General Making green more interactive

[Erik Twice]

Green is, pound for pound, the weakest colour in my cube. And the reason for it is not because it lacks raw power, but simply because it lacks enough interaction to actually cover its bases. It has little removal and even fewer ways to interact with the stack, making it a less central colour than it could hope to be.

The problem is that, after all is said and done, most "interactive" cards end up getting cut for not being good or useful enough. At the current iteration of my cube, I run exactly five cards that could be used as interaction or mess with the opponent somehow. And one of them isn't even green in any way that matters.



That's all. And it's not for a lack of trying. I've tried a bunch of cards that simply weren't good enough compared to the offerings of other colours, like the "fight" creatures:




These are fine at lower power levels, but red creatures are just plainly better. Not only do they more damage, they can't get "countered" by killing the creature in response to the trigger. Most green "interaction" is similarly weak:

is much worse than
is hardly better than the outdated
leaves a huge 3/3 behind
is a bad vindicate that can be destroyed and ramps the opponent
is symmetrical, so it wrecks your own equipment and prevents you from using artifacts to shore up your lack of interaction.
has the same problem.

Some options are fine, but I've found them middling one way or the other:



There are some very powerful options for green to interact with the opponent. So powerful that they go overboard and prevent any further interaction from the opponent:



Some of green's best interaction doesn't do much against the average deck but crushes weaker archetypes so I don't run them right now:



---------
Ultimately, green is a proactive colour. And while there's nothing wrong with that, the fact is that it's not the most proactive colour, either. Green is solid, unique and has a ton of powerful options backed by recursion. But it does not pressure the opponent, making it less well-rounded than it could be.

Given how heavy on artifacts my cube is, I wonder if I can just run this type of cards as a toned down Swords to Plowshares:



Natural State seems appealing since it doesn't destroy some of the most important build-arounds while being a mere one mana.

Ideally, I would like green cards like this:



But I don't think they exist. Do they?

 

[Schafkurai]

I like this topic, as it is a problem I've also been feeling lately. I have no idea if green is the weakest color in my cube but it is difficult to find interaction at the right power level.

Currently I'm running these thigns in green:


Boseiju is obviously great and Heritage Reclamation is versatile. Tail Swipe is the one mana fight spell that makes maindecks the most, but not every green deck likes fight spells.. Legolas's Quick Reflexes was too much for my cube.

Natural State is a great shoutout, I like efficient removal that punches a bit above it's MV.

Unfortunately I don't have any great ideas but I'm curious to see if something else comes up.

 

[Nanonox]

At higher power level, Green’s interaction suite hits GYs, artifacts and enchantments.



You mentioned a few others like Force and Endurance and I agree they hit specific decks too hard.

Some fight spells might be good enough, but they are risky (not Reflexes)



Maybe some deathtouchers like Narnam renegade? But these don’t clear blockers, they are mainly defensive.
The other option might be to break singleton on Green’s best actual removal spell

 

[Seeker]

Some fight spells might be good enough, but they are risky (not Reflexes)

While I don't have enough reps to confidently endorse it, there's also


Don't forget that

are also technically "interaction" (especially with the combat step!)

 

[Brad]

I always like a "G: Protect" instant in my lists. Usually this one.

Historically, green hasn't interacted much because it has other strengths and that's ok. Couple fights, couple naturalizes, couple pump/other and call it a day.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Green is, pound for pound, the weakest colour in my cube. And the reason for it is not because it lacks raw power, but simply because it lacks enough interaction to actually cover its bases. It has little removal and even fewer ways to interact with the stack, making it a less central colour than it could hope to be.

The problem is that, after all is said and done, most "interactive" cards end up getting cut for not being good or useful enough. At the current iteration of my cube, I run exactly five cards that could be used as interaction or mess with the opponent somehow. And one of them isn't even green in any way that matters.

I'm going to say two things here:
First, Green isn't really the most interactive color on the planet. It usually wants to ask "questions" that are difficult for the opponent to answer rather than trying to spend a lot of time trying to answer the opponent's threats. I think your green section has a lot of fun and powerful cards in it, but it seems to run out of steam at the top end. For example, cards like Titania, Protector of Argoth and Verderous Gearhulk get absolutely mogged by cards like Trumpeting Carnosaur, Overlord of the Balemurk, and Kappa Cannoneer. Your top end green threats simply are not better "questions" than any of these cards, which means that your green decks are going to have trouble outscaling the opponent. In this case, I think you should take the Brian Kibler approach and consider trying to lean more into green does well in the form of it's threats rather than trying find better answers.


Second, a lot of green's answers which have leaned into the powerful side of the equation tend to be modal or provide additional value beyond the basic answer effect. Hunter's Talent is a good recent example of a powerful card which has an immediate interactive ability but also provides additional value. Likewise, you could look into cards like Bushwack and Pawpatch Formation which have multiple modes, allowing for flexibility in what the cards do while providing answers to key threats.

 

[TekLazar]

At this power level, what are people's opinions on making green less interact-able in terms of the other colors? Ie:

and all those "give hexproof and/or indestructible" going as high as Heroic Intervention if necessary.

 

[Karshtakavaar]

I had a draft reply written up on my phone about bringing the other colours to Green rather than bringing Green to the other colours (Like with your examples of Oxidize and friends being strong in your environment), but it basically amounted to everything Brad and Train said.

I will add that in a combat focused environments one-sided fogs are sick interaction, and its possible to make pump spells more interesting if most removal is damage or -x/-x rather than destroy/exile (if that's an angle worth taking).

Also promoting Go Forth and Arachnogenesis

 

[Ecophagy]

Green also has a decent number of flash creatures. Cards like Ambush Viper, Briarhorn, and Pack Guardian might mostly say "destroy target attacking creature", but the floor is still a creature.

 

[Seeker]

I always like a "G: Protect" instant in my lists. Usually this one.

Historically, green hasn't interacted much because it has other strengths and that's ok. Couple fights, couple naturalizes, couple pump/other and call it a day.

While it's not a pump spell, I was very pleasantly surprised with

in retail Limited.

The ability to protect anything rather than just creatures, indestructible on top of hexproof to be anti-Wrath too, and the surprise lifegain to swing a race added up to a lot more power than I expected.

Can't go to the face, which is definitely a downside. But at least worth thinking about perhaps?

 

[Nemo]

Green also has a decent number of flash creatures. Cards like Ambush Viper, Briarhorn, and Pack Guardian might mostly say "destroy target attacking creature", but the floor is still a creature.

That's my thought as well. I also like Ambush Wolf and Bounding Wolf. If I could put the "exile a card from a graveyard" effect onto Bounding Wolf, that would be a perfect card. I don't want to go all the way up to Endurance levels of power.

I think they'll keep printing cards of this sort and we'll get more options over time. I wouldn't mind seeing a green version of Plumecreed Escort or Loyal Gryff, with non-flying green-appropriate stats and abilities.

This is a sneaky interactive green card:


It can pump itself as a combat trick if you make creatures enter at instant speed, and you can also sacrifice it at instant speed to pump other stuff. I was also thinking of the "bring green to other colors" sort of idea referenced above, and this card came to mind. At its core, this card is still "asking some questions" of your opponent since it's going to become a big beater if it isn't dealt with, so I find this to be a nice example of what green ought to be.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I always like a "G: Protect" instant in my lists. Usually this one.

Historically, green hasn't interacted much because it has other strengths and that's ok. Couple fights, couple naturalizes, couple pump/other and call it a day.

On this note, my favorite modal naturalize is

 

[Erik Twice]

I'm going to say two things here:
First, Green isn't really the most interactive color on the planet. It usually wants to ask "questions" that are difficult for the opponent to answer rather than trying to spend a lot of time trying to answer the opponent's threats. I think your green section has a lot of fun and powerful cards in it, but it seems to run out of steam at the top end. For example, cards like Titania, Protector of Argoth and Verderous Gearhulk get absolutely mogged by cards like Trumpeting Carnosaur, Overlord of the Balemurk, and Kappa Cannoneer. Your top end green threats simply are not better "questions" than any of these cards, which means that your green decks are going to have trouble outscaling the opponent.

I think you are right that it's part of Green's nature, it should be asking more questions. Still, there's a limit and, frankly, even if I give it more power, there simply are not many cards that can compete with other colours. If you play green, it's better to play Overlord of the Balemurk or Trumpeting Carnosaur than it is to get something out of Primeval Titan.

That said, I think my top end is fine. Titania is game-winning. It provides instant value the moment it comes in and it can very easily destroy you next turn. Gearhulk is "fair", but it's a lot of stats and can be ramped quite consistently.

Compare with white. A white deck can curve out like this:

T.1 T.2 T.3

That's good because it's disruptive. It doesn't let the opponent do whatever he wants while you deploy threats. Green can do good things, but it does not disrupt the opponent:

T.1 T.2 + T.3

Is that good? Yes. Is the storm or control player annoyed in any way? Not really. Chances are they'll blow up half of those cards and the green deck will be left struggling.

Green is good in my cube, but only if it leans into other colours for a little bit of disruption:

->

->

->

The moment you have that "touch", things just work better. You don't have to be as explosive. But I need that slight touch of interaction that green currently lacks.

 

[Nanonox]

While not strictly Green, maybe some disruptive lands since they play well with Green’s strengths (tutoring and recurring lands).



Staying in colorless



The Revoker in particular is nice because it comes with a body. Thorn is matchup dependent, but Green should be able to get ahead with it out on the battlefield.

Some hatebears?



Oophe is intense because there is no respite, but Manglehorn does it right IMO.



Mana dorks let you get ahead of this and break the symmetry?

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Still, there's a limit and, frankly, even if I give it more power, there simply are not many cards that can compete with other colours. If you play green, it's better to play Overlord of the Balemurk or Trumpeting Carnosaur than it is to get something out of Primeval Titan.

I don't really agree with you here, I think there are a lot of cool big green threats you're not playing that match or exceed the other colors.

Vaultborn Tyrant is the one that immediately comes to mind, you have to ramp into it a little harder than some of the other top-end cards, but it's very difficult to get out from underneath while also being a powerful reanimation target. In the 5-6 mana space, there are some cool value engines like Biogenic Ooze that Lumra, Bellow of the Woods could help to give green some extra punch.

There's even a lot of room for experimentation lower on the curve: you only have two real four-drops, and they don't really play into the proactive midrangey decks that mana-dork based green tends to thrive on. There's definitely room for an Ouroborid, Esika's Chariot, or Ulvenwald Oddity here. Nightpack Ambusher would also be a really interesting option, it actually would help to solve the "lack of interactivity" problem by playing at instant speed!

 

[LadyMapi]

As someone who likes Green a lot... I feel like the problem with your Green section isn't that the interaction's poor. It's that I look at your Green section and feel no reason to make Green one of my primary colors while drafting.

Some thoughts:

• Why is Manamorphose in Green and not in Red, the color that actually has more than one (1) Storm card as a payoff for casting that kind of do-nothing cantrip? Same goes for Questing Druid, which should probably either be in Red (if a deck can only cast one half I'd bet on it being Seek the Beast) or Gruul.
• Let's be honest here, no-one is going to cast Basking Rootwalla or Vengevine using green mana except as a last resort, so their inclusion as green cards is kinda suspect? In the big picture it doesn't matter, but you do appear to be trying to balance the number of cards of each color and we're already up to four "green" cards that I wouldn't want to slot into a primarily green deck.
• Your Green section has a lot of ramp that also fixes your mana. If I want interaction, it seems simple enough to hate-draft for it and just splash.
• Your ramp plan is going to feel way more cohesive/coherent if you have tasty three drops to ramp into on T2 or tasty four drops to get out on T3. Also, like... a third of your green section ramps but it's the only color in your whole cube that stops at five-drops. I feel like you either want to cut way back on ramp and fill those slots with cards that actually do something proactive (meaning cards that supply a clock, not stuff that faffs around on the stack or knocks villain off tempo) or lean into the idea that someone drafting Green is going to have a lot of mana acceleration and push the curve up to match.
• I don't know why but my gut is telling me that you'd get sweet results if you ran the middling interaction but also went with double Yeva, Nature's Herald. You've got five creature tutors in the color, why not lean into that and have more toolbox-y stuff/creature buildarounds? It also offers the added bonus of synergizing well with splashing for some interactive creature from other colors.
• Creeperhulk is pretty resistant to your removal suite, dodges Wildfire and Languish, helps your other creatures dodge Wildfire and Languish (and pseudo-counters a lot of burn spell), and turns your mana dorks into an actual clock while being an actual clock. I think it's cool/worth a test.

 

[Erik Twice]

I don't really agree with you here, I think there are a lot of cool big green threats you're not playing that match or exceed the other colors.

I've actually tried most of your suggestions, but I eventually found myself forced to cut them. They are good cards, but they lack the raw power level the other colours have. Their lack of synergy and reliance on raw stats also make them not as fun as I would like them to.

Esika's Chariot is a good example. It is a powerful card, but it's a 4 mana card that is not going to do anything now and won't kill the opponent for quite a while. In practice, I found too many decks could just ignore it. It's an artifact and has some cute synergies but nothing like Beast Whisperer which just allows you to go off!

Nightpack Ambusher is good, but it's pure goodstuff. Vaultborn Tyrant is also way better as a Reanimator target than anything resembling green. It's also awkard (Why does it clone itself as an artifact?)

As someone who likes Green a lot... I feel like the problem with your Green section isn't that the interaction's poor. It's that I look at your Green section and feel no reason to make Green one of my primary colors while drafting.

For me it's one of the reasons. That is, you don't want to make Green your primary colour because its lack of interaction prevents you from doing so. So as I've tried to improve my cube, I've naturally shifted towards making green a secondary colour.

Don't pay too much attention to the odd color categorization, they are placeholders. The reason I don't run any green 6-drops is because they ended up being worse than splashing other colours. I found Green would rather draft into Terror of the Peaks, Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, Noxious Gearhulk or Sun Titan than play Primeval Titan or most other green cards.

Unfortunately, many green cards are also kind of shallow. Old One Eye is good, but it's just raw stats over and over until the opponent dies.

I agree that focusing on tutoring and support could be a good approach. I'll give it another look.

While not strictly Green, maybe some disruptive lands since they play well with Green’s strengths (tutoring and recurring lands).



Staying in colorless



The Revoker in particular is nice because it comes with a body. Thorn is matchup dependent, but Green should be able to get ahead with it out on the battlefield.

Some hatebears?



Oophe is intense because there is no respite, but Manglehorn does it right IMO.



Mana dorks let you get ahead of this and break the symmetry?

I think disruptive lands are a big boon for green. Running Crop Rotation helps in that regard, even if it's just to find Wasteland.

I ended up cutting Revoker for not doing enough. Thorn of Amethyst is interesting, but I worry it will be very matchup dependant. How's your experience with it?

I think hatebears would be great for green, but there are very few. Oophe limits you too much, Gaddock Teeg is a Selesnya card. Manglehorn could be fine, though.

Root Maze would be great if it were on a creature, but that creature is white and it wasn't good enough!

 

[inscho]

My approach to cube has always been that the color/s with the lowest power level sets the ceiling for your cube’s general power level. If green is feeling too weak, lower the power of the other colors until it feels more even.

I tend to think more in guilds, but Selesnya has historically been the governor of my cubes power level

But yeah, investing even more into the artifact subtheme and letting more of your cheat targets be artifacts, makes the removal options green does have stand out a little more. Same goes for the graveyard since green is very adept at graveyard disruption. If your graveyard strategies feel weak, lowering the power level will help that strategy out and in turn improve green as well

 

[Nanonox]

Thorn of Amethyst is interesting, but I worry it will be very matchup dependant. How's your experience with it?

Just like Root Maze, it needs to be in a body to really be impactful enough for you. Figured you might be desperate

If green is feeling too weak, lower the power of the other colors until it feels more even.

This is good advice! Another option is to explore other themes where Green’s power level might be higher.
You mention the GY, I think Erik could have some higher impact GY enablers/payoffs that could help boost the color’s power level.

 

[Dom Harvey]

One nice feature of the family of synergy Cubes around these parts is the heavy focus on artifacts + build-around enchantments + graveyards incidentally makes green (and white! though it needs less help there) a much better interactive colour. You don't want narrow but pushed hate aimed at a specific archetype but if you expect most decks to have at least light GY synergies than a card like Endurance becomes a lot more palatable (while also becoming an actively appealing card even for a 'control' deck)

For fight spells, Primal Might is clean + good

 

[OlegKlishin]

Since I'm struggling with the same questions, I wanted to chime in. I'm trying to give each color multiple vectors instead of a singular vision. But most things have been said already. For my next cube I'm planning on cheap protective instants, flash creatures, hatebears, disenchants, maybe some rare land disruption. Don't know how many I can stuff in, but that's the idea:



It's very niche, but in a vintage environment green can become not only premiun hater of powered artifact decks, but also premium hater of blue as a color. I've seen a few heavily blue-skewed vintage cubes.



Also, from what I know from the fans of green, they love cool monsters and green has the best ones. Maybe it's fundamentally not a color about providing answers, but about asking questions. Downside is the risk of reversing the initial premise to the direction of green not being interactable.



I've also came to a conclusion that sometimes it's reasonable to meet the fans where they are. And maybe tuning down other colors is the answer. Green core identity is about big mana and big monsters, and sone people love exactly that. In my first cube, I've tried to be cute with heavy enchantment theme in Selesnya, and it's not exactly great. It ended up lacking heavy hitters and proactive game plans. That's why I'm on the search of how to make green more interesting, while still maintaining creature heavy identity.

 

[shamizy]

I'm not sure if you can reach the critical mass with interactivity in green at a higher power level outside of certain Constructed formats so I think the best option is to focus on what should define a given G/x deck within your environment.

For myself a mono-green deck should still be looking to ramp out ASAP, but the payoffs nowadays are centered in playing an impact 4 or 5 drop like Bristlebud Farmer or Nissa, Who Shakes the World rather than a 6-7 drop from a decade ago. I still think Primeval Titan has juice in a lot of environments, especially ones like mine with a ULD for spicy land picks, but it's tougher to justify in cubes that want to play all the new hotness with impact cards 3 CMC and cheaper. The more you avoid those the more room Green will have to do its thing in the mid-late game as it can stabilize and gum up the board.

Green is still an awesome support color providing necessary cards for Graveyard, Smaller Midrange, and Big Midrange decks. decks are still weird to set up, but in my environment they kind of slot into a weird combination of midrange/ramp though I wish there was a little more definition to it. Unless your environment features a ton of artifacts and enchantments, green cards alone will not be able to meaningfully interact with developed boards outside of combat. But that's just the color pie at work.

If you want mono-Green to be an actual deck, you're going to have to figure out the optimal strategy to maximize it. From my perspective it would have be ramping out threats ahead of curve and making sure they can stick on the board. Or at least provide enough value to leave you even on resources after interaction might have dealt with them. Some options I can think of include:



One card that I'm really looking forward to testing out in the future for is:



Bigger body is more relevant than Bloodbraid Elf in 2025, more impact hits with 4 drops and down, and finally the Escape ability gives it a recursive stickiness that you don't really get in G/x Midrange decks very often once removal has cleared your board.