost always playable no matter what the other colour is. This alone is enough to make Green highly draftable in most formats.
If I had to name one colour which disproportionately gets the short end in modern Magic, it would be Red. Back when I started drafting (Onslaught) there was a long run of blocks in which Red was either the best or very close to the best colour. The reason was basically burn. It was removal that could deal damage to players, providing an extra finisher without needing room in your deck.
What changed? Creatures got better. Now there are often lots of important creatures even at Common that Red struggles to kill. And on top of that, Red often accumulates more unplayables than any other colour, making it a risky plan from pick one. Green, by contrast, gets a super deep cardpool which means you can draft it with confidence.
(I'm on on this site much anymore. If you want to get in touch it's probably best to email me: dom@heffalumps.org)
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<Limited Clan>
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I've also had some success running r/w tokens/aggro over the past week, which I didn't even know was possible (pyromancer/hive stirrings/fortifys/burn), I even had a devout invocation in one of them.
Blue looked very good initially, but after running it a few drafts early on....I really have started to kind of avoid it, unless I see phantom warriors/seakites/claustrophobias going late. It just seems rather weak, unless you pair it with green for solid blockers or black for removal.
Standard:
RW Boros devotion/Purphoros combo
RGB Jund Midrange
Modern:
WB Martyr.proc
Honestly hexproof plus enchantments is one of the most unbeatable combos. I think everyone can agree on that. Especially if its fast and ramped as well.
Let everyone have their preference it's what defines magic players.
Yeah, they always succeed at this, especially with black in Avacyn Restored, white in Scars of Mirrodin block, green in M12, blue in Zendikar, and white in Rise of the Eldrazi, to name a few standout examples of perfect balancing.
:dance:Fact or Fiction of the [Limited] Clan:dance:
It's not balanced per set its balanced per format. Every set has its top cards obviously. But if it's not balanced as a format no one would play it. Hence certain cards never get reprinted. There's always multiple decks that rule the format. And some might have more strengths but they all have a deck they are weak too. If you want to complain about the thought they put into it that's fine. Try working there. But when it comes to drafting its not a bad color it's your drafting skills that make you end up with a bad deck. Not the color.
It's impossible to have a perfectly balanced color wheel in any given set or block.. the key word is "perfect." What does end up happening is people pick mediocre cards from powerful colors over good cards from weak colors so the drafters balance the format out. A fine example is GTC (subbing "colors" for "guilds" is a fair analogue, I think.) Boros was undoubtedly the strongest, Dimir the weakest. But since everyone was trying to get into Boros or Orzhov, you could spend the whole draft taking the best Dimir cards while they were fighting over fifth-pick Mastiffs.
People play markedly unbalanced formats, too. Just maybe not as long. They'll make more money if the format is varied and balanced (Why, yes, I did spend an uncomfortable amount of money on MMA, how did you know?)
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
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Semantics actually did list Formats, not Sets. Some Formats have only one Set in them. This was the case with Avacyn Restored, Rise of the Eldrazi, and every Core Set.
you might think "that's crazy, limited has way less cards than constructed" but thats only true in the strictest sense. in reality Constructed has a card pool that is more or less restricted to only the 100 or so most powerful cards in the format. Limited has to be balanced for EVERY COMMON and EVERY UNCOMMON in the format. and not just individually, but on the aggregate as well. the statistical average power level of commons and uncommons for each color has to be approximately balanced. its really really hard to do. much harder than balancing for constructed, where you only have to make sure the best cards in each archetype (not even by color, just by archetype) are all good enough.
so they miss on balancing limited pretty regularly. sometimes you get a format like 3xGTC where the format was unbalanced in bias towards fast decks full of 2 drops. Sometimes you get a format like 3xAVR where the format was biased against the color black, since black simply didn't have ANY of the set's strongest mechanics. Sometimes you get a format like Scars of Mirrodin Block where one mechanic (infect) was just better than the other mechanics and the colors that could support it (green, black, and blue) were better than the colors that couldn't (white in particular).
the question asked in the OP of this thread might be interpreted as "why does it seem like Green ends up underpowered in alot of draft formats?". Its debatable whether or not green actually is underpowered, but its borderline frequently enough that we're sitting here talking about it.
Two of those are at sorcery speed, with all the issues that implies. The other costs four mana. But I stand corrected about one thing: Older Magic wasn't so bad to green. Verdigris isn't nearly as bad as a sorcery-speed Naturalize for 4G! That said, a 2/2 with infect for three mana that grants card advantage is worth something, I'm sure, though if you're not playing infect, it's just a worse Verdigris.
Hey, you know who gets sorcery-speed Naturalize for two mana? White...
Ah, but that entire argument falls apart when one considers that Constructed even has banned lists. Hard to do that in limited, but even drafts have a metagame. And green's is...not good.
Even MaRo admits that his sense of balance is off, that he has the dubious honor of having designed the second-greatest number of banned cards of any Magic designer. (And Richard Garfield not only created the game, but the genre, so he has an excuse.)
Blue hexproof is better. And by "better", I mean completely bonkers. And by "completely bonkers", I mean the last creature with hexproof to make a huge splash was blue. And by "make a huge splash", I mean Furor of the Bitten, GG?
On phasing:
Green suffers when other colors get good creatures and green doesn't, in return, get good removal.
If green has the best creatures by a large margin, it is good. If green gets other slices, it is ok.
In M14, green has the best creatures and relevant removal, it is a "good" color.
The only time it was the best color I can remember was triple ROE. It was also close to best in AVR.
So Pro I have an alpha Volcanic Island
What were these artifacts in scars of mirrodin that you needed instant speed removal for? I appreciate that you have read the cards, but around here I personally expect a higher level of analysis than simply telling me what the cards cost or do. Even despite your strange complaints that were entirely irrelevant in the format, those were still some of the best artifact removal in it. If you think infect creatures were unplayable or bad outside of an infect deck, you are clearly inexperienced with both the infect and wither mechanics.
I think this thread has definitively proven that green has been one of the strongest colors in several recent formats. You're just grasping at straws and anyone who has played a substantial amount of limited can easily see through your arguments.
*DCI Rules Advisor*
Especially dangerous, and needing instant-speed removal, is Infiltration Lens, which is basically "This is a punisher: Let me draw two cards, or lose the game to infect fairly quickly." (Which, BTW, is why I was surprised someone listed Cystbearer when I could argue your case better than you.) Oh, and casting it and equipping it costs only 2 total.
At least we're in agreement that Sylvok Replica is either sorcery-speed removal for 4G or gives your opponent too many ways to bluff it out.
But my point remains. My bigger issue is that Plummet is a troll card. On top of green's already present troll cards. (Green already gets a lifegain card and an overcosted spider at common in every set, on top of "every color gets some troll card or another".) And the funny thing is, if you splash any other color, you wouldn't want Plummet in any Core Set before M13 anyway. And from M13 on, we have fight, which fits green's flavor, and has resonance, something Plummet never had.
But the Question Marks have to praise how omgsuperawesome Plummet is because it lets them troll the color pie. Yeah, that's nice. Meanwhile I'm doing with one card what it takes you two to do.
On phasing:
As for green in general.. Green seems fairly strong in M14. It's far from the weakest colour and it has quality cards at all rarities. Particularly, green's commons are fairly deep; there's no green common that's utterly unplayable (Though Fog and Verdant Haven come close) whereas at the same time the high end of strong green commons is very deep (Predatory sliver, rootwalla, rumbling baloth, deadly recluse, elvish mystic).
Green was also a very strong colour in Innistrad limited and DKR-INN-INN draft. It's really odd to me saying that green is always weakest in draft - there's usually a weak colour but it rotates.