Ramp
A turn 1 mana guy may seem innocuous, but it’s an ideal start for almost any green deck. They die to removal depressingly often, but that offers a measure of safety to your more expensive plays; and when they do live, they allow you to seize the initiative. Although they make for bad topdecks in the lategame, between equipment, sacrifice effects, and more there’s always a use for warm bodies.
Green also supports a more focused ramp strategy. If your goal is to go straight to the top of your curve and play threats ahead of schedule, green’s your colour. They get you there in different ways, so you can tailor the selection to suit your exact needs.
Aggro
Green aggro typically relies on the mana guys to accelerate into hard-hitting threats early, but there are some strong beaters at the bottom of the curve as well.
In addition to the various Swords – which work best in greendecks where they can be played a turn early – green has its own ways of buffing its creatures.
Big Things
If you have all this mana lying around, you need something to do with it! It’s satisfying to grind out long games with lots of complex decisions, but sometimes you have to feed that primal urge to play big things and turn them sideways. As Rosewater said, ‘green beats you with size’, and it’s more than happy to remind people if they forget.
Removal
While green traditionally lacked direct creature removal, it’s adept at blowing up everything else; and with the fight mechanic, it has creatures in its sights as well.
Recursion
If it worked the first time, why not do it again? With these in hand, you can safely play out your best threats without baiting removal in the knowledge that you can bring them back for a second round.
Tutoring
Green isn’t often associated with card draw and tutoring, but there’s more than you might think – especially when creatures are involved. As I hope comes through here, green can do a lot of different things, and having ways to find the right tool for the job is important.