Green mages! What’s your favorite thing about playing green? Did we miss any of the color’s pitfalls? What’s your favorite tech to shore up those weaknesses and pilot your green decks to victory?
Why I’m a green mage is A: the number of ways you can build your deck and still have complete bombshell staples available to you (counters, landfall, stompy, etc.). I’ve already built mono green in each of these styles (bristly bill for counters, Titania, nature’s force for landfall, and Ojer Kaslem for stompy), and each style just gets out of pocket wayyy too fast. Secondly, nothing makes me happier than playing a card that everyone either oohs and ahha at, or makes them go “oh crap”.
Brian Kibler is the greatest creature deck builder of all time, and the last time he didn't play green in a pro tour or GP he was patient 0 for getting Jace, the Mind Sculptor banned 🐐🐐🐐
Thank you Kibler you just helped me improve so many decks. I’m a green player through and through and there is so much I just learned from this. The bit about just making sure what I’m doing works instead of worrying about how to remove everybody else’s stuff makes so much sense. Great video!
I take a year or two off from Kibler at a time, and every time I see him pop up he has grown more and more glorious, luscious, and majestic. He has not even reached his final form.
I can't wait to learn about green. Been loving this series and have found it a very entertaining and educational form to learn this game. Love the content guys. We can tell yall love this community and game 😁
Why is award winning science educator Kyle Hill teaching us how to play green and not Artifacts or Jeskei. Or something real like effects of radiation this is quite far out his wheel house
6:58 At GP Minneapolis in, like, 2011, I asked BK to sign my play set of Knights of the Reliquary that I played in my Abzan Loam Legacy deck (as KoR is my favorite card of all time, too). He agreed, but just as I was pulling them out, he got pulled away. Oh well, he was at least able to sign my play mat as a consolation. 😂
Oh wow, this was the episode of this series I was most looking forward to, but never would’ve guessed you would get the Brian “Brian Kibler” Kibler from Brian Kibler Gaming to do it!
That meme of the two ends of a bell curve being the same, one end is a new player saying "this card gains me so much life, how can I lose?" and the other end is Kibler saying "this card gains you so much life, how can I lose?"
Wow, I was getting ready to make my first mono-green deck helmed by Hatsune Miku (Azusa, Lost But Seeking) in preparation for the Secret lair drop. As an Azorius purist, thanks a bunch for this convenient upload!
"So Nylea..... is a GOD... Where in her art is TOWERING over the TREES.... with a BOW, pointed at the SKY........... she doesn't have REACH." That killed me...
Timmy sized insight here. Thank you! I just swapped out 8 cards out of my Goreclaw deck and the deck flows so much better. This episode really made me think about my ramp. Cultivate, Kodama's Reach etc. have always been an auto include, but they may not always be what the deck wants. Great to hear from 2 creature heavy pro's. Really big help!!
about green ramp: You can get a surprising amount of mana by choosing some of the enchantment ramp and untapping lands. Arixmethes is my deck built around this but you can really slide the package into any deck. Instead of just dumping more lands onto the field, you can enchant stuff and then untap it, getting more mileage out of your ramp spells.
As a person who had built a mono green, two Simic, one Golgari, two Jund, and a Naya deck in two years; this was so so helpful in answering the ways to use the best types of green especially for ramp and removal which I’ve struggled to nail down. Thank you so much! 💖
Just watching now and hearing you guys say "What are you going to do with 30 mana?" And I am just here with my new Omnath Locus of Mana commander deck! Great video as always
Just a clarification at about 42:00 cultivate and kodama’s reach are 100% ramp but also fixing. It puts a land into play that you otherwise would not have been able to do so it is ramp.
I love these kinds of videos. It helps me with my deck building so much and turns my low power decks into high power decks just by understanding the color better
im sure shes been here for years at this point and im bafflingly behind the times but i gotta say rachel has been a FANTASTIC addition to this channel. sometimes you just find the absolute perfect individual to fill a big role and this is what that looks like. wish i could consume more of this content on a regular basis than i currently can but i wish everyone behind the CZ the best. thanks for doing all you do
Just wanted to say, I won a game last night thanks to this video. Took out 3 lands and some non-creature ramp from my mono green deck for some mana dorks, 1-cost ramp auras, and duskwatch recruiter. I was about to lose, but pumped a bunch of mana into duskwatch as a last-ditch effort and managed to find a Bane of Progress that cleared out the enchantments that were stopping my army of big creatures. Thank you Rachel and Brian!
I did not know about Duskwatch Recruiter until this video, but I super excited to try it out. I am glad to hear a ringing endorsement from someone else as well! Though I do not look forward to tracking when exactly it flips lol.
40:10 Exploration is SUPER important in my Thirteenth Doctor deck. I run The Thirteenth Doctor with Yasmin as the commanders and I have a ton of impulse draw effects so I can cast things from exile rather than my hand to get paradox triggers, but I always end up impulse drawing a lot of lands or I'll need to dig through lands when I have The Reality Chip out and attached to a creature, so being able to play those extra lands is really helpful to get them out of the way or make sure they don't go to waste when they are impulse drawn, and all that extra mana is nice too XD
It took me 2 weeks to get through this episode but thank you! Gargos is my dude and I've had a few iterations, came away from this episode with options for the top of your library and you dont have to answer everything! Cheers!
Like Kogla, Silverback Elder is undervalued. He's saved my bacon many times. Nissa, Ascended Animist was the first planeswalker card I unlocked in arena and I've put it in all my green decks since. Fantastic card.
The only mono green deck I have been supper excited to build is Runadi , behemoth caller cast big creatures in Magic’s history and give them haste to attack immediately!
Kibblers reasoning for the exploration in Samut is mine with those effects in my Annie flash and Faldorn decks because you keep Impulsing lands and I hate wasting all that free real estate
Kibler was the inspiration for me building my Vorosh deck. It’s got green and uses +1/+1 counters to smash face. I guess in a way it’s my take and way of paying homage to his Rith deck. He’s plays a style very similar to me. I just love playing big things and smashing face!
Beyond the type of ramp it's also a frequently overlooked concept to consider the timing of your ramp. If you have a 4 cost Commander, for example, it's more important to play 2 cost ramp than 3 cost ramp with upside like Kodama's Reach/Cultivate. A note with Apex Altisaur is just that giving it Indestructible does make it a full boardwipe. Also don't forget the value of Deathtouch especially in combination with bite spells or something sneaky like Viridian Longbow.
I would love to see one of these videos for each color with a prominent player of that color. As a beginner I get to see nuances and cards I haven’t seen since I jumped straight into playing multi-color decks. Thanks for the video!
I've always been inclined to play green, 60-card or commander. Despite that, I have stuff to take away from this episode. Thank you so much for the master class!
Biophagus is *such* a great dork, which synergizes *so* well with other dorks like Incubation Druid, Kami of Whispered Hopes, Viridian Joiner, even Selvala and Fanatic of Rhonas to a lesser extent. Absolutely love that card. I keep hoping for another near-clone of him, even if it has to be a 3-drop that also does something else. And play your Harmonize!
Bristy bill is so OP a whole lot of land draw and enchantments to play more land a turn and from the top of library. was doubling the tokens 3 times a turn got to 1158/1158 in very short amount of time
I am a big green player myself; majority of my decks have green in them. it normally is a major support color or used for ramping really hard. I do agree Utopia Sprawl, Wild Growth and Fertile ground (that wasn't talked about it) are great, but utilizing creatures like Arbor Elf, Voyaging Satyr, and most recently Potent Tracker, etc. Combining these things really makes for some broken ramp, just arbor elf and wild growth is 4 mana on turn 2. This is also nice when you are playing effects like collector ouphe or stony silence to really put you ahead.
I live this color breakdown series, will there be one for colorless decks? I know they’re more niche but it’d be interesting to see if there were any insights the command zone could share about things outside the Color pie.
Thank you!!! I really needed this video! i just discovered im a green mage. and this was very helpful. I now know why i am always the archenemy and why people keep freaking out whenever i do stuff thank you. I have an issue with red whenever i try to add red or make a R/G deck i take it apart instantly. I know some of it has do with me not liking any of the red/green commanders, I dont see any effect that i want in the command zone or to build around. I feel wrong playing red overall and dont know why.
I am a green player. Out of my 20 decks 14 include green (4 are mono green). One of my best moments was when I won a war on the stack against a Talarand player (me on Gargos). I also have a mono green mill deck :3
I watched this episode on Thursday. It got me rev'd up to play my mono-Green Azusa deck that night at Commander Night at the LGS. I got a solid opening hand and took off by turn 2 was arch-enemy. By turn 4 I was dominating but also top-decking. I kept hearing Brian say, "There's no tricks, all my cards are on the table and it's obvious what I'm doing. Now, stop me if you can." I won on turn 7.
I'm happy to hear some of my thoughts behind my Toski weenies are correct. I use death touch sub theme in order to connect, then play more lands which plays more creatures, snowballing out of control until I wrap it up with a finisher
Of my favorite decks to play--with one being Selesnya (Rhys the Redeemed) and the other Gruul (Radha, Heart of Keld)--the problem I usually encounter is what I'm trying to do with both can be seen a mile away.
Loved the show! Such great wisdom and knowledge! surprised no mention of poison/toxic/infect? I thought it was predominantly/historically a green-driven mechanic.
Where I've found fogs to be most effective isn't defensively, but offensively. They'll let you go all in on an attack, and not worry about the crackback. They've won me a lot of games with Ruxa, Patient Professor
I made an ottowara proxy, full art of laputa from castle in the sky, it’s for a Miyazaki Jodah archmage eternal wubrg goodstuff deck as a home for pet cards in the form of proxies. There’s stuff from anything from ponyo to wind rises. It has a lot of my favorite big green creatures in it. Scute swarm is the dust sprites from spirited away, giant adaphage is an ohmu from nausicca and mowu is Moro, the wolf from princess Mononoke.
I used to run Roaring Earth in my budget Ashaya deck. I never cast it, i ONLY used it for the channel ability (to give a creature haste, all my creatures being lands because of Ashaya)
Biggest takeaway from this episode: fangren marauder is green's teferi's protection, basically. Thanks Rachel ;) Also: Kibler playing Gruul so much because he is green/red color blind is just hilarious :D such a nice touch. Hes like destined, a higher calling to Gruul. Chosen by xenagos. REVEL
"I hope my opponent doesn't have Moat." Haha. What a way to look at it. Green is my favorite color, especially Simic. Kibler really opened my eyes, you don't have a answer for everything. It's about playing to your strengths and just try to win faster.
Great episode guys. My favourite thing about green is that the math in combat is simpler. If all my creatures trample you can just ask what's your total toughness. Or you can ask how many creatures do you have. And it just makes deciding how much power you need for this wave of attackers easy. Timmy don't like thinky. The part about removal was interesting and I like that Brian said fight spells are actually pretty reliable if you want to use them. But I think I agree with the overall sentiment of but why would you bother. I've always thought of every creature as a removal spell because they attack and block and win all thier fights and if they aren't doing that they're too small. The only removal I really look for in my stompy decks are artifact enchantment wraths and I've never felt over-encumbered even with a dozen of those, because they make the game come down to who has more and bigger creatures, which is exactly the sort of game a stompy deck wants. And in line with that, any decks looping stuff in the hand or grave, or upticking planeswalkers, or building some strange combo engine, are going to become unstoppable. So mostly black and blue, and if there's no other information available and you have to focus your attacks, those are often high priority targets. I'm surprised Brian didn't mention X spells, or maybe I missed it, but any sort of X spell in a green players hands is just bananas. It sort of doesn't matter what it does because X is just massive. I'm having a blast in standard right now with a hasty x cost hydra
Stoked Wurms finally got some respect put on them. By far my favorite creature type. Also, super happy to see Brian builds Gruul decks like I build Rakdos decks
My Rage Omnath follows a lot of this. 63 lands. Everything else helps play more lands every turn. The only interaction is a couple sac outlets for those elementals to throw 3 damage around.
I agree whole heartedly with the concept of "you kill my threat, I play another threat." I have been playing green since beta. My favorite part of green is of course the creatures, but the enchantments green can sport are some of the most unique. From staples like doubling season, wild growth, parallel lives, rancor, tribute to the world tree, concordant crossroads, garruk's uprising, hardened scales, to lesser known ones like lurking predators, wild pair, tornado, zendikar resurgent and elemental bond to color hate cards against blue and black like carpet of flowers, asceticism, or my favorite nature's wrath. Then there is my favorite anti removal/Voltron card out there, dense foliage. Throw in feed the pack with the plethora of creatures whose power and toughness are equal to the number of creatures you control. There are just so many powerful and unique green enchantments.
As an add-on for green wraths, there's aforementioned Ezuri's predation, various Hurricane and similar cards for flyers, mass enchantment removal like back to nature, and monstrous onslaught for getting a lot of little things (it's not great, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel)
One big thing they missed at the end when discussing how green can be “too strong” for casual is that casual/lower power levels also tend to play less interaction as a whole (not just stack), and y’all put it perfectly when you said “green needs things to do things”. It’s a snowball effect that can be shut down more easily in higher power levels because people are more ready to interact or wipe the board
I am rebuilding my first commander deck from 10 years ago. Hell yeah, it was mano green elves. Mana dorks and tokens into giant trample creatures! Here are 20 trample elves coming right for you.💚
I think having the mindset of being ok with getting got is big and changes your play and deck building a lot. When I first got into commander I wanted all my decks to have an answer for everything and now if I’m playing rats and you got one 4/4 angel you win and I just shuffle up and play a new game lol. Sometimes they have the thing that beats you and either the other players stop it or they get the win lol.
Green's main pitfall: Cyclonic Rift. I say this because it is a game winning spell that green can never interact with. It also perfectly represents how sweepers can kneecap green. Furthermore, Cyclonic rift cannot be stopped with Heroic Intervention like most others. Well... except Farewell, another problem card. With cyclonic rift you end up with all your mana dorks in hand and if you have no haste it will take at least a turn before you can attack in. Additionally, if someone is not planning to win through combat then the game is slowed down and you are unequipped to deal with whatever combo, aristocrat, spell slinger win they have been working on. As a green mage, I really appreciated this episode and Brian's insights. I think I have been playing against higher power level decks, so I am all too familiar with it's weaknesses. It reassured me that there is not much you really can do about interacting with problematic spells or permanents, and the best solution is to remove that player by building an efficient and capable deck. The biggest problem with playing green is just how on the board and sorcery speed green can be. People will interpret you as the biggest threat, so I think it can be helpful to remind people of the more stealthy powerful things other players are doing. Helping people know what else is problematic can help them direct their removal at other threats or combos. Green is really weak to combos. It's a bit political, but I would also say it's also important being able to admit when you are the problem and enjoy that part of playing green. I always enjoy seeing how a table comes together to deal with Blightsteel Colossus when I play it. Talking about green's weakness to removal, I think the biggest thing I have been doing to improve my green decks is trying to incorporate more card draw and a sustainable game plan. Green's strength of building a board that invokes fear is very quickly squashed by sweepers, so it's important to build with this in mind. If you still have a bunch of cards in hand after a sweeper you will not be nearly as sad. Card draw is not the only solution to deal with sweepers. I have been playing more land ramp to get around losing all my mana dorks if someone sweeps the board. My favorite part of this episode is how you talked about overrun effects, and how they help dodge green's main problem of being too on board. I think my next commander deck I am going to try and build will have a focus on using overrun effects to have a more surprising win that avoids some of the feel bads of playing readily apparent threats and seeing them removed. I have a super fast elf deck that run's Craterhoof as a finisher but I want to try making a more run of the mill green deck that tries to use other overruns to win. I don't want to buy another craterhoof it's so expensive lol. Also this video had some super solid card suggestions! Kogla and the Nissa planeswalker are two that I agreed are underrated. I didn't know about Duskwatch Recruiter and I am going to have to try it out as soon as possible!
Honestly my favorite thing about Green is ramping. If its by land ramping like your Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Three Visits & Nature's Lore or your mana dorks like Elvish Mystic and Llanowar Elves. I'm not a big Green mage myself, but I do like playing it. Im currently working on a couple Gruul decks, OG Jolene & Chishiro, and I struggle with like card draw in that color pairing. Especially when they're 2 different Gruul decks. Ramping is good, but I want card draw in them. Because I used to run stuff like Harmonize in my Green decks. Just trying to look for better options
Green mages! What’s your favorite thing about playing green? Did we miss any of the color’s pitfalls? What’s your favorite tech to shore up those weaknesses and pilot your green decks to victory?
I've got enough to think about throughout the day. When I play magic I just wanna turn off my brain and stomp.
I’m a green mage through and through and my favorite deck by far is my OG Ghalta Good stuff deck and it’s always a blast!
I just love playing big creatures and swinging at opponents. I play lands, draw more cards, and usually put the table on notice.
as a mono blue spell caster this video was hard to even open.
Why I’m a green mage is A: the number of ways you can build your deck and still have complete bombshell staples available to you (counters, landfall, stompy, etc.). I’ve already built mono green in each of these styles (bristly bill for counters, Titania, nature’s force for landfall, and Ojer Kaslem for stompy), and each style just gets out of pocket wayyy too fast. Secondly, nothing makes me happier than playing a card that everyone either oohs and ahha at, or makes them go “oh crap”.
Very nice of the Command Zone to bring Kyle Hill back as a host for another episode!
Budget, budget Chris Hemsworth.
Chris Hemsworthless
I honestly thought they did the kyle hill joke with the thumbnail, then I realised.
Brian Kibler is the greatest creature deck builder of all time, and the last time he didn't play green in a pro tour or GP he was patient 0 for getting Jace, the Mind Sculptor banned
🐐🐐🐐
You mean Kyle hill
Jeez first I watched the commander at home with JLK and voxy and now kibler is back? This is a good day for my magic brain
Good to see Kyle back on, not only a science educator but an MTG one too.
Finally! Creator and host of Tolarian Community College Brian, “The Professor”!!!! Is on the command zone podcast!
That’s obviously Kyle Hill
No, it's discount Kyle Hill.
I look forward to his mono-green merfolk deck tech 😀
Does this guy have credentials to be teaching us?
He got that street cred fo sho
Well yeah! This is bargain bin, award-winning science communicator Kyle Hill!
Just casual player, He is in MTG Hall of Fame. No big deal
Yeah what does that guy know about ANYTHING?!
I think he plays hearthstone
Thank you Kibler you just helped me improve so many decks. I’m a green player through and through and there is so much I just learned from this. The bit about just making sure what I’m doing works instead of worrying about how to remove everybody else’s stuff makes so much sense. Great video!
I take a year or two off from Kibler at a time, and every time I see him pop up he has grown more and more glorious, luscious, and majestic. He has not even reached his final form.
He's like a Green Delver of Secrets, but with hair.
I can't wait to learn about green. Been loving this series and have found it a very entertaining and educational form to learn this game. Love the content guys. We can tell yall love this community and game 😁
Brian Kibler is an absolute treasure
Why is award winning science educator Kyle Hill teaching us how to play green and not Artifacts or Jeskei. Or something real like effects of radiation this is quite far out his wheel house
YES!!! You HAD to get Brian for the green one!
The professor better be there to explain blue. 😉
Feel like unless it is merfolk, jlk is better for blue and explaining card advantage
JLK *and* Prof together would certainly be nice.
It’s almost certainly going to be JLK
JLK should be the one explaining blue 100%
How often do they do these? Feels like there has been a massive gap
6:58 At GP Minneapolis in, like, 2011, I asked BK to sign my play set of Knights of the Reliquary that I played in my Abzan Loam Legacy deck (as KoR is my favorite card of all time, too). He agreed, but just as I was pulling them out, he got pulled away. Oh well, he was at least able to sign my play mat as a consolation. 😂
Well imma grab a notepad and a pen real quick for this one
Oh wow, this was the episode of this series I was most looking forward to, but never would’ve guessed you would get the Brian “Brian Kibler” Kibler from Brian Kibler Gaming to do it!
I love this series of how to play Color. I cannot wait until blue comes out.
That meme of the two ends of a bell curve being the same, one end is a new player saying "this card gains me so much life, how can I lose?" and the other end is Kibler saying "this card gains you so much life, how can I lose?"
Wow, I was getting ready to make my first mono-green deck helmed by Hatsune Miku (Azusa, Lost But Seeking) in preparation for the Secret lair drop.
As an Azorius purist, thanks a bunch for this convenient upload!
"So Nylea..... is a GOD... Where in her art is TOWERING over the TREES.... with a BOW, pointed at the SKY........... she doesn't have REACH."
That killed me...
Timmy sized insight here. Thank you! I just swapped out 8 cards out of my Goreclaw deck and the deck flows so much better. This episode really made me think about my ramp. Cultivate, Kodama's Reach etc. have always been an auto include, but they may not always be what the deck wants. Great to hear from 2 creature heavy pro's. Really big help!!
about green ramp: You can get a surprising amount of mana by choosing some of the enchantment ramp and untapping lands. Arixmethes is my deck built around this but you can really slide the package into any deck. Instead of just dumping more lands onto the field, you can enchant stuff and then untap it, getting more mileage out of your ramp spells.
Are we sure it's green? It might be Red. Love ya Kibler.
I could listen to Brian talk concepts and strategy all day long
As a person who had built a mono green, two Simic, one Golgari, two Jund, and a Naya deck in two years; this was so so helpful in answering the ways to use the best types of green especially for ramp and removal which I’ve struggled to nail down. Thank you so much! 💖
Just watching now and hearing you guys say "What are you going to do with 30 mana?" And I am just here with my new Omnath Locus of Mana commander deck! Great video as always
Just a clarification at about 42:00 cultivate and kodama’s reach are 100% ramp but also fixing. It puts a land into play that you otherwise would not have been able to do so it is ramp.
I love these kinds of videos. It helps me with my deck building so much and turns my low power decks into high power decks just by understanding the color better
A truly great deck builder who is teaching and preaching so much that I totally agree with. Commander is better Kibler brewing and enjoying himself.
im sure shes been here for years at this point and im bafflingly behind the times but i gotta say rachel has been a FANTASTIC addition to this channel. sometimes you just find the absolute perfect individual to fill a big role and this is what that looks like. wish i could consume more of this content on a regular basis than i currently can but i wish everyone behind the CZ the best. thanks for doing all you do
Just wanted to say, I won a game last night thanks to this video. Took out 3 lands and some non-creature ramp from my mono green deck for some mana dorks, 1-cost ramp auras, and duskwatch recruiter.
I was about to lose, but pumped a bunch of mana into duskwatch as a last-ditch effort and managed to find a Bane of Progress that cleared out the enchantments that were stopping my army of big creatures. Thank you Rachel and Brian!
I did not know about Duskwatch Recruiter until this video, but I super excited to try it out. I am glad to hear a ringing endorsement from someone else as well! Though I do not look forward to tracking when exactly it flips lol.
Yes! So happy to see this. I absolutely loved the Black video with Ladee Danger and this one did not disappoint. Can't wait for the rest of the cycle!
40:10 Exploration is SUPER important in my Thirteenth Doctor deck. I run The Thirteenth Doctor with Yasmin as the commanders and I have a ton of impulse draw effects so I can cast things from exile rather than my hand to get paradox triggers, but I always end up impulse drawing a lot of lands or I'll need to dig through lands when I have The Reality Chip out and attached to a creature, so being able to play those extra lands is really helpful to get them out of the way or make sure they don't go to waste when they are impulse drawn, and all that extra mana is nice too XD
The episode I've been waiting for!!! 🌳🌳🌳
It took me 2 weeks to get through this episode but thank you! Gargos is my dude and I've had a few iterations, came away from this episode with options for the top of your library and you dont have to answer everything! Cheers!
Like Kogla, Silverback Elder is undervalued. He's saved my bacon many times.
Nissa, Ascended Animist was the first planeswalker card I unlocked in arena and I've put it in all my green decks since. Fantastic card.
Yeeeeesssssss. Been waiting for the green episode and can't believe it's Kibler
This was really inspiring, thanks CZ
Glad you enjoyed it!
This explains why I like so many of Brian's decks. I, too, am a green player at heart.
Its THE Kibler !
good to see you on the show big guy, love your content
The only mono green deck I have been supper excited to build is Runadi , behemoth caller cast big creatures in Magic’s history and give them haste to attack immediately!
I endorse this mono green commander lol
Kibblers reasoning for the exploration in Samut is mine with those effects in my Annie flash and Faldorn decks because you keep Impulsing lands and I hate wasting all that free real estate
Kibler was the inspiration for me building my Vorosh deck. It’s got green and uses +1/+1 counters to smash face. I guess in a way it’s my take and way of paying homage to his Rith deck. He’s plays a style very similar to me. I just love playing big things and smashing face!
Beyond the type of ramp it's also a frequently overlooked concept to consider the timing of your ramp. If you have a 4 cost Commander, for example, it's more important to play 2 cost ramp than 3 cost ramp with upside like Kodama's Reach/Cultivate.
A note with Apex Altisaur is just that giving it Indestructible does make it a full boardwipe. Also don't forget the value of Deathtouch especially in combination with bite spells or something sneaky like Viridian Longbow.
I love these How To Play each color videos. I've learned so much from them. Looking forward to Blue
I would love to see one of these videos for each color with a prominent player of that color. As a beginner I get to see nuances and cards I haven’t seen since I jumped straight into playing multi-color decks. Thanks for the video!
We have episodes on red (Jimmy), white (Rachel), and black (Ladee Danger). Only blue is left!
My favorite commander deck to play, and is what got me into EDH, is Omnath, Locus of Mana. It is the epitome of all that is great about Green.
I've always been inclined to play green, 60-card or commander. Despite that, I have stuff to take away from this episode.
Thank you so much for the master class!
Biophagus is *such* a great dork, which synergizes *so* well with other dorks like Incubation Druid, Kami of Whispered Hopes, Viridian Joiner, even Selvala and Fanatic of Rhonas to a lesser extent.
Absolutely love that card. I keep hoping for another near-clone of him, even if it has to be a 3-drop that also does something else.
And play your Harmonize!
Bristy bill is so OP a whole lot of land draw and enchantments to play more land a turn and from the top of library. was doubling the tokens 3 times a turn got to 1158/1158 in very short amount of time
I am a big green player myself; majority of my decks have green in them. it normally is a major support color or used for ramping really hard. I do agree Utopia Sprawl, Wild Growth and Fertile ground (that wasn't talked about it) are great, but utilizing creatures like Arbor Elf, Voyaging Satyr, and most recently Potent Tracker, etc. Combining these things really makes for some broken ramp, just arbor elf and wild growth is 4 mana on turn 2. This is also nice when you are playing effects like collector ouphe or stony silence to really put you ahead.
I'm a simple man. I see Kibler, I click Kibler.
Haven’t even watched it yet, but this is probably my favorite episode ever
Love the Psyduck hat. How is Rachel so effortlessly freaking cool!?! 🥹
"Any cards that answer their own questions are generally good" - I've never heard it phrased like this but its so succinct.
Thanks to Mr.Kibler . Thanks to the Command Zone .
rachel is a great host. she brightens the guest and keeps them on topic. spectacular.
One of my favorites is I run Ashaya as my commander and having scute swarm. Then casting last march of the ents when ashaya is 15+ power/toughness.
I live this color breakdown series, will there be one for colorless decks? I know they’re more niche but it’d be interesting to see if there were any insights the command zone could share about things outside the Color pie.
Brian is my hero!
Mono green can turn all your opponent's lands into creatures to punish the board wipers... let there be salt!
Thank you!!! I really needed this video! i just discovered im a green mage. and this was very helpful. I now know why i am always the archenemy and why people keep freaking out whenever i do stuff thank you. I have an issue with red whenever i try to add red or make a R/G deck i take it apart instantly. I know some of it has do with me not liking any of the red/green commanders, I dont see any effect that i want in the command zone or to build around. I feel wrong playing red overall and dont know why.
Great video!
One of the best things of playing green... Golgari art is AMAZING.
I am a green player. Out of my 20 decks 14 include green (4 are mono green).
One of my best moments was when I won a war on the stack against a Talarand player (me on Gargos).
I also have a mono green mill deck :3
I watched this episode on Thursday. It got me rev'd up to play my mono-Green Azusa deck that night at Commander Night at the LGS. I got a solid opening hand and took off by turn 2 was arch-enemy. By turn 4 I was dominating but also top-decking. I kept hearing Brian say, "There's no tricks, all my cards are on the table and it's obvious what I'm doing. Now, stop me if you can." I won on turn 7.
After the color tutorials, I wonder if they’ll do archetype tutorials like artifacts or aristocrats for example. These are a great listen
Good idea
Fantastic video! I hope you do this for all the colors!
I'm happy to hear some of my thoughts behind my Toski weenies are correct. I use death touch sub theme in order to connect, then play more lands which plays more creatures, snowballing out of control until I wrap it up with a finisher
Trample is my favourite keyword. It’s so good. So happy Kibler was here to talk Green
Green is def the most beginner friendly colour
Of my favorite decks to play--with one being Selesnya (Rhys the Redeemed) and the other Gruul (Radha, Heart of Keld)--the problem I usually encounter is what I'm trying to do with both can be seen a mile away.
PRO GREEN PLAYER: "At one point my brain shuts down"
ME: *Green Intensifies*
Loved the show! Such great wisdom and knowledge! surprised no mention of poison/toxic/infect? I thought it was predominantly/historically a green-driven mechanic.
Where I've found fogs to be most effective isn't defensively, but offensively. They'll let you go all in on an attack, and not worry about the crackback. They've won me a lot of games with Ruxa, Patient Professor
Is that Kyle Hill?!?!? Crazy
Board wipe? Hurricane, removals i use acidic slime, mold shambler. Enchantment, tranquility. Haste? Use instill energy
I made an ottowara proxy, full art of laputa from castle in the sky, it’s for a Miyazaki Jodah archmage eternal wubrg goodstuff deck as a home for pet cards in the form of proxies. There’s stuff from anything from ponyo to wind rises. It has a lot of my favorite big green creatures in it. Scute swarm is the dust sprites from spirited away, giant adaphage is an ohmu from nausicca and mowu is Moro, the wolf from princess Mononoke.
I used to run Roaring Earth in my budget Ashaya deck. I never cast it, i ONLY used it for the channel ability (to give a creature haste, all my creatures being lands because of Ashaya)
Biggest takeaway from this episode: fangren marauder is green's teferi's protection, basically. Thanks Rachel ;)
Also: Kibler playing Gruul so much because he is green/red color blind is just hilarious :D such a nice touch. Hes like destined, a higher calling to Gruul. Chosen by xenagos. REVEL
"I hope my opponent doesn't have Moat." Haha. What a way to look at it. Green is my favorite color, especially Simic. Kibler really opened my eyes, you don't have a answer for everything. It's about playing to your strengths and just try to win faster.
Great episode guys. My favourite thing about green is that the math in combat is simpler. If all my creatures trample you can just ask what's your total toughness. Or you can ask how many creatures do you have. And it just makes deciding how much power you need for this wave of attackers easy. Timmy don't like thinky. The part about removal was interesting and I like that Brian said fight spells are actually pretty reliable if you want to use them. But I think I agree with the overall sentiment of but why would you bother. I've always thought of every creature as a removal spell because they attack and block and win all thier fights and if they aren't doing that they're too small. The only removal I really look for in my stompy decks are artifact enchantment wraths and I've never felt over-encumbered even with a dozen of those, because they make the game come down to who has more and bigger creatures, which is exactly the sort of game a stompy deck wants. And in line with that, any decks looping stuff in the hand or grave, or upticking planeswalkers, or building some strange combo engine, are going to become unstoppable. So mostly black and blue, and if there's no other information available and you have to focus your attacks, those are often high priority targets. I'm surprised Brian didn't mention X spells, or maybe I missed it, but any sort of X spell in a green players hands is just bananas. It sort of doesn't matter what it does because X is just massive. I'm having a blast in standard right now with a hasty x cost hydra
Stoked Wurms finally got some respect put on them. By far my favorite creature type.
Also, super happy to see Brian builds Gruul decks like I build Rakdos decks
Is that Kyle hill?
My Rage Omnath follows a lot of this. 63 lands. Everything else helps play more lands every turn.
The only interaction is a couple sac outlets for those elementals to throw 3 damage around.
I love BK. His take on the game is one of my personal favorites
Salute my fellow long haired king
I agree whole heartedly with the concept of "you kill my threat, I play another threat." I have been playing green since beta. My favorite part of green is of course the creatures, but the enchantments green can sport are some of the most unique. From staples like doubling season, wild growth, parallel lives, rancor, tribute to the world tree, concordant crossroads, garruk's uprising, hardened scales, to lesser known ones like lurking predators, wild pair, tornado, zendikar resurgent and elemental bond to color hate cards against blue and black like carpet of flowers, asceticism, or my favorite nature's wrath. Then there is my favorite anti removal/Voltron card out there, dense foliage. Throw in feed the pack with the plethora of creatures whose power and toughness are equal to the number of creatures you control. There are just so many powerful and unique green enchantments.
As a mana green player this gave me such a good insight into where I'm going wrong.
Putting together a dual color Green/Magenta right now....love the music at the end
As an add-on for green wraths, there's aforementioned Ezuri's predation, various Hurricane and similar cards for flyers, mass enchantment removal like back to nature, and monstrous onslaught for getting a lot of little things (it's not great, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel)
Bruh.. I DONT EVEN PLAY COMMANDER... But mah goodness its Brian Kibler.. Imma watch the vid till the end... Lez go!
I was getting curious when this series would continue
One big thing they missed at the end when discussing how green can be “too strong” for casual is that casual/lower power levels also tend to play less interaction as a whole (not just stack), and y’all put it perfectly when you said “green needs things to do things”. It’s a snowball effect that can be shut down more easily in higher power levels because people are more ready to interact or wipe the board
I'm a big fan of mono decks, and at the moment im loving my Mono Green Radagat the Brown deck!
I am rebuilding my first commander deck from 10 years ago. Hell yeah, it was mano green elves. Mana dorks and tokens into giant trample creatures! Here are 20 trample elves coming right for you.💚
I WAS WATCHING THE WHITE AND RED ONES EARLIER THIS WEEK AND I WANTED A GREEN EPISODE SO BAD
I think having the mindset of being ok with getting got is big and changes your play and deck building a lot. When I first got into commander I wanted all my decks to have an answer for everything and now if I’m playing rats and you got one 4/4 angel you win and I just shuffle up and play a new game lol. Sometimes they have the thing that beats you and either the other players stop it or they get the win lol.
Love Kibler and this series! 😊
Can you do Blue next? Also, would that be Josh's episode? Who else could it be 🤔
Looking forward to the blue episode!! Love this series and this was a good episode
Green's main pitfall: Cyclonic Rift. I say this because it is a game winning spell that green can never interact with. It also perfectly represents how sweepers can kneecap green. Furthermore, Cyclonic rift cannot be stopped with Heroic Intervention like most others. Well... except Farewell, another problem card. With cyclonic rift you end up with all your mana dorks in hand and if you have no haste it will take at least a turn before you can attack in. Additionally, if someone is not planning to win through combat then the game is slowed down and you are unequipped to deal with whatever combo, aristocrat, spell slinger win they have been working on.
As a green mage, I really appreciated this episode and Brian's insights. I think I have been playing against higher power level decks, so I am all too familiar with it's weaknesses. It reassured me that there is not much you really can do about interacting with problematic spells or permanents, and the best solution is to remove that player by building an efficient and capable deck. The biggest problem with playing green is just how on the board and sorcery speed green can be. People will interpret you as the biggest threat, so I think it can be helpful to remind people of the more stealthy powerful things other players are doing. Helping people know what else is problematic can help them direct their removal at other threats or combos. Green is really weak to combos. It's a bit political, but I would also say it's also important being able to admit when you are the problem and enjoy that part of playing green. I always enjoy seeing how a table comes together to deal with Blightsteel Colossus when I play it. Talking about green's weakness to removal, I think the biggest thing I have been doing to improve my green decks is trying to incorporate more card draw and a sustainable game plan. Green's strength of building a board that invokes fear is very quickly squashed by sweepers, so it's important to build with this in mind. If you still have a bunch of cards in hand after a sweeper you will not be nearly as sad. Card draw is not the only solution to deal with sweepers. I have been playing more land ramp to get around losing all my mana dorks if someone sweeps the board.
My favorite part of this episode is how you talked about overrun effects, and how they help dodge green's main problem of being too on board. I think my next commander deck I am going to try and build will have a focus on using overrun effects to have a more surprising win that avoids some of the feel bads of playing readily apparent threats and seeing them removed. I have a super fast elf deck that run's Craterhoof as a finisher but I want to try making a more run of the mill green deck that tries to use other overruns to win. I don't want to buy another craterhoof it's so expensive lol.
Also this video had some super solid card suggestions! Kogla and the Nissa planeswalker are two that I agreed are underrated. I didn't know about Duskwatch Recruiter and I am going to have to try it out as soon as possible!
Honestly my favorite thing about Green is ramping. If its by land ramping like your Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Three Visits & Nature's Lore or your mana dorks like Elvish Mystic and Llanowar Elves. I'm not a big Green mage myself, but I do like playing it. Im currently working on a couple Gruul decks, OG Jolene & Chishiro, and I struggle with like card draw in that color pairing. Especially when they're 2 different Gruul decks. Ramping is good, but I want card draw in them. Because I used to run stuff like Harmonize in my Green decks. Just trying to look for better options
"Its big enough." Amen 😂