Yet another return to Magic: The Gathering's ancestral home has brought us even more powerful renditions of iconic cards and creature types. Dominaria United features old favorites with a new spin, and also brings back well-loved mechanics like kicker.
Green is often regarded by many as one of the weakest, if not the weakest, color in the entirety of the Magic color pie. This is due to the fact that green's most notable characteristics include enchantment and artifact destruction, making lots of mana, and casting gigantic creatures. Typically, none of these qualities can be found in a great constructed deck. Nevertheless, Dominaria United has delivered some creatures and spells that might just change the way many players think about this underutilized color.
7 Urborg Lhurgoyf
This new take on Tarmogoyf allows its caster to use kicker costs in order to grow one of Magic's favorite beasties. It's also notable that, unlike Tarmogoyf, Urborg Lhurgoyf's power and toughness are based on the number of creatures in your graveyard, not the number of card types.
This difference is a kind of double-edged sword. While Urborg Lhurgoyf is capable of growing to a much larger size, you will have to fill your graveyard with a lot of cards in order to achieve this benefit. Furthermore, it restricts the kinds of decks in which this Lhurgoyf can be played to primarily creature-based strategies. Consequently, this Lhurgoyf might see play in Standard or even Pioneer, but it's unlikely to catch more popularity than that.
6 Tear Asunder
One of the biggest deficits of including artifact and enchantment removal in decks is the risk that it becomes a useless card in many matchups. Tear Asunder helps assuage these concerns, thanks to its kicker cost transforming the card into nonland permanent removal.
That being said, four mana for a removal spell is a hefty price to pay. It's not uncommon to pay this much for removal in Limited and, less frequently, Standard. At the end of the day though, Tear Asunder will often be an overpriced removal spell. There's still a world where this card sees usage due to its added flexibility, though. After all, it's a strictly better Naturalize.
5 Yavimaya Iconoclast
We couldn't return to Dominaria without a healthy heaping of Elves. Yavimaya Iconoclast is one such fellow who provides an aggressive body for a fair price.
More than that, the Iconoclast's kicker ability not only gives it a counter, but gifts this creature with haste as well. Three mana for a four-power, three-toughness creature that can attack immediately is a pretty good deal in a properly aggressive deck. One successful attack with Yavimaya Iconoclast will eliminate 20 percent of your opponent's starting life total, while also leaving them with the problem of a big attacker on the battlefield.
4 Defiler Of Vigor
Speaking of big attackers, Defiler of Vigor is the compleated version of the classic Green creature cards we know and love. Five mana for a six-power, six-toughness creature isn't an especially good rate, but trample makes this Wurm a real threat.
Like all the creatures in the Defiler cycle of this set, Defiler of Vigor also allows you to pay Phyrexian mana in place of green mana among the casting costs of your cards. In Standard words, this is the perfect creature to lead into a four mana Titan of Industry that net costs you one life. Defiler of Vigor also provides counters to your whole board every time you cast a green permanent spell, including itself. Trample has never looked so good.
3 Leaf-Crowned Visionary
This Elf is the new Elf Lord printed in the Lords cycle that Dominaria United brought. Lords have almost always been printed at a minimum mana value of three until now, which already makes Leaf-Crowned Visionary a card to write home about. Even better than that though, Leaf-Crowned Visionary allows you to pay one green mana to draw a card each time you cast an Elf spell.
While this might not seem like a huge deal at first glance, any Elf player knows that one of the things Elves are best at is making an ungodly amount of green mana. Consequently, Leaf-Crowned Visionary will allow Elf decks to dig through their library and refill their hand all while developing their own board.
2 Quirion Beastcaller
Yet another aggressive green two-drop like Yavimaya Iconoclast, Quirion Beastcaller is just a Bear when it first enters the battlefield. Thanks to its ability to gain a counter each time you cast a creature spell though, it will soon grow to much more threatening heights.
As a result, opponents will eventually be forced to remove this Dryad Warrior. Even when they do remove her, the counters that Beastcaller has accumulated can then be placed on any number of other creatures you control. In other words, opponents pretty much need to remove Beastcaller the turn she comes down, or ensure a board wipe, in order to deal with this creature cleanly. Since when did green get so aggro?
1 Tail Swipe
The final card on this list is a card that stands to change the nature of green decks forever. Tail Swipe is one of the first impressive removal spells for green to ever receive, and it won't be surprising if this card pops up in multiple formats.
Granted, this is still removal that requires you to have a sizable creature on the board in order to be effective, but its lowly cost of one green, instant speed, and ability to pump up your own creature prior to the fight effect all make for an efficient removal spell that many creature decks will be happy to play. You might not be used to fearing a single open green mana, but you very likely will soon. Mess with green, you get the tail.