Vorinclex, Monstrous RaiderVorinclex, Monstrous Raider | Illustrated by Daarken

Each color in Magic has its own strengths and weaknesses. This is one of the first things you learn about the game when you start and is what keeps most people playing for years.

A red deck is going to be aggressive, even in a long-form format such as commander. It specializes in direct damage, swarms of cheap and hasted creatures, and an array of artifacts to support them. Not to mention enough mana-cheating and card draw to support a verifiable engine of war.

... unless you’re following this series, which is all about taking those traditional deck archetypes and turning them on their head. In that case, a red deck will play the long-game with traps, counters, and a dedicated plan of action to outplay your best maneuvers.

Or just straight-up randomness. That, too.

What is Playing “Out Of Type?”

Every color in Magic has the ability to engage with every facet of play. Red can play stax while blue can buff your creatures, even if these aren’t the “intended” archetypes of those colors, and while black might lack the “lifegain” tag white is flooded with, it has other means of increasing its life total.

Just like white has some creature removal despite that being black’s “thing.”

Playing Out Of Type or “Off-Color” is focusing on those strange and wonderful exceptions to the color pie and diving into them. Forget the game changers your color is known for and turn a blind eye to the meta.

Grab the worst cards you can find and cram ‘em together with some tape, elbow grease, and a prayer, 'cause where we’re going, we don’t use staples.

A Quick Disclaimer

Doing this is not a surefire means of victory. In fact, some might say it’s “intentionally decreasing how effective your deck is.”

To those people I say: yeah, and?

This is a style of play to shake up the rut you might be finding yourself in. Whether you’re the top of your pod and burning out from defending your crown or just looking to craft a deck you’ve never made before, part of the joy of Magic is exploring new possibilities, and making more decks than you’ll ever be able to play!

But to do so, you just have to adopt the mentality that you aren’t playing “optimally.” So when playing Off-Color, it’s probably stick to Bracket 1 or 2 where games aren’t as competitive.

When your green deck has fewer creatures on-board than cards in your hand, your opponents will be confused. When you follow your mana curve religiously, they’ll start asking questions. And when all you have left on your board are artifacts and enchantments, they’ll just assume you’re colorblind.

And that’s when you win right out from under them.

What Green Does Well

Mana Gain and Landfall

I’m throwing these two together because when I think green, I think lands and creatures cosplaying as lands. It’s more common than you’d think in other colors, but the absolute poster child of this is green.

Green breaks the mana curve regularly due to its fundamental hatred of economics. This, of course, stems from green players’ collective illiteracy, but it works out for us because when you can’t read the rules, you don’t need to worry about things such as a limit to how many lands you can play per turn.

Then green capitalizes off of this flouting of the rules with its rampant use of Landfall and its rampant use of non-Landfall land-based triggers.

So if a green player plays a land, they can benefit from it. If a green player has a lot of lands, they can benefit from that. If a green has lands in their graveyard, well that’s just a hand that takes some work to play from.

Graveyard Reclamation

Speaking of the graveyard, green is second to one in its ability to access the graveyard. Black takes the cake, but green has no shortage of fetch cards for a wide variety of targets. I have to give a special shoutout to Eternal WitnessEternal Witness for having a blanket “grab whatever you want, on me” as an enter-the-battlefield effect.

Any ability that allows you to remove it from the field and return it, or otherwise play it again once it dies, skyrockets its value.

Quantity AND Quality of Creature

The only strength green can employ which would so much as rival its infamy in the mana market is its ability to create a frankly insulting amount of creature tokens or, with its mana production, simply play strong creatures ahead of the curve to dominate the battlefield.

Not only that, green strengthens and protects creatures with keywords such as reach, hexproof, and indestructible. Or it just increases their base stats with the humble +1/+1 counter, which is itself neutral on the color-pie but has a tinge of green in its alignment.

Then there’s the various temporary strength increases green loves to hand out to its creatures, and in case you were wondering if that was “just” to inflict damage, think again! Green even makes sure to use that to also benefit itself economically.

Artifact/Enchantment Removal

While this might be a bit needlessly restricting to playing Off-Color, I feel green’s hatred of artifacts and enchantments is core enough to its identity to include. Green struggles with removal of creatures, not removal of other types of permanents.

It has activated abilities, instants, and sorceries whose sole purpose are the removal of artifacts and enchantments, the lore being that they aren’t native to the natural world and so green rejects them, but still! Not the worst coverage, given the inherent strength of green’s creatures.

But What If…

… you play a green deck where you build a noncombat engine?

It’s time to exit the forest and enter the forge, because green has a surprising amount of noncreature permanents that are quite strong! Granted, they primarily scale off of having a strong creature-base, but don’t worry about it!

You have alt win-cons for that.

Creature Removal

Green can’t destroy creatures directly most of the time, save for artifact and/or enchantment creatures. However, it has access to multiple cards which allow your creatures to deal their power in damage to another creature. Similarly, green holds domain over the “fight” keyword, which forces two creatures to attack one another.

Artifacts/Enchantments

This one’s kind of cheating, but hear me out! Green has very little support for artifacts, so while it’s easy to say “having colorless artifacts in a green deck feels more like playing a colorless deck,” there isn’t the synergy a blue or red deck would have.

Green excels at removing artifacts. Remember the tidbit of lore I mentioned earlier? What’s more Off-Green than to focus on that which is not natural?

Then following the same logic, we can also grab a few cheeky enchantments that’ll really help us set up a legitimate board state, and something that’s usually quite fun while still being Off-Green is Sagas, particularly those that field creatures.

Wait, no, those are VERY green. I meant more like these.

Alternative Win Conditions

Green seems to struggle with alternative win conditions, at least from what I’ve seen. And for the record, I’m uncertain counting poison counter. While they aren’t “core” to green’s color identity, they’re still quite common in it.

Poison isn’t integral to green, though green is integral to poison. The main other color that involves poison is black through the largely phased-out infect. While Phyrexia gave us poison across all colors, it’s still largely a Golgari exclusive.

So if that fancies you, here’s a few green cards to get the poison going.

However, there are certain cards which simply allow you to win the game. They aren’t quite common to green and when they exist, they tend to focus on green’s strengths, so while many might bemoan their fielding, the fact you’re facing an uphill battle means it won’t be “cheap.”

You have to earn an Off-Green victory, because ignoring your ignoring your economy and board state aren’t markers of an easy strategy!

Green Loves Fundamentals

A primal part of my brain lights up whenever I see a big number and I make it get bigger, whether mana or a creature’s strength, so I’m a green player and have been since I first started playing.

Green has the basic loop of magic down to a science. It plays lands, lots of them. Gets lots of mana. Plays creatures and makes them hit harder.

But it struggles and loses scope the further from that core loop you stray. It has some enchantment support, life gain, and card draw if you build your board right, but it can’t control your opponent’s stack or board nearly as well as any other color.

If you want to play Off-Green, you’re using a wooden sword to enact drone warfare. It’s a blunt tool you’re trying to be clever with, so start your engines, begin the politicking, and be prepared to have a much more open board than you’d ever feel comfortable with.

I’ll stick to my big numbers in the meantime.