Ghave, Guru of Spores Casual EDH / Commander
The idea of the deck is to sacrifice or bring in saprolings to control the game with cards like Grave Pact, Aura Shards, or
Martyr's Cause
, while building your own board presence at the same time. While edict like effects are the primary win condition, they are not the only way to win. Token swarm, commander damage, a surprise
Debt to the Deathless
, loss of life from Geralf's Messenger / Blood Artist, or just big creature beat down are all potential paths to take.
- Note: I enjoy the luck/randomness aspect of magic, and like the deck to play differently each game. Therefore, you will notice that there isn't a single tutor card in the deck, excluding land fetches. This makes the deck more casual (in the spirit of EDH), and more enjoyable to both play with and against. It also allows me to use those spots for other great cards.
Ramp
In order for Ghave to do his thing, he needs mana, and plenty of it. While his abilities are cheap (), there are often times when you need to be able to activate it 4 or 5 times a turn. To help with that, several mana ramp cards are included.
- Land Fetches:
Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, and Skyshroud Claim are pretty much green EDH staples. I love starting the game with one of these in my hand.
Sakura-Tribe Elder and Yavimaya Elder can fetch land and trigger Grave Pact, etc.
The best land fetcher in the deck though is easily Fertilid. If you can keep counters on him, you can get as many lands as you want. He also has the benefit of being able to be used on an opponent, if you're nice like that, which can come in handy in Casual EDH. - Artifact Ramp:
Darksteel Ingot is included for some artifact ramp. This is extremely useful when you don't have a green mana to play one of the above sorceries, or Fertilid.
Armillary Sphere
and Burnished Hart are great mana fixers and can trigger things like Martyr's Bond or Grave Pact.
And then of course there's Sol Ring. - Mana Producers:
If you have some extra Saprolings lying around, Utopia Mycon is really useful as well. Also acts as a sac outlet.
Ashnod's Altar is just ridiculously powerful. Not to mention, it makes a ton of infinite combos in the deck, if that's your thing.
Protection
While the deck does have some protection cards, such as
Martyr's Cause
, Spike Weaver,
Fanatical Devotion
, Golgari Charm, or Kor Haven, the flexibility that Ghave's abilities provide offers a great deal of protection by itself. There are a lot of ways to react to what your opponent is doing to either nullify, or reduce its effectiveness. This is where the relatively low average CMC helps out, often leaving you with plenty of mana to adapt as necessary. For example:
- Someone deals 5 damage to Ghave? Just sacrifice a token and make him a 6/6.
- They try to exile target creature with power 3+? Remove a few counters to make him a 2/2.
Its real ability to protect itself, however, lies in the massive amount of removal at your disposal. After all, if you eliminate all the threats on the board, what is there to protect from?
Removal
When I first started magic, I often built decks that revolved around lifegain and Fog like abilities. I found that I wasn't able to win that often, because even if I could stall the game, I never had any threats of my own to go in for the kill. Therefore, this deck takes a "the best defense is a good offense" approach.
- Spot Removal: The few cards, Golgari Charm, Putrefy, Mortify, Deathspore Thallid, and
Retribution of the Ancients
help get rid of those few pesky permanents until you come up with some better removal.
- Mass Removal: The main method of removal uses Grave Pact, Dictate of Erebos, Martyr's Bond, or Butcher of Malakir, plus any sac outlet. It's usually pretty easy to clear the opponent's board of creatures if Ghave, Guru of Spores is your sac outlet, making it easy to swing for the kill. Just having any of these cards on the field often stalls your opponent several turns. Savra, Queen of the Golgari can be used in a pinch, but is somewhat limited by the fact that it needs black creatures to sac.
Aura Shards can be used in a similar manner to clear the board of any/all artifacts or enchantments that may be giving you trouble. - Exile: Most of the time, the above removal cards pave the way to your victory. Sometimes though, just killing your opponent's creatures, or destroying their artifacts/enchantments isn't enough. For situations like this, the deck has Merciless Eviction, Abzan Charm, and Return to Dust.
Synergies
I'm not really sure what to put here. Every card has synergy with every other card in the deck, so I'll just list a few examples.
- Ghave, Guru of Spores + Primal Vigor + Cathars' Crusade + Hardened Scales = , Remove a +1/+1 counter from a creature you control: Put two 1/1 Saproling Creature Tokens into play. Put 8 +1/+1 counters on each creature you control. Make your opponents cry. Add
Tuskguard Captain
or Abzan Falconer to the mix, and everything you have just gained trample/flying.
- Requiem Angel + Utopia Mycon allows you to turn all of your saprolings into 1/1 flying spirit tokens and colored mana.
- Ghave, Guru of Spores +
Fanatical Devotion
+ Death's Presence pretty much nullifies board wipes if you have a decent amount of creatures.
- Mycoloth + Primal Vigor + 5 Saprolings to devour = 24/24 Mycoloth and 40 Saprolings at each upkeep.
- Ob Nixilis, Unshackled + Fertilid is a nice way to force someone to search their library and lose creature and 10 life. Then all you need is a way to move Ob Nixilis, Unshackled's counter to Fertilid, then repeat.
Infinite Combos
I don't rely on infinite combos to win (no tutors after all), but they are listed below, for the occasion that I happen to draw them. There are more infinite combos than listed here, I just haven't added them yet.
- Ashnod's Altar + Geralf's Messenger + Ghave, Guru of Spores
= Infinite life loss.
- Ashnod's Altar
+
Blood Artist
+
Ghave, Guru of Spores
+ Counter/Token Generator = Infinite life loss/gain.
Ashnod's Altar + Cathars' Crusade + Ghave, Guru of Spores
= Infinite tokens / counters / colorless mana. For this combo, Cathar's Crusade can be substituted with any of the following cards:
I will be adding to this description as time allows to better explain the deck. In the meantime, please feel free to comment and make suggestions! I'd really like to know what everyone thinks.