Dominaria United Limited Set Review: Green

Hey everyone! We’re back for my favorite time of year. That’s right it’s pumpkin spice season! Oh, I guess you are here for Magic stuff. Let’s try that again… It’s new card preview season! I’m really excited to be heading back into Dominaria to throw down with the Phyrexians for the fate of the multiverse. So, let’s get down to the business of how these cards are going to be playing out in Dominaria United Limited.

Here’s the usual grading scale:

• 5.0: Disgustingly powerful and basically unbeatable. Either answer it the turn it comes down or just pack up your cards. (Tovolar's Huntmaster, The Meathook Massacre, Starnheim Unleashed)
• 4.5: Incredible bomb that still gives your opponent a slim chance. (Adeline, Resplendent Cathar, Alrund's Epiphany, Grand Master of Flowers)
• 4.0: Great rare or the absolute best uncommons and removal. (Froghemoth, Morbid Opportunist, Skullport Merchant)
• 3.5: Great role filler or removal that you never cut. (Magic Missile, Cathartic Pyre, Battle Cry Goblin)
• 3.0: Good playable that I’m basically never cutting. (Usher of the Fallen, Search Party Captain, Dragon Turtle)
• 2.5: Decent playable and the bar I hope nearly every card in my deck to reach. (Mourning Patrol, Steadfast Paladin, Goblin Morningstar)
• 2.0: Mediocre filler that normally is your 20-23rd card(s). (Contact Other Plane, Mindleech Ghoul, Timberland Guide)
• 1.5: Replaceable, overall bad filler. Could also be decent sideboard cards. (Secrets of the Key, Spiked Pit Trap, Village Rites)
• 1.0: Bad filler. Gets cut most of the time. (Secret Door, Mystic Skull, Funeral Longboat)
• 0.5: Very unhappy to main deck this, but maybe it has fringe sideboard applications. (You See a Guard Approach, Bramble Armor, Compelled Duel)
• 0.0: Unplayable in every possible situation. (Mimic, Change of Fortune, Curse of Shaken Faith)

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Barkweave Crusher

Rating: 2.0/5

This can attack for a decent amount with enlist and the five toughness does make it hard to kill. I just want my four drops to be able to do something decent on their own. I’d be more interested in this if I’m trying to win through the air and just need something to hold the ground.

Bite Down

Rating: 3.0/5

Instant speed Rabid Bite is a great way to clear the way, blow out a double block, or wreck a trick. This is greens best form of interaction so don’t pass it up if you’re playing another color without much removal.

Bog Badger

Rating: 2.0/5

While Centaur Courser isn’t where you really want to be, it’s acceptable on curve. Giving your whole team menace is a great way to sneak in lethal or at least put them in a bad position with blocking, but not really relevant early in the game. Two cards only really good at different parts of the game combined into one makes this a decent card.

Broken Wings

Rating: 1.5/5

Take…these Broken Wings… And learn to board again… Yeah, this is broken coming out of the sideboard, but main boarding it can leave you with a totally dead card so don’t do that unless you are short on playables or have multiple ways to rummage it away.

Pretty key card to bring in against the pile of Oblivion Rings and Flyers.

Colossal Growth

Rating: 1.5/5

I’m not too thrilled about paying an extra mana for Giant Growth with nothing thrown in. The kicker is the only reason I’m considering this card since the random haste and trample can give you some surprise lethals out of nowhere.

Deathbloom Gardener

Rating: 2.5/5

Really expensive for a Birds of Paradise, but we just saw how much work Undercellar Myconid could do for three mana so I’m willing to give this a chance. While it doesn’t give you the chump blockers it does pose the problem of being able to trade for anything on the ground giving your opponent twice the reasons to bolt the bird.

While it doesn’t help with Domain, it does help to pay for off color kickers. I also have to mention that this dies to Smash to Dust so that might be a problem after sideboard.

Defiler of Vigor

Rating: 4.5/5

Ummm…. Did they mean to say target creature and accidently put each creature on this? Serious question here because it still would have been really good distributing counters as a one of. Now your whole freaking side including this overstatted trampler gets pumped. What a freaking scam.

Elfhame Wurm

Rating: 2.0/5

Your average acceptable curve topper. Nothing more, nothing less.

Elvish Hydromancer

Rating: 2.5/5

The biggest mistake with this card will be when people don’t just play it on curve because it’s got awful stats for that. Here’s the thing, if you don’t get to the point in the game where you can kick this, it did literal nothing. If you don’t have other three drops, just play this and worry about the value later.

I’m giving it a good grade because it can be amazing at seven mana when most three drops are really meh at that point in the game.

Floriferous Vinewall

Rating: 2.0/5

While an 0/2 isn’t much of a defender, it usually replaces itself when it comes into play so anything else you get is decent. Useful for sacrifice fodder or in a defender themed deck (though you usually want those in Esper colors). If nothing else it provides a speed bump.

Gaea’s Might

Rating: 2.0/5

The reason I’m high on this is that five potential extra damage for one mana is ridiculously efficient. Killing someone from twelve with only a bear getting through and double Gaea's Might is the stuff that memes are made of.

Herd Migration

Rating: 4.0/5

Your opponent is about to get Mufasa’d in the middle of nowhere here. This is pretty insane in the Domain deck as dropping 15/15 worth of power and toughness is going to swing almost any game state in your favor.

The fail case of searching up a land to your hand and gaining three life isn’t great, but it’s a lot better to have it and not need it, then need it and not have it.

Hexbane Tortoise

Rating: 2.0/5

I’m slowly trying to figure out why some people are high on this. The ward and the enlist are nice options, but it doesn’t really stop it from trading with a two drop like every other 3/2 for three. I guess tricks are better with this since ward makes it harder to get wrecked.

Leaf-Crowned Visionary

Rating: 2.0/5

Another 1/1 lord that is going to have trouble justifying itself due to a shortage of elves running around. I’m sure this would be busted in limited if this was the Lord of the Rings expansion, but here it’s just a tease for the constructed shenanigans that it is going to get up to.

If you already have three or four elves you were going to be playing, then go ahead and grab this. It’s not worth grabbing and hoping you get there though.

Linebreaker Baloth

Rating: 3.0/5

Now this is the kind of enlisting that I’m looking to do as Baloth smashes through their lines of dorks to get to the real fights. I would be huge on this card if it was like Dread Linnorm and it had power 3 or less, but as it is it can still be a huge beating.

Llanowar Greenwidow

Rating: 3.5/5

I hope you don’t have arachnophobia because even if you manage to smash this spider, it comes back to haunt you again. It’s a great body for the cost and you don’t even need Domain to make bringing it back good.

The only real knock on this is that white has a lot of exile effects so you might never get to take advantage of its comeback.

Llanowar Loamspeaker

Rating: 3.5/5

Two mana Birds of Paradise that can turn your lands into decent hasty creatures later seems like a great early, still good late card. The mini Avalanche Caller effect really makes this tick, but unfortunately the sorcery restriction prevents you from using it on defense.

Llanowar Stalker

Rating: 1.0/5

As I’ve talked about before, Savannah Lions is not where you want to be in 2022 limited. This might not even be that and requires you to play things precombat to get any benefit. So go ahead and hope someone else picks up this stalker (preferably the cops).

Magnigoth Sentry

Rating: 2.0/5

Its best ability is that the art might give it secret reach and catch some poor unsuspecting 2/2 flapping over to say hello. This is actually as close as we get to a vanilla creature these days. Is a 4/4 for four that occasionally wrecks small flyers worth playing? As a curve filler, sure. Do you want multiples? Most likely not.

Mossbeard Ancient

Rating: 2.0/5

This has keyword Chonky and as a huge trampler can do some serious damage. The five life you get is nothing to sneeze at either as it can stabilize you from some pretty bad positions. There are just going to be games where you’re going to be dead long before you hit seven mana.

Nishoba Brawler

Rating: 3.0/5

If you’re playing Domain, dual lands can technically have this already smashing the face for five damage on turn three.  The three toughness really helps this brawl well in the early game and even if you can only get this up to three power, it’s still a bargain.

Quirion Beastcaller

Rating: 3.5/5

If you drop this on two and they don’t have an immediate answer, it starts snowballing out of control. Then when they finally do deal with it, you get to spread the love around to the rest of your creatures. That’s a lot out of one two mana creature.

Scout the Wilderness

Rating: 1.5/5

You can go Scout the Wilderness, I’m going to stay in the nice cozy cabin. Only being able to grab a basic land instead of a basic land type is actually a huge downside to this since you can’t grab the common dual lands.

The abilities are also contradictory because you’re not really ever ramping into trying to go wide.

Silverback Elder

Rating: 4.5/5

This is a sexy beast that I hope I open plenty of. Just a massive body that is going to be really difficult to deal with for anything outside of hard removal. Then every time you play a creature, King Kong gives you the choice of a free Disenchant, land, or 4 life. That’s pretty disgusting and going to add up quickly.

I managed to resist saying that Silverback Elder sure doesn’t monkey around because I didn’t want to have to explain that I clearly know the differences between a monkey and an ape. That does being me to the conundrum that if you Tail Swipe something with this, does it become a monkey? The world may never know.

Slimefoot’s Survey

Rating: 1.0/5

Survey says… Not a chance. Even though this can grab the common dual lands, this is way too expensive to care about the ramp. Hey let me go from five to eight mana while my opponent played a relevant spell. Slimefoot needs to do a better job or he’s off the Weatherlight… Oh wait…

Snarespinner

Rating: 1.5/5

I shall spin you a wonderous tale of a small spider whose destiny was to stay in the sideboard. Yup, that was the story. Bring it in against cheap flyers, otherwise don’t bother.

Strength of the Coalition

Rating: 2.5/5

While +2/+2 with nothing else is a questionable trick, this gets much stronger when everyone works together to get really buff.  Being able to put +1/+1 counters on your entire team at instant speed is sure to wreck combat on both offense and defense. With white as your second color, you shouldn’t have trouble going wide enough to really take advantage of this.

Sunbathing Rootwalla

Rating: 2.5/5

Wally can put a serious hurting on your opponent’s face. A much cheaper Stonewood Invoker who comes down as a bear and has one serious threat of activation going on. I’d bump this down half a grade if you are only two colors.

Tail Swipe

Rating: 2.5/5

One mana instant speed fight spell seems pretty sick. One minute your opponent thinks they are going to get you and SMACK, tail right to their creature’s face. It even gives you a temporary +1/+1 bonus if you just want to clear the way during your main phase.

It is important to note that you can still get the bonus at instant speed, it just has to be during your main step to qualify. You can cast something to provoke them into letting you blow them out with Tail Swipe and still grab it.

Tear Asunder

Rating: 3.0/5

If you can’t pay the kicker cost, then feel free to tear this grade asunder. In that case it goes from amazing removal to crappy sideboard card really quick. Don’t get too cute either and do something crazy like try to splash it off of one dual.

Territorial Maro

Rating: 2.0/5

Don’t play this in a two color deck because a five mana 4/4 hasn’t been good in limited since 2003. Three colors is still kind of pushing it because a 6/6 for five with no abilities is really mehsville. If you’re rocking the rainbow, then you should probably have this in there because 10/10 can end the game in a hurry if not dealt with.

Threats Undetected

Rating: 1.5/5

A fixed Gifts Ungiven for creatures, but is it good? First you have to still have four creatures with different powers in your deck so drawing it in the late game is basically a blank. Then they get to choose the two to put back into your deck.

That leaves you with getting two creatures that, unless the powers lined up perfectly, probably aren’t even the third and fourth best creatures left in your deck. Then you still have to cast them. Maybe it’s for the best if you just go ahead and leave this undetected in the pack.

Urborg Lhurgoyf

Rating: 2.0/5

Not a ton of good self-mill payoffs floating around in this set so the milling isn’t going to be doing much besides fueling itself. It also only counts your graveyard so it’s going to take awhile to get to a respectable number. At least there’s no graveyard hate floating around to mess with it.

Vineshaper Prodigy

Rating: 3.0/5

They fixed Organ Hoarder by taking away a power and adding a color. I’d say that the not fueling the graveyard is a drawback too, but in this set it’s probably better that it puts the cards back into your deck.

As long as you can pay for the color requirements, this is still a really amazing card. Take all of these and show them what a prodigy you are.

The Weatherseed Treaty

Rating: 2.5/5

A land search, a 1/1, and a sorcery speed pump they can see coming from a mile away isn’t the most intriguing package floating around. Getting it all for one card and three mana makes this playable as long as you’re going for domain or need to ramp something out.

The main use of the read ahead is to use the domain buff as a precombat “trick” though I could see some scenarios where you just wanted to skip the land and get the 1/1 right away.

The World Spell

Rating: 1.5/5

For seven mana, you get two cards and the chance to play them for free. It just takes 3 turns for it to go down. This is certainly no Tooth and Nail.

You don’t even get to tutor the cards, you just get two shots at the top seven. I’m not saying it’s really atrocious, I’m just saying that I’ll never run it.

Yavimaya Iconoclast

Rating: 2.5/5

I can see why Yavimaya considers them an iconoclast, because they shatter the ideas of what a bear should be. You had me at 3/2 trample for two. Done. End of story.

Then they had to show me more and bring me back in. That sweet little kicker turning this into a 4/3 trample haste for three is where it is at. Just remember that it is only until end of turn, not a +1/+1 counter or it would be a 3.0.

Yavimaya Sojourner

Rating: 2.0/5

Even with the absolute dream of dual land into dual land into fifth land type into this, you just have a 4/6. Yes, that’s huge for that point in the game, but that’s your first play and it doesn’t do anything else so its certainly not game breaking. On an average draw you are probably still paying five for a blank chonker.

You should never ever play this in a two-color deck.

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Wrap Up

Green has one very distinct thing going for it. Very large creatures. As expected, it’s removal is pretty sparse with one common bite and one uncommon fight spell so you’ll either need to support that with other colors or rely on tricks to be pseudo removal. It’s also the home of multiple mana fixers and Domain cards so we might see a return of five-color green soup decks.

I’ll be back tomorrow with my Dominaria United Limited Review of Artifacts, Lands, and Multicolored. Now I’m going to go get that pumpkin spice latte… Yeah I have them every day… Don’t judge me…

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below.

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