The 40 Best Green Pump Spells in Magic Ranked

Last updated on October 21, 2025

Craterhoof Behemoth | Illustration by Chris Rahn

Green has a reputation for having Magic's biggest, baddest creatures on the mana curve. Who could forget bangers like Questing Beast, Primeval Titan, and Magic's best creature: Colossal Dreadmaw.

But maybe those creatures aren't big enough. Maybe you don't want to just crush your opponents but handle them with a Savage Stomp. That's where pump spells come in to make your creatures go from reasonable to unreasonable.

Let's dig into the subject!

What Are Green Pump and Buff Spells in MTG?

Warbriar Blessing | Illustration by Michele Parisi

Pump spells, sometimes called buffs, are spells that increase a creature's power and toughness, sometimes until the end of turn, sometimes permanently. As you may imagine, green pump spells have a green color identity.

A few different cards fall under this definition, including anthems, mass pump spells, auras, combat tricks, and cards that dispense +1/+1 counters. It would be reasonable to include typal lords within this category; I chose to omit them to make the ranking as universal as possible.

This list primarily caters to Commander, so it emphasizes spells that provide lots of value over a long game. It favors permanent and team-wide buffs as more impactful plays, but some traditional combat tricks made the cut as well.

#40. Rune of Might

Rune of Might might not be the flashiest pump spell in the world, but you don't need much from a spell that cantrips. You don't even need to target a creature or equipment; you can slap it onto a land if you need to cycle this, so you never need to worry about it becoming a dead draw.

#39. Oran-Rief, the Vastwood

Oran-Rief, the Vastwood isn't technically a spell, but this land's value warranted its inclusion. Its nature as a tapped land and the restriction on which creatures it puts counters on make it rather slow, though.

#38. Sandstorm Salvager

Sandstorm Salvager only works in token decks, but it comes with a token of its own to buff. Spreading +1/+1 counters about gives this green creature lasting impact, even after your opponents remove it, despite being on the slower side since you can only use its activated ability once per turn.

#37. Sarkhan's Resolve

Modality goes a long way to make basic spells good. Sarkhan's Resolve is a great card for commanders that need tricks since it randomly serves as a kill spell; it might even make it into the right Cube.

#36. Meltstrider's Resolve

RIP Warbriar Blessing, you had a good run. Meltstrider's Resolve takes the fight auras template, shaves a mana off the cost, and even adds in some extra evasion. It's an efficient removal spell in decks that want to target their own creatures, or just have enchantress synergies.

#35. Lion Umbra

Modern Horizons 3‘s Lion Umbra requires a deck dedicated to modifying your creatures, otherwise you won't have anything to enchant with it. The reward is there, however; these are pretty significant stats for a 2-mana aura. Umbra armor helps mitigate the downside of modifying creatures, especially with auras.

#34. Cartouche of Strength

Cartouche of Strength offers a nice, clean fight spell attached to an aura. This works best in decks that care about enchanting creatures; otherwise, you can find better fight spells.

#33. Blossoming Bogbeast

If you want a green lifegain payoff, look no further than Blossoming Bogbeast. Giving your creatures +2/+2 each time it attacks would be a fine ability, but this card boasts an impressively high ceiling. Have you ever known a lifegain deck to gain just 2 life?

#32. Arwen, Weaver of Hope

If you want to spread +1/+1 counters across your team, I heavily recommend Arwen, Weaver of Hope. I like it as both a payoff and enabler for +1/+1 counter synergies. You get some value if this is the first card down that spreads counters for payoffs like Armorcraft Judge and Pir, Imaginative Rascal. And if you already have an engine going, Arwen greatly benefits from its power increasing. You can't go wrong!

#31. Get a Leg Up

Get a Leg Up (and Might of the Masses) can be quite formidable in go-wide decks. Who hasn't seen a token player resort to d20 dice to keep track of their board? Now, imagine all that power concentrated on a single creature. The ceiling is astronomical, though it lacks a stout floor.

#30. Vines of Vastwood

Protective spells are important, especially in decks that want to focus on augmenting one or two creatures. Vines of Vastwood protects your creatures from spot removal, and even adds some power if you have a spare . This was a mainstay of infect decks when the archetype thrived in Modern, which should give you a good idea of where it's most useful.

#29. Demolisher Spawn

The delirium requirement makes Demolisher Spawn one of the more niche Overrun effects in the game, but it's a convincing finisher in graveyard decks that exploit token producers like Insidious Roots and Teval, the Balanced Scale. You gain inevitability when you get it each turn.

#28. Indomitable Might

Sometimes you need just a bit of extra damage to push yourself over the finish line. Indomitable Might excels at this. You can line up one-shots with stacked Voltron commanders or just smack your opponent for a bunch of damage. It's great with commanders that care about dealing combat damage, like Ellivere of the Wild Court or Disa the Restless.

#27. Court of Garenbrig

Taking command of the monarchy provides incredible card advantage, which makes Court of Garenbrig a powerful green enchantment. Most cards that give the monarchy cost 4 or more mana, making this a steal at 3. Spreading around +1/+1 counters gives you a fantastic buff, even if you lose the enchantment, and doubling those counters only makes your defenders more formidable.

#26. Innkeeper's Talent

While Bloomburrow‘s Innkeeper's Talent had a small moment in Standard as a combo piece with Vraska, Betrayal's Sting, you don't need that or really any planeswalkers to make this class enchantment a valuable card. An eventual counter doubler that distributes counters itself does plenty of work on its own. Ward 1 isn't the most impressive form of protection, but it's just disruptive enough to be worth the mana to level it up.

#25. Sylvan Anthem

Sylvan Anthem only buffs your green creatures, making it narrower than Gaea's Anthem, but I vastly prefer it for its reduced mana value and scry ability. Scrying repeatedly does a lot to smooth out your draws and let you curve out well.

#24. Longstalk Brawl

Green removal often hinges on fight or punch spells that force combat between two creatures. Longstalk Brawl deserves recognition both for its efficiency and ability to permanently buff your creature. Giving a gift in Commander can even be pure upside, giving you a little political sway to go with your removal.

#23. Bear Umbra

Spending all your mana in a turn feels great and hugely advances your board state. Imagine how nice it’d be to do it again! Bear Umbra gives you that second chance with a fairly efficient mana doubler that even protects the enchanted creature.

#22. Garruk Wildspeaker

It takes some work to get to Garruk Wildspeaker‘s buff, though not much. Even if you never get the Overrun, I'm happy to slap this green planeswalker in many decks for the ramp and token production. It pairs best with enchantment-based ramp like Wild Growth and Utopia Sprawl to get even more value from untapping your lands.

#21. Primal Might

Primal Might lets you punch an opponent's creature really, really hard. The massive X-spell buff increases the odds of getting to fight and swing after. You also don't need to buff the creature, making this green sorcery a hyper-efficient fight spell. It's held back only by its sorcery speed.

#20. Trash the Town

Trash the Town has two awesome spree modes, and it can give a creature trample. While the buff is nice and synergizes well with many strategies, this card's charm rests in the final mode that allows you to draw a few cards.

#19. Tifa's Limit Break

Tifa's Limit Break looks ready-made for Voltron decks. Doubling or tripling a creature's power often results in one-shotting a player out of nowhere. Tiered provides excellent flexibility; this can save a Delighted Halfling from Lightning Bolt or obliterate an opponent as required.

#18. Triumph of the Hordes

Triumph of the Hordes smacks face as a nasty Overrun effect. Giving your creatures infect puts your opponents in a tricky spot—they can't afford to take lethal infect damage, but blocking can severely weaken their board presence.

#17. Snake Umbra

A little card draw goes a long way, and Snake Umbra has an incredible ceiling. Importantly, this triggers whenever a creature deals any kind of damage, not just combat damage. That lets you draw cards off the activated and triggered abilities of cards like The Howling Abomination and Shalai and Hallar.

#16. Rancor

Rancor was once the bane of my existence in Pauper, and it still holds up. This aura never stays down, which means you don't get two-for-one'd when your opponent kills the enchanted creature! Getting trample is essential for many go-big decks; it's surprisingly easy to make a 10/10, but it sucks if your opponent can just chump block it.

#15. Mutagenic Growth

Free spells are good. You can pay a bit of life to win a combat, to save a creature from Lightning Bolt, or simply to trigger cards like Kalamax, the Stormsire or The Howling Abomination. Mutagenic Growth does all this and more!

#14. Blossoming Defense + Friends

There are a variety of spells that give a creature hexproof and a power/toughness buff. Blossoming Defense gives you the biggest power pump, but Snakeskin Veil can be decent if you care about the counters. Royal Treatment might be good with enchantments, and so on; the specific iteration you want depends on the theme of your deck.

#13. Ancestral Mask

If you're piling a creature high with auras, Ancestral Mask should be one of the first cards you add to your list. This green aura adds silly amounts of power and enables surprise one-shots later in the game. Keep in mind it counts enchantments your opponents control too!

#12. Spider-Ham, Peter Porker

Spider-Ham, Peter Porker offers a variety of creature types a cheap lord, from well-supported types like squirrels and spiders to the more obscure, like rabbits, wolves, and jackals. Its sheer efficiency warrants running in a variety of typal strategies.

#11. Bristly Bill, Spine Sower

Outlaws of Thunder Junction‘s Bristly Bill, Spine Sower buffs your creatures as you trigger landfall. It can be tricky—green is notoriously bad at getting lands into play. Should you overcome such a hurdle, you even get to double those counters! This is another payoff/enabler for +1/+1 counter synergies you shouldn't overlook.

#10. Tyvar's Stand

Giving your creature hexproof and indestructible makes for a fantastic combat trick. Tyvar's Stand ensures that your creature survives combat while brushing away spot removal and ignoring the majority of board wipes. This lets you save the creature of your choice from most removal short of Sunfall.

#9. Overrun

The classic green mass pump spell, Overrun holds up to this day. It's not the best version of this effect, but it still provides enough power to trample your opponents into dust.

#8. Beastmaster Ascension

One of the classic mass pump spells in Commander, Beastmaster Ascension takes time to get rolling, but boy does that snowball roll! A steady +5/+5 sits among the biggest buffs you can receive. This green enchantment works best in decks that go wide rather than tall, but you can get a lot from it either way.

#7. Archdruid's Charm

Only one of Archdruid's Charm‘s modes counts as a pump spell, but it's strong. A removal spell that can be a tutor or ramp spell? Absolutely incredible. That kind of flexibility makes the card. The mana cost looks daunting, but most 2-color decks should be able to swing it.

#6. Thunderfoot Baloth

If you control your commander, Thunderfoot Baloth ensures that every creature in play becomes a threat worth dealing with. If you don't control your commander… well, you should be interested in getting it down. This is still a pretty nasty lieutenant on its own that applies plenty of pressure.

#5. Nissa, Ascended Animist

Nissa, Ascended Animist can ultimate the turn it comes into play (assuming you don't pay phyrexian mana), so this amazing green planeswalker can be a powerful pump spell the turn it resolves. The more colors you add, the weaker the -7 ability gets, but the other modes offer plenty of value.

#4. The Skullspore Nexus

The Skullspore Nexus is kind of crazy. Doubling a creature's power for a mere 2 mana lets you bust some skulls, but the real charm lies in that center ability. Making massive tokens whenever your creatures die gives you a steady stream of threats, especially once you throw in cards like Parallel Lives or Doubling Season.

#3. Unnatural Growth + Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus

Doubling your creatures' power and toughness might be the best way to pump your creatures, especially if you mix in some other buffs. Unnatural Growth and Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus are two of the best ways to achieve this. I tend to favor Zopandrel, both because it’s a threat and because the activated ability on this dominus gives you some additional synergies.

#2. The Great Henge

The Great Henge would be a ludicrous card if you had to pay the full 9 mana, but you often cast it for much, much less. One of the best creaturefall cards, pretty much any green deck would kill to have this in its opening hand every game. The combination of card advantage and counters means you'll have more and larger threats than everybody else at the table. And it taps for mana to cast all those spells you'll draw! The buff is but one little part of this obscenely powerful card.

#1. Craterhoof Behemoth

I spent a fair bit of time flipping between The Great Henge and Craterhoof Behemoth for the top slot. I settled on the ‘Hoof because of its lethality. Probably the best ETB effect in green, when this card hits the board, at least one player dies—and probably the rest of the table, too.

This is by far the best Overrun effect in the game and easily tutorable with cards like Natural Order, Green Sun's Zenith, and Tooth and Nail.

Best Green Pump Spell Payoffs

One of the best payoffs for buffing your creatures is combat-oriented keyword abilities. Ways to spread trample like Garruk's Uprising and Akroma's Memorial are incredible, as are evasive abilities like flying and menace.

Depending on the buff spell you use, you can find synergies.

If you go all in on auras, enchantress synergies like Argothian Enchantress and Sanctum Weaver enhance your Rancor and Ancestral Mask.

Should you choose to augment your creatures with counters, you have access to cards like Evolution Witness and Armorcraft Judge to take you over the top.

You should consider cards that care about the power and toughness of your creatures. Pump spells make cards like Last March of the Ents and Rishkar's Expertise much stronger and enable mechanics like ferocious.

Green’s primary source of removal are punch and fight spells, like Hard-Hitting Question and Ram Through. Pump spells let your creatures punch up the mana curve to make your removal more effective, and they even open the door to attacks with the pumped creature.

Green also has cards that check for a creature’s power at certain phases of the game, like Sylvan Scavenging and Primal Empathy that get much stronger when pump spells ensure you meet the power requirements.

Lastly, Lure effects that force your opponents to block a specific creature are great with pump spells since your opponents must block a massive creature that eats their board.

Wrap Up

The Skullspore Nexus | Illustration by Daarken

When your green creatures just aren't big enough, you have access to plenty of pump spells to make them better. From mass pump effects that kill the table out of nowhere to pump spells that win a single combat, green has all the tools you need to remind your opponents who has the biggest, baddest creatures in the game.

What's your favorite green pump spell? Do you like combat tricks in Commander? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and keep pumping!