There is a confession I need to make, and it needs to be made in an open forum.  Made to a public that  must share my dirty  secret, what you could even call a fetish.  Must empathize with my quasi-tragic struggle.  I am speaking about playing Magic the Gathering with mono-green.  When I express the joys of green magic to my cohort they are met with  a sneer.  I am told that green is impotent and helpless.  He pontificates about a lack of strategy and innovation. I know he is wrong.  More accurately I hope he is wrong because I love playing mono-green, and I am not alone.

[caption id="attachment_959" align="alignright" width="241" caption="green: this kind of magic"][/caption]

The allure of green is obvious:  big creatures and even bigger damage. Green is a karate chop to the opposition's life total.  For that reason I will always be addicted to it.  After my first Might of Oaks resolved on a Groundbreaker and it sprinted through the red-zone for 13 points of damage I thought . . .  Hell Yeah!  After damage like that, it's hard to continue pecking away with control decks.  The more I played the more my addiction grew.  Rock bottom?  When I started putting duel mana creatures like Deus of Calamity and Overbeing of Myth in mono-green decks.  These creatures are better served in dynamic multi-color environments.  In decks where they fill a color's natural weakness or compliment another color's strength.  Maybe, but I don't see it like that anymore.  I've been to the mountain top and its covered in forests.

[caption id="attachment_958" align="alignleft" width="220" caption="versatility is over-rated "][/caption]

To love green is to struggle with her inadequacies however.  Each game seems to unearth new ones.  For example, many times I try to reach the promised land of green domination, but black always looms.  There is not a more perfect foil than black to green.  Terror will always be there waiting.  Also, with recent mass removal spells like Damnation and Infest black is no longer so susceptible to green rush tactics.  The root of the problem, pun intended, is that green is very easily destroyed.  Green is physically strong but mentally weak, aggressive to a fault.  There is not enough defense in mono-green.  I know this and play through anyway.  My friends laugh when I play my Overgrowth/Myojin of Life's Web deck.  They snicker when I claim Howl of the Nightpack is one of the top cards in Shadowmoor.  Green is the Rodney Dangerfield of MTG.  Unfortunately for us Johnny's there is truth in this slight.

[caption id="attachment_985" align="alignright" width="223" caption="what's not to like?"][/caption]

Alright enough of the negativity.  I love green, even if green doesn't always love me.  There is not another color like it.  Green is about good times, like having more elves than lands or doing 36 points of damage with one creature.  Therein lies the beauty of green.  The philosophy being the shortest distance between two points is always a straight line.  Flawed concept maybe, but nobody is perfect.

MTG 2010 is due out this summer, and is supposedly strengthening the idea of each color.  Therefore I expect some serious muscle for my money.  Because as long as WotC keeps producing giant creatures and game changing spells I'll be waiting with open arms, and I won't be the only one.