I’m not here trying to convince you that Green is awesome in Zendikar draft, because it isn’t. But it is much better than people are giving it credit for, and if you know how to draft the color well, you are at a huge advantage over people who don’t. I’m not recommending that you go into a draft looking to draft Green, but if the color is open (as it so often is), look to capitalize on it.
I’ve found (unsurprisingly, I suppose) that drafting very aggressive and almost mono-Green decks is the best way to take advantage of the color being underdrafted. There are certainly other ways to profitably draft Green cards, but today I’m focusing specifically on the archetype that has been the most successful for me.
Here’s what I’ve found to be the key to drafting Green in this format: draft two drops. Draft lots and lots of two drops. Earth shattering, I know, since that’s also the key to drafting most any deck in this format, but that’s not how Green is most often drafted, so it needed to be said. You want to play a dude on turn two, you want to play a two drop on turn three (after all, the three drops are no better than the two drops), and you want to play two guys turn four. You don’t want a traditional mana curve; you want nothing but two mana creatures and spells that keep your dorks turning sideways every single turn.
Stop Picking bad cards
Grazing Gladehart*, Harrow, Oran-Rief Recluse, Mold Shambler, Territorial Baloth, and Vastwood Gorger all suck. You will be stuck playing some of these, but they aren’t going to be very good for you. Make sure you approach drafting the archetype with the mindset that these are all slot #22 quality. Obviously, you can draft decks where these cards are good, but the more focused you can make your deck on aggression, the worse these cards are, and the better your deck will be.
*Okay, so Gladehart is still pretty good, but I wanted to really get the point across that it is much worse than it is in your typical Green deck, and is not a premium common for you. The rest all actually do suck.
That leaves you with quite a problem: you aren’t interested in playing the vast majority of Green’s commons. Like I said, Green is not an awesome color, and its commons are incredibly shallow with regards to what you are looking for. If you are competing with other drafters for the few commons you do want, you are going to be in serious trouble. Fortunately, most Green drafters will prefer Grazing Gladeharts and Harrows to the cards you most want, so you won’t necessarily be competing with them despite sharing a color.
The only exciting Green commons are Oran-Rief Survivalist and Timbermaw Larva. At the second tier of cards you are looking for, you have Adventuring Gear, Nissa’s Chosen, Grazing Gladehart, and Vines of Vastwood, roughly in that order.
Survivalist
As Survivalist is the biggest draw to Green, you will often find yourself with multiples early on when in Green, and it will be rare to not end up with multiples by the end of the draft. While you aren’t exactly looking to draft an “Ally deck”, Allies are usually going to be a fairly strong sub-theme in Green decks due to Survivalist.
Stonework Puma is quite good. The three drops available to you are not very impressive, so it ends up filling a mostly empty spot on your curve. As just an off-color morph, it would not be much worse than a Grizzly Bear, and would often make the cut on those merits alone. Throw in blocking Intimidators, a highly relevant bonus, and you have a solid playable even with no other Allies. When it looks like you are heading towards a fairly heavy Ally theme, you should make picking up Pumas a priority. Your Survivalists will thank you.
How well the other colors complement the Ally theme is a big part of how well they complement Green as a whole. White brings nothing to the table in terms of common Allies, as you are an aggressive deck first and an Ally deck second. Blue offers the other best common Ally, Umara Raptor (man is that hard for me to type correctly), but it is both the only common Blue Ally, and a popular early pick, so you aren’t likely to collect all that many Allies in Blue. If you can get multiple Survivalists and Raptors, then of course by all means go crazy, just don’t go into Blue expecting reliable Survivalist support. Black also only has one common Ally, and Nimana Sell-Sword is no Raptor (but who what is?). Though it’s much easier to collect many Sell-Swords, it’s easy to end up glutted with four drops in Green/Black, and just another sizeable ground guy for four does a poor job of complementing your offerings in Green. Red is where you really want to be to maximize your Survivalists. You get two good Allies at common, Highland Beserker and Tuktuk Grunts, both of which are not high picks but are quite good for you (not to even mention the best pair of uncommon and rare Allies in Murasa Pyromancer and Kazuul Warlord). The more Survivalists you have, the more you want to be drafting Red.
Even outside of Allies, Red makes the best pairing for aggressive Green. What you most want out of your support color is removal, and while Black’s is better, Red’s is more what you are looking for: it all costs a single colored mana. It will also be more plentiful, as few drafters will want Magma Rift as much as you do. (This is not to say that it is a high pick for you, but just that you are reasonably happy playing it, whereas in most decks it’s not very good.)
Of course, the best complement to Green is often just more Green, as the other big draw to the color is Timbermaw Larva. Maximizing that one is much simpler: draft Green cards. When you’re in Green, you should be looking to play as many Forests as possible from very early on, with the expectation of picking up several Timbermaw Larva even before you have them. This manifests itself in more ways than just preferring Green cards to cards in other colors. For example, if you’re in Green, you want to have a mana base that easily casts turn two Nissa’s Chosen anyway, so you can rate the card almost as if it cost a Green and a colorless.
Adventuring Gear is awesome here. Remember, you want basically nothing but two drops and spells that keep your two drops profitably attacking. Gear curves out perfectly alongside two drops. It’s not just the turn one Gear, turn two guy, turn three equip plus two drop draw, though that is obviously insane when it comes up. It’s more that Gear easily slots into most any curve, and adds a ton of damage for its very cheap cost. Gear is often adding more than two damage per land. If it takes away a profitable block from your opponent, like a Kraken Hatchling versus your Geared up Nissa’s Chosen, it’s adding four damage. Whether it’s a Kraken Hatchling or an Oran-Rief Recluse or any random two drop or whatever else, such situations are not pipe-dreams; they occur turn after turn, game after game. You don’t have any evasion in Green, so making sure your opponent can’t effectively block your creatures is of utmost importance. If you don’t go out of your way to make all your crappy dudes relevant, you can’t expect that they will be, and Adventuring Gear is the very best on-color common for this role. Bottom line is I want an Adventuring Gear every single game. I want to ensure having one bad enough that I’m willing to pick it very highly, and I’m willing to risk drawing multiples, as awkward as that can be.
Savage Silhouette is a bad Adventuring Gear, but it can fill the same role well enough. If you are short on pump effects, happily pick these up and play them. The same goes for Goblin War Paint when in Red, which I like slightly more than Silhouette. In this archetype the haste is not just an occasional bonus but is usually good for four damage. The turn four two-drop plus War Paint is quite strong, and quite common.
Take Nissa’s Chosen over Grazing Gladehart. You need to be pretty committed to a very aggressive base Green deck to make this pick, but when you are, barring unusual curve considerations, Chosen is better for you.
I play Vines of Vastwood more without kicker than with, though it’s close. As just a pump spell, it is solid, and you want to be playing it, but it gets really exciting masquerading as a Negate. Sometimes you get to live the dream and counter a bomb like Gigantiform or Rite of Replication, but even realistically just protecting a big Survivalist or Timbermaw Larva is easily game-winning. Because it’s the unkicked side of Vines that is most attractive, it is better than Primal Bellow even in mono-Green, despite being worse as a combat trick (costs one more – the pump size is largely irrelevant for creatures battling) and significantly worse as a burn spell.
Hedron Scrabbler will make your deck more often that it won’t. It attacks as a bear most of the time, and that is what you want to be doing. Scrabbler is an easy way to make sure you are never lacking for two drops (or “playables” for that matter).
The takeaway from this article should be a simple yet effective formula to drafting Green: two drops, more two drops, Timbermaw Larva, and roughly five spells that make your two drops bigger. This is not a formula you would expect to be successful in most formats, but it seems to do the trick in Zendikar draft. The format decentivizes blocking well enough that you can consistently get through with random dorks turn after turn, with little support, which is pretty atypical. Until next time, enjoy Choosing to Scrabble to Survive your pod.
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desensitize… decentivizes isn’t a word… just saying.
The article is fantastic, I just wish it wasn’t written because this is how I’ve been winning 8-4s for a while now.
The secret is out!
Oran-Rief Survivalist actually does get picked up pretty often, so you shouldn’t expect to get many of them. Green/white allies is also reasonably powerful and can get ridiculous with multiple Ondu Clerics.
Good article, nevertheless!
Perhaps disincentivize? To create an incentive to do the opposite.
yeah i think green aggro is a good draft decck, but since people are starting to recognize how good nissa’s chosen and survivalist are its wise not to try to force green aggro with every crappy bear you can find. If there is a baloth and a scrabbler in the same pack, and those are your’e two picks, most of the time the baloth is the better choice
@Sam: decentivize works just fine. You just have to think like an economist. 🙂
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I think you vastly underrate Gladehart. While it is not super aggro, it helps counter your opponent’s 2 drops. Your opponent has to leave back a 2/x to block your 2/2 every turn or you get a 4 life swing every turn, which is a huge deal. If you get your adventuring gear on 1 you can even bash through with it and do some real damage.
I’ve always liked drafting green in Zendikar, I always found it strong because it has the tools to trade damage where as every other colour lacks it (gladeheart is the key to this). Many Zendikar games are decided in the first 5 turns. Gaining 4-6+ life can often put you ahead in the race and very few decks can constantly hit for 5 damage a turn in Zendikar, as opposed to swinging for 1 massive swing on turn 3-5 and then being completely out of gas, by which time your Larvas are still forcing chump blocks and swinging for massive damage every turn.
I draft this deck paired with white often. I’m surprised you didn’t mention it as it’s better that way instead of red. This is in part due to the fact that white is underdrated but not entirely, hear me out….
White offers journey to nowhere instead of blast. While blast offers more reach late game, journey takes care of flyers and fatties much better. This is key because most early creatures will be outclassed by green’s bears.
Kor Hookmaster is simply better than goblin shortcutter or any 3 drop in either color.
Kor Skyfisher is one of the best two drops out there and teams very well late game with allies or lands (for teh gear).
And finally…
Windborne charge is teh nuts.
Imho vines of vastwood is what makes this deck work because it is basically a green counterspell for one green: read it, counter target removal spell. Realistically, if you have more vines than they have removal, well, you should win just by representing a single green for protection. But really, drafting just two drops is what your sposed to do anyways…people thought/think green sucks(ed) because they wanted to ramp into fat; dur dur dur, doesn’t work. small guy,vines one or two of the BOMBY fatty fats (yeah, you’ll take that woodcrasher that whelled, thanky). Just one man’s opinion.
Blue is the new green.
Seriously. All sites are now writing articles saying draft green, it’s underdrafted. Not anymore it isn’t. EVeryone is drafting green now.
Everyone also thinks blue is the worst colour now so now THAT colour is underdrafted. Which makes that colour awesome.
I should note I’m talking about MODO drafts.
I’ve won two 8-4 drafts in the past few days with gx. I always like being in green because most of the time you’ll have playable cards wheel. No mention of Tanglesap. That cards has won me many games.
Rak: The problem is that Blue has a much lower tendency to be underdrafted. Green only has one “bomb” card in the entire set, which is Gigantiform, and some people aren’t even huge on that beast of a card! Blue, however, has multiples, including one at only uncommon; immediately coming to mind are Living Tsunami, Sphinx of Lost Truths, and Sphinx of Jwar Isle. If someone cracks one of these, they’re Blue, and with Blue being as shallow and terrible as it is that means that if any of those Blue drafters are near you your Blue is going to be ugly. The color is horribly shallow in this set, and often even two Blue players at a table find themselves (Paralyzing) grasping for playables. Green doesn’t have that problem; it is just a little deeper and supports two, and is more likely to be underdrafted since there aren’t other insane cards to “move in” on.
The above comment is simply wrong. Oracle of Mul Daya is a bomb. Turntimber ranger is a bomb unless it’s pack three. Rampaging baloths is a huge card, too. People are just willing to draft blue before green when they’re equally good because it’s…. blue.
I liked the article and can’t wait to see if it works! The obvious problem being that a ton of other people are thinking the same thing, so it will be tough… but it’s at least something to keep your eyes open for I guess.
Sorry, Baloths is also a bomb, my mistake on that one. Most people do like Turntimber Ranger a lot too, but don’t even think of it as a bomb on the scale of the blue fliers. Oracle is another one which is underappreciated and not really considered a bomb. Baloths is a mythic rare, and the other ones in debate are all rares, and aren’t consensus bombs. Tsunami is an uncommon and often a reason to move in on blue, and the 2 Sphinxes are very strong consensus bombs. I appreciate the retort, but I purposely left the rest out just like I left out Rite of Replication, Roil Elemental and Sea Gate Loremaster. There are people out there that consider all of these bombs, and there are people out there who consider the green cards you mentioned bombs, but Baloths and the 3 top blue fliers are really consensus bombs. Also, the implication that blue and green are -equally good- in Zendikar is a bit off, imo. Green is much deeper and better suited to the format.
I stopped reading at “Harrow…[this] card sucks.”
On the other side of the green spectrum…
I’ve had a fair amount of success as of late drafting slow, rock-style Green-Black, which prioritizes Savage Sillhouette and Giant Scorpion. It counts on Surrakar Marauders and Nissa’s Chosen to get in for early damage, gladeheart and giant scorpions to make race situations unfavorable for your opponents, mold shamblers to knock out machetes and punish greedy manabases, and vastwood gorgers to present and nigh-impossible threat to remove; most of the removal in this set comes in the from of shots for two-four.
Also, I hear Bog Tatters in combination with vines and primal bellows is pretty good. Vampire’s bite is best though; 14-point life swings are pretty back breaking.
Really strange points in this article… but I might try this strategy
Please provide a sample decklist of a true mono green deck in your style.
Because i just do not get it: you say “draft 2drops and avoid Harrow, Recluse, Shambler, Baloth, and Gorger” but there are only 3 2drops guys in common and uncommon in green, survivalist, chosen and river boa.
Say you get 1 boa and 5 survivalist/chosen and 2 larva’s, you still are many guys short.
Providing a real sample deck (or a few) would make me understand, because now i just don’t see it happening, not without Harrow, Recluse, Shambler, Baloth, and Gorger.
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Hopefully more people will start drafting green with all the pros raving about it so I can draft good colors again 🙂
I think the real point to take away from this is, don’t be scared to draft green **if it’s open**. If you try to force it and some other dork is on it, your deck will suck.
damn you josh and ur talk about allies at all, i still remeber when u got quad ondu cleric out against me in a team draft in austin.
Green is no more underdrafted. This article should be good two months ago, when no one goes in green. I appreciated Shyft commentary. Blue is not a good color to draft but when numerous people cracked one of the numerous blue bomb in the same draft, they are all tempted to go blue and build weak decks.
you play mono green, i’ll play my nighthawks
Sneaky has a point. Even with sick non-black decks, the black deck can always drop any number of gamebreaking uncommons and win out (marsh casualties, nighthawk, gatekeeper, mind sludge).
That isn’t to say I haven’t had tons of success with all colors in the format, because I have. I agree with your points regarding green, particularly a month or two ago when they were still accurate. Its just annoying that they made black so good!
it really doesnt matter what color colors you are as long as you have bears….at least thats what i understand from reading this website
I have to disagree with some of the cards you said that “sucked”. I just finished an 8-4 drafting green + splash journey and my deck consisted of all fatties (larva, 2 territorial baloths, vastwood gorger, and terra stomper with 2 harrow) and i won easily even against aggro decks simply because when i put a threat on the board, it was bigger than my opponents. I know this format is fast, but if i was able to land one nissa’s chosen or a survivalist, it was enough to stop the bleeding and allowed me to put fatty after fatty on the board. Just because this format is fast doesn’t mean you can’t play a successful deck that is a little slow.
Thanks, now I keep trying to draft green and I’ve stopped winning.
Draft what’s open.
Picking a random 2 drop over harrow is going to lose a lot of people a lot of drafts if done blindly, and is certainly going to be deck dependent. As a control player, I really don’t like the idea of trying to race black or red with whatever chosens and oran bears i can pick up.
The green control player has ten great commons to the green aggro player’s two. By this article’s logic, blue is a great color because you can run 22 welkin terns.
I am starting to feel like the whole “zendikar is aggressive” thing is a myth propigated by people who want to just play aggro.
Sometimes you get handed a sick deck, and it might not be the red/black aggro from week 2 of ZZZ. Sometimes it’s green aggro, green control, or some other weird thing that just wins.
Lately, I’ve been able to pick up two or three whiplash traps and just win off them. If it’s open, and you know how to play control or aggro, then draft it