Green: The Color of Mana

GreenYou can tell a lot about a person's thought process by MTG color they favor:

• Red: aggressive, unsubtle, will surpass an obstacle by blowing it to bits with the largest explosives available (or Fireballs, as the case may be
• Black: vindictive, mean-spirited, will tie the obstacle to a chair and cut off it's limbs one by one. (with a littany of Bury Target X spells)
• Blue: creative, passive-aggressive, shy, disables obstacles by taking pictures of them in  congress with their masseuse and threatening to post them on the Internet if it keeps getting in their way (the real life equivalent of the Corruption enchant creature).
• White: Defensive, nervous, closed-off, will outlive the obstacle armed with healthy lifestyle choices, COP's, and dudes with banding.
• Green: Constructive, powerful, balanced, patient, will get some friends (creatures), some sledgehammers (nasty Enchant Creatures), and take the freaking obstacle down.

I'm a green guy, and I'll tell you why. No, it's not because of my Elf fantasies. The points in it's favor:

• Mana Elves. Words can't properly explain how much I love Mana elves. Every color has fast 1/1 creatures, no other color has fast 1/1 creatures that remain useful for the entire game because they're also Mana. If you load a 60-card deck with 8 Mana elves (which is excessive, but doable. Four is a better total number to have. Use the Quirion Elves model below if you play with multiple colors), you're practically ensuring not only that you'll have the necessary fast creatures to defend yourself and strike fast in the early game, but that you'll enter the later phases of the game faster. because you are basically guarenteed, assuming both you and your opponent have about the same amount of land, of having more Mana to play with than them. And that's essential for successful green play, since all of the great stuff I'm about to describe is really Mana-intensive.
• Big Stonking Creatures. I've always had an undue attachment to creatures. I think they're fun to play with and strategize with. Green has got more dudes with more power and toughness than any other color easily. Many of them can be regenerated, have trample, block flying creatures (much thanks, Giant Spider), or feed you yummy delicious mana as described above.  You can strike them down with Sorceries (Black asshole) or obstruct them with Enchantments (I'm looking at you, you Blue-playing jerkface) but as long as the Green player has a proper number of creatures and enchantment-dispelling spells, their creatures can usually handle any in-game situation effectively.
• Sweet, Sweet Buffs. I love the Enchant Creature cards you get with green more than those in the other colors. Sure, it's hard to make creatures unblockable like you can with Black or Blue, but they're so strong it's better if they get blocked so they can kill something. What you can do is make your creatures nearly impossible to kill (with Regeneration and Toughness buffs) and overwhelmingly powerful (with Trample-givers like Overrun). Between the two, most opponents will watch head in hands as their army and health are slowly whittled down by your unkillable, blockable-yet-unblockable creatures. Also included in this category are the uniquely Green "Mana Buffs": Wild Growth, Untamed Wilds, and Rampant Growth all help the Green player acquire Mana sources faster and cheaper than anyone else can. Combine a few of those spells and a few Mana Elves and you will never want for Mana.

The biggest problems with Green:

• It's painfully slow unless you have the aforementioned army of Mana elves and Mana Buffs.
• It's arsenal of "Destructive" cards, which I define as cards that negatively affect your opponent, is the thinnest of any color save maybe White. If your opponent has a card you don't like, your options for disposing of it are pretty limited. Green is all about building, and you'd better have a lot of good stuff to build fast or Red and Black players will own you. The biggest problem by far.
• Very few of it's many Creatures have Flying. They have many tough creatures, mostly spiders, that can block flying creatures though, and most of their Creatures are strong enough that it doesn't matter so much if they get blocked.

In summary: Green is the best color for building your side of the table. Building a massively fortified side full of unkillable creatures and backed up by limitless Mana and a few Streams of Life and making it crush is my favorite way to play MTG. In honor of all that Mana and the lack of any Octarine cards in MTG, I will declare here and now: Green is The Color of Magic.