10 best mono-green Commander cards in Magic: The Gathering
Give me land, lots of land.
The best mono-green Commander cards in Magic: The Gathering involve surprisingly few creatures. Despite Green being the colour of massive monsters, a lot of the best cards are actually found in other card types. After all, just because you’re known for being good at something, doesn’t mean that’s all you can do.
We’ve gone through the many, many, many Green Commander cards to find a list of ten that we think should be in nearly every Green deck around. Use this as a skeleton for any mono-green Commander, and you’ll be rewarded with a very strong start to your deck. Plus, they’re a huge amount of fun to play with.
Best mono-green Commander cards MTG
- Sylvan Library
- Exploration
- Triumph of the Hordes
- Beast Within
- Cultivate
- Eternal Witness
- Seedborn Muse
- Scute Swarm
- The Great Henge
- Veil of Summer
Green actually has some of the best cards in MTG in general, so picking just ten was genuinely quite tricky. We’ve tried to balance this list of mono-green Commander cards with a few overpowered cards that can win the game on the spot, a few staples that don’t win the game but build a good foundation, and just some very powerful and unique spells that only Green has access to.
1. Sylvan Library
Best of 3?
Sylvan Library is a two-mana enchantment that nearly always feels unfair when you’re not in control of it. It reads: “At the beginning of your draw step, you may draw two additional cards. If you do, choose two cards in your hand drawn this turn. For each of those cards, pay 4 life or put the card on top of your library.”
In essence, rather than drawing one card, you get to draw three then pick the one you want the most out of the bunch and keep it for free, or choose to draw more cards by paying some life. Paying four life in a different format is a big deal, but in Commander you start with 40 life, so it’s an easy price to pay.
2. Exploration
Another one
Playing land cards is at the core of any deck in Magic: The Gathering. Not even just the best MTG decks, either - nearly every deck needs to play one land a turn to function. In Commander, where mana values are generally higher, it’s even more important. Exploration is a one-mana enchantment that helps you out on that front.
All it does is let you play one additional land on each of your turns. As long as you combine this with some good landfall triggers, or just a land-heavy deck, you can overwhelm anyone by just playing a few more land cards.
3. Triumph of the Hordes
Down with the sickness
Infect is uniquely powerful in Commander because it allows you to kill an opponent with ten damage instead of forty, which is a big speed-up. Cards that give infect are incredibly powerful as a result, and Triumph of the Hordes sits atop them all.
This four-mana sorcery gives all your creatures not only infect, but also +1/+1 and trample until the end of the turn. It’s so easy to win games with this you might feel like you’re cheating, but don’t let that stop you from winning the game.
4. Beast Within
Your 10/10 is a 3/3 now
Beast Within is one of the best removal spells that Green has in Commander, and possibly in any other MTG format too. It comes with the downside of turning whatever you destroy into a 3/3 beast creature, but it’s worth it.
That’s because Beast Within costs three mana, is an instant and can target any permanent. You can turn an opponent’s single source of Red mana into a beast and lock them out of their deck for a few turns, or get rid of a pesky planeswalker with ease.
5. Cultivate
Land now and then
There are lots of good options for ramp spells in Green. It’s literally the colour of playing land cards and big creatures, so it’s not all that surprising. Cultivate is one of the best though, because it not only puts a land card into play, but also puts one in your hand.
This three-mana sorcery allows you to search your library for two basic land cards, and then pick one to go onto the battlefield tapped, and put the other in your hand. It’s just reliable, and that’s what you need sometimes. Also, you can play a card called Kodama’s Reach that does the same thing, which is always valuable in a Commander deck.
6. Eternal Witness
Again and again
Eternal Witness is a three-mana 2/1 creature with very little combat ability outside of blocking a creature once. However, it’s still one of the best Green creatures in MTG, because it allows you to play cards again.
As it enters the battlefield, you get to choose a card in your graveyard and then put it back into your hand. That means getting to play your best removal card again, or breathing new life into a creature that got countered. It gets even better if you can flicker it to make it enter the battlefield again too, because then you can just keep doing it.
7. Seedborn Muse
Untap everything, every turn
One of the hardest decisions you have to make in Commander is deciding when to attack and leave yourself with fewer defences. It’s also tough to try and decide if you should play a big creature, or save an instant spell to protect something else. Seedborn Muse allows you to stop worrying about such things.
Seedborn Muse is a five-mana 2/4 that allows you to untap all permanents you control during each other player’s untap step. In the right decks, this can double, triple or even quadruple your mana depending on how many other players there are.
8. Scute Swarm
Too much of a good thing
Scute Swarm is a three-mana 1/1 creature, so you’d best believe it has an incredible ability. While it’s not strong on its own, the thing that makes Scute Swarm so powerful is that it is rarely on its own, and it can get out of hand very quickly.
That’s because it reads: “Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, create a 1/1 green Insect creature token. If you control six or more lands, create a token that’s a copy of Scute Swarm instead.” Basically, once you get past six lands, you start doubling your Scute Swarms every turn. It makes it hard to kill and, if you combine it with cards like Exploration and Triumph of the Hordes, it can win games easily.
9. The Great Henge
Aptly named
Sometimes, a card just does a little bit of everything, and that’s enough to make it well worth playing. The Great Henge is one such card. This nine-mana artifact costs X less to cast, where X is the greatest power among creatures you control, and it can cost as little as two mana.
It can then tap to add two Green mana to your mana pool and give you two life. That’s nice, but it also puts a +1/+1 counter on any nontoken creatures that enter the battlefield under your control, and lets you draw a card when you do so. It’s just a lot of good stuff, and it’s hard to beat.
10. Veil of Summer
No to that
Finally, we have Veil of Summer. This is a one-mana instant card that is banned in multiple formats because it’s so powerful. Thankfully though, it’s not banned in Commander, and that’s currently all we care about.
It reads: “Draw a card if an opponent has cast a blue or black spell this turn. Spells you control can’t be countered this turn. You and permanents you control gain hexproof from blue and from black until end of turn.”
Being able to stop your spells being countered and also stop them dying to target removal is incredible, and being able to draw a card on top of that is amazing.