#ghave

Second Patron-choice for today was another Commander from the original Commander set, but this time around it was Ghave, Guru of Spores. I must admit, I was never a big fan of Ghave. It’s one of those commanders that I feel tries to be a complex, tactical commander, but it’s ability doesn’t really do well. But as a creature, I really like how it turned out. And since I feel like plant villains aren’t much of a thing, I turned the lore around a bit to make Ghave more of a brutalist “plants will rule” sort of creature.

The Ca-Ca-Combo Refresher!

This combo takes a bit of work but all the pieces seem harmless and non-threatening on their own (maybe not the Blood Artist, but I mean come on, he’s only a 0/1!) So how this new abridged combo works:

1) Have all the cards assembled on the battlefield together. Using Ghave, pay one mana and remove a +1/+1 counter from himself, creating a 1/1 green saproling creature token. 

2) Upon etb, the saproling will trigger Carnival of Souls, causing you to lose one life while gaining one black mana (B). 

3) Sacrifice the saproling to the Carrion Feeder, putting a +1/+1 counter on it and triggering Blood Artist, causing you to gain a life and target opponent to lose a life. 

4) Using the floating black mana (B) from earlier, use Ghave’s ability to remove the +1/+1 counter from Carrion Feeder and create a 1/1 saproling token. Carnival will trigger and cause you to lose 1 life and produce a single black mana (B).

5) You have now created an essentially endless infinite combo of life loss. Congratulations, and give yourself a pat on the back!

My previous iteration of this combo was more infinite mana based with Ashnod’s Altar and Lumberknot. Upon playing a few games of Pauper with friends tho I discovered Carrion Feeder and the light bulb nearly exploded in my brain. Who needs infinite mana when you can just out right kill people and in fewer steps!!

I’m trying to go thru and re-evaluate my old combos to keep things fresh while putting new twists on them. I know this isn’t really a new twist on my older post, but I still thought it was note worthy enough to warrant a revisiting! There is always room to add more pieces to a brew but sometimes the simpler a home brew is, the sweeter it is. Let me know what your thoughts are and share any new M19 cards you think I should visit on. 

So here’s the Ghave list I came up with. I pretty much just copied some of the combos from this post on mtgsalvation after searching “Ghave combos”.

I added Altar of the Brood to make the deck infinite mill if needed, as most of the combos involve something entering the battlefield in some way or another.

Solemnity won’t allow Ghave to enter the battlefield with any +1/+1 counters on it, so it’ll just enter as a base 0/0 creature that’s getting +1/+1 and undying from Mikaeus. Nothing else special happens here.

But that’s not very interesting, so let’s say that there’s also a Night of Souls’ Betrayal on the battlefield, giving every creature -1/-1 and causing Ghave to be 0/0 again. In this case, Ghave will immediately die and Undying with trigger. When the undying trigger resolves, Ghave will return to the battlefield without counters and die again. This loop will repeat endlessly. If no one chooses to (or is able to) break the loop and the game doesn’t otherwise end due to somehting like Zulaport Cutthroat triggers or the like, then this is an endless loop which will end the game in a draw.