My Cart (0)
Is Green too good?
By: Juan Miguel Salcedo
Short answer: Yes, Green is indeed too good.
Green has always been seen as the best color to go into when you want to ramp ahead. While seeing a Blue/X deck will already set off alarm bells around the table, a Green/X deck will either cause everyone to already panic or think little of it until the table gets run over by little creatures being pumped by a lord effect or gaining so much advantage across multiple fronts that the table can no longer keep up, thus traumatizing them forever and will quiver at the sight of any flora in the wild and also probably plant a seed of hatred against Legolas and his fellow people.
…… sorry, that last bit came from a dark place. Anyway!
In the last year alone, the Commander format has seen a huge surge in Legendary creatures with Green in their color identity. And most of them came from Standard sets. Said creatures have built-in value engines that, when synergized with certain cards, generate advantage that gets the player closer to their win condition faster than it was possible 2 years ago. Worse, they’re constructed to efficiently protect their pieces or stifle anyone’s ability to disrupt them. This will make the table spend their resources to stop whatever it is the Green/X deck is doing, leaving little left for everyone else.
So, what does the non-Green player need to do? Counter the ramp spells? Kill the commander on sight? Stifle the sources of mana? These will only barely dent the Green deck if it has already pushed far into the race. Then what? Prevent that player from playing the game entirely? No, that will never end well. Tell the player to power down their deck? But what if it is their favorite deck?
What can the non-Green player/s do? Simple: communication. We as players ultimately have no say with the cards that Wizards of the Coast produces on a quarterly basis. It is up to us to rein in this increase in card quality (whether or not this is healthy for the game is a can of worms I will not get into in this article) and ensure that game night will not devolve into heated arguments as only one player wins 80-95% of the games. We as players tend to forget that simply letting everyone know what the deck can do will set expectations and will not result in bad vibes ruining the mood.
We cannot prevent the creators of this game from making more powerful cards. After all, settling the wreckage is always an option. *hint* *hint*
Share Now:
