Below you’ll find a quick overview of the best green Commander staples. While, the list is by no means a definitive one, it does include most of the best green cards for Commander. No matter which kind of green deck you’re playing, these cards should make it better.
Before we start, let’s explain what a staple is. Staples are generically powerful cards, that are often played in any deck of their colors. Some of them can be quite pricey, but that’s not always the case.
The staples you’ll find in this article are all mono-green, meaning you can play them in any deck that has access to green. First, we’ll take a look at the best three green Commander cards, then we move to other staples, which will be group together by their card types.
Top 3 Best Green Commander Staples
For these three cards you need a really big reason for omitting them from your green Commander decks. Keep in mind that all of these rankings are still somewhat subjective. If you’d choose something else as you your best three green Commander cards, feel free to share them in the comments below.
Cultivate
There are various great ramp spells in green, but Cultivate really hits that sweet spot. It effectively draws you two cards, so it’s a sort of a weird card advantage spell. But most importantly it ramps you and makes sure you aren’t missing your land drops.
In most Commander games, there’s no shortage of things to do with your mana. Typically, you don’t have enough of it to make all the fun plays you want. Thus, it feels horrible when you miss your lands drops. This sorcery makes sure that won’t be the case.
On top of that, its been printed in just about every green Commander precon. Thus, you can get it for fairly cheap.
Birds of Paradise
Playing Birds of Paradise on turn 1 feels amazing. Not as good as casting Sol Ring, but still quite powerful. Even on the later turns, you’ll typically have a single mana to spare on Birds and it’ll be fine.
The fact that you get mana of any color is amazing for any deck that plays more than one color. Of course, if you’re playing mono green you probably want to play Llanowar Elves variants over Birds, but even so – why not both?
Also, flying comes up more often than one might think. It useful for either holding equipment or chump blocking a big flyer.
Boseiju, Who Endures
The newest card among the top three green Commander staples is a land from 2022. (As of early 2024, no new cards have threatened to take its place.) Boseiju, Who Endures is so amazing because its insanely low opportunity cost.
There’s just no real downside to putting this card in your deck. It comes into play untapped and gives you a green source. Perfectly playable. However, its power level comes from the fact that you can also play it as a Naturalize. Since that’s an ability, it can’t be countered by regular Counterspells.
Sure, the card costs a lot on the secondary market, but you only need one, which you can then swap among all of your green Commander decks.
Now it’s time to check the other strong green cards, and we’re starting with creatures.
Creatures
Of course, creatures are green’s bread and butter. There are so many of great creature staples, that I’ve probably missed some. They can be grouped into different categories.
First, green is full of mana dorks. These are creatures that tap for mana. In some cases, like Llanowar Elves, they only tap for green. (You can also get more consistency with functional reprints such as Elvish Mystic and Fyndhorn Elves.) Others, like the previously mentioned Birds of Paradise, are valuable in multicolored decks because of their ability to tap for any color.
Other creatures can search your library for lands. Sakura-Tribe Elder and Wood Elves are examples of these creatures.
You can then use those quickly by playing multiple lands per turn. Oracle of Mul Daya is one of the most common creatures with this kind of effect, but there are tons more, like Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and Azusa, Lost but Seeking. You can combine these with landfall creatures, such as Scute Swarm and Tireless Provisioner to get tons of value.
Reclamation Sage and Acidic Slime are both creatures that destroy artifacts and enchantments. This is another thing that green creatures are especially good at.
Green Commander staples can also return cards from your graveyard. Eternal Witness is the quintessential example of those kinds of creatures.
Finally, green has the best game-ending creatures. Three that come to mind are Avenger of Zendikar, Craterhoof Behemoth, and Seedborn Muse.
Instants
Green instants do largely the same things as the creatures do. They ramp for mana, destroy artifacts and enchantments, and get cards back from the graveyard. In addition to that, cards like Heroic Intervention can protect your creatures really effectively.
A rule of thumb for green in Magic is that their payoffs require creatures. For example, green can draw with cards like Return of the Wildspeaker as long as you have creatures on the board. Similarly, a lot of green cards can tutor, but they can almost exclusively search for creatures. For example, Worldly Tutor.
Finally, one green staple is a color-pie break. This means that there are not a lot of cards that have this effect. However, this particular card is very commonly played. The card I am referring to, is of course, Beast Within.
Some other great green instants (for various reasons) are:
Sorceries
See the previous two sections for staple green effects. Sorceries serve almost the exact same function as instants and creatures in green. There’s not lack of great ones, such as:
- Bala Ged Recovery
- Cultivate
- Farseek
- Finale of Devastation
- Kodama’s Reach
- Nature’s Lore
- Rampant Growth
- Rishkar’s Expertise
- Skyshroud Claim
- Sylvan Scrying
- Three Visits
- Triumph of the Hordes
Enchantments
Green enchantments are quite a bit more diverse than its instants and sorceries. Like creatures, green’s enchantments can add additional lands (or untap them) and mana.
However, they also have the ability to neutralize threats with cards like Lignify or Kenrith’s Transformation. Finally, Sylvan Library is a powerful enchantment that provides green with non-creature related card advantage.
Some other staple green enchantments include:
- Bear Umbra
- Doubling Season
- Exploration
- Garruk’s Uprising
- Song of the Dryads
- Utopia Sprawl
- Wild Growth
- Zendikar Resurgent
Artifacts
Green is known for hating artifacts more than any other color. However, there is one green artifact that quickly became a staple. That card, of course, is The Great Henge.
Another one is Lifecrafter’s Bestiary, which is somewhat clunkier, but does provide a lot of value over the course of a long game. Conduit of Worlds can also be useful, but you really want to take advantage of that playing lands from graveyard part.
Lands
Despite being the color that cares most about lands, green does not have that many powerful lands. There is one exception, however. Gaea’s Cradle is certainly one of the most powerful lands in the entire format.
Other than that, though, green only has a few lands worth considering staples.
- Boseiju, Who Endures
- Castle Garenbrig
- Dryad Arbor
- Gaea’s Cradle
- Mosswort Bridge
- The Shire
- Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
- Yavimaya Hollow
More Staples, More Commander
That’s it for green Commander staples. Want to read more about staples from other colors? Here are articles for you to check out:
And if you want to read up on how to use fewer staples in your decks, check out my other article about problems with Commander Staples.