The Green Machine | Drafting Green in Rise of the Eldrazi

Kevin:
Green is a strange color in Rise of the Eldrazi. I find that it is fought over pretty heavily, though because of how deep it is, even the dregs of this color are very satisfying. However you need to be careful to get your removal / disruption from one of the other colors.

Typically, if I get into green early, my goal is to use its acceleration to put out some of the ridiculously costed Eldrazi dudes. I do not have a problem with committing to green early if I see one of these 1st to 4th pick gems:

Kozileks Predator – Need Three Guys? This guy delivers.
Growth Spasm – Hate turns 4 and 5? go straight to 6.
Pelakka Wurm – Hate losing? Make it very hard for your opponent to win the game.

Capitalize on the mid-range picks of Ondu Giant, Nest Invader Daggerback Basilisk, as well as the often undervalued Growth Spasm. Then when the packs start drying up, there’s still a good chance you can get your hands on one of these off the trodden path cards:

Sporecap Spider – 5 seems to be the magic number in this set for toughness. This guy is almost a green removal spell able to block almost every common and uncommon without requiring another spell to remove. I love catching this card in the last three picks of the pack because it typically extends your opponents clock a good 3 to 4 turns or blocks and eats a removal spell. Not bad for a 10th pick.
Living Destiny – Being the type of drafter that I am, when I am playing green I often find myself trying to get to turns 10 and 11, which ca n unfortunately put myself at the mercy of my opponents ‘speedy beats. Over the years I have  tried to find places for almost every lifegain spell (because of what some of my fellow drafters would refer to as my being ”full of crazy”), and this may be one of the best lifegain spells ever printed for draft. These are the things that make this life gain card one of the best ones:

• Output: Often this card can hit for eight and in very rare situations as much as fifteen Countering two attack steps at four mana for one card is very solid. I used to have to tap out to play Dawnglow Infusion just to get 10+ life.
• Instant: Tricking your opponent into doing their combat math expecting that you’ve kept up a removal spell, only instead of preventing four or so damage by removing a guy, you actually gain an insane amount of life and survive the alpha strike.

Ancient Stirrings – This card is very interesting. Once you’re playing around 17 lands and 4 or so colorless spells, this spell will begin to rarely whiff. Hitting a Dreamstone Hedron or an Artisan of Kozilek makes this card not a bad cycler to fix up your hand, and it will easily replace a 18th or 19th land. I often find this card as the 23rd card in my draft deck.

Chris:
Green is certainally deep, with five incredibly solid acceleration spells at common, Kozileks Predator, Ondu Giant, Nest Invader, Overgrown Battlement and Growth Spasm. And all of those ramp spells come into play with guys as well? What the hell could convince me not to fight for this color?

The problem then, with having so many dudes ramping your mana hard, is finding something to play alongside them. The simple answer is to try and fill your deck with as many giant Eldrazi guys as possible, but depending on the build, this could be a risky tactic. The thing is that despite the slow nature of this format, you can still find yourself taking a lot more damage in the early game than you’d want. Yes our ramp cards often come into play with Eldrazi spawn, but blocking with these valuable mana critters should be a last resort. Really the only card reliably holding the ground early is the Overgrown Battlement, but unless you’ve got at least two of these you still face an early beat down.

This is why, as tempting as that Artisan of Kozilek may look, I’d still advise opting for some of the format’s more effecient creatures, ones which hit the ground early and capitlalize on your mana glut later on. The cards who most fit these theme are the invokers and the levelers. These guys all let you not only put up an early game, but when the mana starts flooding in they quickly become more-than-solid beaters, or incredible game winning bombs. Currently I’d advise anyone playing Green to take Wildheart Invoker over just about anything, as the 4/3 body more than beats in against walls, and the invoker ability is top-notch. My ideal green deck would play one or two Eldrazi as well, though my real focus would be to find things to do with all that mana other than wait for the bombs in my hand to drop.