The Ten Most Adrenalizing Green Cards, According to Gatherer – Part One

Wizards of the Coast hates Green.  Or, at least, that was the common mantra in 1997.

At the time, Magic was split into two games.  There was the practical tournament environment, where players talked card advantage and meta-game choices.  And there was what the game represented: A duel between archmages casting spells, equipping themselves with arcane artifacts and summoning forth larger and ever larger creatures to clobber their nemeses.  Many early mages believed in the latter philosophy.  And when they chose a color to represent them, they chose Green, because Green was the color of titanic creatures lording over the top of the mana curve.

Green represents Magic’s dramatic end game.  But as the tournament scene matured, players noticed a problem.  Few, if any, expensive creatures were worth casting.  Why bother making a Craw Giant if it can be undone with a single Terror?  Games weren’t decided by who owned the biggest creature, but by who could play the cheapest, most synergistic combination of cards.  The community at large shunned overpriced dinosaurs.

Paradoxically, Wizards took the wrong message from how the community approached the game.  They saw the community’s unwillingness to play large creatures as a sign that they didn’t enjoy swinging with colossal titans.  Players did play large creatures with drawbacks, but only because they were cheap and efficient.  Development read too far into this, and decided that players enjoyed seeing dramatic drawbacks on big creatures.  Consequently, staple big guns from the original game, like Serra Angel, Shivan Dragon and Mahamoti Djinn were rotated out of the core set for being ‘too good’, while a stable of equally large drawback creatures like Sibilant Spirit and Johtull Wurm, entered the 6-cost plus zone.

Many good Green cards were printed during this time.  In fact, four of the cards on this list come from The Dark time when developers confused expediency with fun.  But the Ice Age thawed and cracked, supplying Visions of the sort of game Magic could be.  That’s when a Tempest broke, dumping a number of all-star green cards on the battlefield, including our Honorable Mention for today’s article, Verdant Force.

Modern creature power creep makes it hard to appreciate how awesome Verdant Force was in Tempest.  This is what we would expect to get for eight mana today.  In 1997, however, finding any expensive creature was a rarity (Between 1993 and 1998, only four other mono-green creatures which cost seven or more were printed.)

Unlike the other beasties of its day, Verdant Force didn’t come with a drawback, and sported an efficient power and toughness for its cost.  And it provided value.  If your opponent fumbled a couple rounds before landing their Terror, you walked away with an army of Saproling tokens.  With cards like Natural Order kicking around, little green creatures didn’t just clog the board.  They were gasoline to make your engine run.

By Tempest block’s end, big ‘stupid’ green was not only an option, but would form the backbone to Brian Selden’s 1998 World Championship RecSur deck.  Game after game, Selden would cast Natural Order, slipping Verdant Force on the table, or raise the Force from his grave round after round with Recurring Nightmare.

Big giant monsters weren’t in vogue yet.  Sneaking gargantuans into play isn’t the same thing as tapping eight lands and dumping them on the table.  But this was the first step down a path that would lead to the triumph of heavyweights in Invasion and Onslaught blocks.  It took a long while for green to come in it’s own.  But when it did, it flattened the competition with cards like:

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Number Ten – Exploration

Oh, Urza’s Saga, you keep on giving.  With utter insanity like Tolarian Academy and Time Spiral kicking around, it’s hard to notice the impact crater a card like Exploration leaves behind.

In many decks, Exploration is strong, but fair.  Certainly, it revs up your game.  But in order to get more out of Exploration than, say, a Llanowar Elves, you need to drop the Exploration on round one, drop an additional land on round one, drop two lands on round two, and hold a ready four drop.  Even when going second, the odds are against that particular six card combination happening by turn two.  A great play when it happens, but far from unfair.

What makes Exploration Nutty Kirkpatrick, though, is when it combos with drawing.  Let’s pretend, for example, that you lucked out and got four land on the board by round two.  You know what would be a great spell to cast right now?  Deep Analysis.  Including the flashback, you’re up four more cards by turn three, and there’s a good chance you’re holding two more lands.  You know what would be a great spell to cast right now?  Deep Analysis.  It’s all turtles from here on down.

Never mind card draw.  All we really need is to flood your hand with land.  Yavimaya Elder makes a fine start.  Exploration works great with a deck full of karoos like Gruul Turf.  Thawing Glaciers was already broken, but it’s downright unfair now.  Forget unfair.  Let’s go absurd.  Ever see a Crucible of Worlds?

Combine an Exploration, a Crucible and a couple Wooded Foothills, and your game will erupt in an uncontrollable forest fire starting on round two.

Best Comment by ROBRAM89: “It’s as if at some point they realized how crazy the block they were making was and went ‘you know, we could put in a one-drop enchantment that doubles your mana base and nobody would even notice.'”

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Number Nine – Gaea’s Touch

Sir Francis Galton was a crazy polymath, invested in more sciences than I can go into in an article of this size.  Let’s just say he was a thinker.

One day in 1906, he attended a livestock fair where a prize ox was on display.  The owners of the ox were holding a contest, and asked locals to guess what the weight of the ox would be after it was dressed an slaughtered.  Galton saw the ox.  Then he saw the tickets full of guesses—over 800.  And Galton wondered what kind of response he would get if he looked at the aggregate of all that data.

Galton’s original theory was that, if you remove the extreme guesses, thus removing the fools, the average folk, the semi-professionals and the professionals, you would end up with one ‘expert’ opinion, somewhere around ticket number 400, who would give the most correct answer.  That medium average expert said the ox would weigh 1,207 pounds.  The ox weighed in at 1,198 pounds.  Not a bad guess.

However, when Galton totaled all the numbers up and divided by the number of guessers, he ended up with a mean average of 1,197 pounds – a closer guess than any individual in the crowd put forward.  Galton, a eugenicist who believed in the power of the lone individual, was incensed.  To his credit, though, he published his findings, along with the rest of his experiments on the subject.  What Galton was discovering in the early 20th century was that there is a Wisdom to Crowds.  Given enough true quantifiable data, the average opinion of any population is more likely to be the correct opinion than any individual opinion.

I mention this because, personally, I think Gaea’s Touch and Exploration should be switched.  I don’t want to diminish how powerful sacrificing Gaea’s Touch to bust out seven green mana on round three is.  But, there are worlds of difference between a one cost card and a two cost card.  In my mind, Exploration is more focused, more efficient, and therefore ‘better’.  But the masses spoke, and, right now, they say Gaea’s Touch is the better card.  Either way it’s very close, considering out of thousands of green cards, the two of them are sitting back to back, ready to swap places but for a few votes.

Best Comment by Arachnos: “Gaea looks strangely creepy.”

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Number Eight – Oath of Druids

Remember how I said Tempest block showed us Wizards didn’t hate green?  Verdant Force was but an appetizer for what was to come.  By Exodus, Wizards created a monster!

Words fail to express how messed up this card is.  Oath of Druids circumvents the point of playing lands and casting spells.  Why bother?  Most decks require creatures to win.  Play Oath on turn two, wait for your opponent to cast anything, then trump their creature with an abomination.

In a world of Counterspells, this is a godsend.  Stick it early and, at the very least, stop the control player from ever casting a creature.  That may not be exciting, but it’s one heck of an ability for .  But never mind control.  Think of how absurd this card is against aggro.  “Turn two Mogg Flunkies and pass the turn?  Oh, that’s nice.  I’ll just begin my turn three and flip some cards off the top of my deck and… well would you look at that!  Verdant Force it is.  So, how many Lightning Bolt[/cards]s do you got in that deck?

This, of course, assumes we’re playing fair and not ‘accidentally’ giving creatures to our opponent with cards like Bazaar Trader or Forbidden Orchard, or manipulating the top card of our library with Sylvan Library, or simply playing 8x Wrath of God effects and playing only double-digit cost creatures.  If they ever printed a book called “Magic: the Gathering Combos for Dummies”, this card’s art would be on the front cover.  There are so many ways to abuse this card, it’s stupid.

Best comment by voidweaver: “This card is all sorts of fun in my Phelddagrif EDH deck. Guy being a jerk? Here, have some hippos, everyone else gets to go fishing for creatures.”

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Number Seven – Priest of Titania

I wrote something here, but I deleted it.  The truth is, you don’t need me to explain why Priest of Titania is good.  It’s self-evident.  All Priest of Titania needs is another elf, and she produces more value than what’s reasonable.

At least, I think it’s a ‘she’.  The long dress and the wild hair certainly suggest it, though, you would think her name would have be Priest-ess of Titania.  Or maybe not.  Back when I was took creative writing in college, I made the mistake of referring to a female author as an authoress.   That, in turn, caused my female teacher to leap off her desk, do a forward flip and, heels first, jump down my throat.

I didn’t know then that the word authoress could be used as an insult.  That making a distinction in someone’s gender when talking about their work was equivalent to saying “She’s a good writer, for a girl.”  By choosing to bring gender into play, I made it important.  In order to not be sexist, I needed to look beyond the writer’s sex.

Which, I got to be honest with you, seems like a backwards perspective to me.  If an author identifies herself as female, and writes from a female perspective, I don’t see why it’s a sin to acknowledge her femininity when talking about her.  If we are to truly be non-sexist, then terms of gender shouldn’t imply any more than those words mean.  She is a female author.  I’m a blogger.  I don’t like to be associated with the term ‘blogging’ since it carries a connotation that I’m not a ‘real writer’.  But I own up to it, because blogging is what I do.  The only way bloggers will be accepted as ‘real writers’ is if they identify with the word used to classify them.  And if you’re a female author who takes offense that someone noticed your gender, your problem doesn’t stem from your society, but from yourself.  Still, I learned my lesson.  There are words you don’t use unless you want to insult people, and ‘authoress’ is one of them.

And maybe ‘priestess’ is inappropriate, too, and this is one female priest that refuses to be defined by her gender.  Or maybe the priest is a male who wears dresses and sports long kinky hair.  After all, the only Oracle ruling from 2003 reads “Since he is an Elf, he counts himself.”  Flip a coin; it could go either way.  Though, suddenly I find myself questioning the gender of all the pretty watercolor girls that Rebecca Guay paints.

Best comment by Kragash: “I think it’s clear that Urza’s Saga was a time when Wizards of the Coast thought it would be a great idea to get high while designing cards. Really… what were they smoking?!”

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Number Six – Noble Hierarch

Five cards down, and they all care about producing mana, or circumventing the need for mana.  I suppose that makes sense.  One of the easiest ways to break the game is by outproducing your opponent for whatever game stage you’re in.  And Green is well known for its ability to spawn large gobs of mana.  It’s natural the two meet up in the top ten green cards and shake hands.

Based on the other choices we’ve seen, though, Noble Hierarch doesn’t feel like it belongs.  The other four cards were combo pieces that, with the slightest of setup, rocketed you into the mid to late game by their lonesome.  Noble Hierarch, on the other hand, makes a mana.  It doesn’t even make or like Birds of Paradise does, and loses flying for an equivalent keyword.  The Hierarch is a variation on a theme.  How the heck did she creep into the number six spot?

Well, for starters, the Hierarch doesn’t need other cards to move your game forward.  Granted, Exploration only requires a few more lands than normal, and Oath provides one heck of an effect for very little set up.  But there will be games where both those cards whiff.  It’s difficult to whiff with Hierarch.  Even when there’s nothing good to play on turn two, the Hierarch still swings for one.

Second, on a utility creature, Exalted is better than Flying.  Much better.  When you’re dropping an opponent from twenty to zero, every point counts.  That plus one bonus may not look like much, but it represents a lot of potential damage over the course of a game.

There’s something to be said for consistency, especially when you don’t care about consistency.  For many players, these first five cards are boring, boring, boring.  Those players don’t play Green to manipulate mana bases.  They play Green to drive mammoth cranes equipped with mighty wrecking balls, primed to demolish walls.  These five cards fuel those gas guzzlers.  But Noble Hierarch does so in the least invasive way possible.  It provides one mana, and one boost for an almost criminal cost, but in a non-threatening manner.  It shuns the spotlight and puts it back where it belongs: the wrecking machines.

Best Comment by pwnsaw:

“The correct order for “The blow out” is as follows:
1st turn: Noble Hierarch
2nd turn: Rhox War Monk
3rd turn: Rafiq of the Many (10 lifelink)
4th Turn: Finest Hour, attack with Rhox War Monk twice. (30 lifelink)

I think an 80 point life swing should work out pretty well.

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Five down, five to go.  Continue onto Part Two to Hulk SMASH! our way through the top of the food chain.  Come and fight Hulk if that is what you want. Hulk is ready. Hulk is always ready!