Cryo's Corner

During MKM preview season, green was widely viewed as a “tier 2” color, likely around par with blue and black but beneath white and red. While the other color evaluations were more or less correct, many players have recognized green-centered decks as one of the most reliable and powerful archetypes. So, what did we miss? Why is it easy being green for once?

Splashing Success

All it takes is reading the commons and skimming the noncommons to know green is very interested in splashing this set. Nervous Gardener, Topiary Panther, and They Went This Way make for a whopping three commons that search for lands of any type (green can be lucky to get one), and with so many two-color uncommons and rares thanks to the Ravnica setting, it was inevitable that quite a few would be powerful enough to stretch your manabase. While splashing was a certainty, we didn’t recognize how much of an advantage it would put green over other colors. The case tends to be that there just aren’t that many cards worth splashing, the fixing is poor, or the power bump isn’t worth the lowered consistency against coherent two-color decks. All three are untrue in MKM. The multicolor cards are generically good, Nervous Gardener and Topiary Panther are synergistic within green, and the other colors are hard to draft when contested (even white decks can be anemic if Novice Inspector, Inside Source, and Dog Walker aren’t forthcoming).

Overwhelming Evidence

I rolled my eyes when I first saw collect evidence, and I’m sure I’m not alone. We’ve just come from LCI, whose descend mechanic ate up a ton of set space despite being relatively weak. Green cards have a nasty habit of requiring deckbuilding work to be on-par with other colors and not downright unplayable. The misevaluation here is that evidence just works. Between seeded designs like the split cycle, Topiary Panther, and Rubblebelt Maverick and the set-inherent play pattern of trading (more on this in the next point,), this is the first time the designer assertation that doomed undergrowth, “cards naturally find their way to the graveyard,” is absolutely true. It doesn’t hurt that evidence only cares about mana value, not card type, giving you much greater flexibility in building and play.

Get a Load of Disguise

I often rag on green for being the color of creatures, yet suffering from the most conservatively statted commons set after set. As it turns out, 1/3 reach for 2 and 3/3 investigate for 4 get a lot more reasonable when every deck has to play 3-mana 2/2s. Not only is a 4/4 vigilant Loxodon practically unblockable, throwing down a Topiary Panther or flipping a big disguise creature is a constant anxiety for the opponent. Much like KLR, the best showing for limited green on Arena, the average board state just can’t absorb raw stats. Even on the early turns where haymakers have yet to show, green is thrilled to get into combat and trade creatures. With Vitu-Ghazi Inspector or Sample Collector, any dead creature is just making your next creature better. That’s exactly the sort of strategy green needs. Disguise is even an indirect boon for Bite Down on Crime, a bit of a laughing stock in preview season. With ward 2, a bite effect is that much harder to punish, and mana value 4 is perfect for most strong evidence collectors. MKM feels like the first set to realize ward’s gameplay potential since the keyword’s debut almost three years ago, giving green some security in a landscape of brutally efficient interaction. It’s just a bit frustrating that it took giving every color access to the effect.

Common Denominator

As I alluded to earlier, green is pretty easy to draft. If we don’t even account for splashing, which opens your options way up, ten of its thirteen monocolor commons are useful to great (with Airtight Alibi, Pick Your Poison, and Slime Against Humanity excluded, though Alibi has its applications). At that point, it doesn’t matter much if green is contested; you’ll probably open something that makes your deck better. In a set where red, blue, and black commons languish in halfhearted synergy archetypes, green stands out with a self-contained and potent plan.

In retrospect, I think the MKM conversation was overdominated by a handful of absurd white and red commons. While my friend and I recognized green’s potential, we were just burned by LCI having busted-looking Jeskai cards that did, in fact, turn out busted. The conversation petered out once those cards got contested, leaving the “Jeskai format” impression solidified, even though green and black were perfectly draftable. This time, I wish we had given a bit more serious thought to what would happen once Novice Inspectors and Dog Walkers stopped flying around the table. In the future, I’ll be sure to think about week 3 as hard as week 1; that’s where legendary sets start to truly shine anyway.