Green Giants

Welcome again to A Gathering of Magic the Gathering!

I recently had a friend ask me to give her some tips on making a Big Green Creature deck as well as an Infect deck. Big Green Creature decks are my specialty and I’m also looking to make a good infect deck, so the next couple posts I do are going to be my pointers for creating my 2 favorite kinds of Green Beat Down decks.

Today will be about your basic Green Giants deck. This deck focuses on getting huge creatures out early in the game and then beefing them up.

The first thing to remember about a Big Green deck is that not all huge green creatures are going to be beneficial to you. Many of the bigger green creatures are going to have drawbacks associated with them that make them cost less. The lower cost may seem like a benefit, but the drawbacks from the card’s abilities tend to outweigh that. Plus, there are plenty of ways to get high mana cost cards out fast and easy, which I’ll get into in just a bit.

Some of my favorite green giants are the elementals. There’s a whole host of green elementals and they each have their own benefits. Thorn Elemental is always a staple in my Green Giant decks. It’s a 7/7 creature that can deal its damage to a player as though it weren’t blocked, which is a really handy ability. Tornado Elemental is another great one, although it tends to be a bit more situational, as it has the ability to deal damage to all creatures with flying when it enters the battlefield.

Beasts and Wurms also tend to be great in a Green Giants deck. I particularly like the Krosan Colossus and the Plated Slagwurm. Krosan Colossus is just a big hitter at 9/9. Plated Slagwurm is an 8/8 with Shroud (It can’t be the target of spells or abilities your opponent controls). Both of them tend to find their way into my Green Giants deck.

One creature that I find to be ridiculously awesome in a big hitter deck is Ancient Ooze. This card has won the game for me more times than any card. Ancient Ooze’s power and toughness is equal to the total converted mana cost of all other creatures you control. Sound awesome? No? Let’s say you had a Krosan Colossus, Plated Slagwurm and Thorn Elemental on the field when you played Ancient Ooze. Krosan Colossus costs 9 to play, Thorn Elemental and Plated Slagwurm each cost 7 to play. As soon as Ancient Ooze is on the field, it’s going to be a whopping 23/23 creature, and the more creatures you play after that, the bigger it’ll get. It’s definitely a game ender.

My best Green Giants deck has a particular card in it that is my secret weapon: Brawn. Brawn is a 3/3 creature with Trample, which doesn’t seem all that impressive, but it’s the ability it has that makes it indispensable. As long as Brawn is in your graveyard and you control a forest, creatures you control have Trample. That’s going to be a killer advantage in any deck Brawn is in, but when you have him in a deck full of 7/7s and 9/9s, it’s murderous. You can pretty much take down any player in a matter of a couple turns with Brawn in your graveyard.

Now, as I said earlier, you’re going to want to find a way to get these creatures out faster than usual in order for your deck to be really effective. Elves are one of the best ways. There are plenty of elf cards in the game that allow you to tap them for mana, and they usually each only cost 1 mana themselves. Llanowar Elves and Fyndhorn Elves each do this. There’s also cards like Krosan Restorer which allows you to tap it in order to untap a land. Krosan Drover also helps. It has the ability of: Creature spells you play with converted mana cost of 6 or more cost 2 less to play.

The very best elf card for any Green Giants deck is Elvish Piper. Elvish Piper is a 1/1 for 4 with a fantastic ability. If you pay 1 forest and tap Elvish Piper you can put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield. So, basically, all those super expensive creatures in your hand now only cost 1 to play. With Elvish Piper only being a 1/1, however, your opponent is going to want to destroy it as soon as possible. So, keep a few in your deck just in case, or beef them up with cards like Blanchwood Armor, which is a creature enchantment that gives the creature it’s attached to +1/+1 for each forest you control. Also, feel free to throw a couple extra Blanchwood Armors into your deck as they work great for beefing up any creatures.

A fun little addition to a Green Giants deck is Tooth and Nail. It’s a sorcery that costs 5 and 2 forests and gives you the choice to either search your library for up to 2 creature cards, reveal them, and put them in your hand OR put up to 2 creature cards from your hand into play. But, it also has an Entwine cost of 2. If you pay the Entwine cost, you get to do both things on the card instead of just one of them. If you have the mana for it, it’s a great card.

If you have enough space left in your deck, throw some beef up cards in there for good measure. Giant Growth and Explosive Growth are both excellent for this.

Anyway, these are just a few of my favorite Green Giants deck cards. There are plenty of other great green cards that you can put in your own deck. What do all of you like to have in a Green Giants deck? What card combinations do you find work the best for you?

Watch for my next post for pointers on how to make what I call an Exponential Beat Down deck. And following that; pointers on making an effective Infect Deck.