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Ghave's Combo Emporium

Commander / EDH

jovennnn


This deck is a pure combo deck focusing primarily on using Ghave as an engine and combo piece to close out games.

The most frequently encounter combo options are:

Ashnod's Altar + Ghave, Guru of Spores + Young Wolf to create an arbitrarily infinite number of saprolings with all creatures being having as large of power toughness. Replace Young Wolf with Geralf's Messenger for to drain all of your opponents. Replace Young Wolf with Strangleroot Geist and you can get a hasty kill condition large enough to take out any opponent who does not have an instant speed way to gain infinite life. Replace Ashnod's Altar with Phyrexian Altar to gain colored man a rather than colorless which oftentimes allows you to cast something else to end the game. Utopia Mycon is included in the deck to act as a backup filtering source from colorless to colored mana when an Ashnod's Altar combo by itself isn't ending the game.

Ashnod's Altar + Melira, Sylvok Outcast + Kirtchen Finks to gain infinite life and gain infinite colorless mana. Replace Kitchen Finks with Woodfall Primus to destroy all of your opponents nonland permanents. Ashnod's Altar can be Phyrexian Altar to once again gain colored mana rather than colorless.

If any of these combos don't win on their own, there are plenty of other ways to win, but Altar of Dementia, Altar of the Brood, or Bitter Ordeal can often seal the game up via a pseudo-mill win. Cards like Skullclamp, Viscera Seer and Greater Good can help you dig to a combo if needed or find you a win condition the turn you are combo-ing off if what is already being done doesn't win on its own. Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat can function as infinite drain as well with any of the above combos.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion for infinite damage to opponents. Beyond this Mikaeus can make the a few other utility creatures in the deck into just undying creatures for other combos.

Devoted Druid + Vizier of Remedies will create infinite green mana. This on its own will not win the game, but it does allow for some powerful plays early game such as Chord of Calling for Woodfall Primus. Late game, it helps on the combo turn to allow you to leave up black and white mana as needed. Beyond this, Vizier just functions as Melira number two outside of games where infect may matter.

The deck runs a full tutor suite with the exception of Sylvan Tutor because placing a card on top of your deck at sorcery speed, even for one mana, is sometimes too slow. Green's Sun Zenith oftentimes only finds half of combos rather than all the pieces which is why it has been removed from the deck, but as Wizards prints more green creature cards, GSZ only gets better and better so may someday find its way back in.

Beyond the tutor suite and combo pieces, most of the other cards are ramp, removal, hate or utility. Cards like Scavenging Ooze and Linvala hinder opponents from getting out of control and assembling their own combos, and Saffi Eriksdotter acts as hate against my opponents removal. Ethersworn Canonist is an additional option to add to the deck to hose spell based combo decks while having minimal impact on your own gameplan. Phyrexian Arena and Necropotence dig for combo pieces with Necro almost always being the correct tutor target if you have three black and need to find multiple combo pieces. Evolutionary Leap digs to combo pieces extremely efficiently since almost all of the creatures in the deck either are combo pieces or have utility in getting to your combo pieces. The removal suite is made up of the most efficiently costed pieces of removal in Abzan that will hit the most targets (though I am on the fence about adding Fatal Push or Murderous Cut and trimming either Grave Pact or Aura Shards which have synergy with Ghave but are slightly overcosted). The ramp spells are pretty run of the mill.

At this time, the only cards I still definitely want are Mox Diamond and Misty Rainforest. I bounce back and forth on Grim Monolith since it ramps early, but with Sol Ring, Mana Vault and Mana Crypt, the colorless mana isn't always useful.

Quick note, I don't run Squirrel's Nest and Earthcraft for two reasons. First, I don't think that combo wins on its own as often as the other combos in this deck can. Second, I don't run enough basics to consistently be able to setup the combo.

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Casual

100% Competitive

Date added 5 years
Last updated 5 years
Key combos
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

5 - 0 Mythic Rares

59 - 0 Rares

21 - 0 Uncommons

9 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.35
Tokens Saproling 1/1 G
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