For One Mana - Green
Part four of the ‘For One Mana’ article series, where I take a closer look at one-mana cards you could be playing instead of automatically going for the often played Birds of Paradise, Fyndhorn Elves, Nature’s Claim, or Wild Growth.
You’re not wrong for playing those cards. They’re obviously very good, but if you feel that the Commander games that you play are samey or the format is getting solved or homogenized, then grabbing underused cards some people might have not even heard of before is a great way to make your deck feel more unique and special.
Creatures
Brown Ouphe
I’m pretty sure most of you know what Collector Ouphe does so meet its politer cousin, Brown Ouphe! While it’s true it's technically worse than Collector Ouphe, Brown Ouphe doesn’t disable your own artifacts, which can sometimes be quite important.
Deny someone their Sunforger’s ‘search and cast’ while still unattaching the equipment, stop that Sensei’s Divining Top from going to the top of their library, or allow an opponent to sink 50 health into their Aetherflux Reservoir only for you to counter the ability and stop them from dealing 50 damage to you!
Make sure to read the up to date oracle text, and remember that mana abilities can’t be targeted, so you’re not going to stop cards like Timeless Lotus or Mana Vault. Brown Ouphe is a repeatable once per turn effect, which made me pick this card over Rust.
Elvish Herder
A repeatable trample source that can also target creatures your opponents control. While it’s true green has no shortage of overrun effects, you’ve likely found yourself in situations before where you could connect for meaningful damage ‘if only my creature had trample!’, and Overruns tend to be quite mana intensive. Elvish Herder also doesn’t have to be on the battlefield early, so you can cast it just before you need it.
Play the card late game right before you want to swing out for lethal damage or activate it in response to someone blocking too sparingly. If you’ve already used cards like Rogue’s Passage or Kessig Wolf Run on your opponent's voltron commander before, you might want to add Elvish Herder to your list. I’m sure the newly previewed 18/6 Yargle and Multani wouldn’t mind this card either.
Permeating Mass
This will be no stranger to our own Battlecruiser players and I’m sure they’re happy to see it pop up here. People will think twice swinging their commander or biggest beater your way, knowing they’ll end up with a 1/3 in return. Permeating Mass snowballs for quite a while, especially if more than one player is focusing on a combat strategy to play the game. This card is very aptly named, prepare for it to spread across all players' battlefields. Certainly worth considering in decks with Volo, Guide to Monsters or Riku of Two Reflections at the helm.
Xantid Swarm
Another late game one-drop card. This is a great way of preventing your opponents from messing with your board when you’re committing to your final attack. While it’s true you silence just one opponent, if you’re left in a 1v1 situation, that Silence effect could mean the difference between you winning or losing.
Force your opponents to cast their combat tricks before they can decide on blockers or stop their ‘at the end of your turn’ spells they’ve been keeping back throughout the game. Xantid Swarm is a great card if you’ve built a deck that wants to play around on the stack during combat, and now you and you alone get to cast your tricks.
Enchantments
While I’d like to recommend Drop of Honey, I understand not everybody has the luxury to play in a proxy friendly environment, and I don’t expect someone to pay… (checks notes) ...800 dollars for this quirky card. Let’s look at some more affordable one-mana enchantment options.
Chief: Drop of Honey was actually reprinted as a white card in Planar Chaos. Check out Porphyry Nodes if you want a more affordable equivalent.
Exxaxl: Shhh no white article spoilers, I still have the colorless one to write first. Let’s continue.
Bequeathal
Turn creature destruction into card draw with this one-off Skullclamp effect. Bequeathal seems incredibly underused in my eyes. Note how it doesn’t have to be a creature you control, so feel free to enchant your opponent’s creature they’ve been attacking with each turn, or draw two cards when you’ve already decided to cast Beast Within after Bequeathal resolves.
Early game engine commanders like Rhys the Redeemed or enchantment-focused decks like Sythis, Harvest’s Hand and Tatsunari, Toad Rider might survive a few more turns because your opponents don’t want to give you the card advantage when they destroy your commander. Draw four cards for one mana if you’re playing Stangg, Echo Warrior or Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief, replay Bequeathal several times in one game with Muldrotha, the Gravetide or draw five cards with your next Baba Lysaga, Night Witch activation.
Mortal Wound
Destroy any creature you desire if it takes damage from any source. This is a great deterrent to cast on someone’s voltron commander, and if you’re leaning into other combat related tricks such as goad or other ‘must attack’ effects, Mortal Wound can get rid of an otherwise hard to deal with creature.
It’s also a nice way to turn all your ‘target creature you control fights’ spells into creature destruction if those creatures outscale your own toughness-wise. While pinger decks aren’t all that common in green, you can easily slot this in a deck with Saryth, the Viper’s Fang or Cattie-brie of Mithral Hall at the helm.
Shaper’s Sanctuary
While it won’t prevent your creature from dying, Shaper’s Sanctuary will draw you cards if your opponents are pointing removal your way. This one will be quite meta-dependent, but if you’re regularly playing in pods where targeted removal is common practice - and let’s be honest, it should be - then you might want to consider this card. Works great with Arasta of the Endless Web and Jolrael, Mwonvuli Recluse!
Urban Burgeoning
Attention all utility land players: you can use those lands more than once per turn cycle. Do you already run a Gaea’s Cradle or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx? What about untapping your Mosswort Bridge on your opponent's turn right after you played it, or drawing more than one card with War Room? Four Maze of Ith activations per turn cycle? Triggering your landfall payoffs not on your turn through Terrain Generator?
You can get more uses out of this with cards like Ashaya, Soul of the Wild and enchant a creature you control, like Circle of Dreams Druid or Karametra’s Acolyte. Just remember that once that creature stops being a land, the aura falls off.
Instants
Camouflage
This card changed a lot in its Oracle text, so I’ll post its up-to-date rules text first.
This turn, instead of declaring blockers, each defending player chooses any number of creatures they control and divides them into a number of piles equal to the number of attacking creatures for whom that player is the defending player. Creatures those players control that can block additional creatures may likewise be put into additional piles. Assign each pile to a different one of those attacking creatures at random. Each creature in a pile that can block the creature that pile is assigned to does so. (Piles can be empty.)
Still confused? Let’s simplify! It’s probably best to cast this at the beginning of combat or after attackers have been declared, before blockers are declared. Each player that’s getting attacked chooses any amount of creatures they control and puts those creatures in piles, equal to the number of creatures attacking that player. Imagine doing Fact or Fiction with your creatures, equal to the amount of creatures attacking you - reminder, piles can be empty. Each pile can block one attacking creature, and those blocking piles are chosen at random. Are you caught up now? Great. Useful? Unlikely. Hilarious? Very. Happy randomizing!
Chief: Camouflage does an excellent job living up to its name, since there are no versions of the card that actually show you what the card does. Yes, I’m ignoring the 30th Anniversary Edition printings of the card on principle.
Exxaxl: Reading the card does not always explain the card.
Crumble and Oxidize
While there’s plenty of artifact and enchantment removal in our format, rarely are they one mana at instant speed. Yes, Crumble and Oxidize only hit artifacts and not enchantments, but I feel the amount of artifacts that see play now versus several years ago has gone up a lot.
Bolas’s Citadel, The Great Henge, Midnight Clock, Shadowspear, the list goes on. While they are worse than Nature's Claim, when you’re down to one mana, having limited removal in hand beats having none and if your Nature’s Claim is already in your graveyard, they probably won’t see these coming. ‘They only have one mana up, what’s the worst that could happen?’
Mystic Repeal
While you can no longer tuck commanders, Mystic Repeal can still remove them from the battlefield. There’s currently 52 legendary creatures that are also enchantments, be that on their front or flip side, and with the newly previewed front side Preator, back side Saga cards that list is about to expand.
Seeing how all of the Theros gods are indestructible, this a great way to get them off the board. This is also a great way to safeguard some of your own enchantments from exile removal, or reuse them if you’re playing Sagas. Yes, you can use this on Urza’s Saga with the third lore counter ability still on the stack, activate it to generate a colorless mana, put it on the bottom of your library and then tutor for a 0 or 1 drop artifact, shuffling your Urza’s Saga back to a random location in your deck to reuse it later. Using offensive spells defensively for your own benefit is always great!
Sorceries
There are several fight and look at your top n cards in green for one mana, too many to talk about here. This also makes these effects not unique enough to mention for the series, and I feel with the recently released Bushwhack, it and similar cards have already been placed on people's radar in regards to EDH. This article is also making me realise I’m quite used to writing up Scryfall search syntaxes so maybe a small article piece on how versatile the search functions are on that platform isn’t a dumb idea for the future.
Caravan Vigil
I feel this is criminally underplayed, especially if you’re on a go-wide, aristocrats, or graveyard game plan. In those cases, you should have no issues making sure you get the morbid effect of this card. A morbid Caravan Vigil is better Rampant Growth for one mana, one of the most played green cards in our entire format. While you lack the flexibility of turning it into removal like the aforementioned Bushwhack, you can get an extra land on the field, which can be important sometimes.
Insist
Guarantee your creature resolves and draw a card. Especially if your commander tax is quite high, or they’re just expensive to cast to begin with, making sure your spell actually resolves can be quite important. If you have the mana for it, why risk your End-Raze Forerunners or Apex Altisaur getting counterspelled?
I feel this card is often overlooked because Autumn’s Veil and Veil of Summer already exist - the latter of which got banned in Pioneer, Explorer, and Historic because of how strong the effect can be. You’re only safeguarding your next creature spell, not all spells you cast this turn, but sometimes that can be enough to meaningfully impact the board or close out the game. Put this new toy in your deck, I insist ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).
Irresistible Prey
Being a control player myself, I dread seeing this resolve. All my backline creatures are now potentially at risk. I might only have a few of them on the battlefield, a mix of card draw engines, sacrifice outlets or my commander, usually none of those want to be on the receiving end of a mandatory block. And of course, draw a card, because green needs more cards that do that.
Metamorphosis
While it’s no Dark Ritual, it has the potential to generate a lot more mana. Cards like these always make me think of go-to lines of play ahead of time. It’s especially good if you’re relying on impactful enter the battlefield effects. Recycle your Acidic Slime to cast Rampaging Baloths. Woodland Bellower now pays for your Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus and Protean Hulk gives you enough mana to cast Craterhoof Behemoth. Consider running Metamorphosis in your graveyard or sacrifice deck to generate big mana, I’m sure Meren of Clan Nel Toth and Henzie “Toolbox” Torre won’t mind.
Artifact(s)
This is the first time I’m adding an artifact to one of these articles. While the card pool of one colored mana artifacts is quite limited, green did have one underplayed card that stood out to me as potentially good. It’s no format staple - and let’s be honest, none of the previously mentioned cards are - but I felt it should at least be mentioned.
Skyclave Pick-Axe
This equips for free when it enters the battlefield, and when you’re playing a landfall based strategy, you usually don’t have a shortage of creatures you want to turn sideways towards your opponents. Multani, Yavimaya’s Avatar and Slogurk, the Overslime already have trample and Titania, Voice of Gaea or Greensleeves, Maro-Sorcerer certainly won’t mind their power and thoughness gaining yet another bonus when extra lands enter your battlefield. Pair this with Elvish Herder from the start of the article and mix up your next deck’s one drops. There’s a colorless version of this card called Adventuring Gear if you’re looking for something similar. I wonder if it makes the For One Mana: Colorless article later!
Green was somewhat easier than red for me - Abzan, Jund and Sultai are no strangers to me and I’m always happy if I happen to have those color combinations in a limited environment. Mix up your next brew without going for your easy auto includes and run some of these lesser known and lesser played cards next time you’re building a deck! The next article in this series will be colorless, which is certainly going to be interesting.
Did you see a card you’re excited about? A new card you’ve never played before?
Let us know on our Discord or let the world know by reaching out to us on Twitter.
Want to play webcam EDH from the comfort of your own home? Join our Patreon or subscribe to our Twitch channel and find people to play with in our automated queues!
“This article is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.”
