Bourgeois Fungus (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

Bourgeois Fungus

Commander / EDH Aristocrats BGW (Abzan, Junk) Combo Control Dredge Reanimator

herpdederp92

Creature (33)

Land (35)

Enchantment (5)

Artifact (4)

Commander (1)

Sorcery (14)

Instant (8)

Maybeboard

Creature (18)

Land (6)

Sorcery (3)

Artifact (5)

Instant (2)

Enchantment (2)

UPDATE: THIS DECK IS NO LONGER ACTIVE. I have retired good ol' Ghave in order to build The Gitrog Monster and Saffi Eriksdotter decks. Decklist is up to date as of the last time it was played.

Hello! I am a longtime casual commander player, and this is my Aristocrats combo deck built around Ghave, Guru of Spores and Protean Hulk.

"Aristocracy is always cruel." - Wendell Phillips

Why aristocrats and why Ghave? Show

Ghave, Guru of Spores is an awesome card. Ghave works as the commander of many BGW deck builds and strategies, including Saproling tribal, token spam, +1 counter synergy, and even most goodstuff strategies like hydras or superfriends. In this case, I'm using him to head up an Aristocrats deck. This deck has seen at least 4 different commanders, most notably Teysa, Orzhov Scion, but it's always been about firing off infinite Karmic Guide + Reveillark death chains. Some time ago, I swapped out Teysa to Ghave in order to splash green for power cards like Saffi Eriksdotter and Protean Hulk, and the deck's power level rose dramatically.

Aristocrats are a fun and rewarding archetype where we intend to pitch our creatures into the graveyard willy-nilly to gain value and control the board, eventually winning via combo or aggro, depending on the deck's style. I highly recommend this archetype; commander is a format where indiscriminate creature wipes are the norm and aggro is frequently shut out, but you can still get tons of value out of creature cards by sacrificing and reanimating them. This particular build sits at the border between control decks and combo decks, functioning well at either racing other decks to win or choking them out of the game instead.

We're building BGW aristocrats in a way that doesn't require any particular card in the command zone, so we're looking for a commander that gives us tons of value, and in my opinion Ghave, Guru of Spores is the highest-value card available. Ghave guarantees us access to a sacrifice outlet and to a pile of Saproling chumpblockers that we can pitch into cards like Skullclamp, Sidisi, Undead Vizier and Meren of Clan Nel Toth. That said, the Fungus tends to draw a lot of hate and removal, and rightfully so since he sits squarely inside lots of infinite combos. If Ghave isn't to your liking, you might consider running other commanders, most likely Karador, Ghost Chieftain or Tymna & Tana.

Although our particular strategy doesn't rely on Ghave to combo out, there are plenty of build-around-me combos that use Ghave's abilities to generate infinite +1/+1 counters or infinite Saprolings. This fact heavily benefits this deck, since Ghave draws lots of attention and eats plenty of removal that would otherwise be pointed at more crucial cards. If you're looking for card suggestions to set up a Ghave-centric deck, I'd recommend the following:

Cards that specifically make Ghave much scarier (but would make this deck weaker)

You won't be seeing these cards here, but if you want to build around Ghave, I'd recommend the following mechanics:

Token Doublers:

+1/+1 counter matters:

Corpsejack Menace

Champion of Lambholt

Juniper Order Ranger

Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest

Big mana generators:

And of course, Saproling synergy:

Slimefoot, the Stowaway

Utopia Mycon

Mycoloth

Tendershoot Dryad

Think you get the picture of what this deck is, and what it isn't? You should play this deck if:

-You're tired of your powerful commander getting repeatedly killed, and you feel like just painting a target on the card and chucking it into the graveyard instead.

-You want to play a creature-centric commander deck that's more subtle than Craterhoof token aggro.

-You are willing to kill off every creature ever, even your own, if it helps you win.

-You're okay with the idea of using your graveyard as a second hand.

-Your opponents don't ban infinite combos and don't run Rest in Peace in every deck.

-Your first instinct on seeing Avacyn, Angel of Hope hit the battlefield is to laugh derisively, because your deck has so many answers. SO many.

Combos involving lots of creatures dying lots of times Show

Is this a Protean Hulk deck? You bet it is! Is it a Flash Hulk deck? Hell no. Get that blue mana out of here. We can still win on turn two using Entomb and Reanimate on Hulk, but that type of cheesy combo isn't the kind of magic we're here to play. Instead, we're looking to play the value game, ramping and milling and drawing until the combo comes together piece by piece. Hulk is merely the instant kill switch.

So what packages of cards does Hulk grab to win the game? Good question. I'll discuss the individual merits of these cards in the next section, but for here, I just want to outline how to build up 6-CMC groups of cards that set off infinite combos.

Card categories:

Sacrifice Outlets are the biggest piece of the puzzle, since we need to sacrifice Hulk to set off the combo. Ghave can pitch him once, as can a few lands e.g. Phyrexian Tower, but since Ghave's sacrifices cost mana, we can't go infinite. Here are the options:

Sac Outlets that are creatures: Viscera Seer, Carrion Feeder, Cartel Aristocrat (Aristocrat costs 2 mana, which sometimes keeps it outside Hulk's CMC budget.)

Sac Outlets that aren't creatures: Ashnod's Altar, Altar of Dementia, Phyrexian Altar. These can't be Hulked to play, but having them in play allows us to spend Hulk's 6-CMC budget on other tools.

Drain Dorks have triggered abilities that we can loop to kill our opponents 1 damage at a time. They're all 2-CMC creatures.

Drain Dorks: Blood Artist, Cruel Celebrant, Zulaport Cutthroat. (I'm considering Corpse Knight for redundancy.)

Loopers are key creatures that can reanimate other creatures. Typically, our combos are built by specifying a pair of Looper creatures that can target each other, letting them be sacrificed and resurrected infinitely.

Loopers: Karmic Guide Saffi Eriksdotter Reveillark Sun Titan Renegade Rallier Phyrexian Delver. Notably, Animate Dead and Stitcher's Supplier change the ways some of these cards interact.

So here's some basic Protean Hulk packages that instantly win the game:

6-CMC single Hulk: Start with a Drain Dork in graveyard. Sacrifice Hulk to anything and pull out Saffi Eriksdotter, Renegade Rallier, and a Sac Outlet. The Rallier sees that Hulk left the field so it reanimates the Drain Dork, and now Saffi and Rallier can reanimate each other forever.

12-CMC double Hulk: Start with an empty board. Sacrifice Hulk to anything and grab out Karmic Guide and a Sac Outlet. Point Karmic's trigger at Hulk, bringing back to play, then immediately sac Hulk again to fetch Saffi Eriksdotter and a Drain Dork. Now Saffi and Karmic can loop forever. (A minor variation is to swap Karmic for Phyrexian Delver, which still works provided you tutor out two Drain Dorks rather than one.)

Double Hulk 2: Start with empty board, sacrificing Hulk to pull Karmic Guide and a Sac Outlet, then sac Hulk again. Pull out Reveillark and Stitcher's Supplier. Sacrifice Supplier, milling cards. Loop Karmic and Reveillark, pointing Reveillark's other reanimate target at Supplier, milling cards. Continue to loop the Supplier until a Drain Dork mills, then reanimate the Drain Dork instead of the Supplier. Then loop to kill.

Animate Hulk: Start with Animate Dead in graveyard. Sacrifice Hulk to anything and search for Renegade Rallier + Sac Outlet + Drain Dork. Rallier's trigger points at Animate, which goes onto Hulk. Sac Rallier then sac Hulk, and fetch either Sun Titan or Karmic Guide. The Rallier can point at Animate Dead each time it enters, allowing the loop to complete.

Animate Hulk 2: Start with a Sac Outlet on board and Animate Dead in yard. Pitch Hulk for just Sun Titan. Titan's trigger points at Animate Dead, reanimating Hulk. Sac Hulk again and grab a Drain Dork and either Saffi Eriksdotter or Renegade Rallier. Loop to kill.

By this point, it should be pretty obvious that there are plenty of other degenerate ways to set off combos, depending on what cards exist on board and in the graveyard. It should also be clear that simply milling these cards and then dropping Living Death gets the combos set off just as efficiently. There are plenty of ways for this deck to win!

Notably, there exists an equally valid alternate build based on the Pattern of Rebirth + Boonweaver Giant combo. If you prefer to pull out combo pieces with Pattern rather than with Hulk, that's your prerogative; you'll probably want to make some alterations like including an Enlightened Tutor or an Academy Rector to fetch Pattern. Ultimately, I value thinning out the combo cards somewhat for a stronger control package, so I don't think my version has the room for those tools.

Aristocrats like to win games. Who doesn't? Show

So here's where I go into more detail about the individual combo cards, both how the cards work and why I selected them. Here we go!

First of all, we need to obtain a Sac Outlet that can sacrifice those looping combo creatures indefinitely (or at least chop up Ghave's Saprolings and get some value there.) Here's what the deck has available and what it does in a combo scenario:

Altar of Dementia mills our opponents out and wins the game by itself. Also good for some self-mill, which we call "card advantage" in these parts.

Phyrexian Altar makes arbitrarily large amounts of mana in whatever colors we need. If nothing else, we can now play Ghave from command zone endlessly to make a bazillion Saprolings.

Ashnod's Altar also makes arbitrarily large amounts of mana; colorless only, though. If we can still get Ghave into play, we again get to make a rather large number of tokens.

Viscera Seer lets us scry any one card to the top a la Vampiric Tutor.

Carrion Feeder swells with +1/+1 counters until it's approximately the size of a small planet. This also fuels Ghave so he can churn out a big pile of Saprolings every turn.

Cartel Aristocrat becomes very, very protected. I understand why there aren't more 1-CMC creature sac outlets, but I'd select any arbitrary 1-CMC card over Aristocrat due to its higher cost. Regardless, Aristocrat still needs to be included for redundancy, and at least it's very difficult for opponents to remove.

And of course, Ghave, Guru of Spores exists. His sacrifices cost 1 mana each so we can't go infinite under normal circumstances, but he'll at least let us kill off a finite number of creatures, which helps with cards like Protean Hulk and Skullclamp.

Next, we need something to convert those infinite deaths and infinite reanimations into a win condition. These are the cards that trigger opponents to death:

Altar of Dementia wins directly as mentioned above.

Blood Artist immediately drains our opponents down to zero HP.

Zulaport Cutthroat also drains our opponents down to zero.

Cruel Celebrant again drains our opponents down to zero. See the pattern? Drain dorks are best dorks.

Midnight Reaper isn't a direct win condition, but he lets us draw cards up to our life total to dig for any of these other wincons, which is almost as good. Oftentimes, our combos let us discard the Drain Dork to hand size and then immediately reanimate it for the kill on our left-hand opponent's upkeep.

Ghave, Guru of Spores + either Ashnod's Altar or Phyrexian Altar turns a combo into a degenerate win condition. Using infinite mana from an Altar, Ghave sacs our combo cards to generate infinite Saproling tokens and put infinite +1/+1 counters on our field, winning via aggro immediately or on the next turn (depending on summoning sickness).

And finally, it's worth noting that some of the Loopers have extra utility, beyond just being Reanimate on a stick:

Renegade Rallier does a great job of grabbing lands a la crucible or recurring cheap tools like Skullclamp and Sylvan Library from the yard.

Sun Titan is a bigger, badder Rallier. He can ramp out lands just as well, but his trigger lets him grab cards with slightly higher CMC, like Aura Shards and Plaguecrafter.

Reveillark is an interesting fellow; Lark's ability to dig out two creatures at once lets us produce some degenerate side loops while comboing. The obvious one is Stitcher's Supplier to mill the deck, but we can also get some weird interactions by recurring Veteran Explorer or Eternal Witness. Also, Ghave is technically a 0/0 and therefore a legal target.

When the combo pieces just aren't coming together, good old aggro is the obvious fallback wincon. We can use Dictate of Erebos to squish our opponents' creatures into paste for a few turns, paving the way for scary attackers like Sun Titan, Rune-Scarred Demon or an angry Carrion Feeder to knock an opponent or two out of the game. This is a creature deck, after all; surely we can aggro for aggro's sake.

How to reanimate the dead without really trying Show

We may not be Blue but we can still Control Show

Did Somebody Say Value? Show

Many of this deck's creatures are cheap weenies and bears, so comparatively few spells are devoted to ramping up on mana. Most of them are creatures themselves:

Birds of Paradise

Elves of Deep Shadow

Avacyn's Pilgrim

Veteran Explorer Try sacrificing Explorer as a ritual during combo turns. It's jank but it works.

Wood Elves

Sakura-Tribe Elder

Collective Voyage Grab a couple snow-covered basics too, just for variety.

Tempt with Discovery We get our biggest payoff by pulling out Field of the Dead alongside 3 other unique lands to spit out 4 zombie tokens for sac fodder. See the lands section below.

As for card advantage, this deck splits focus between tutoring and raw draw power. We can win quickly once combo pieces reach the correct zones, so we start by playing plenty of tutors that can get those cards where they need to go:

Entomb hits any card, even a Dread Return.

Buried Alive should turn Reanimate into a quick win. The typical Buried Alive package contains Protean Hulk, Golgari Thug and a control-oriented creature like Reclamation Sage

Survival of the Fittest Survival is possibly the scariest tutor in the deck, since we can treat it either as a Worldly Tutor or an Entomb depending on the context of what creature card needs to go where. Survival sets up combos VERY quickly.

Fauna Shaman Survival of the Fittest on a stick. We have to wait for the tap ability, but she's still a hell of a lot easier to reanimate than Survival, so Fauna Shaman is a much harder resource for our opponents to deny us.

Diabolic Intent cosplays as Demonic Tutor with an extra cost of a Saproling. Big whoop.

Scheming Symmetry has plenty of ways for us to break its parity, from Midnight Reaper to Altar of Dementia

Rune-Scarred Demon The demon is fantastic to entomb and reanimate out. Big creature, impactful tutor.

Sidisi, Undead Vizier Ditto. Even more so since Sidisi can send herself back to the grave for multiple reanimations in one turn.

Plus, we're running plenty of card advantage engines, both self-mill and raw card draw. These help us draw tons of removal so we can act as the control player, and keep us fueled with creatures throughout long grindy games:

Hermit Druid is not designed to self-mill our whole deck; we're running it alongside Collective Voyage, for crying out loud. But even if Hermit mills 7 cards a turn, that's still plenty of reanimator fodder.

Life from the Loam serves multiple purposes. The dredge lets us fill the bin with reanimator targets, plus Loam keeps us from getting mana-screwed by filling our hand with land.

Golgari Thug Dredge on a stick, why yes I think I will have some of that. Every so often, the death trigger is relevant for getting a creature back to hand, but it's usually pretty awkward.

Dakmor Salvage If you think this is just a land, you must forget how dredge works.

Stitcher's Supplier Alongside all the Entombs and Hermits and dredge, how could I not play Supplier? He's an adorkable little value engine that also participates in Reveillark combos.

Midnight Reaper One of the best aristocrats out there for card draw. Arguably a sidegrade to Grim Haruspex but I like that the Reaper draws off its own death as well.

Skullclamp is just too good not to play. Clamp gives huge card advantage when our commander makes 1/1 tokens at will, and is one of the best value cards to tutor out in the face of stax and control decks that want to drag out the game.

Sylvan Library After testing, Library feels amazing in this deck. The card is always a house, but here we can get extra value simply by overmaxing hand size and pitching the extra cards to the yard.

Eternal Witness No comment.

Meren of Clan Nel Toth No comment.

Finally, a few power lands are worth mentioning:

Field of the Dead is our most interesting power land, since it vomits out sacrifice fodder like nobody's business. We're running some snow-covered basics to enable even a Collective Voyage to set off the Field immediately.

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth No comment.

Krosan Verge hits something like Murmuring Bosk and Godless Shrine. Excellent manafixing.

Phyrexian Tower is a good emergency sac outlet to save a combo creature from Path. Notably, Tower also serves as a hard-to-remove catalyst to set off Protean Hulk wins.

High Market serves as redundancy for Phyrexian Tower.

Geier Reach Sanitarium is an incredibly good card in this deck. Not only does it generate some card advantage, but it also gives us a cheap way to discard important creatures to grave. It also acts as an instant kill switch when Altar of Dementia goes infinite.

Last but not least, Bojuka Bog is our token tool for sniping other graveyard-based decks.

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Casual

95% Competitive

Date added	5 years
Last updated	3 years
Key combos	Karmic Guide + Reveillark
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 0 Mythic Rares 47 - 0 Rares 23 - 0 Uncommons 12 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.82
Tokens	Experience Token, Saproling 1/1 G, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Ghave
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