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Best green planeswalkers in MTG

Nissa, Vivien, and Garruk all star in our comprehensive guide to the best green MTG Planeswalkers – here’s our top picks explained.

Wizards of the Coast art of MTG green planeswalker, Nissa

Green planeswalkers love a few key things: mana ramp, massive creatures, and tokens, tokens, tokens. And for Magic: The Gathering players who share a passion for this playstyle, there are plenty of green MTG planeswalkers that can enhance a green deck. If you’re shopping around for a new addition, we can point you to the best options.

Before we ramp up the MTG planeswalker recommendations, here are a few other handy Magic guides that might interest you. We can point you to the best MTG Arena decks and MTG Arena codes for the digital trading card game, or we can keep you up to speed with the latest MTG sets coming out of this year’s MTG release schedule. But for now, it’s time to go green.

Nissa, Who Shakes the World

The best green planeswalker overall.

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Nissa, Who Shakes the World specifications:
Mana cost 3C, 2G
Starting loyalty 5
Legal formats Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander, Historic, Explorer
Reasons to buy
  • Excellent passive ability
  • Ridiculous ramp capabilities
  • Indestructible lands, if you play your cards right
Reasons to avoid
  • You lose an activated ability in exchange for that passive

Nissa, Who Shakes the World may only have two activated abilities to offer, but her passive ability more than makes up for it. Whenever this planeswalker is on the battlefield, you can add an additional green mana any time you tap a Forest. That doubles the value of all your MTG lands – tasty.

Nissa’s -8 activated ability also offers more ramp potential. It gives you a permanent emblem that makes your lands indestructible, and you can search your library for any number of Forest cards. Then, you put them on the battlefield tapped.

Nissa only starts with five loyalty, so you’ll need to hit that +1 ability a few times to prepare for this. This gives you three +1/+1 counters to place on a non-creature land. It then becomes an Elemental creature with Vigilance and Haste, and it gets untapped.

This planeswalker isn’t a must-have for any particular MTG format, but it sees a wide spread of play (plus, that lack of demand means it’s nice and affordable). If you’re looking to build a mono green and/or a ramp deck, Nissa is a great option.

Wrenn and Seven

Best green planeswalker in Standard right now.

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Wrenn and Seven specifications:
Mana cost 3C, 2G
Starting loyalty 5
Legal formats Standard, Brawl, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander, Historic, Alchemy, Explorer
Reasons to buy
  • Four helpful activated abilities
  • Useful for ramp and creating beefy creatures
  • No maximum hand size? Yes please
Reasons to avoid
  • May still be Standard legal, but it’s not the most competitive card

We still have a few more months before Innistrad: Midnight Hunt is rotated out of MTG Standard. So, if you’re looking for a green planeswalker for your Standard deck, Wrenn and Seven is the top option.

It’s not the most competitive card right now, but in the right deck, this planeswalker can still pack a punch. Wrenn and Seven has long been a Midrange darling, but more recent deck lists show its potential in ramp and MTG Mill decks, too.

Wrenn and Seven comes with four activated abilities, which offer a range of handy benefits. For +1, you can reveal four cards from your library, adding all revealed lands to your hand and placing the remaining cards in your graveyard. For 0 loyalty, you can add any number of land from your hand to the battlefield, tapped.

-3 lets you create a Treefolk creature whose power and toughness are equal to the number of lands you control, and -8 returns all cards from your graveyard to your hand. You also have no maximum hand size from now on – which can lead to some outlandish plays, if your opponent lets things get that far.

Vivien, Monsters’ Advocate

Best green planeswalker for creature-heavy decks.

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Vivien, Monsters’ Advocate specifications:
Mana cost 3C, 2G
Starting loyalty 3
Legal formats Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander, Historic, Explorer
Reasons to buy
  • Two helpful passive abilities
  • Can easily create blockers to protect itself
Reasons to avoid
  • Mana cost feels a little expensive for what you get

Vivien, Monsters’ Advocate lets you look at the top card of your library at any time. Nice! Even better is the card’s second passive ability, which lets you cast creature spells from the top of your library. It’s a handy way to get your creatures in play sooner, with no loyalty cost.

Speaking of loyalty, Vivien’s +1 is a handy way to keep her on the board, as it creates a 3/3 Beast creature token. This helps counteract her low starting loyalty slightly – though a determined opponent could still break through your defenses and wipe her out sharpish.

Still, those tokens are still worth having. You can choose to give them Vigilance, Reach, or Trample, which gives you a range of defensive and offensive options in battle.

Finally, there’s Vivien’s -2 ability. When you cast a creature spell on your turn, this lets you search your library for a creature with a lower converted mana cost. You can then put it straight on the battlefield.

Garruk, Primal Hunter

Best green planeswalker for card draw.

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Garruk, Primal Hunter specifications:
Mana cost 2C, 3G
Starting loyalty 3
Legal formats Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander
Reasons to buy
  • Green decks with powerful creatures can lead to a whole lot of card draw
  • Can create a large number of beefy creatures
Reasons to avoid
  • Difficult to defend with its low starting loyalty

Garruk, Primal Hunter is hard to keep alive thanks to his puny starting loyalty. But if you can hold onto this planeswalker, the payoff is pretty sweet.

Its -3 activated ability alone has a lot of value, allowing you to draw cards equal to the greatest power among creatures you control. If you’ve already played a 10/10 creature, the card advantage here is wonderful.

The -6/-6 ability might be even better, if you can reach it. This lets you create a 6/6 Wurm creature for every land under your control – which in green decks tends to be many.

Garruk comes with a pretty standard +1 ability, which creates a 3/3 Beast token to help defend him from incoming attacks. But with such useful abilities, you’ll probably need to invest a lot more resources if you want Garruk to stick around.

Nissa, Voice of Zendikar

The best low-cost green planeswalker.

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Nissa, Voice of Zendikar specifications:
Mana cost 1C, 2G
Starting loyalty 3
Legal formats Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander
Reasons to buy
  • Consistent +1/+1 counters can vastly improve your board state
  • Ultimate offers some helpful life gain and card draw
Reasons to avoid
  • A low-value card that doesn’t see as much play these days

Nissa, Voice of Zendikar can make a huge impact with the right board state. If you’ve got a wide range of powerful creatures in play, her -2 ability can hugely strengthen your side of the battlefield. It gives every creature you control a +1/+1 counter – simple, yet effective.

Her +1 activated ability creates a puny 0/1 Plant token, which can be used to defend the planeswalker. Keep the card alive long enough, and its -7 ability lets you draw cards and gain life equal to the number of lands you control. This can be a major advantage.

Still, Nissa isn’t the most impressive planeswalker out there. And with only three starting loyalty, you’ll need to time her entrance perfectly to get the most out of the card.

Wizards of the Coast art of MTG green planeswalker, Nissa

For more of our top picks, here are the best MTG Commanders in play right now. We can also tell you all you need to know about MTG creature types.