If green is known for one thing in MTG, it’s mana ramp. Ever since Alpha, the color has been pulling ahead of its peers in terms of resources through various means. That tradition persists to this day, where it makes green a top-tier color in Commander, particularly at low-bracket pods. While the very best green ramp cards for MTG Commander are quite expensive, the category is broad enough to encompass many budget options, too. You can pick any of these cards up for less than $1, and all of them will help take your early plays to the next level.
Tutor-Based Land Ramp
The gold standard for green ramp in Bracket 3 Commander is the suite of two-mana spells that tutor a land directly into play. Both Rampant Growth and Shared Roots get you any basic land, while Farseek gets you any typed land that isn’t a Forest. Farseek is the best of these since it can grab multi-type lands, like Shock lands and Triomes, but all three are full-on staples in their own right.
What makes these such effective ramp pieces is that they’re cheap, and very difficult to disrupt. Land hate is a taboo subject in Commander, so ramping with extra lands is a very safe bet, unlike deploying mana rocks or dorks. That these cards tutor also opens up incidental benefits as well, letting you shuffle to improve cards like Brainstorm or Scroll Rack. Considering their sheer power and flexibility, the low prices on these cards are pretty wild. By current prices, Rampant Growth is available for around $0.30, while Farseek is $0.60 and Shared Roots is just $0.10.
Cultivate And Friends
As one of the top five most-played Commander cards by EDHREC numbers, with 1.71 million decks running it, Cultivate needs little introduction. This card represents the next step up from Rampant Growth, tutoring two basics and putting one into play and one in your hand. Flare of Cultivation does the same thing, but with the option to sacrifice a creature rather than spend mana on it.
While weaker than Rampant Growth et al due to their increased mana costs, these are still fantastic ramp spells. Searching up two basics lets you fix your mana perfectly, and plan around the cards you’ve drawn early on. The fact that you get one of the lands in your hand is great for Landfall decks, too, and gives you the option to use it as fodder for cards like Faithless Looting in a pinch. Both of these cards are also incredibly affordable, with Cultivate going for just $0.32, and Flare of Cultivation also surprisingly cheap at $0.44.
Harrow And Friends
Sacrificing your lands isn’t something you want to be doing in Commander for the most part, but Harrow changes the math on that by ramping to replace your loss. Since it brings two basics in untapped, Harrow essentially only costs you one mana in total. Its retrains, Roiling Regrowth and Springbloom Druid, are much weaker since they lack this element, bringing the lands in tapped. Druid does bring a 1/1 body with it to soften the blow, however, which is valuable in its own right. All three of these cards are available on the cheap, with Harrow at $0.20, Roiling Regrowth at $0.30, and Springbloom Druid at just $0.15.
The big advantage of running Harrow and Roiling Regrowth is that they let you ramp at instant speed, letting you hold up interaction for other plays. All of these cards also give you two Landfall triggers at once, which lets you get more out of cards like Nissa, Resurgent Animist. You can run these cards in any green Commander deck fairly effectively, but they shine brightest alongside cards like Ramunap Excavator that let you offset the sacrifice. You can also gain some extra advantage with these by sacrificing Earthbent lands, or lands that otherwise benefit from it like Flagstones of Trokair.
Mana Dorks
Since the dawn of MTG, mana dorks, or creatures that tap for mana, have been a go-to option for those looking to ramp early on in a game. While they’re not as resilient as land-based ramp, being vulnerable to both removal and board clears, they have the advantage of coming down as early as turn one. This can start off a snowball where you ramp into something like Cultivate on turn two, then pull far ahead starting on turn three.
A lot of mana dorks are very budget-friendly these days, too, with classics like Llanowar Elves and Elvish Mystic available as low as $0.20 and $0.30, respectively. Even some of the more powerful, flexible dorks, like Ignoble Hierarch and Sylvan Caryatid, are available under $1 thanks to recent reprints.
Land Enchantment Ramp
One of the more unusual schools of ramp available in Commander is the series of enchantments that attach to your lands and let them produce extra mana. Wild Growth is the best budget card in this category by far, attaching to any land and working like a mana dork on turn one, or a Hasty mana dork later on. Fertile Ground is worse due to its higher cost, but getting perfect fixing makes it solid in color-intensive brews.
While these cards are more vulnerable than land-based ramp, they have the advantage of stacking multiple mana into a single land. This can easily be exploited with untap effects like Arbor Elf, to produce a ton of mana in a single turn. Being cheap enchantments, they also excel in Enchantress decks, where the extra value they provide can balance out how bad ramp typically is as a top deck later. You get all this value for very little, too, with both cards available for around $0.40 on the low end.
More To Explore
With all of these options available for under $1, it’s trivial to put together a green ramp suite for any MTG Commander deck on a budget. If you want to get a bit more specific, however, then there are some surprisingly spicy alternatives available at this price point, too.
Creature-based ramp, like Sakura-Tribe Elder or Wood Elves, is a great example here. While these are overall worse than cards like Farseek, in many decks with a blink or reanimation focus, they can often deliver much more value. These creatures are cheap, too, available for around $0.30 each in the right printings.
Thanks to recent Commander reprints, you can even enjoy explosive ramp options like Splendid Reclamation for as little as $0.46. Though it’s a do-nothing card in many decks, Commanders like Hearthhull, the Worldseed turn it into a terrifying ramp piece, and sometimes even a finisher. At $0.20 Bootleggers’ Stash is another great budget pick, capable of ‘banking’ your mana turn over turn while unlocking plentiful artifact synergies.
With these out-there options available on top of the ramp classics, there’s never been a better time to go big and go green in Commander.
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