Strategies against Green decks in Standard

[VPR]

Hi, I'm a novice MTG Arena player. I started about 18 months ago and I'm playing a White/Black deck in Ranked Standard.

I could use some advice from the pros on viable strategies/cards versus Green decks, which after Outlaws appear to be unbeatable.

How do you play around the massive imbalance in Mana access? By turn 4 or 5 a Green opponent has 150% up to 300%+ Mana advantage.

[Nec]

Using B/W you have tons of options to slow down Greens ramp. You have discard, you have direct kill cards that are cheap and don't discriminate, and you have a bunch of exile options.

Force discard fetch spells, destroy/exile mana dorks, better yet, let your opponent run out their big creatures and destroy them instead. eventually the ramping will run it's course, and with very little draw; a top decking green deck that's getting mana or fetch spells every turn does nothing.

[ʍolɟ ǝɥʇ ǝsɹǝʌǝɹ]

There's a rabbit in white that let's you catch up. Claim jumper

[mwesthoff]

Originally posted by ʍolɟ ǝɥʇ ǝsɹǝʌǝɹ:

There's a rabbit in white that let's you catch up. Claim jumper

Nice catch, I forgot about it because it's so rare to see it in draft.

[Minmataro]

Orzhov control has discard, spot removal, board wipes, planewalkers, token creation, life gain/drain, death touch and more . What do you mean u cant deal with green?

[ʍolɟ ǝɥʇ ǝsɹǝʌǝɹ]

Originally posted by Minmataro:

Orzhov control has discard, spot removal, board wipes, planewalkers, token creation, life gain/drain, death touch and more . What do you mean u cant deal with green?

They are new and asking for help. Why not help instead of questioning their intentions

[Minmataro]

Originally posted by ʍolɟ ǝɥʇ ǝsɹǝʌǝɹ:

Originally posted by Minmataro:

Orzhov control has discard, spot removal, board wipes, planewalkers, token creation, life gain/drain, death touch and more . What do you mean u cant deal with green?

They are new and asking for help. Why not help instead of questioning their intentions

18 months isnt new. thats longer than ive been playing mtga dude... If they said they were new i wouldnt have bothered posting.

[Winter Wolf]

Originally posted by Minmataro:

Originally posted by ʍolɟ ǝɥʇ ǝsɹǝʌǝɹ:

They are new and asking for help. Why not help instead of questioning their intentions

18 months isnt new. thats longer than ive been playing mtga dude... If they said they were new i wouldnt have bothered posting.

Novice indicates beginner level understanding. Which does not depend on the time spent playing. Though of course a genius would find that time to be astronomical, some people are slow learners, or perhaps don't actually do enough research to learn the game in that time.

Originally posted by VPR:

Hi, I'm a novice MTG Arena player. I started about 18 months ago and I'm playing a White/Black deck in Ranked Standard.

I could use some advice from the pros on viable strategies/cards versus Green decks, which after Outlaws appear to be unbeatable.

How do you play around the massive imbalance in Mana access? By turn 4 or 5 a Green opponent has 150% up to 300%+ Mana advantage.

Welcome to the forums, thanks for asking for help.

Green's strength is it can fetch lands (ramp) and produce mana with creatures fast and can field some absolutely monstrous high cost creatures. The weakness of green is it is very creature dependent so you can rid the board of creatures via sweepers ("destroy all" and "exile all" are examples of sweeper phrases you can search for in the editor.) Green also relies somewhat heavily on enchantments so enchantment removal can be of use.

Essentially if you are playing White and Black you have the perfect colors for hitting green's weaknesses while still managing a board state for yourself. Examples of cards that hurt green/help you:

Wedding Announcement (2-3 is usually good = provides blockers and grows all your creatures by +1/+1)

Sunfall (the top mass exiler available, this provides you with creatures in the aftermath which is great,)

Deadly Coverup with enough stuff in your graveyard can act like a surgical extraction, (Which allows you to just remove 4 of a card -- 1 picked from the graveyard +up to 3 in hand or library. This is great vs combo decks.)

Urza's Sylex (costs 7 total to use, WW2 activation +3 generic cost. -- to limit your opponent's lands AND clears the board of everything else. It can also incidentally get your planeswalkers if you are running any. (See below for suggestions on good pws.)

White Sun's Twilight (at 6mv + similar to sunfall clears the board of critters and then makes you some (without having to pay an additional amount).

Final Showdown (is expensive at 6mv+ but can save your own guys and can also just save one of your guys from control attempts at 2mv)

No Witnesses (is great if you running more creatures than them but they are running the big dorks that hurt so much.)

Unstable Glyphbridge is great if your own guys are small and theirs are huge.

Virtue of Persistence (great for small guys or finishing off a damaged bigger guy while providing you with recursion come late game.)

Virtue of Loyalty (this both makes creatures at instant speed which is a nice combat trick vs an attacking mana dork and also a harder to remove 2/2 token because you can cast it at their end step thus avoiding their own sorcery speed removal. The enchantment part acts as a continuous growth for your creatures which makes your tokens huge over time.)

Planeswalkers (fetchable with Sylex)
Kaya, Intangible Slayer (expensive at 6cmc but has a very reasonable ultimate that does good things.)

Vraska, Betrayal's Sting (also expensive though you can pay life to make it 5mv, has a removal ability that works nicely.)

The Eternal Wanderer (also expensive, has a sweeper ultimate for cheap.)

Liliana of the veil (is a classic edict and hand discard planeswalker. Typically great after a sweeper clears all but one creature or when your opponent is slow rolling their board.)

Kaya, Spirit's Justice (is a fine card that has a cheap ultimate that removes a card)

these are just some of the ways you can handle Mono Green. Branching out to other colors (red in particular) gets you even more options.

[SonOfKrypton]

Black. Most efficent removal.

[BEEN]

You hit next and move on. Not every archetype is beatable 100% of the time.