The 55 Best Green Cards in Magic Ranked

Last updated on February 2, 2025

Natural Order | Illustration by Anato Finnstark

Creatures are essential to Magic. Most games come down to creature beatdown to get the opponent down to 0, and many creatures have effects that are far more powerful than just some stats. Green benefits the most from this as the primary color of Magic that deals in creatures.

Green doesn’t just have big creatures, but access to the best mana production as the color of verdancy and growth. Getting a mana advantage is a great way to pull ahead of your opponents and defeat them with your massive monsters. These are the best green cards to live out your inner Timmy dreams.

What Are Green Cards in MTG?

Primeval Titan | Illustration by Aleksi Briclot

Green cards have an exact mono-green color identity, and specifically work with cards like Natural Order or Emerald Medallion. Green cards are often characterized by caring about either creatures or lands in most cases.

We're excluding multicolor cards as well as cards with other colored mana symbols in their text box like Chatterfang, Squirrel General, so any Commander deck with green can use any of these cards.

#55. Garruk Wildspeaker

Garruk Wildspeaker brings a lot of value. It’s essentially a 2-mana planeswalker thanks to the untap ability and also defends itself with 3/3s. It also only takes a turn to get to the ultimate, which can easily end a game. If you’ve got a board developed enough for the Overrun effect to finish an opponent, you’ve likely got sufficient board presence to keep Garruk defended.

#54. Hauntwoods Shrieker

One of the strongest game plans in Magic is cheating huge creatures into play without even considering their mana values. Hauntwoods Shrieker was designed with this very purpose in mind. You’ll either want a high density of huge creatures or some way to set up the top of your library. It’s a lot of setup and requires attentive deckbuilding, but it’s worth it to end up with a 2-mana Blightsteel Colossus.

#53. Mossborn Hydra

If left unchecked, Mossborn Hydra gets huge. You’ll want plenty of ramp, fetch lands, and effects like Crucible of Worlds. You could even throw a Sword of the Animist on it. Creatures need to be really dangerous these days if they aren’t going to draw cards or disrupt the opponent, and Mossborn Hydra is an example of that kind of creature.

#52. Railway Brawler

One of green’s strongest suits is its massive creatures. Railway Brawler basically doubles your creatures’ power and toughness when they enter. All your threats are doubly threatening, and if you’ve got synergies with +1/+1 counters, every creature automatically qualifies. The plot cost makes it far easier to utilize this effect without Railway Brawler being removed first, too!

#51. Enduring Vitality

We’ve seen effects like Enduring Vitality prove to be pretty useful. In a deck with lots of creatures, this green enchantment creature is almost like a ritual since it comes down and gives you immediate access to a bunch of mana. I like this in decks whose win condition involves a wide board of small creatures. Turning the entire team into extra mana can give you the resources you need to cast that game-winning spell.

As a bonus, Enduring Vitality itself can chump block in combat, die to a board wipe effect, or even be sacrificed without losing its effect, since it comes back as an enchantment.

#50. Overlord of the Hauntwoods

Duskmourn‘s Overlord of the Hauntwoods is basically a ramp spell, as most of the time you’ll be casting it for that impending cost. Still, the effect of making those Everywhere tokens is strong. Any domain-related effects turn on instantly, turning cards like Leyline Binding and Herd Migration into the most effective versions of themselves. That’s the backbone of many domain-based ramp decks in Standard. It’s a bit slow for most Commander decks, but find ways to synergize with the land token or enchantments and it makes up for that and then some.

#49. Cultivate

Speaking of Commander, Cultivate has been a staple of the format for some time. It’s fantastic fixing and mana ramp that lets you jump from 3 mana on turn 3 to 5 on turn 4 with a guaranteed land drop. The extra land drop especially makes this a powerful 2-for-1.

#48. Dryad of the Ilysian Grove

This is a great ramp piece and a great fixer. Dryad of the Ilysian Grove is a powerful card that gives you multiple land drops each turn while giving unlimited mana fixing. It’s especially useful with effects that care about land types like domain or converge and has found a home in decks looking to combo off with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.

#47. Elder Gargaroth

Green is defined by its stat sticks and Elder Gargaroth is a fantastic example of what green creatures can do. Even as a 6/6 for 5 mana it would be oversized, but it’s also got three keywords and a stack of abilities. Reach and vigilance make this a powerful defender while trample gives it offensive powers. The diverse abilities on attack or block really make the card, bringing this awfully close to a planeswalker on an efficient body.

#46. Flare of Cultivation

Who doesn’t love a free spell? Okay, okay, Flare of Cultivation isn’t completely free – sacrificing a nontoken creature is actually quite a steep cost for a free spell. Regardless, when ramp is on the agenda, this is a green sorcery you’ll want to consider. Sacrifice a creature whose value has already been used up, like Arboreal Grazer, Burning-Tree Emissary or Reclamation Sage. It’s also a completely reasonable 3-mana ramp spell.

#45. Questing Beast

If Elder Gargaroth is a planeswalker on a creature, this is a planeswalker assassin. Questing Beast manages to have an even more impressive range of abilities than Gargaroth with evasion, haste, defensive capability, and the ability the smack a planeswalker and a player at once. Deathtouch is what really makes this card; that and not being able to be chump blocked make it impossible to block Questing Beast profitably.

#44. Nature’s Lore + Three Visits

These are effectively the same card, so they’re here together. These are great ramp pieces that also function as fixing. Putting the land into play untapped makes these really strong; they effectively only cost 1 mana since they recoup half the cost instantly. Grabbing shock lands like Breeding Pool allows you to fix while you ramp and you really can’t get a much better effect for 2 mana.

#43. Primeval Titan

In many ways, Primeval Titan, one of MTG's strongest giants, embodies everything green wants to do. A 6/6 for 6 with trample is a pretty fine body, and the ability to put any two lands into play captures the growth and land-based bits of the color. This is an incredibly strong effect that makes excellent use of powerful lands like Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.

#42. Endurance

Endurance is a very strong and flexible card. A 3/4 for 3 with flash is a fine rate on a body, and the ability that forces a player to shuffle their library into their deck makes it a great answer to some really unfair strategies like reanimator or anything running Underworld Breach. Having evoke for free is what really pushes this card over the top as a fantastic answer to a variety of decks.

#41. Nature’s Claim

There’s really not too much to say about Nature's Claim. It’s one of the best enchantment removal spells ever printed, and one of the best artifact removal effects in green. You can’t do much better than unconditional destruction at instant speed for a single mana. Giving your opponent 4 life is a bit of a drawback, but it’s inconsequential enough for this to be a powerful card.

#40. Vaultborn Tyrant

When it comes to big, dumb, terrifying creatures, green’s got you covered. Vaultborn Tyrant is a green dinosaur that draws cards, gains life, and is hard to kill. There’s not much more you can ask for in a massive creature.

#39. Legolas’s Quick Reflexes

The perfect time for Legolas's Quick Reflexes is when your creature gets targeted right before your combat step, so that attacking triggers the ability it gives the creature. Either way, a 1-mana protection spell is totally acceptable, and with split second to boot, it’s hard not to think about jamming this in any deck that wants to win with green creatures that might face targeted removal.

#38. Lumra, Bellow of the Woods

If you’re a green mage because all you want to do is ramp and play big creatures, Bloomburrow‘s Lumra, Bellow of the Woods might be for you. You’ll want your deck to have ways to put lands in the graveyard, be it fetch lands, cards like Harrow, or self-mill like Malevolent Rumble. Once Lumra resolves, it’ll be huge, and you’ll pull even further ahead on mana.

#37. Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus

For what you get immediately, Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus is definitely a little slow. You’ll undoubtedly be looking to ramp into it or cheat it out. Once it’s on the battlefield, this Phyrexian horror turns your creatures into a true force to be reckoned with. Pair it with effects like Last March of the Ents to convert that terrifying board state into value.

#36. Beast Whisperer

One thing green doesn’t always excel at is card advantage. Much of its card draw is tied to creatures and Beast Whisperer does a fantastic job of drawing plenty of spells. This is at its best in a deck with lots of small creatures that produces tons of mana and can make great use out of the cantripping. This is everything green wants to be doing.

#35. Six

Six is the tree from Wrenn and Six on its own. Fittingly, it uses land and graveyard synergies to generate value. You’ll want to make sure you’re drawing cards and finding lands to toss, but with careful sequencing and the right assets to retrace, Six is an incredibly strong card advantage engine that makes your opponents wonder if removing your permanents is even worth it.

#34. Innkeeper’s Talent

Innkeeper's Talent gets a lot of work done for a 2-mana enchantment. Each step of this class enchantment is relevant and powerful at their mana costs. You’ll want this in a deck with lots of +1/+1 counters and/or planeswalkers. The final level of Innkeeper's Talent causes all your planeswalkers to enter with twice their normal loyalty, which often means you can use their ultimate abilities right away. In Standard, this is paired with Vraska, Betrayal's Sting to immediately eradicate an opponent with poison counters.

#33. Tribute to the World Tree

Consistently drawing cards is one of green’s weaker areas in Magic. Cards like Tribute to the World Tree are card advantage engines that cater to green’s strengths – big creatures. Is your creature already big? Great, draw a card! No? Now it’s big!

In decks that can manage its triple green cost, Tribute to the World Tree plays like a less-absurd The Great Henge, which is one of the most powerful green card advantage engines.

#32. Beast Within

This gets a shoutout mostly for EDH players. Beast Within doesn’t see a ton of play outside Commander, but boy is it good in that format. Games go long enough and spells are explosive enough that the 3/3 isn’t nearly as much downside as it would be in a 1v1, 20-life format. This is the kind of unconditional removal that’s often reserved for other colors like black and white, making this an invaluable green removal staple for decks not running those colors.

#31. Golgari Grave-Troll

A frequent flyer on the Modern ban list, Golgari Grave-Troll isn’t universally powerful but specifically insane. It’s only good if you care about getting cards into your graveyard but it does so incredibly efficiently. Dredging for six anytime you would draw a card is often akin to drawing six cards for decks that can utilize it effectively, making this a card worth building decks around.

#30. Exploration

Exploration is a great ramp spell, but it does have a significant weakness: Oftentimes, you’ll just run out of lands. Getting ahead on lands is absolutely great, but you really need a steady stream of card draw to go along with this. If you play it on curve and play another land, you’ll be ahead, but only for a turn. If you miss a land drop after playing an extra land, then you’re just on par with the rest of the table.

#29. Fastbond

Fastbond suffers from many of the same drawbacks as Exploration. It’s stronger, however, because of two things: The infamous combination of Strip Mine and Crucible of Worlds to get rid of all of your opponents’ lands and powerful synergy with cards like Oracle of Mul Daya to play tons of lands. Fastbond is a fantastically powerful card, but only if you put in the work to build around it, which does keep it in check and a little lower on this list.

#28. Collector Ouphe

Much like how Endurance is a fantastic answer to graveyard strategies, Collector Ouphe offers a similar level of control to stopping artifact strategies from functioning. It’s Null Rod on an efficient, easily-tutorable body. It presents a threat that must be dealt with if the artifact player wants to advance their gameplan at all, making this a fantastic sideboard card and a generally good stax piece.

#27. Last March of the Ents

Making Last March of the Ents work is pretty simple. Put ramp spells and big creatures in your deck. That’s really all you have to do. Eventually, you’ll find yourself with the mana to cast this green sorcery while you have just about any large creature on the battlefield. When your board state is already threatening, Last March of the Ents can win the game on the spot when it draws six or more cards and slams your Craterhoof Behemoth.

#26. Bristly Bill, Spine Sower

+1/+1 counter strategies and land strategies are some of the most popular in Commander. Outlaws of Thunder Junction‘s Bristly Bill, Spine Sower is a sort of bridge between the two archetypes. Alongside all your favorite land synergies, Bill will turn your creatures into real threats. In the late game, if you’ve got a board full of counters, ol’ Bill here can multiply ‘em, which can close out a game quickly.

#25. Scythecat Cub

Scythecat Cub is a lot like Bristly Bill, Spine Sower. The main difference is that it doubles counters on the second landfall each turn. This means, with enough methods to get those double-triggers in your deck, your creatures will grow into terrifying threats very quickly.

#24. Basking Broodscale

Basking Broodscale is an absurdly overperforming common from Modern Horizons 3. This Eldrazi lizard is a 2-card mono-green combo with Blade of the Bloodchief, which can be found by Urza's Saga. This combo makes infinite colorless mana, which can be spent on Walking Ballista, or the infinite spawn that enter and die can lead to a win with Glaring Fleshraker. If those options aren’t available, Basking Broodscale will still find itself infinitely large, so hope to attack.

#23. Birthing Pod

Birthing Pod is an incredibly powerful tutor that puts cards straight into play for the low cost of a single Phyrexian green mana, though nobody ever pays green for this card. It’s not the most versatile green tutor. It requires you to have a carefully structured “Pod curve” to ensure you’ve always got something to hit and is susceptible to hate cards like the Ouphe above, but it’s a fantastic card in a toolbox-style deck full of silver bullets that can be built around it.

#22. Springheart Nantuko

Springheart Nantuko is a card most famous for its synergy with Nadu, Winged Wisdom in Modern. With Nadu and Nantuko, every land drop made more creatures, more creatures meant more Nadu triggers, and more Nadu triggers meant more land drops. Even outside of that use-case, Springheart Nantuko is a fantastic creature that can generate absurd amounts of value regardless of what you may or may not bestow it upon. It synergizes with strategies revolving around tokens, lands, and even copying creatures, and can fit into just about any green deck.

#21. Archdruid’s Charm

Archdruid's Charm is green’s answer to Archmage's Charm. Like that classic charm, this green instant is versatile and powerful – at the price of a difficult mana cost with 3 colored pips. In mono-green decks or 2-color decks that can reliably cast it, it’s a card you never mind drawing. It’s difficult to overstate the value of an instant-speed card whose options are “tutor” and “efficient removal.”

#20. Up the Beanstalk

Up the Beanstalk’s power level is a little deceptive. It’s an uncommon from a Standard MTG set, but if you know anything about Modern circa late 2023, you’ll understand why it’s here. “But wait,” you might think, “people don’t play expensive spells in older formats!” And you’re generally correct – but you know what they do play? Free spells. Solitude and its banned brother Fury are “free” spells with mana values that trigger Up the Beanstalk. Expensive spells that discount themselves, like This Town Ain't Big Enough or Leyline Binding, are played alongside it in Standard, where it’s a strong card in ramp decks.

#19. Invasion of Ikoria / Zilortha, Apex of Ikoria

A lot of green’s most powerful cards are creature tutors like Invasion of Ikoria. This siege battle twist on Green Sun's Zenith is only a tad less efficient. It’s also far less restricting, since it can find a non-human creature rather than exclusively green creatures. The back half of this battle, Zilortha, Apex of Ikoria is a bonus, making itself and the creature you tutored for (and all of your other non-humans!) effectively unblockable.

#18. Heroic Intervention

This is very much another Commander staple, as Heroic Intervention gives you a lot of flexibility. It provides your entire board with indestructible and hexproof, blanking any form of targeted removal or non-exiling board wipe your opponents try to pull off. It can also enable better blocks for you, letting you turn a tight corner. And it’s incredibly cheap for all this versatility.

#17. Chord of Calling

Chord of Calling is another powerful tutor that puts cards right into play, which is generally stronger than putting them into hand. It does have some pretty hefty mana requirements as it’s 4 mana just to get a 1-drop, but it does this at instant speed. Convoke is also a helpful keyword, allowing you to turn all of your creatures into mana dorks to help pay for this. Like Pod, it’s great at finding one-of answers like Collector Ouphe and Endurance at the perfect time.

#16. Veil of Summer

Isn’t it funny how there was a period in Standard where the best piece of countermagic was green? Veil of Summer is an impressively powerful card. For a single green mana it protects your spells and permanents from danger while replacing itself. Needing to play against blue or black opponents is a bit restrictive, but this card punches well above its weight as a cheap, interactive 2-for-1. One line to keep in mind is casting this at the start of the turn you want to win the game, forcing your opponent to either counter this or let you combo off in peace.

#15. Sylvan Library

Part of what makes Sylvan Library one of the best green enchantments, and the best card draw spell in green, is how blue it feels. Top deck manipulation isn’t something green has much access to, and this functions as a strong source of card draw to boot. Either 4 or 8 life is a lot to pay to get ahold of two extra cards, but life is a resource after all. On top of all of this, the Library has an incredibly low mana investment of 2 mana for repeated value turn after turn.

#14. Llanowar Elves + Elvish Mystic + Fyndhorn Elves

Rather like Nature's Lore and Three Visits, these friends are grouped together as they’re the same card down to cost and typing. And they’re all great. Getting to ramp from turn 1 lets you get much further ahead of your opponents than it may seem. There’s a reason one of the oldest and most repeated Magic heuristics is “Bolt the Bird.”

#13. Finale of Devastation

Finale of Devastation gives us the range of a tutor while doubling as a fantastic finisher if you can pump enough mana into it. And if there’s one thing green is good at doing, it’s pumping mana into things. One of best green sorceries, Finale of Devastation finds you pretty much whatever you need throughout the game and in the later stages offers a pretty easy kill condition.

#12. Delighted Halfling

Delighted Halfling is one of the strongest mana dorks ever printed. A 1-mana dork that taps for 1 mana is already a high bar for it to reach, and making legends uncounterable pushes it over the top. If your turn 1 play both accelerates and protects your game plan, it’s a recipe to get ahead of the competition. It’s seen play in Modern, but Delighted Halfling impresses me most in Commander.

#11. The Great Henge

Speaking of steady sources of card draw, The Great Henge keeps cards flowing and creatures big. It also produces a ton of mana and gives you some incidental life gain. One of the best creaturefall cards, this tree's a house that instantly stabilizes you by gaining a bunch of life and making all of your creatures larger and making them cantrip. Its high mana cost is offset by both the cost reduction ability and by tapping for the turn it comes out.

#10. Birds of Paradise

And speaking of Birds worth Bolting, Birds of Paradise kicks off the top 10 as one of the best mana dorks ever printed. There’s an argument for putting the Elves we looked at before in this slot solely for having better creature types, but the mana fixing that Birds offers is incredibly powerful. This is also just a classic green creature and an elegant design that shows off green’s ability to ramp and fix and shows how life is at the root of all colors.

#9. Greater Good

Card draw is good, and many decks can benefit from dumping cards into their graveyard. Greater Good does both. In the color of massive creatures, you can draw enough cards to offset discarding three. Lots of cards regularly produce 3/3s you can sacrifice for pure card filtering, and once you get to 4/4s about above, you start raking in the cards. It’s also a fantastic enabler for cards that care about filling your graveyard quickly.

#8. Survival of the Fittest

Where Greater Good offers you the ability to churn through your deck and fill your graveyard in large, variable amounts, Survival of the Fittest offers precision. You can only add one creature to your graveyard and only get one in return, but you’re always getting the one you need. It’s a repeatable tutor that takes a bit of investment but offers better and better value the longer the game goes.

#7. Glimpse of Nature

Glimpse of Nature is an incredibly strong card draw engine. You’ll rarely want to play this for simple value but instead as an enabler for something like an elves deck that will generate massive amounts of mana and small creatures. But most green decks that aren’t exclusively focused on deploying one massive spell a turn can benefit from this burst of card advantage.

#6. Worldly Tutor

Worldly Tutor is a one-off ability, but it offers the most versatility out of the tutors on this list by costing a single mana and being at instant speed. Putting the creature on top of your library isn’t much of a downside since you can just play this at the end of the turn before yours or even in your upkeep to draw the card straight away. The only thing that could make this card better would be if it put the creature into play.

#5. Green Sun’s Zenith

Speaking of tutors that put creatures into play, Green Sun's Zenith does so about as efficiently as possible. It only adds one green to the mana cost of whatever you’re getting, making it far more efficient than Chord of Calling or even Finale of Devastation. You can go for Dryad Arbor as soon as turn 1 or find your silver bullets. It also shuffles back into your library so you can find it again later. It only finds green creatures, but that’s rarely a downside in decks that want to play this.

#4. Craterhoof Behemoth

Every deck needs a good finisher, and Craterhoof Behemoth (probably the best ETB effect in green) reminds your opponents of what it means for green to have the biggest creatures. One of the best green pump spells, this is the kind of effect that often kills a table by such a wide margin it’s not worth declaring blockers. You do need to have some amount of board presence established for this to end the game, but it doesn’t take too many creatures for this to overwhelm a table beneath a flurry of hooves, paws, and other things to make a lake of your table.

#3. Channel

One of Magic’s classic combos is Channel into Fireball to obliterate an opponent. Turning life into mana, even colorless mana, is an insanely good deal. It takes a bit of building around to make this work (you don’t want to be casting cards like Gigantosaurus with Channel), but it gives you such a huge lead it’s easy to win the game following this card. It happens to get along fantastically with Eldrazi titans like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre.

#2. Gaea’s Cradle

Okay, it might be cheating to include a land in a list like this. On the other hand, there’s no color more fitting to have a land sneak into its ranks than green. Gaea's Cradle is an incredibly powerful land that works well in any green deck looking to go just a little wide. It’s also a marvelous example of green’s color identity and ideas of growth. The world nurtures your creatures by letting you cast them which nurture the land in turn so it taps for more mana and both flourish in harmony with each other. It’s obscenely powerful and an elegant flavor win.

#1. Natural Order

Natural Order tops the list by being an effective combo piece and reasonable tutor. It turns any green creature into the best green creature for the turn you cast it, which often ends up being Craterhoof Behemoth. Four mana isn’t a ton and makes this more efficient than most of the other tutors unless you’re specifically looking for a 1- or 2-mana spell, and even then, it’s on par with Chord and Finale. Putting the creature straight into play is what really makes this card powerful, and you get some value out of sacrificing a creature depending on how you built your deck.

Best Green Payoffs and Synergies

One of the best things about green is that it works awfully well with itself. Take the focus on lands and apply it to landfall on Avenger of Zendikar, +1/+1 counter support in Defiler of Vigor, and Allosaurus Shepherd is huge as an enemy of blue.

Green has reasonable access to card draw, it’s got the best creatures, the best ways to gain a mana advantage, and it’s even got decent removal with fight effects like Prey Upon and artifact and enchantment hate like Nature's Claim.

The best payoffs are generally ones that care about big creatures like Garruk's Uprising, Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma, and Fanatic of Rhonas that make use of how big green’s creatures often are.

Other good payoffs are spells with X in their mana cost like Crackle with Power, Mass Manipulation, and Animist's Awakening that benefit from pumping tons of mana into them.

The best reason to be in mono-green is definitely the oversized bodies. Green tends to have the biggest creatures at any point in the curve, so it lends itself well to stompy strategies that makes use of 2-mana 3/3s like Werewolf Pack Leader and Keen-Eyed Curator and such to outsize your opponents and rush them down.

What Is Green Good at in MTG?

Green’s strengths tend to rely on its creatures. Creatures are everything this color wants to be doing. They defend you and pressure your opponents. Green also has lots of effects that care about creatures, including the best tutors like Worldly Tutor and Green Sun's Zenith and cards that benefit from having creatures like Rishkar's Expertise.

Having creatures that generally outsize your opponents' also makes it hard for them to effectively attack you. Big creatures give you a commanding presence on the board that can be hard to overcome if your opponent is skimping on removal spells.

What Are Good Green Cards in Modern?

Lots of the cards we looked at here aren’t in Modern because they’re either banned like Birthing Pod or simply aren’t legal like Worldly Tutor. That said, there are still great green cards in Modern.

One frontrunner is certainly Endurance. This is great against decks trying to exploit their graveyard like Izzet () Murktide and Rakdos () Scam. It often costs nothing to get rid of their graveyard and can make them stumble in critical moments of the game. It’s also a reasonably sized blocker against things like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and can stop Hammertime for a turn or two thanks to reach.

Another fantastic green card in Modern is Veil of Summer. This is definitely more of a sideboard card to bring in against specific matchups, but it does work in those matchups. There’s a reason it was the best counterspell in Standard and while that might not hold true in Modern, it’s still incredibly efficient for the amount of value it provides.

Wrap Up

Channel | Illustration by Rebecca Guay

Green is the color of verdancy, growth, and nature in Magic. This translates to being defined primarily as the color with the best creatures and the best ramp in the game. It’s about showing your opponents just how big nature can be and how fast it can over take them.

Green gives one of Magic’s most important card types a solid home to grow as large as they’d like and stomp hard. What do you think of the list? What are your top five green cards? Let me know in the comments below, over over on the Draftsim Twitter.

That's all from me for now. Stay safe, stay healthy, and wash your hands!