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Green creatures in Magic: The Gathering have often been some of the best in the game’s history. There are many green creatures that were meta-defining, becoming some of the most iconic cards in the game. However, some of the best green creatures need some to be used in conjunction with other cards and effects to realize their full potential.
13. Llanowar Elves
While Llanowar Elves isn’t going to win any points for having a flashy effect, its simplicity doesn’t mean it’s bad. For one mana, you get a creature that can tap for one green mana. So long as it’s not removed, you essentially have an extra land to play with that has the benefits of being a creature as well. This puts you ahead on mana that can be used to start out-resourcing your opponent(s).
Llanowar Elves is best used in decks that want to generate a lot of mana quickly. This tends to be in the form of aggro decks to get into their big top-end threats quicker, or in ramp decks to generate mana for your key spells.
Green creatures in Magic: The Gathering have often been some of the best in the game’s history. There are many green creatures that were meta-defining, becoming some of the most iconic cards in the game. However, some of the best green creatures need some to be used in conjunction with other cards and effects to realize their full potential. This article will go over the 13 best green creatures in Magic: The Gathering and when to use them.
13. Llanowar Elves
While Llanowar Elves isn’t going to win any points for having a flashy effect, its simplicity doesn’t mean it’s bad. For one mana, you get a creature that can tap for one green mana. So long as it’s not removed, you essentially have an extra land to play with that has the benefits of being a creature as well. This puts you ahead on mana that can be used to start out-resourcing your opponent(s).
Llanowar Elves is best used in decks that want to generate a lot of mana quickly. This tends to be in the form of aggro decks to get into their big top-end threats quicker, or in ramp decks to generate mana for your key spells.
The Other Llanowar Elves:
Llanowar Elves is not the only card with this mana value, effect, and stat line. Elvish Mystic and Fyndhorn Elves are identical in every way, right down to being Elf Druids as well. In singleton formats like Commander and Oathbreaker, this lets you have multiple copies of the same card (well, essentially anyway), though in constructed formats assuming they are legal in the format, it comes down to personal preference.
12. Satyr Wayfinder
On the battlefield, Satyr Wayfinder isn’t going to do much but chump block. Its stat line is as basic as it comes, and being on a two-drop doesn’t make it much better. What makes Satyr Wayfinder so good is its effect. Being able to put potentially four cards into your graveyard is excellent and lets you keep greedier hands as you are likely to see a land off of its effect.
Satyr Wayfinder finds its home in self-mill decks that want to load up their graveyard. It’s a common so it’s legal in Pauper, finding a home in Dredge decks and is also a major part of Abzan Greasefang decks in Pioneer as they all want cards hitting their graveyard as quickly as possible.
11. Avenging Hunter
Avenging Hunter doesn’t do a whole lot on the battlefield, it’s just a 5/4 with trample after all. However, taking the initiative is what makes it so strong. In non-multiplayer formats, the initiative is amazing since you can deal a lot of burn damage, get cards into your hand, ramp with Treasure, and get a creature on the battlefield to name some of the effects. Once you have the initiative, you don’t need to do anything else to keep moving through the dungeon.
Initiative is only legal in Pauper, Legacy and Vintage (outside of multiplayer), and there are better options in most of those. However, in Pauper Avenging Hunter is one of the main reasons to put green in your decks. Decks that are playing Avenging Hunter are usually playing a midrange plan with a lot of removal spells to make sure your opponent doesn’t get the initiative from you.
10. Collector Ouphe
Collector Ouphe is an amazing stall card that prevents all artifacts from using their activated abilities. This doesn’t prevent triggered abilities, but luckily, most artifacts are using triggered effects. This does affect your artifacts as well, so if you’re playing Collector Ouphe, you want to make sure you don’t need artifacts for your deck to function.
The card is best used in stall decks. For multiplayer formats, Collector Ouphe is perfect for Stax decks where the goal is to prevent your opponents from being able to play their decks properly.
9. Elder Gargaroth
Once Elder Gargaroth hits the battlefield, if it sticks odds, are you are winning the game. It has so many effects that are versatile depending on what you need. Low on creatures? Make a 3/3. Need cards in your hand? Draw a card. About to be killed by aggro? Gain life. Elder Gargaroth triggers on both attacking and blocking, letting you use it multiple times. Since it has vigilance, it doesn’t even tap, so you can attack and block in a turn cycle.
Elder Gargaroth is best used in Stompy decks that want to get powerful creatures on the battlefield as quickly as possible. When combined with mana dorks (like Llanowar Elves also featured here), you can get Elder Gargaroth out very early in the game to make it hard for your opponent to fight back against.
8. Elvish Reclaimer
Elvish Reclaimer is an Elf that lets you get any land you want out of your deck so long as it’s not summoning sick and has two mana to spend. You can even sacrifice the land you tapped to activate its effect. What makes Elvish Reclaimer so good is that there’s no limitation on the land you get out of your library.
The decks that want Elvish Reclaimer in it are the ones that want specific lands. Field Of The Dead is a notable example, along with many utility lands across many formats. Even if you’re not fetching out a specialty land, it can get any land from your deck so you have all the colours you might need to cast your spells.
7. Old Gnawbone
Treasure tokens are some of the best tokens you can generate, and Old Gnawbone is a way to make more than you know what to do with. It turns all combat damage you deal into that many Treasure tokens. Old Gnawbone alone can give you seven Treasures, and that number only gets bigger the more creatures that are attacking.
Old Gnawbone does cost a lot of mana to play, so it’s best used in decks that can cheat creatures onto the battlefield, even temporarily. The Treasure it leaves behind lets you re-cast it later if it has to return to the hand, and if not you have a ton of mana sources to work. It’s especially strong in ramp decks as it’s a good target to ramp into so you can cast your other high-mana spells.
6. Elvish Spirit Guide
Elvish Spirit Guide is unique in that you almost never actually want to cast it. After all, on the battlefield it’s a 2/2 with no abilities for three mana, which is awful. What makes Elvish Spirit Guide so good is its effect to exile it from your hand to add one green mana. While this seems minimal, you have access to a free mana that can’t be interacted with in most cases.
Elvish Spirit Guide tends to go in decks that play combos and want to cast as many spells as possible. It’s a staple of Storm strategies as a way to generate mana to cast your rituals easier. Outside of that, being able to cheat ahead of your mana curve lets you turbo out powerful cards that are more impactful the earlier they hit the battlefield.
5. Allosaurus Shepherd
Preventing spells from being countered is one of the best effects in the game, as it almost guarantees they will always resolve. Allosaurus Shepherd makes all your green spells uncounterable as a static effect, so once it’s on the battlefield you don’t have to worry about counterspells anymore. This would be good on its own, but as an added bonus, Allosaurus Shepherd itself can’t be countered. It can turn Elves into 5/5 creatures for a turn, which makes it a great game-ender in Elf decks that benefit from being uncounterable.
Allosaurus Shepherd fits into any deck with impactful green spells. While it’s great in Elf-based decks, its static effect is so powerful that it’s worth running to guarantee all your green spells will resolve.
4. Endurance
If a spell can potentially be cast without spending mana, it’s generally very good. Endurance is no exception, as you can play it by paying its evoke cost of simply exiling a green card from your hand (although Endurance has to be sacrificed afterward). It has the benefit of being cheap to cast on its own, so you don’t always have to evoke it. It’s one of the best graveyard-hate cards, as it forces an entire graveyard to go to the bottom of the deck. This makes it so your opponent likely won’t see those for the rest of the game, and in some cases gets cards you want in your library back in them.
Endurance is played in most green decks (in formats its legal in) at the very least in the sideboard. It’s a generically solid card, and most decks will benefit from including it.
3. Delighted Halfling
Delighted Halfling is one of the best mana dorks of all time. At worst, it produces a colourless mana, and at best makes a mana of any colour that prevents that spell from being countered. Remoing the ability to counter a spell is amazing, especially on a legendary spell which tend to be more powerful than non-legendary ones. It’s mana fixing, so if you have a multi-coloured manabase you don’t have to worry about not having the colour you’d need, and when you cast the legendary card you don’t have to sweat about counterspells.
Delighted Halfling works best in decks running a lot of legendary spells. These are often in the form of combo pieces or planeswalkers that need to resolve in order to get their gameplans going. It’s also good in any Commander deck as even if the 99 cards aren’t legendary, it still lets you cast your commander without having to worry it’ll be countered.
2. Craterhoof Behemoth
The best game-ender for creature-based decks, Craterhoof Behemoth is a way to turn all creatures into ones with massive stats with trample. If Craterhoof Behemoth resolves, you are often winning the game off of it. Craterhoof Behemoth giving trample is the main attraction, as blocking hardly means anything when you can trample over them.
Craterhoof Behemoth is best in creature decks that flood the battlefield with creatures, often cheap ones. It’s one of the main game-enders in Elf decks, especially since they can search it out from the deck naturally. If you can cheat it out with a card like Natural Order, you can avoid paying its hefty mana cost as well.
1. Primeval Titan
Primeval Titan is so good it’s banned in Commander, and is a meta threat in all other formats it’s legal in. It’s a creature that ramps you and lets you put any two lands onto the battlefield tapped. There are no restrictions on the lands, so you can get any utility lands based on what the gamestate is.
Primeval Titan is best paired with Field Of The Dead where you turn each land entering the battlefield into 2/2 Zombie tokens. Primeval Titan often needs you to build your deck around it, ramping into it quickly because once it resolves and attacks once, you often win the game off of it.
That concludes the list of the 13 best green creatures in Magic: The Gathering and when to use them. All colours tend to trade off on being the “best,” with green having the longest stint and are usually at the top of the metagame of all formats, from Legacy to Modern. There are plenty of powerful green creatures, so much so they are worth building your entire deck around. Green has access to plenty of creature tutors that let you search them directly from your deck and put them either in your hand or on the top of your library (or in some cases cheat them onto the battlefield directly). There’s a reason most green-based decks are built around creatures, they have so many good ones that a strategy of putting the best of them onto the battlefield is often enough to be a meta threat.
The other Llanowar Elves
Llanowar Elves is not the only card with this mana value, effect, and stat line. Elvish Mystic and Fyndhorn Elves are identical in every way, right down to being Elf Druids as well. In singleton formats like Commander and Oathbreaker, this lets you have multiple copies of the same card (well, essentially anyway), though in constructed formats assuming they are legal in the format, it comes down to personal preference.
12. Satyr Wayfinder
On the battlefield, Satyr Wayfinder isn’t going to do much but chump block. Its stat line is as basic as it comes, and being on a two-drop doesn’t make it much better. What makes Satyr Wayfinder so good is its effect. Being able to put potentially four cards into your graveyard is excellent and lets you keep greedier hands as you are likely to see a land off of its effect.
Satyr Wayfinder finds its home in self-mill decks that want to load up their graveyard. It’s a common so it’s legal in Pauper, finding a home in Dredge decks and is also a major part of Abzan Greasefang decks in Pioneer as they all want cards hitting their graveyard as quickly as possible.
11. Avenging Hunter
Avenging Hunter doesn’t do a whole lot on the battlefield, it’s just a 5/4 with trample after all. However, taking the initiative is what makes it so strong. In non-multiplayer formats, the initiative is amazing since you can deal a lot of burn damage, get cards into your hand, ramp with Treasure, and get a creature on the battlefield to name some of the effects. Once you have the initiative, you don’t need to do anything else to keep moving through the dungeon.
Initiative is only legal in Pauper, Legacy and Vintage (outside of multiplayer), and there are better options in most of those. However, in Pauper Avenging Hunter is one of the main reasons to put green in your decks. Decks that are playing Avenging Hunter are usually playing a midrange plan with a lot of removal spells to make sure your opponent doesn’t get the initiative from you.
10. Collector Ouphe
Collector Ouphe is an amazing stall card that prevents all artifacts from using their activated abilities. This doesn’t prevent triggered abilities, but luckily, most artifacts are using triggered effects. This does affect your artifacts as well, so if you’re playing Collector Ouphe, you want to make sure you don’t need artifacts for your deck to function.
The card is best used in stall decks. For multiplayer formats, Collector Ouphe is perfect for Stax decks where the goal is to prevent your opponents from being able to play their decks properly.
9. Elder Gargaroth
Once Elder Gargaroth hits the battlefield, if it sticks odds, are you are winning the game. It has so many effects that are versatile depending on what you need. Low on creatures? Make a 3/3. Need cards in your hand? Draw a card. About to be killed by aggro? Gain life. Elder Gargaroth triggers on both attacking and blocking, letting you use it multiple times. Since it has vigilance, it doesn’t even tap, so you can attack and block in a turn cycle.
Elder Gargaroth is best used in Stompy decks that want to get powerful creatures on the battlefield as quickly as possible. When combined with mana dorks (like Llanowar Elves also featured here), you can get Elder Gargaroth out very early in the game to make it hard for your opponent to fight back against.
8. Elvish Reclaimer
Elvish Reclaimer is an Elf that lets you get any land you want out of your deck so long as it’s not summoning sick and has two mana to spend. You can even sacrifice the land you tapped to activate its effect. What makes Elvish Reclaimer so good is that there’s no limitation on the land you get out of your library.
The decks that want Elvish Reclaimer in it are the ones that want specific lands. Field Of The Dead is a notable example, along with many utility lands across many formats. Even if you’re not fetching out a specialty land, it can get any land from your deck so you have all the colours you might need to cast your spells.
7. Old Gnawbone
Treasure tokens are some of the best tokens you can generate, and Old Gnawbone is a way to make more than you know what to do with. It turns all combat damage you deal into that many Treasure tokens. Old Gnawbone alone can give you seven Treasures, and that number only gets bigger the more creatures that are attacking.
Old Gnawbone does cost a lot of mana to play, so it’s best used in decks that can cheat creatures onto the battlefield, even temporarily. The Treasure it leaves behind lets you re-cast it later if it has to return to the hand, and if not you have a ton of mana sources to work. It’s especially strong in ramp decks as it’s a good target to ramp into so you can cast your other high-mana spells.
6. Elvish Spirit Guide
Elvish Spirit Guide is unique in that you almost never actually want to cast it. After all, on the battlefield it’s a 2/2 with no abilities for three mana, which is awful. What makes Elvish Spirit Guide so good is its effect to exile it from your hand to add one green mana. While this seems minimal, you have access to a free mana that can’t be interacted with in most cases.
Elvish Spirit Guide tends to go in decks that play combos and want to cast as many spells as possible. It’s a staple of Storm strategies as a way to generate mana to cast your rituals easier. Outside of that, being able to cheat ahead of your mana curve lets you turbo out powerful cards that are more impactful the earlier they hit the battlefield.
5. Allosaurus Shepherd
Preventing spells from being countered is one of the best effects in the game, as it almost guarantees they will always resolve. Allosaurus Shepherd makes all your green spells uncounterable as a static effect, so once it’s on the battlefield you don’t have to worry about counterspells anymore. This would be good on its own, but as an added bonus, Allosaurus Shepherd itself can’t be countered. It can turn Elves into 5/5 creatures for a turn, which makes it a great game-ender in Elf decks that benefit from being uncounterable.
Allosaurus Shepherd fits into any deck with impactful green spells. While it’s great in Elf-based decks, its static effect is so powerful that it’s worth running to guarantee all your green spells will resolve.
4. Endurance
If a spell can potentially be cast without spending mana, it’s generally very good. Endurance is no exception, as you can play it by paying its evoke cost of simply exiling a green card from your hand (although Endurance has to be sacrificed afterward). It has the benefit of being cheap to cast on its own, so you don’t always have to evoke it. It’s one of the best graveyard-hate cards, as it forces an entire graveyard to go to the bottom of the deck. This makes it so your opponent likely won’t see those for the rest of the game, and in some cases gets cards you want in your library back in them.
Endurance is played in most green decks (in formats its legal in) at the very least in the sideboard. It’s a generically solid card, and most decks will benefit from including it.
3. Delighted Halfling
Delighted Halfling is one of the best mana dorks of all time. At worst, it produces a colourless mana, and at best makes a mana of any colour that prevents that spell from being countered. Remoing the ability to counter a spell is amazing, especially on a legendary spell which tend to be more powerful than non-legendary ones. It’s mana fixing, so if you have a multi-coloured manabase you don’t have to worry about not having the colour you’d need, and when you cast the legendary card you don’t have to sweat about counterspells.
Delighted Halfling works best in decks running a lot of legendary spells. These are often in the form of combo pieces or planeswalkers that need to resolve in order to get their gameplans going. It’s also good in any Commander deck as even if the 99 cards aren’t legendary, it still lets you cast your commander without having to worry it’ll be countered.
2. Craterhoof Behemoth
The best game-ender for creature-based decks, Craterhoof Behemoth is a way to turn all creatures into ones with massive stats with trample. If Craterhoof Behemoth resolves, you are often winning the game off of it. Craterhoof Behemoth giving trample is the main attraction, as blocking hardly means anything when you can trample over them.
Craterhoof Behemoth is best in creature decks that flood the battlefield with creatures, often cheap ones. It’s one of the main game-enders in Elf decks, especially since they can search it out from the deck naturally. If you can cheat it out with a card like Natural Order, you can avoid paying its hefty mana cost as well.
1. Primeval Titan
Primeval Titan is so good it’s banned in Commander, and is a meta threat in all other formats it’s legal in. It’s a creature that ramps you and lets you put any two lands onto the battlefield tapped. There are no restrictions on the lands, so you can get any utility lands based on what the gamestate is.
Primeval Titan is best paired with Field Of The Dead where you turn each land entering the battlefield into 2/2 Zombie tokens. Primeval Titan often needs you to build your deck around it, ramping into it quickly because once it resolves and attacks once, you often win the game off of it.
That concludes the list of the 13 best green creatures in Magic: The Gathering and when to use them. All colours tend to trade off on being the “best,” with green having the longest stint and are usually at the top of the metagame of all formats, from Legacy to Modern. There are plenty of powerful green creatures, so much so they are worth building your entire deck around. Green has access to plenty of creature tutors that let you search them directly from your deck and put them either in your hand or on the top of your library (or in some cases cheat them onto the battlefield directly). There’s a reason most green-based decks are built around creatures, they have so many good ones that a strategy of putting the best of them onto the battlefield is often enough to be a meta threat.
